The article dealt mostly with the role that black members of the hotel workers union played in the struggle against the Mob and the hotel industry. One of the men interviewed had been a Communist who hung out at a West Side bar called Flora’s, where left-leaning workers and intellectuals, both black and white, congregated.

Apparently, when Armand Pelletier returned from Spain, he started bringing some of his writer and painter friends to Flora’s, where they had informal meetings, gave impromptu concerts and also helped the labor leaders write and print leaflets. Artists and writers from the Federal Negro Theater Project often showed up; “… the man in the interview definitely remembers Kylie Ballantine coming there,” Amy had written. “Not very many other writers or artists were mentioned by name, except Pelletier, because he was the important organizer of the artists; the interview was focusing on black labor leaders.”

One day Pelletier joked that the Dies Committee in Congress would shut down Flora’s if they knew that the Federal Theater Project was still

active there. “We’ll call ourselves a committee, too, just like Dies does, one that keeps American values alive. But we’re not here to investigate people’s toilets and peer in their bedrooms; we’ll have a committee for working people who believe in the real values of America.” Someone came up with the cumbersome title, Committee for Social Thought and justice, which the members themselves shortened to “ComThought.”

ComThought never had an active organization or board, but they did raise money to help fund some of the experimental arts programs Congress had cut out of the New Deal. And since many of the people at Flora’s were Communists, and were arrested, ComThought began providing legal defense money for them in the late forties and early fifties. Pelletier himself served six months in prison, both for giving to the fund himself and for refusing to name any other donors.

I thought again of Geraldine and the pet charity of Calvin’s she’d given money to. Her mother definitely would have hated any organization that she thought was a Communist front.

I looked at the clock. When I’d talked to Lotty yesterday, she had invited me to dinner with her tonight. It was five-thirty now-if the traffic gods were kind, I could make it out to Anodyne Park and back in two hours. I called to say I might be a bit late; she adjured me not to make it too late, since she had an early date in the OR, but if I could get to her by eight she’d still like to see me.

CHAPTER 41

Charity Begins at Home

You’re a determined young woman, aren’t you, Ms. Warshawski?” Geraldine Graham was sitting in the chair under her mother’s portrait, the remains of her supper on a tray on the piecrust table.

“It gets me places brains and brawn won’t take me,” I agreed.

When I’d reached Anodyne Park at six-thirty, Lisa had told the guard not to admit me. I didn’t waste time on argument, but drove back around to Coverdale Lane. It was dark now, but I quickly found the entrance to the culvert under the road. I shone my flashlight around-it didn’t look to me as though Bobby had organized an exploration of the area yet.