“I didn’t ask.”
“How you know he was bent?”
“Angel said that they were doing business where they were going to make ten thousand dollars in a month,” Tommy said in a muted voice. “That kinda money don’t evolve from honest labor.”
I smiled at his inside joke.
“You know where I can find her?” I asked.
“Man’s Barn.”
“She moved outta there.”
“Oh,” Tommy said, not really caring. “I don’t know, then.
All I can tell ya is that the one time I met your cousin he told me that he played billiards at Jerry Twist’s and that he could get me in there any time I wanted.”
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He looked at me.
I returned the stare.
“That all you after, Mr. Minton?”
“I guess so.”
“Any time you need me to tell you more about Darwin, you just drop on by.”
I wondered as I left if he believed that he had lectured me.
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J e r r y Tw i s t ’ s wa s a p o o l p a r l o r on Slauson, occupying the second floor of a lime-18 colored two-story building in the center of the block. The bottom floor housed Ha Tsu’s Good News Chinese restaurant.
Good News was unique inasmuch as it was the only Chinese restaurant I’d ever been to that had a bouncer — Harold Crier.
Harold was big and dark. He wore a black eye patch and had hands like catchers’ mitts. Harold was fat, but I’d seen him chase a would-be patron who had slapped him after being refused entrance. The runner was young and sleek, but the forty-something and ponderous Harold ran that boy down after two blocks.
The story goes that Harold met Ha Tsu while trying to rob him late one Monday night. The armed robber made the mistake of getting too close to the restaurateur and before he knew it the smaller man had grabbed Harold’s gun wrist and jabbed him in the eye with a fork from the counter. When Harold woke up, he was in the back room on a cot with a Chinese doctor ministering to him.
Ha Tsu made Loretta’s hatred of white people seem like 113
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mild perturbation. Loretta’s anger came from a specific event over a relatively short period of time. But Ha hated whites for the domination of China. He hated white people the way Sitting Bull hated them. He hated them so much that he wouldn’t even turn Harold, an armed robber, over to the cops. He told Harold that he could either die there on that bamboo cot or take a job as the sentry at the front door of Good News.
“You want me to be a guard?” Harold had asked.
“You perfect,” Ha told him. “You know when somebody bad comes to rob me, and when they see your eye they know what they get.”
“Hey, Paris,” the bouncer said in greeting. It was late afternoon, I remember, and there was hot sun on my back. The big bodyguard was sitting on a high stool, leaning against the wall next to Good News’s double green doors.
“Harold. How’s it goin’?”
“Cain’t complain. I’m eatin’ good an’ stayin’ outta jail.
How’s Fearless?”
Almost everyone who knew me did so by way of Fearless. I didn’t mind.
“He’s fine. Doin’ a li’l stint wit’ Milo Sweet.”
“Yeah,” Harold said. “I hear that Albert Rive been lookin’
for Milo.”
“Where you hear that?”
“Whisper. He come around lookin’ for Al.”
“What about my cousin — Useless Grant?”
“Useless your cousin, man? Damn. I don’t know if that’s good or bad.”
“What you mean by that?” I asked.
“I guess it could come in handy bein’ related to a snake. I 114
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mean, maybe the snake tell ya where all the other snakes be hidin’.”
We both laughed.
“But have you seen ’im?” I asked.
“Not for two, three weeks, I haven’t. No, sir. I don’t work Tuesday, Wednesday, though. Maybe he come by then.”
O n t h e i n s i d e H a T s u ’ s looked more like a rundown fishing boat than a dining room. There were ceramic lobsters, shrimp, and other shellfish placed everywhere: on counters, on the walls, hanging in clusters from ropes over and next to each booth. There were dark-colored glass floats hanging by the dozen in fishnets, and the booths were of unfinished wood with peeling sea-green fake-leather cushions for seats.
The counter was nice. Formica and chrome. The cracked green linoleum was clean and without splinters.
“Hi, Paris,” Mum, a young Chinese woman, said. She was related to Ha Tsu somehow and worked as a waitress every day of the week.
Ha was behind the counter. I liked the middle-aged Chinese partly because he was one of the few men I knew who was shorter than I. He liked me because he believed I had a sense of humor.
“Paris,” he hailed. “How you doing?”
“Not bad, Ha. What’s goin’ on around here?”
“Color people study revolution,” he said, cocking an eye at unseen spies.
“They should be studyin’ their ABCs,” I said.
Ha laughed and slapped my forearm.
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“You right about that, bruddah,” he agreed. “But you know I hear ’em talkin’. They not happy. Soon the world know.”
“Maybe I better stock up on The Communist Manifesto, ” I offered.
“Put your money in gold,” he advised, and I wondered about the treasure he must have buried somewhere.
“What’s good today?” I asked the warlord of Watts.
“Chicken with walnuts, snow peas, and my extra-fancy white rice. Each grain inch long.”
“I’ll take it.”
“You like it.”
Ha went away to let me consider the next part of our talk.
Most people thought that I was harmless at best. I read books and stayed in most of the time. I didn’t have any kind of reputation except in the sex category, and even there I was no Fearless Jones. Women would leave their date to be with Fearless.
As I said, most people didn’t pay me any attention. Not so with Ha Tsu. His eyes were nearly shut all the time, but he saw everything. He heard everything too. When I came nosing around he realized that my questions and actions had purpose.
He had heard the stories about people I looked for.
Don’t get me wrong. On the whole I was innocuous. But now and then I did work for Milo and helped Fearless when he got into a jam. And when I did, and Ha Tsu saw me, he knew that I had something going on.
I didn’t want be out in the streets looking for Useless. I didn’t want to find thousands of stolen dollars or moldering bodies. But there I was.
