Black Betty

by Mosley, Walter

  After all, I didn’t pay their salaries.

  When they were gone I faced LaMone. He was seated behind his desk again.

  “I know what you an’ Clovis been up to, man,” I said. He wasn’t even breathing as far as I could tell. “And I ain’t gonna let you take away what’s mines.”

  “I don’t have anything to do with the county, Mr. Rawlins. They need a sewage treatment plant. What’s that got to do with me?”

  “You can’t pull that shit on me. I got Clo’s number now and I will bring the house down on both of you.”

  My threat didn’t mean much to Mason LaMone. He took off his glasses and stared out with his big vacant eyes. “If that’s how you want to spend your time, Mr. Rawlins, it’s okay by me. I’m in business, that’s all. When I heard that some investors were planning to build a shopping mall I went straight out to meet them.”

  Suddenly the egg was full of life. He got up and gestured meaninglessly in the air. “I found Miss MacDonald and opened a line of communication. That’s what I do.

  “Now I was upset to find that the county had to condemn that property.” He pointed up to the ceiling for no good reason that I could tell. “I want to make money. A sewage plant won’t make me a dime.”

  “But if they reverse the decision after they throw us out, that would open up the property at rock-bottom prices.”

  LaMone went back to his chair. He sat down and returned to his peaceful state. He cupped his big hands on the desk and contemplated them.

  “I’m not a fortune-teller, sir. If the right chain of events occur I will exploit them. That’s business.” LaMone couldn’t help but give me a little smile after that. Couldn’t help but laugh at how he had it over some poor nigger who wanted to come up with the big boys and get his chance.

  “Uh-huh, yeah,” I said. “But I could read the tea leaves. I can tell you what will happen. I can tell you that Clovis MacDonald is gonna lose all the money that you gave her. I can tell you that if I lose my property and then by some celestial coincidence there magically appears a shoppin’ center or some big store where that treatment center shoulda been, then there will come some terrible events. I can promise you that whatever comes up outta that ground, if it ain’t mines then it won’t be nobody’s. Because if you insist on makin’ me out a nigger I ain’t got no choice but to be one. No choice at all.”

  Mason LaMone’s smile dimmed. And where his eyes didn’t care before I saw some little bit of concern, some worry. Where there had been a lifetime of clear skies set out before him, Mr. LaMone, the great green-and-white reptile egg, now saw a bank of clouds.

  — 27 —

  YEAH,” the bartender at Remo’s said. “He said that you was ta meet’im atta… atta…” He hesitated trying to read the note. “At nine out behind the hot dog stand that you told him about.”

  That was at twelve-fifteen. It was one hundred and seven degrees. The wind coming out of the east was a scythe of pain.

  It was too hot to stay in my car and there was no place to drive until nine anyway. So I went over to a mixed bar on Normandie called the Viking. It was a cool dark room that played old tunes and served food. I had deep-fried fish sticks with French fries and cole slaw. I almost asked for a beer but settled for ice water.

  There was an L.A. Times on the bar.

  Kennedy was considering resuming underground nuclear tests and Khrushchev threatened above-ground testing. Fallout in Alaska had increased three thousand percent and there wasn’t a Negro in the world worthy of an article.

  I hung around until two-thirty. Then I went to the phone booth and called John.

  “I been tryin’ t’call you, Easy,” John told me.

  “Ain’t been home. What did you want?”

  “I think you better drive by here tonight, ’bout nine.”

  “Cain’t, man. I got some serious business and I don’t know how late it’ll go.”

  The quiet on the other end of the line was John’s rage. People didn’t tell him no very often.

  “I could make it in the mornin’ if I ain’t in jail by then,” I said to fill up the silence.

  “Make it nine in the mornin’ then,” he said and then he hung up.

  I SPENT THE REST of the day down in Santa Monica. I got barefoot and sat on a YMCA towel in the sand. But the sea didn’t relax me and the bathing girls didn’t make me smile.

  I went to an army/navy store on Pico in the early evening. I got black pants, a dark blue shirt, and a pair of black canvas shoes.

