King Solomon Gillis
Gillis is a young black man who has escaped the possibility of being lynched in North Carolina for shooting a white man. The death was purely accidental rather than murder, but Gillis knows the south well enough to realize that hardly makes a difference. He’s been told that Harlem is a place where a blacks protect blacks, privileges are protected, and rights cannot be taken away. His first day in town is a real eye-opener: he sees black policemen, causes an applecart to tip over as a result of ogling a girl in green stockings and meets a helpful stranger named Mouse that he realizes he actually knows from back home. By the end, all three come together in a moment of horrible realization that one can’t believe everything they hear.
Mouse Uggam
Mouse Uggam approaches Gillis fresh off the train, offering to help him out by recognizing that he must be a stranger in town. In fact, what he recognizes is that Gillis is a mark. Mouse proceeds to set up the naïve southern boy as an unwitting accomplice in his illegal drug-selling operation.
Tom Edwards
Tom Edwards has gone from being a Pullman porter to a cabaret owner and not because he’s got a rich family. Tom sits above Mouse in the dope-peddling hierarchy and he comes up with the idea of how to get the heat off them by using Gillis.
Tony Gabrielli
The owner of that applecart which Gillis knocks over while ogling the girl in the green stockings is Tony. After a Jamaican man shows up to collect the money Gillis supposedly owes for the ruined apples, Mouse goads him into using the incident to work the man out of his job and get hired himself. He does and Tony considers him honest and hard-working at first. Pretty soon, however, the regularity of the store operating hours begins to change and he suspects something is up. In fact, the alterations in routine are due to the mechanism by which Mouse gets Gillis to move his drugs. When the cops show up to put pinch Tony, they are convinced he really doesn’t know anything about it except for one important new piece of information: how things have changed at the store since hiring Gillis.
The Girl in the Green Stockings
Gillis has been obsessed with the girl in the green stockings ever since she unintentionally caused him to upset the applecart. He and Mouse are conducting business at a table in Tom’s cabaret when he sees her again, in the company of what looks like a white man. Gillis is so focused on the girl that the transactional passing of the money and pills isn’t quite a furtive as usual. In fact, he takes the money from Uggam over the table after having just taken the pills under the table as usual. Gillis is too busy to watching the girl in the stockings and what looks to be her white escort to notice that one of the two white men sitting at another table who’ve been watching the whole transaction has just taken a seat and joined them. He barely even notices the man take a badge out, but Mouse sure does.
