Rose Gold

by Walter Mosley

  “Me an’ Bobby lived together in a nice apartment when he was still boxin’,” Sister said. “But when he got banned he lost heart and moved back home with Belle. Cousin an’ me both really miss him.”

  She turned her head to the side, looking out of the window wistfully.

  I followed her gaze, noticing that there were neither shades nor curtains installed.

  “And this Rose Gold brought you money for his son?”

  “She was talkin’ all political and all,” Sister said, turning her attention back to me. “She was callin’ me sister like we was blood an’ it wasn’t my name. She told me that Uhuru was workin’ for the revolution but that he wanted to take care of his son. That’s all some shit. Bobby only ever cared about how to be somebody else.”

  “Uhuru?”

  “He started wearin’ this dress he called a royal African robe. When he had it on he talked funny and said things about the revolution but it was all just dress-up. That white girl was fooled but I took her money though. Cousin needs clothes and food and I hardly make enough to pay our rent.”

  “Mama!” a high voice yelled. Then there came the thumping of small bare feet.

  He was short and solid, dark with a big ball of woolly hair. He ran right at Sister, leaped in the air, and landed on her like some kind of predator attacking a leaf eater five times its size.

  Sister grunted and then folded him in her arms. Somehow she turned him around with this embrace and he found himself looking at me.

  “This is Mr. Rawlins, baby. What do you say?”

  Somewhere between three and four, the boy was fearless in his mother’s arms.

  “Hello, mister,” he said.

  “This is my son,” she announced, “Cousin Mantle.”

  “Hello, Cousin.”

  He nodded and then squirmed until he was out of his mother’s arms and standing between her and me.

  “Mr. Rawlins is looking for your father,” Sister said.

  “My daddy send a white lady with some money to buy me red cowboy boots.”

  “How long ago?” I asked in the general direction of mother and son.

  “I ’ont know,” the boy said.

  “It was yesterday,” his mother amended.

  “Was she alone?”

  “I think that there was somebody in a car downstairs.”

  “Did she tell you how to get in touch with her?”

  “No.”

  “She said that when I get my cowboy boots that there was a merry-go-round with yellow and brown and red horses on it right across the street from her friend’s house,” Cousin said in a quick stream of words. “She said that I could ride a red horse to go with my red boots when I got ’em.”

  “She did?” I said with real interest.

  “Uh-huh. An’, an’, an’ she said that there was a ice cream truck that came by every day and that all the kids runned down to get ice cream on’a stick. They went swimmin’ too but you cain’t swim right aftah eatin’ or you’ll get a cramp.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Uh-huh,” Cousin said with a great nod. “An’ I could ride a red horse an’ eat ice cream and maybe my daddy would be there too.”

  Cousin had been named by his mother’s tradition but he looked just like his father. Gazing on him, I thought about Alton Post; his mother, Alana; and his dead father—Fred.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t help you and Belle, Mr. Rawlins,” Sister Godfreys said.

  I looked up from Cousin into his mother’s eyes.

  “Can I use your phone, Miss Godfreys?” I asked.

  “They disconnected the phone six weeks ago.”

  “Then I guess I’ll be going,” I said.

  50

  “Hello,” he said in a voice at least an octave lower than was his norm.

  I was standing at a phone booth on East Slauson.

  “Get your ass up outta that bed, Melvin,” I said.

  “What do you want?”

  “I told you I was gonna be callin’.”

  “I’ve only been home a couple of hours.”

  “And we both know what you’ve been doing. But what you got to remember, Mr. Suggs, is that the reason you got that bass in your voice is because I found your girlfriend and brought you to her.”

  A woman’s voice sounded in the background.

  Melvin muttered a reply.

  She said something else and then the disgraced detective came back to me.

  “What do you need, Easy?”

  “You think you could get your contact to help us do a simple job?”

  “He won’t do anything like babysit a wanted felon. I wouldn’t ask him to.”

