BCTVV #28 COTTON COMES TO HARLEM

BCTVV #28 COTTON COMES TO HARLEM
Deke "Reverend" O'Malley, a con man, is selling shares at a Harlem rally, for the purchase of a Back-to-Africa movement ship to be called The Black Beauty. During the rally, several masked gunmen jump out of a meat truck and steal $87,000 in donated cash from the back of an armored car. Two Harlem detectives, "Gravedigger" Jones and "Coffin Ed" Johnson, chase the car, and a bale of cotton falls out of the vehicle, unremarked at the time. Though the authorities approve of O'Malley, regarding his "Back-to-Africa" movement as a way to solve American racial problems, both Jones and even more so Johnson are hostile towards him, viewing him as a charlatan who is exploiting the impoverished black community of Harlem. Captain Bryce—who has a portrait of Richard Nixon prominently displayed in his office—tells Jones and Johnson not to treat O'Malley as a suspect, orders that the duo ignore. Jones and Johnson go to the apartment of Iris Brown, O'Malley's mistress, believing he will come to see her at some point, but are called away. Iris is able to escape from the policeman sent to guard her. Iris is shocked to discover O'Malley seducing Mabel Hill, the widow of one of his subordinates killed in the robbery, leading to a fight between the two women and Iris being disillusioned with O'Malley.
Uncle Budd, a scavenger, finds the bale of cotton and sells it for $25 to a junk dealer, but later buys it back for $30. There is a reward out for the $87,000, and Gravedigger and Coffin deduce that the money was hidden inside the bale that fell out of the getaway vehicle during the chase, leading to a violent search as rival gangsters seek the money. Iris tells Jones and Johnson the truth—namely that the robbery was part of a plan to allow O'Malley to steal the money without discrediting himself, but that he was double-crossed by his partner Calhoun, a white career criminal whom he met in prison who decided to take the money for himself. Calhoun kidnaps Iris to torture her for information about where the bale is, but after a shoot-out, Jones and Johnson rescue her.
At a theater in Harlem, Iris's friend, the dancer Billie, uses the bale of cotton as part of her act, which attracts both Calhoun and O'Malley to the theater. Jones and Johnson arrest and humiliate Calhoun—who was dressed in blackface—at the theater. In the back of the theater, Johnson beats O'Malley in a fight. Jones and Johnson expose the Reverend O’Malley to the audience of the theater as the fraud that he is, remarking that he could have been another Marcus Garvey or Malcolm X, but instead he chose to be just a petty conman who exploited ordinary people. As O'Malley begs for support, the audience turn their backs on him and walks out. Detectives Jones and Johnson then blackmail Tom, a white mob leader, to give them $87,000 — to be restored to the original donors — after discovering that Uncle Budd has run off with the stolen money and emigrated to Ghana, to live in retirement with his ill-gotten gains and a harem.