  I’D PARKED A FEW BLOCKS west of Robertson, on Livonia, and was walking up the alley at eight fifty-nine. I was proud at being so exact and on time. That pride being a leftover from my army days.

  “Easy.”

  In his drab-colored pants and black jacket Alamo was a wraith behind the trash bin. Slung across his back was a black-dyed long English rucksack. We were three buildings down from Hodge’s office.

  “You ready?” Alamo asked. He looked down at my hands and then at my feet. “Good shoes. Good shoes.”

  He gestured two fingers for me to wait and then he went ahead. I waited two minutes and then came on behind. The Robertson Professional Building faced Robertson Boulevard right at the corner of Pico. Alamo and I stood at the back of that building in a small lot for parking off of the alley. The parking was for the Cupcake Bakery, Ron Gordon Glazier’s shop, and a stationery store that faced out onto Pico. The office building and the glazier’s shop met at the angle of the backwards el.

  “Shh.” Alamo took two pair of yellow dish-washing gloves from his sack and handed me one. “Put ’em on.”

  There was a ladder propped up next to a window about midway between the first and second floors of Hodge’s building.

  Two more fingers and Alamo was up the ladder. The breaking glass was louder than some cannon fire I’ve heard. He was in and I was up and in right after him.

  We were on the halfway landing of the stairs leading up.

  We pulled the ladder in and took it up to the second floor, where we laid it flat against the wall. Alamo took a flashlight from his sack. It gave off a very dim light as if maybe the batteries were going bad.

  We stopped at a door that had CALVIN P. HODGE, ESQ. stenciled on it.

  “This your boy?” Alamo asked.

  “Yeah.”

  Instead of pulling his tools out and working on the door, Alamo went further down the hall to another office. This one said “Myna Goldstein, Fine Fabrics.” Alamo took a pair of pliers that had a long flat nose. He closed the pliers and inserted the nose in between the lock and the doorjamb. Then he put his strength into it, trying to pull the pliers open.

  “Gimme a hand.”

  I grabbed one side of the handle with my good right hand and pulled as hard as I could. After about thirty seconds the wood around the lock started to give. The bolt was pulled out of place and the door swung inward.

  It was another poor office. Just a desk and a filing cabinet. There was a two-toned spider plant in a pot on the windowsill. While I improvised, propping a chair under the doorknob to keep unwanted noses out, Alamo went right to the wall that Hodge’s office shared. He took two mountain climber hammers from his bag and handed me one.

  “Let’s get to it,” he said. He started hammering away at the plaster wall.

  We spent the next half an hour clearing away the plaster from the crossbeams that made the wall. Then we crawled through the triangular space and were in Hodge’s office. No alarms to prevent going off. No fancy locks to pick.

  Hodge’s office was the same layout and size as Myna Goldstein’s. But he had a large oakwood desk and plush carpeting. There were many plaques on the walls extolling his achievements and a glass-enclosed cabinet that had at least fifteen trophies that he’d won for hunting and shooting. There was too much furniture in that small room. I imagined that he once had a big office on Wilshire but he had to move when times got hard.

  Mr. Hodge was a man on his way down.

  Using hammers
, a punch with a titanium bit, and a pair of metal shears, we opened up Hodge’s file-safe in under thirty minutes. I found Albert Cain’s file in there. It wasn’t very thick. On a whim I looked up Saul Lynx and Commander Styles.

  I expected to find Saul but there was only a slender folder on the commander.

  While I searched, Alamo went through the rest of the office, taking whatever he could get into his sack and any petty cash lying around.

  I was more than ready to go when there was a loud crash.

  Alamo hissed, “Shh!”

  We could see a light flashing into Myna Goldstein’s office through the hole in the wall.

  “Help me!” Alamo was grabbing the husk of the file cabinet. I knew right away what he was doing. Together we pushed the gutted file to cover the hole in the wall as well as possible. Then I took Hodge’s typewriter and threw it through the bolted window.