  “What I have in mind is hardly even bending the rules.”

  I explained my needs and Melvin asked his questions.

  “I guess I can’t see anything wrong with that,” he said when the cross-examination was through.

  An hour and sixteen minutes later Melvin parked his Pontiac behind my car down the block from a house on East 47th Street. I’d found the address by looking up A. Cox in the phone book. Pulling up behind him was a classic baby blue 1964 Ford sedan. From this car there issued a giant in a light tan suit. He was six-six at least with the shoulders of an even taller man. His skin was almost true white and the red hair might have connected him directly with the Vikings that had raided his ancestors’ shores.

  The two men walked up to me—Mutt and Prince Valiant.

  “Anatole McCourt,” Melvin said, “I’d like to introduce you to Ezekiel Porterhouse Rawlins, a man that I am proud to call friend.”

  The giant’s eyes knitted for a moment and then lifted, bringing with them that smile the Irish are so famous for.

  “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Rawlins,” he said.

  When we shook hands I felt as if he was being careful not to hurt me.

  “Likewise,” I said, looking up. Then I turned to Melvin. “It’s the house with the blue door halfway down the block on the right side.”

  “They there?”

  “They were five minutes ago.”

  “You sure about this?” Officer McCourt asked. His eyes might have been blue or gray depending on his mood, or yours.

  “Absolutely positive.”

  “If he says so then it’s true,” Melvin put in, according me greater respect than he ever did before or after that day.

  Anatole nodded and both he and Melvin climbed into their cars.

  They drove only half a block down the street, stopping in front of the house. A gray dog barked at them and then scuttled away with its tail between its legs. It ran across the street in a sideways gait and stood on the opposite sidewalk barking like an old man debilitated by hard living and disease.

  As they mounted the three front stairs my heart quailed. I took out a cigarette and a book of matches.

  I could hear Anatole’s big fist knocking on the front door from where I stood.

  There was a pause and then the front door opened. Angela’s loud voice could be heard cursing them and then a man joined in. McCourt and Suggs kept their voices down but Angela Cox and her friend kept up the ruckus. It got so loud that people were coming out of nearby houses to bear witness.

  I worried that by sending armed white men to do this job I might cause a shootout or even a riot. But I also knew that using the law to deal with the country criminals was the best way to stem any future retaliation.

  Melvin Suggs’s voice raised up high enough to be heard but not enough for me to make out the words. The woman stopped arguing and a moment later the white policemen went back to their cars. Anatole was accompanied by a small brown boy.

  As soon as the police were headed down the block I got in my car.

  EttaMae lived about two and half miles from Angela’s blue door. I got there maybe four minutes before the police.

  I knocked on the door and waited. It didn’t surprise me that the handsome young white man Peter Rhone answered.

  A year or so before, Peter Rhone h
ad a crisis of faith after his black girlfriend was murdered. Etta took him in and he became something like a self-indentured manservant to her.

  “Hello, Mr. Rawlins,” he said.

  “Peter. I’m lookin’ for Alana Post.”

  “She’s here,” the makeshift retainer said. “She and EttaMae are in the backyard with LaMarque.”

  “The police are going to be coming by in a few minutes,” I said. “When they get here ask them to wait a moment and come back to tell us.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  A huge walnut tree dominated the Harris-Alexander backyard. The blue grama lawn was rich and thick, having finally revived after the years of LaMarque’s rough childhood play. EttaMae, LaMarque, and sad Alana Atman-Post were sitting at a round redwood table that I helped Raymond install over a decade before.

  Upon seeing me, Alana got to her feet and staggered in my direction. EttaMae followed her. LaMarque remained seated.

  “Did you?” the white woman asked.

  I nodded and she took me in an embrace that pinned my arms to my sides. She cried out loud and I stood there in her vise of love.

  “My baby!” she yelled. “Where is he?”

  “Some friends will be here with him in just a few minutes,” I said.

