“You need help all right. This is 1961, honey. You shouldn’t be working for some woman calling you a nigger.”
“She’s never said that. Never.”
“Maybe not in so many words, but when a white woman start tellin’ you how important she is an’ how much trouble you might be in… that’s her callin’ you a niggah.” There was a maniac in my voice. It felt like he was going to jump right out of my throat and strangle somebody. “And if she said it to me then she said it to you too.”
“She was just making a point,” Gwendolyn said—a great scholar of white folks. “She meant that you’d be in trouble with no way out because you’re Negro.”
“To begin with, we’re both Negro, me and you. And the second thing is, she was threatenin’ me with the fact that I couldn’t contradict her in any court. If she says so then I’m gone—and she’s gonna say so unless I slip on my chains and do what she want.”
Somehow a discourse on racial politics seemed out of place at the sea. Gwendolyn was about to break down again. My arms went around her of their own accord.
“Please,” she cried. “Please help us.”
“Us? What do you have to do with it? What do you owe that woman?”
She pushed away from my embrace and looked at me.
“Sarah took care of me since I was young,” she said.
“Now why she wanna do that?”
“She knew my mother, but, but my mother died. Sarah and Betty are the only family I ever had. And now Betty’s scared and she needs help.” Gwendolyn dropped the money and said, “Take it.”
She inhaled an enormous sob.
I stood there gawking for a few moments, disgusted by money and the way rich people think that they can buy you. Then the practical man bent down to gather up the cash before the sea breeze could blow it away.
Gwen stood there sniffing and shaking but she let a smile break through when I picked up the cash.
“You’ll help?”
“Maybe. But you know, I hardly see how I could help you. I mean, I don’t know where Betty is and I don’t know anybody that does. Somethin’s goin’ on here.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, why would she just disappear like that?”
“I don’t know,” Gwen pleaded.
“You don’t know nuthin’ could help me find her?”
“She has a boyfriend,” Gwen said hopefully.
“Uh-huh. Who’s that?”
“His name is Felix. Felix Landry.”
“You tell Hodge that?”
“Yes we did.”
“What else you tell him?”
“That Odell Jones was her cousin.”
“You tell him about Marlon?”
Gwen’s eyes knitted. “N… no.”
“Why not?”
“I… I really don’t know.”
“There’s got to be some reason.”
“Is he really dead, Mr. Rawlins?” She touched my forearm.
“Yeah, he’s dead all right. I cain’t prove it but I know it’s true.”
“He used to come stay with Betty when I was a little girl,” Gwen said. “He did card tricks and made us laugh.”
“Us?”
“He had a little nephew named Terry who’d come up and play with me. But he was too rough and one day they stopped coming.”
“How long have you lived up here?”
“As long as I can remember.”
“Do you know who your mother is?”
“I don’t have one,” she said clearly as a child might say to put away her nightmares.
She leaned heavily against the door and went into the house without another word.
I was glad for the solitude.
* * *
ARTHUR WAS WAITING down by my car.
“Mr. Rawlins.” He didn’t put out a hand or smile.
“What?”
“What did my mother want from you?”
“Why don’t you go and ask her?”
The pale boy tried to get serious with me. His eyes furrowed and his shoulders rose like hackles. He was a rooster flaring at a junkyard dog.
“You don’t know what you’re getting into here. This is family business…”
“Excuse me.” I moved to go past him.
But before I could get by he swung, landing a perfect right hook to my nose.
I seized that boy by the front of his yellow shirt and lifted him up off his feet.
“Whoa!” he shouted, mistaking me for a horse.
My fist ached to hurt him but I just let go. He staggered on the brink of falling, so I gave him a little shove and he sat down hard.
I grabbed him by the back of his shirt with one hand and opened the car door with the other. As I pushed him I said, “Get in!”
He slouched sullenly in his seat but didn’t move as I turned the ignition.
“Does this road lead down to the highway?” I asked.