  Three different alarm bells went off all at once. Somebody shouted, “Police!”

  Alamo was already through the window and I was right behind him. It wasn’t until I grabbed the iron railing to let myself hang down the grated stairs that I realized my mistake. A pain went off in my shoulder louder than the alarm bells. I hit the roof of the hot dog stand and rolled right off of it, sprawling onto the sidewalk below. It was only luck that kept me from breaking a bone.

  “You okay?” Alamo had me by the shoulders and was helping me up. His grip hurt so bad all I could do was nod.

  “Half a block north of Pico, on Livonia,” I said. Alamo was gone, running south on Robertson. I ran across the street intending to throw them off by heading east. When I got to the middle of the street they threw down on me.

  “Halt or I’ll shoot!” Right out of the movies. I never missed a step but in that one moment I could tell that the officer was still on the second floor of the office building. I weighed the chances of him hitting me with a pistol at that range.

  I kept running.

  At least eight shots were fired. Bullets ricocheted off the sidewalk around my feet. Everything inside me turned to water and I ran so hard that it seemed to me that I was invisible. I must have run seven blocks. The first four were a zigzag route away from my car. I had it in my mind that I wanted to confuse the cops, throw them off. But then I realized that they didn’t know where my car was—they were after me.

  I made it to the car quickly after that. Two minutes later Alamo was coming down the street.

  I headed west on Olympic toward Santa Monica, figuring we’d cross municipalities so the police couldn’t track us.

  “Damn, that was close,” Alamo said. He was wheezing from his hard run. “That was a close one all right.”

  My hands were sweating in the rubber gloves.

  “I’ll go down to Santa Monica,” I said.

  “You could drop me at a friend’a mines on Tuxedo Lane. Better if they don’t catch no salt and pepper in a car,” Alamo said. “When you wanna split?”

  He was talking about the loot he’d taken.

  “All I got was some papers to keep me out of trouble. That’s all I want. You need me to pay you something?”

  “Naw. Naw, but maybe we could go into business, Easy. You’re good.”

  “Yeah. Good enough to spill out my blood on the street corner.”

  I DROPPED ALAMO off half a block from his friend’s house.

  The desire to be home overwhelmed me. I couldn’t imagine a hotel or even a friend’s house. I wanted my chair and my lamp.

  It was a fool’s move but I had to go home. I drove around the block twice. There were no suspicious-looking cars parked out front or down the street. The lights in my house were off. That didn’t mean much—the cops could have been laying for me in the dark. But that was an expensive proposition. I’d have to be a real top ten for them to spend that kind of money on overtime. I finally pulled into the driveway and took my chances with the front door.

  — 28 —

  THE FIRST FILE was labeled “Norman Styles.” There was a deposition indicating a charge of battery and sexual assault on a Mr. and Mrs. Bradley Rosen on North Stanley. The charges were dropped and Styles sued to get back pay for the time that he was suspended from the Beverly Hills Police Department.

  He was questioned about an accidental death in 1954. The question concerned a prisoner (named John Doe) who died in his cell. John was drunk and disorderly before and after his arrest. He committed suicide by hanging himself from a leather belt.

  The inquisitors wondered why John also wore suspenders.

  Commander Styles also did private work for Mr. Hodge. He was a bodyguard for various Hollywood celebrities and businessmen. He was a security consultant on two occasions for meetings between men who were only referred to by first names.

  The last page in Styles’s folder was an old arrest report from the Beverly Hills Police Department. On July 14, 1939, Marlon Eady was arrested on burglary charges. He’d been arrested at the house of Albert Cain.

  CAIN’S FILE SAID ALMOST NOTHING. There was a medical report, all in Spanish, from a place called the Sisters of Mercy Hospital in Mexico City dating from 1940. From my little bit of Spanish I couldn’t make out what the treatment was—the patient was Jane Smith.

  There was a legal letter from one lawyer, Bertrand Fresco, requesting a transfer of legal documents for Cain. That letter was dated June 4, 1959. I supposed that was why Cain’s file was so slim—everything else was with the new lawyer.

