“Why don’t you sit, Melvin?” I said.
He regarded the sofa for a moment before sitting down at the end farthest from my chair.
“Dodgers lost last night,” he said. “Back east somewhere. I said when Koufax quit that they were in deep shit.”
I knew men that had gone senile and forgotten their children’s names but they could still reel off sports scores from a dozen years before.
“Why’s the LAPD on your ass, Melvin?”
He jerked his head as if he’d been slapped.
“What’d they say?” he countered.
“That you hooked up with a woman you arrested.”
He squinted at the words as if they were bright, cancer-inducing sunbeams.
Then he nodded and said, “Mary Donovan. Seven months ago. I arrested her for passing bad hundred-dollar bills at a fancy downtown clothes shop. It wasn’t even my beat. I was covering for a guy had appendicitis. Just followed the numbers to her door in West Hollywood. Just followed the numbers.”
“And you had a thing?” I asked.
On the wall behind Melvin I saw a line of tiny black ants that had discovered the trove created by his despair. He had been looking down upon the dirty carpet, but when I asked about his connection he raised his head, fixing me with a confused stare.
“I’m in love with her, Easy.” These words tore from his throat. “I’m in love with her,” he said again, “and she’s gone.”
He didn’t care about the ants, the eviction notice, the police investigation, or even the possibility of going to jail. He probably hadn’t bathed in a week, hadn’t cut his hair in a month. Melvin Suggs, as cynical a man as I had ever met, was, maybe for the first time in his life, heartbroken.
At that moment I felt, keenly, that he and I were of the same race despite any color schemes.
“What happened?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “One day we were drinking Champale on a blanket at Redondo Beach and the next she was gone.”
Moving Day.
“She was gone and a week later I got suspended,” Melvin was saying. “I hadn’t been to work for days. They said that I was on forced leave without pay and subject to review for conduct unbecoming an officer. I wasn’t even positive what they were looking for until you just told me.”
“You knew that you let Mary off.”
“I would have,” he said. “I would have, sure, but I didn’t need to. I couldn’t prove intent. She’d taken a thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills out of a downtown Bank of America three days before I busted her. Even a court-appointed attorney could have claimed that she got the boodle from the bank without knowing what it was.”
“You think her disappearance had anything to do with your troubles?” I asked. I had to.
“No,” he said, shaking his head like an old Roman general after his last defeat. “No. We were good together, Easy. I know her.”
He slumped back on the sofa and stared out over the detritus of his coffee table.
The problem was him and possible charges by the police department. But all Melvin cared about was the woman that had probably betrayed him.
“I’m on a case, Mel.”
“Yeah?” he said, not looking at me.
“Missing girl.”
He grunted.
“You help me with that and I will find your Mary Donovan.”
That got his attention. He looked up warily.
“How would you do that?”
“I’m good at what I do, Detective,” I said. “They don’t see me comin’, don’t know when I’m there, and couldn’t tell you when I left. People so worried about my threat that they don’t see the danger.”
Suggs was a smart man who liked smart men. He was a fool for love but if you have to be a fool that’s the best way to go.
“You can find her?” he asked, a child in his voice.
“Frisk said that if you quit the force, jail time would be off the table,” I said.
“Fuck that. I didn’t do anything wrong,” he said. “Can you find her?”
“I can do my level best.”
“What do you need from me?”
“Some police work and some personal things.”
“What’s the police work?” the cop asked.
“Roger Frisk came to my door yesterday when I was moving into a new place. He told me that he was looking for a girl named Rosemary Goldsmith, said that she had been in the company of a broken-down boxer named Bob Mantle. I tried to turn him down but he insisted. He finally persuaded me and sent a guy named Tout Manning to give me what I needed to move forward.”
I went on to tell him about Benoit’s Gym and the attack. I didn’t waste time complaining about the police interrogation. We both knew that the game was hardball in the street.
When I was finished Melvin said, “Frisk is who he says he is. He’s high up on the chart and there’s nobody above him except the chief. I never heard of this Manning guy. But Bob Mantle … you hit a note with him.”
“What kinda note?”
“The kind they tie to a dead man’s toe.”
I waited while Suggs put the story together in his head.
“Mantle has an alias,” he said after a minute or so, “Uhuru Nolicé.”
The senseless shout that accompanied the shots took form in my mind.
“He’s suspected in the shooting death of a high-school vice principal in Watts,” Melvin reported. “A guy named Emerson, I think. Then there’s an armored car heist in Burbank, and finally a shootout that left three cops dead in Watts.”
I knew about all three crimes. They were front-page news.
“They weren’t connected in the papers,” I said.
“No. The only connection was a telephone call and a letter, both to Bill Tarkingham at the Herald Examiner. The call claimed that the vice principal deserved death because he was a traitor to his people. About a week later a letter made of letters cut out from magazines was delivered to Tarkingham. It claimed responsibility for being the mastermind of the shootout. On the phone the caller said he was Uhuru Nolicé. The letter had that name glued to the bottom.”