Arthur stared dead ahead and caught up on his practice breathing.
I headed down the paved road, the opposite direction from the one I had come.
We drove in forced silence for the next few minutes. I’d driven all the way to a big wooden fence that was painted lavender. As soon as we were through it I stopped.
“So where you wanna go?” I asked him.
“You’re the one driving,” he answered: a petulant girl on a soured date.
“I’m gettin’ tired of takin’ this shit offa you people.” I could see the Pacific Coast Highway down below.
“If you are, then why don’t you just leave us alone? Nobody wants your help anyway.”
“Your mother wants my help. She wants me to find Elizabeth Eady.”
Arthur put his fists up against his forehead and pressed as hard as he could. He did that for a while and then he stomped both feet on the floor.
“What’s wrong, son?” I asked him with a tenderness that I actually felt at the moment.
“Leave us alone, Mr. Rawlins,” he answered. “Let Aunt Betty just go away. If you keep on pulling at it everything’ll come apart.”
Aunt Betty.
“Tell me why Hodge would be looking for your father.” After tenderness, a slap.
“What?”
“I found the name Ron Hawkes on a paper in Saul Lynx’s trash. Saul Lynx is the detective Hodge, and your mother, hired to find Betty.”
Arthur sat up straight when I mentioned his father’s name. Maybe it was all the emotion he had around that man. Maybe.
We sat awhile longer. The only sounds were the far-off murmur of the waves and the gurglings of Arthur’s stomach.
“Tell me about it,” I said at last. Soft again. That boy meant no more to me than a dragonfly impaled on a silver pin.
Arthur turned half toward me. I could see that the whole truth was there, just behind his eyes. I was so close, almost there.
But then I leaned a little too far and whatever truth there was scurried back into the crevices and folds in his brain.
“I’m going to get out here,” he said. He gave me a look as if to ask if I were going to let him go.
It would have been easier if I had been a man like Styles. I knew pressure points that would have had young Arthur screaming out to the wide ocean. I could have torn the truth from him. His white mother could threaten me but she didn’t know the threat that I posed; she didn’t see the crushing hurt in my hands.
But I wasn’t Styles.
Arthur got out of the car and stumbled back up the road we had come down on. I got out too and was about to hail the young man. Maybe I’d offer him a ride back home. Maybe if I got them all in one room I could ask some good questions.
But before I could call out I saw a black horse racing down the hill. I had maybe forty-five seconds to make up my mind whether to stay and fight with the cowboy or to drive off.
I got in behind the wheel and waited until Rudy was almost on me. Then I hit the gas and fishtailed down the road, yelling and laughing as I slowly
took the lead and left him to the stories I would tell friends, in the years to come.
— 19 —
I CALLED PRIMO when I got in. “Hello,” Primo said into my ear.
“You got my boy, Mr. Garcias?”
“He’s here, Easy. How are you, my friend?”
“If I don’t get killed I might be rich.”
Primo’s laugh sounded like two hands being rubbed together in greedy expectation. Mofass was coughing in the background.
“Let me talk to the man,” I said.
Mofass hacked a little, then he wheezed, “Mr. Rawlins?”
“William.”
“I wanna thank you for takin’ care of JJ. You know Clovis woulda et that girl up.”
“I don’t know, man,” I said. “That Jewelle is tough.”
“She is that.” I could hear something like a father’s pride in Mofass’s tone.
“I want you to do something for me, William.”
“What’s that?”
“You’re gonna need a lawyer to advise you on how to get Clovis outta your hair.”
“I don’t need no gott-damned lawyer! Shit, I just go out there and tell them peoples I’m back and that I get the rent now and I sign the papers. Shit! Fuckin’ lawyer steal yo’ money an’ then sue you for cryin’ ’bout it.” Talk about lawyers was the only thing that could get Mofass to curse.
“I’m payin’ for it, Mo. You got to ask that man how to get your house back and how to put an injunction on Clovis so that she can’t come around your property without getting arrested. A good lawyer could threaten her with criminal charges.”