  THE PHONE STARTED RINGING somewhere near two in the morning. There was a slight chance that it was an innocent call. A wrong number or maybe an old friend who’d gotten drunk and sad. But more likely it was trouble. Another brick in my cell.

  I didn’t want to answer but it might have been about the children or maybe Jewelle.

  “Yeah?”

  “What is it, Easy? Did I do somethin’ to you?”

  I could tell from the first word that he’d been drinking. “Odell, man, I got enough problems right now. If you got somethin’ t’say then get it out.”

  “I got somethin’ t’say all right. Yeah. We been friends since you was a boy, Easy. I took you in my house when you didn’t have nuthin’ to eat and nowhere to sleep. I used to give you money when I didn’t hardly have nuthin’ myself. And then you turn it around an’ shit on my shoe.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Reverend Towne…”

  “Odell, I know we got to talk about that one day, but there’s things happenin’ right now—”

  Before I could finish Odell cut me off. “I know that! I know that! First Marlon gets killed. Betty’s only brother, and you know she loved him somethin’ terrible. And now you done killed her son.”

  “Her son? What you talkin’ ’bout, man?”

  “Terry.”

  “The boxer?”

  “He was hers. They let him live down here wit’ the Tyler fam’ly but he was hers. And you killed him.”

  “I did not kill Terry Tyler.”

  “How could you say that when I know you did?”

  I waited for a moment, confused by the force of his accusations. I didn’t know if I was guilty or not. Maybe I had killed Terry. Not by my own hand, but maybe he was killed because of me.

  “Who told you that?” I asked, coming out of my spell. “Who told you that I killed Terry?”

  Odell went silent on his end of the phone.

  “Odell.”

  “Leave us alone, Easy Rawlins. Stay out of our life.” He hung the phone up in my ear.

  I WAS DOWN to his house by three, knocking at the front door. I rapped on it for five minutes with no reply. But when I started shouting the porch light went on and Maude came out dressed in a pink nightgown.

  “Do you know what time it is?”

  “Let me in, Maudria!” I yelled at the top of my voice.

  A look of fear went over her and she shrank back from the door. I came in towering over her, looking around the neat and well-ordered house.

  “I told yo
u to leave us alone, Easy.” His voice came from the side.

  “Odell!” Maude shouted.

  My old friend had come out of the door that led to his kitchen. There was a double-barreled twelve-gauge shotgun hanging through the crook of his arm.

  I put my thumbs up next to my ears. “I didn’t kill Terry Tyler, Odell. I went to the house…”

  “Odell, put down that gun!” Maudria screamed.

  “…and I found him there. Somebody came up behind me and stabbed me in the shoulder and then hit me with a number ten cast-iron fryin’ pan.”

  Odell’s stare was too deep to decipher.

  “And I know two things.” Keep talking and keep talking. “One is that whoever stabbed me wasn’t the one who killed Terry, and two is that whoever it was they told you about me.”

  “It was Betty!” Maude shouted. “Now, Odell, put down that gun!”

  “Betty?” I wasn’t even looking at Odell anymore. “Betty stabbed me?”

  “She went to the house to ask Terry where she could find Marlon and she fount him there. And then she heard somebody and figured that it was the killer and she laid for’im an’ stabbed him. When she told us what happened, Odell knew it was you.”

  “Where is she?” I asked Odell.

  “We don’t know,” Maude answered. “She just called to tell us about Terry. To ask us to see that he gets buried.”

  “An’ did she tell you about Marlon too?”

  The guilty stare that passed between husband and wife was a testament to decades of honesty. Neither one of them could hide their guilt. I would have laughed if it wasn’t so serious.

  “Where is he?”

  Both their heads retreated like a pair of turtles sensing a shadow from overhead.

  “Naw. Here in this house?”

  Odell let the shotgun hang down to his side and he stumbled backwards. He was aiming to land in a chair but missed it and slid against the wall until he was crouching on the floor.