“What’s that have to do with Bob Mantle?”
“When he was a student at Metro College he became politically active and started going by the name Uhuru Nolicé. He would dress up in African robes and give fiery speeches in the student union. Nobody paid any attention officially until the telephone call but by then he had gone underground.”
The ants were still marching down the wall behind Melvin. Their relentlessness felt somehow daunting.
“Why didn’t Tarkingham report on all this?” I asked.
“He told his editor,” Suggs said, “but because there was no actual confession it wasn’t considered newsworthy. After the letter his boss had a meeting with Chief Parker. They decided to hold back until the police could get a handle on the case. They didn’t want to erode public confidence in the LAPD, and there was some concern that Mantle would be hailed as a hero in some parts of the colored community.”
“He killed those three cops?”
“That’s what the brass thinks.”
“Why? I mean, it was a crank letter made from cutouts. Were there fingerprints?”
“I don’t think so,” Melvin said. He sat up straighter when talking about the details of his profession. “But there were details about the killings that were never in the news … and nobody outside of Tarkingham and Parker’s office knew the name Nolicé.”
“How do you know all this, Melvin? Aren’t you on probation?”
“I got my contacts.”
“And so what am I to Frisk and Manning? Like a sacrificial lamb or somethin’?”
“You are the man to go to if they want their finger on the jugular of the colored community.”
I closed my eyes and brought my hands to the top of my forehead. I wished, irrationally, that I had not come to Melvin; that I had not heard about the killings and Uhuru Nolicé
. But I knew that ignorance couldn’t save me. Maybe nothing could.
“You got a cigarette, Melvin?”
“In the kitchen. I’ll go get it.”
He went through an arched doorway that had no door. I reached into my gym bag, into a secret sleeve under a Velcro strip that the police had missed, and came out with an envelope I had thought I might need before the day was up.
“Old Golds,” Melvin said when he came back. He had pulled on a pair of jeans; I took this as a good sign on a bad day.
I handed him the envelope.
“What’s this?”
“A thousand dollars,” I said. “Consider that a down payment on us working together on the case.”
“I thought you were going to find Mary for me.”
“I am. But four murders, an armored car job, and a kidnapping trump a simple missing person. You pay the rent, hire a cleaning lady, and get a haircut and I’ll be calling in about Uhuru-Bob.”
Melvin lit my cigarette.
I inhaled the fumes, knowing for a fact that I would never die due to complications arising from tobacco smoke.
“You got a picture of your girlfriend?” I asked.
He pulled a wallet out of his pocket and took from it a Kodak snapshot of a pretty young woman with long brown hair and a smile that would have worked on any child or mark.
12
The drive from West Los Angeles down to South Central was like following a social science chart starting from working-class Culver City, where people thought they were middle class, down to the crime-riddled black community, where the residents were under no such illusions.
Maybe, I thought as I pulled up to the curb on South Central Avenue between 76th Street and 77th Place, it would be better falsely believing that you were living the good life rather than knowing you probably never would.
My office was on the east side of the street, on the third floor of a block-long building. The workspace was smaller than my new master bedroom but it was large enough for the extra-wide desk that sat with its back to a window looking over Central, and a blue sofa that was just the right size for a three-hour nap.
The first thing I did was change out of my gym outfit into regular clothes. Then I went to the window and looked down on the street. Midday pedestrian traffic had been on the rise since the riots. Employment was definitely down and hope, especially for black men, was pretty low too.
If I wanted a better class of client (that is to say, anyone with disposable cash) I should have moved downtown or west of there. But as I got older, experience with my people had become not only exhilarating but nostalgic. Every new black face I met was a hopeful long shot and at the same time I was reminded of experiences so broad that they seemed to cover multiple lifetimes. No amount of silver could buy the passions in an aging man’s heart.
After my mawkish musings about the street, I sat down and pulled out the phone book. After that I dialed a number.
“Metro College,” a man’s friendly voice said.
“Records department please.”
“We don’t have a records department, sir.”
“I need to talk to someone about a student you have who is applying to me for a job.”
“The administration office is what you want, sir,” the friendly, officious switchboard operator informed me.
The next thing I heard was another ringing phone.
“Student services,” a mature woman said.
“Is this the administration office?” I asked. I didn’t need to but I wanted to respond to the operator’s obliquely condescending attitude.
“Yes, sir, it is,” the woman said and I felt a little stupid.
“And who am I speaking to?”
“Miss Hollings.”
“Well, Miss Hollings, my name is Jason Silver. I run a little mom-and-pop assembly shop on Robertson. Actually we’re in an alley off Robertson, behind a hotdog stand. We put together toys and party favors that are prefabricated in Japan. That way, you see, the Japanese can say Made in the U.S.A. and still have some control.”
“And?” the woman asked. “How can I help you?”
