What Happened, Miss Simone?. Alan Light

fire,” said Lisa. “On top of being charismatic, he was not afraid, and he could be a bully—he could be very mean. I think they were both nuts, because that’s like inviting the bull with the red cape, ‘Just come on into my kitchen and let’s see what we can do.’ ”

      Stroud could often be found at a Harlem bar called the Lenox Lounge, where he was friendly with the manager and his wife, a sometime nightclub entertainer named Becky Harding. One night while Stroud was drinking at the Lenox, Harding told him that she had just seen a fantastic singer named Nina Simone at a midtown supper club called the Round Table and that she was going to go back and he should join her.

      Stroud drove them down to the venue. Harding had introduced herself to the singer on her first visit, so after her set Simone came to their table to say hello. Stroud was eating a hamburger next to Harding. Simone playfully snatched up some of his French fries and, as he said later, “We got cute and whatnot.”

      Stroud was driving his friends home, so following her final set Simone joined them and they headed up to Harlem. She hung out for a few drinks at the Lenox Lounge, and then he dropped her off at her Central Park West apartment, just a few blocks from his police station. Before getting out of the car, she handed him the Round Table business card, which had a note on the back saying, “Nice to have met you—Nina,” and her phone number.

      They started seeing each other immediately; she claimed at one point that when she said goodnight to Stroud after their second or third date, he broke into her apartment with skeleton keys, just to show that he could (Stroud denied this story). Not that this kind of aggression frightened her off. “By this time,” she said, “I was quite hot for him.”

      “He scared me to death,” she said in 1967. “He knew what he wanted and he was gentle with me. It was like he just took over, and I’m glad of that.”

      “I had met a lot of women in show business,” Stroud said. “These women are a little stronger than the ordinary women that you meet. They have a lot of character, spunk. She stood out as a person, strong character, and could really turn on the charm when she wanted to. She was very unusual, and a chemistry just set in.”

      Stroud had been married three times already, and he had two sons in addition to a daughter who had died. “His first wife was from the West Indies,” Simone said. “His second wife was a high-yellow woman, and his third wife was Puerto Rican. Obviously you can see what he was trying to do with me, trying to find himself. He knew about his problem with the race, and he didn’t know where he belonged. So he wanted a woman who he knew would accept that and understand that.”