  “Let the man go, Alana,” Etta said, pulling at her friend’s shoulders. “He told you that Alton is comin’. Easy don’t lie.”

  “But where is he?” Alana moaned.

  “He comin’,” Etta said. “LaMarque.”

  “Yeah, Mama?”

  “Come ovah heah an’ brang Alana to a seat.”

  “Yes, Mama.”

  As LaMarque did his mother’s bidding Peter Rhone was coming out the back door of the house.

  “They’re here, Mr. Rawlins.”

  “Who is?” Etta asked.

  “The police and Alton.”

  Etta glanced at the picnic table where Alana cried and then she turned back to Peter.

  “Count to fifteen and then bring ’em back here,” she said.

  Peter nodded and went to accomplish his task. Etta laid a hand on my arm.

  “Raymond been callin’ every day,” she said. “He told me that I should tell you sumpin’.”

  “Why didn’t you call me?”

  “He said that it might could put us all in danger if I told you on the phone.”

  “What is it?”

  “He told me to tell you that them cops got killed a while back was in business with the men that shot ’em. I would’a gone out to look for you if I wasn’t afraid that Alana might kill herself.”

  If Satan played bingo in hell, I had just gotten my final winning/losing number.

  There was nothing for me to say but even if there had been there was no time to say it because Melvin Suggs and Anatole McCourt came into the backyard with little Alton Post between them.

  “Mama!”

  Alana screamed something. She ran toward her son, tripped, and fell onto the thick lawn. She scrambled to her feet and grabbed up the boy like he was a rag doll. She was crying incoherently and he was steady talking.

  “Don’t get mad at the men, Mama,” he was saying. “They just wanted to bring me home from Auntie Angela’s house. I know you wanted me to stay with her because you was too sad to take care’a me but the men said that a boy had to be with his mama.”

  Anatole McCourt was watching the reunion closely, assuring himself that he was doing the right thing. Melvin was looking at his watch, counting the seconds it would take to be back in his lover’s arms.

  Etta ushered us all to the table and sent Peter to bring out a platter of her famous shortbread cookies.

  A few minutes later Alton was sitting on his mother’s lap eating cookies. The cops were seated, a little uncomfortably I thought, accepting the gratitude of the white woman’s friend.

  “I told Miss Cox and her boyfriend that this was a kidnapping charge and that I would let it slide if they desisted,” Officer McCourt said. “But I’d suggest you move somewhere where they won’t be able to find you. Miss Cox’s auntie believes that a black child should stay with his own kind and she is very upset to see him with you.”

  It seemed to me from Anatole’s tone that he might have agreed with that assessment.

  “I gotta be goin’, Easy,” Melvin said. When he stood up, Officer McCourt followed suit.

  “I’ll walk you out,” I offered.

  Standing next to McCourt’s blue Ford, I shook the man’s hand and thanked him.

  “This is Raymond Alexander’s house, isn’t it?” he said.

  “When he’s in town.”

  “There’s a standing stop-and-search order on Alexander,” Anatole said to Melvin.

  “Can’t do that if he’s not here,” the elder cop replied.

  McCourt shrugged, frowned, then smiled and nodded. With nothing left to say, he climbed into his Ford and drove off.

  Melvin was about to do the same thing when I put a hand on his shoulder.

  “How much do you trust your friend?” I asked.

  “A woman named Patricia Knapp worked the street for a rough pimp named Lucky. I busted her carrying drugs for him. She was too afraid to turn him in and she had this little boy named for her dead father. I pulled a few strings and had Lucky put away without her help and then I made sure that Anatole got brought up right. When he was of age I got him on the force.”

  “You know those cops got ambushed?”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  “I’d like it if your friend would look into them.”

  “What the hell for? I mean even if they had some infractions you can’t hold it against them after they got murdered.”

  “You can if the infractions are what they were murdered for. You can if the men that killed them were in business with them.”