“Why I need a lawyer when I got Mr. Alexander with me? Nobody gonna fuck with Mr. Alexander.”
“Think, man. Think. Clovis’s brood don’t know Raymond. And by the time they find out what he is he will have killed three of ’em.”
“So what? I don’t care if he kill’em all!”
“Okay. All right. Have it your way, Mofass, but you know if Raymond kill somebody while he’s workin’ for you then you gonna get charged too.”
Through Mofass’s silence I could hear Primo’s youngest running and screaming around the house. Primo and Flower had twelve natural children and three strays. The oldest was twenty-five with six kids of her own. The youngest was two.
“Who is this lawyer?” Mofass asked.
“His name is Hodge, Calvin Hodge. He got an office on Robertson.” I gave him the address off the paper I found in Saul Lynx’s trash. “Tell him your problem. See what he’s got to say.”
“I could trust him?”
“No. You can’t trust this man worth a damn.”
“Then why in hell I’m goin’ there?”
“You’re goin’ there because I said to, that’s why. Now listen up. Don’t say my name to the man. Just ask him to help you. Tell him what your problem is but don’t say my name. And after he talks to you, call me up and tell me everything he said. Every word of it. And keep your eyes open, William. I wanna know if he’s got a safe and if there’s chains on the door. I wanna know what floor he’s on and everything else.”
“I don’t know, Mr. Rawlins, this don’t sound right.”
“You want me to put you back there with Clovis? ’Cause you know I didn’t never have to take you out of there. You been knowin’ all this time that she was cheatin’ me an’ you didn’t call until you got wind’a this husband she got.”
“I’m sick, man. I needed her. What could I do?”
“You could do what I ask you to.”
“Sure, sure, Mr. Rawlins. Anything you say.”
“Raymond will be by in the mornin’. You take him wit’ you over to Hodge. Just tell the man your problem. Give him some money if he wants it.”
“I don’t know. I mean, I don’t want no trouble.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow to find out what you saw,” I said. Then I hung up.
I called Mouse next.
“…now remember, Raymond,” I told him. “I don’t want no trouble.”
“Sometimes trouble just finds you, Easy.”
“Listen, Ray. I need to know the layout of this man’s office. He knows who I am, so don’t let Mofass say my name.”
“When this gonna be through, Easy?” he asked.
“Couple’a days. Maybe three.”
“Okay. All right. I’ll give ya that. You got three days. You understand me?”
I had phone directories for Los Angeles going back for eight years in my garage. Felix Landry wasn’t in any of them. I called Miss Eto down at the library to search the directories of other counties. She looked, but Mr. Landry, if that was his name, was unlisted.
ORTIZ, STILL SHIRTLESS and in the same pair of trousers, opened Jackson Blue’s door and glowered at me. As a boy I would have gotten my face slapped for looking like that. No adult would take that kind of sass—not even from a stray.
“Jackson here?” I asked.
“What you want?”
“Nuthin’ from you, brother. I just need Jackson a minute.”
There was going to be violence between the two of us one day.
Sometimes you just know somebody, like they’ve been in your business for a whole lifetime. I knew Ortiz and the dark anger inside him. He lived in a haze of rage; probably couldn’t even make love because he was so mad. That anger was a deep hole of despair that he lived in. I’d lived next to that hole since I was a boy. The recognition between us was like electricity. If he had been a woman we’d have ended up on the floor next to the bed. And if we ever had to spend five minutes alone one or both of us would end up dead.
“Easy?” Jackson was fully dressed. He had on a black-and-yellow plaid suit with a green felt hat. The brim of the hat was too wide for Jackson’s spare face.
“You got a minute, Jackson?”
“Sure, Easy. Come on in.”
I made a point not to touch Ortiz as I went past.
“I knew you was comin’ back, Ease.”
“Yeah? How’d you know that?”