Her mild confusion was part of my design, like a transient element of a modern art installation.
“You have a student there named Robert Mantle. He’s applying for a part-time position and he wrote on the application that he was in attendance at your college.”
“I’m familiar with that name. I’m pretty sure he’s one of ours.”
“That’s Robert Dallas Mantle who is studying political science and who lives on Slauson?”
“Let me see,” she said. I heard the opening of a metal drawer and then the rustling of paper. “Oh, yes. I know Bob. He hasn’t given a middle name and we don’t have a course in poli-sci. here at Metro. Bob is a bookkeeping major and he lives on … let me check … yes, he lives on Hoover with his mother. Someone in our department met with him four weeks ago. He wants to transfer to a four-year school where he can major in dramatic arts but he’s learning a trade first. What position are you hiring him for?”
“He applied for the production-line job but maybe I should put him on the financial side.”
“He’s a very good student,” the woman confided, “and a very neat dresser, wears a suit and tie to class every day. That’s why I thought I knew who you were talking about.”
“He does?”
“Yes. Why?”
“When he came in here he was wearing some kind of Afro-dashiki thing.”
“Oh.” She hesitated. “I seem to remember that Bob is very particular about the clothes he wears.”
“Define particular.”
“Nothing bad, Mr. Silver. He just dresses for whatever it is he’s about to do. It’s an aesthetic.”
“So if I change his job to bookkeeping he’ll put on a suit and tie?”
“Probably. Is there anything else? I have to get back to my work.”
The most important piece of information I got from Miss Hollings was that the police had not notified Metro College that their student was suspected of armed robbery, kidnapping, and murder. That was not standard procedure for the LAPD. Their penchant was to storm in with heavy boots and shotguns, knocking down doors and making threats.
What was it about Bob Mantle that had made them so circumspect?
I was considering that question when there came a tapping on my office door.
My inquiring mind dropped the police and their strange behavior and picked up on that soft knock. I hadn’t seen recognition in anyone’s face at Benoit’s. It was unlikely that someone there knew my name, profession, and office address; unlikely but not impossible.
In that instant my life became a blues song. There I was, sitting in my own chair afraid to answer the door. That was another reason I kept my office in that neighborhood, because only the people down there understood the fear of everyday occurrences—like a simple knock.
This series of thoughts, contradictorily, lightened my mood. I smiled broadly, pulled the .22 from the gym bag, and called out, “It’s unlocked.”
The door came open framing a familiar countenance—EttaMae Harris, Mouse’s wife and one of the three true loves of my life. She was wearing a simple shift that was decorated by pale blue and deep burgundy swirls.
I dropped the pistol back into the bag and jumped to my feet. Etta and I embraced halfway between my desk and the door.
She was a big woman, lovely and dark. We kissed lips, then leaned back and smiled for each other. Her face was round and proud. I felt like I was something special when she gazed upon me.
Behind her was a small white woman in a dark red dress. This woman was younger than either Etta or I. She seemed to be laboring under a great weight.
“Easy, this here is Alana Atman. Alana, this is Easy.”
“Hello,” I said.
“Hi.”
We shook hands.
“Come on in.”
I stepped to the side, allowing the women to come in and situate th
emselves in the visitors’ chairs. I closed the door and locked it, then went around to my reclining office chair.
“Looks the same around here,” Etta said.
“No reason to change. I’m sorry I don’t have anything to offer you.”
“That’s okay, Easy. Alana and me already et and drank. At least I did. She haven’t been too hungry lately.”
I smiled, waiting.
“We got us a little problem,” Etta said after an appropriate wait. “Raymond told me that you came down here pretty regular so I was gonna leave you a note. We called your home number but the answering machine wasn’t on.”
“I just moved,” I said. “But you know that. Haven’t attached the recorder yet.”
“Alana here was married to a man named Fred Post.”
“The plumber?” I asked.
Just the question brought a trembling smile to the white woman’s thin lips.
“Yeah.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said to Alana. Fred had died of a coronary not long before I drove off that coastal cliff.
“Thank you.”
“He was only forty years old, Easy,” Etta continued. “You know they ain’t no guarantees in this life.”
“That’s for sure.”
“Fred was our plumber,” Etta said by way of explanation. “That’s why I know the family. He never charged us and sometimes I’d babysit for their child.”
“Uh-huh,” I said.
“Anyway, Alana and Fred have a son name of Alton. He’s five years old, and the other day a black woman calling herself his auntie picked him up from kindergarten and took him away. His mother haven’t seen him since.”
“No idea who took him?” I asked Alana.
She tried to answer but only managed to shake her head and cry.
“We need you to find him,” Etta said. “Alana went to the police but they hardly even listened. You know the only thing worse in their books than a black mother is the white mother of a Negro child.”
“Etta,” I said, “I’m kinda jammed up right now.”
Instead of insisting she said, “LaMarque told me that you wanted me to say hey to Raymond.”
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