  51

  Melvin agreed to ask his Irish ward to find out what he could about the dead policemen, and then he jumped into his own car and was off.

  I stood on the street in front of my friends’ home appreciating the hot sun on my face and hands. I had helped Etta, and in turn her husband, from thousands of miles away, had guided me. The street was empty and two cops had done my bidding because I did a favor for one of them.

  Most of the inhabitants of that working-class block were at some job somewhere getting paid by the hour while they slowly, inexorably sank into debt.

  It occurred to me that my debts had no dollar signs attached to them. This thought brought a grin to my lips.

  Half an hour later I was sitting in my office chair, reviewing the harvest of my labors.

  It was my self-imposed purpose to salvage as much of Uhuru-Bob’s life as I could. I liked the young has-been boxer simply because I understood him. He was a fool and a genius in his own way. If he was born another color he might have been recognized as something special.

  It might have been my purpose to protect Bob but my first priority was to help Rosemary Goldsmith. This wasn’t because I was being paid to save her; money helped but I never worried too much about where it was coming from. No, money wasn’t the reason that Rosemary’s predicament took precedence in my work. If the white girl was to go down, then Bob would too—that’s just the way things happened. Innocence was rarely a key factor for justice in the world Bob and I inhabited.

  It was a mistake to be sitting alone and thinking about the unfairness that defined my world. The only thing that would come from that line of thought was unbidden rage. And anger at injustice was the last thing I needed in my heart.

  But there I was—smoking and infuriated. Why couldn’t I just walk into Chief Parker’s office and tell him that there was a conspiracy, conscious or not, against a poor black man who liked to pretend? Why couldn’t the truth be enough to keep a mostly innocent man from getting shot down in the street?

  Try as I might, I couldn’t get the burr of anger out of my heart. I had a job to do but I had to quell the rage inside me.

  That’s when Fate came knocking on my door.r />
  I put my right hand on the pistol attached by wires underneath my desk and called out, “Door’s open.”

  Percy Bidwell in all his coiffed glory came in wearing a gold iridescent two-piece suit. His shirt was a pale blue and the jacket had only one button.

  I hated him on sight but that’s not saying much; I would have hated Black Jesus if he crossed my path just then.

  The young man walked right up to my desk and looked down on me.

  “Mr. Bidwell,” I hailed in false greeting.

  “Call Jewelle.”

  I released the pistol, sat back, then stood and came around the desk to face him.

  “Say what, young man?”

  “I told you to call Jewelle.”

  “And why would I want to do that?” Every slight, every insult, every affront to me and all of my ancestors and his were roiling in my breast.

  “Because I said so,” Percy said.

  Then there came a lull in my rage. This was a bad sign, I knew, but I was beyond instructive experience at that moment.

  “She told me to tell you to call her,” Percy said, somehow intuiting that his up-front approach had failed in its purpose.

  “Now let me get this right,” I said, almost feeling the calmness my voice exuded. “You gonna fuck my good friend’s wife, bully her to try and bully me, then you gonna walk in my door and order me to call her. Not ask but command me.”

  “That baby—” he managed to say before I hit him with a medium-hard straight right hand.

  His head bounced back but he wasn’t hurt or even pushed off-balance.

  He threw a left hook over my extended arm and so I lowered on my haunches and came up with both fists against his chin. This moved him half a step backward. I thought that I had hurt him but he was just bracing for his next attack, which was his right fist against my chest.

  Who would have ever expected that a man named Percy Bidwell with a beauty shop hairdo would be made from stone? The punch knocked the wind from my lungs and I would have hit the floor if the wall hadn’t been there to keep me from falling.

  My eyes opened wide and a wolfish grin came to my lips. When Percy bum-rushed me I tilted to the side and slammed him in the left ear with my right hand. In response he threw a right hook that only managed to numb my shoulder. I lowered my head and butted him in the jaw, then stood up and hit him flush three times.