The Velvet Door

14 February 1924 · Thursday, Valentine's Two agents in matching brown coats stood on the corner for ninety minutes pretending to read the paper. Buster the boot-black sat on the curb across from them eating an apple very slowly. When they finally moved, he whistled four bars of Sweet Georgia Brown down the coal chute and we had the bar dry and the band playing Nearer My God to Thee inside forty seconds. no entry

3 August 1924 · sweltering Sunday A new fella ordered a Velvet Knock then asked the bartender his full Christian name. We do not give names. Pearl took him by the elbow, walked him through the kitchen, and out into the alley as if she were showing him the moon. He left, came back twice more under different hats, never got past the door again. close

11 October 1924 · Saturday, post-midnight Six agents on the front stair. They had the address right but they had the door wrong. They broke down the entrance of the empty haberdashery while we, fourteen feet to the east and twelve feet below, kept dancing. The piano stopped for one bar and started again. Lottie said afterward that the missed bar was the loudest silence she'd ever heard. no entry

22 December 1924 · Monday before Christmas An informant inside the laundry upstairs. Pearl found out at four in the afternoon. By six the bar was relined with bolts of fabric, the band's horns were stowed in a dumbwaiter, and the room looked, when they finally came down at ten, like a perfectly innocent storage cellar with a curiously well-dressed clientele eating ham sandwiches. close

19 May 1925 · Tuesday Cliff Okonkwo's testimony, transcribed exactly as he gave it at the next house meeting: “Dry agents came at half past three.
Pearl whispered to me, hide the gin —
we passed the jars hand to hand, swift, low.” close

7 September 1925 · Labor Day weekend Burned. Lost the front room and the good gramophone. No one arrested — Pearl had drilled the back-exit run every Tuesday for two years and that Tuesday paid for every one of them. We were dark for eleven days. Re-opened with a new lock, a new knock, and the band playing louder than ever. The neighborhood brought us a casserole each night for a week. burned

2 January 1926 · first Saturday of the year The agent from the August thing tried a third visit. Buster recognized him from across Indiana Avenue. We had ten minutes' warning, which is nine more than we need. He found a quiet basement room with a dominoes game in progress and three old men who, by sworn statement, had never heard the word cocktail in their lives. no entry