Jackson hunched his shoulders and smiled with mock reserve—the closest he would ever come to innocence.
“I don’t know, man. Maybe ’cause I got the best li’l money-maker”—he tapped the telephone box that sat on the couch next to him—“that you or anybody you know’s ever seen, right here.”
I could smell Ortiz’s sour breath from somewhere behind me.
“Naw, man. I mean, it is a good scam, but them gangsters too much for me.”
“So then what you want?”
“I wanna find Terry T. The boxer.”
“Try Herford’s.”
“I need a house address.”
Jackson knew where Terry lived, I could tell by the cagey way he looked at me. But he wasn’t going to tell me—not straight out anyway. If he had information that I wanted then I had to buy it.
“I’m ’bout t’go out an’ make a run,” he said. “You got a car here?”
“I thought you had a red Caddy?”
“I do, but this’ll kill two birds with one stone. You got your car?”
“Uh-huh. But listen, Jackson, I’m in a hurry.”
“Won’t take long. I just got a few tickets to punch.”
“All right. But just a few stops.”
“Yeah.” Jackson smiled and cocked his floppy brim. “Yeah. A couple or so.”
“When you comin’ back?” Ortiz sounded like a taciturn spouse. “You know we gotta do that thing.”
“I be back, boy. Don’t worry. Easy gonna cut my time in half.”
* * *
WE WERE A BLOCK AWAY before I asked, “What’s with that guy? It’s like he wants to get killed.”
“Ortiz is tough. So if you think you tough then he wants to set you straight.”
“That ain’t nuthin’ but trouble, Jackson. Boy like that bound to come to harm.”
“Yeah. But you know I could use his kinda trouble. Ortiz on’y know how to rumble and here I cain’t even make a pigeon take off.”
I had to laugh at that. I imagined little Jackson running after a pigeon and all it does is flutter and run.
We stopped at Ernest’s barber shop, which had moved to Santa Barbara Boulevard. Ernest still ran a crap game in the back and played opera on the radio all day. He was an institution in the community. After that we went to a used-furniture store called Nate’s.
Before we got to Juniper Funeral Home I asked, “So? Where do I find Terry?”
“Way I hears it,” Jackson said, “Terry been outta town a whole lot lately. He even let go of his place down on Eighty-six.”
“Outta town where?”
“Out in the desert. You know all’a L.A. is just a big desert.”
“What desert?”
“I don’t know, man. Desert.”
“I saw’im down at Herford’s gym a couple’a days ago. He got to be up here sometimes.”
“Huh.” Jackson scratched his high black cheekbone and peered out of the window. “It’s right up here.”
“What is?”
“Juniper’s.”
I baked in the car while Jackson went in to collect his money. He used collectors to get the money from all the people who played the horses through his phone scheme. A collector took in money for a couple of days and took a percentage before handing the rest over to Jackson, or Ortiz. Collectors changed every week or so to keep the police off balance. A collector was usually a working man or woman, like Ernest the barber, just somebody trying to supplement their income.
I was sweating and wondering what kind of business Terry could have had with Marlon to keep him out in the desert. Then I heard Jackson’s excited voice coming out of the funeral home.
“I don’t give a fuck what you say, man. I got it writ right chere that you owe me four fifty, not no two seventy-five.” Jackson was backing out of the door. I thought about Lynx’s .38 in my pocket but didn’t reach for it.
Rollo Jones’s big belly was forcing my cowardly little friend backwards.
“You callin’ me a liar? Fuck you! Fuck you!” Rollo accented each curse with a shove from his belly. “You ain’t gonna scare me.”
“Easy!” Jackson squealed.
I got out of the car and stood by the door. Rollo stopped moving forward and looked at me. I held my hands up in a gesture of ignorance. I don’t know what Rollo thought I meant by that but he stopped pushing Jackson, put his hand into his pocket, and came out with a wad of money. He peeled off some bills and exchanged a few quiet words with Jackson.
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