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poured us both cups of fragrant jasmine tea and sat with me, as there were few other patrons at that hour.
“You look for Al Rive?” Ha Tsu asked.
“No. Why?”
“I hear Milo want him.” Ha hunched his shoulders and opened his mouth. He was missing some teeth.
“No. For my cousin,” I said. “Useless Grant.”
“He your cousin?”
“Uh-huh. And I have never been thankful for that fact.”
Again Ha laughed.
“You should come work for me, Paris,” he said.
“Why’s that?”
“Then I laugh all times.”
“Have you seen Useless?”
“Five days.”
“Really? How was he?”
“He okay, I guess,” Ha said. “Talking ’bout how he gonna get rich.”
“How?”
“Off of white devils.” Ha smiled a smile that would frighten a child of any age.
“How’s he gonna do that?”
“I don’t know. But he tell me that if you got a man by his dick, even if
he white he gonna go where you say. Your cousin funny too.”
At the end of the counter was a doorway covered by a black-and-white-checkered curtain. Behind the curtain was a steel-bound door to some stairs that led up to Jerry Twist’s pool parlor. Only certain people were allowed up into Jerry’s place.
If you were Van Cleave or Fearless Jones, or with somebody of 117
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that stature, you could go up any time you wanted to. But a schlub like me didn’t have a chance without an invitation.
“You think I could go up that way?” I asked my host.
Ha grimaced at the fabric. His left eye enlarged and he said,
“It’s a magic carpet. Only open for men with power.”
“Open sesame,” I said.
Neither the curtain nor the restaurant owner moved.
Abracadabra, Shazam, hail hail. I said all these words, but the fabric did not flutter.
Ha shrugged and walked away from me.
I went into my pocket and came out with a dollar.
“Hey, Mum,” I called to the waitress.
She came over to me with a dazed and innocent look on her face. Mum was dressed in the black-and-white uniform of half the waitresses in America. But she carried it off with more elegance and beauty than Jayne Mansfield could have imagined.
“Yes, Paris?” she asked, but I heard another question.
“You got change for a dollar?”
“For you.”
When I think back on my youth, remembering moments like those, I realize that I have squandered my life.
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I u s e d m y f i r s t d i m e to call Milo’s office.
When Loretta answered, I felt the hole in my 19 heart.
“Hey, Loretta. It’s Paris.”
“Hello, Paris,” she said in a friendly but professional voice. I could tell that she was going to wait for me to bring up the conversation we’d started the night before — and also that there was no pressure for me to hurry.
“Lookin’ for Fearless,” I said.
“Milo went home to study an argument he’s going to present,” she said. “He’s trying to be readmitted to the bar.”
“Fearless say where he was going?”
“No. He just drove Milo.”
“Thanks.”
“Sure, Paris. Is that all?”
“I had a great time last night,” I said.
She hummed her agreement and then said, “One day you’ll come to understand what a wonderful man you are, Paris Minton.”
•
•
•
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I c a l l e d t w o b a r s and three restaurants that Fearless frequented, with no luck. I left messages for him, but no one had any idea when he’d show up.
I could have called Mona. Maybe I should have called her. If you woke her in her bed from a deep sleep and asked her where Fearless might be, she would probably know. That man was on her mind twenty-four hours a day.
But I hesitated. One day I might really need Mona’s help and if I called all the time she could begin to resent me. It’s always a delicate thing dealing with your friends’ girlfriends.
So instead I dialed a Ludlow number. He answered on the first ring.
“Yeh?”
“Bobby?”
“You know it is, Paris. What you want?”
Bobby Frank was known as the Two Dollar Man. He’d perform any errand for the discreet payment of two George Washington notes.
If someone wanted to get word to his mother that he was in jail and needed bail, Bobby would take the message to her door for two bills. If you wanted your mother and your cousin to know, then that was four — unless the cousin and the mother lived under the same roof.
Bobby lived in a studio apartment with a portable Zenith TV, a mini-refrigerator filled with cheap beer, a perpetual carton of Kools, and a big black telephone. He kept a ledger sheet that had three live columns: name, estimated cost, and paid.
Cost was always a multiple of two, and you had to have an X in the rightmost column or Bobby wouldn’t work for you again.
“I need Fearless to meet me down at Ha Tsu’s ASAP,”
I said.
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“You ain’t paid me for that thing I did last month, man.”
“I ain’t seen ya.”
“Well, you coulda come by,” Bobby said.
“Yeah. You right, man. I’ll tell ya what, you tell Fearless when you see ’im to give ya the four dollars. Tell him that I said to settle my bill.” This accomplished two ends. It meant that Bobby would definitely get paid, and it let him know that Fearless wanted the information Bobby had. Either detail was enough to get him up and out.
“I was gonna call him,” Bobby complained. He liked to complain.
“Milo’s only three blocks from you, B,” I said. “And anyway, Fearless ain’t there.”
The Two Dollar Man sighed on his end of the line.
“I hear Milo got trouble wit’ Albert Rive,” the Two Dollar Man said. This was often the case with Bobby. He stayed at home to get his business calls, but being at home most of the time made him lonely. On top of the two dollars, I had to pay a little interest in conversation.
“It’s Al got trouble,” I said. “He got Whisper and Fearless on him. He be lucky to make it to jail.”
“I hear you got trouble too, Paris.”
I wondered how he could have known about Three Hearts and her evil eye.
“What kinda trouble?” I asked.
“Mad Anthony says he gonna kill your cousin and he got some choice words about you too.”
“Where you hear that?”
“Around. People be sayin’ that Useless better keep his butt indoors.”
“You know where Useless is right now?” I asked.
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“I’ll tell you what I told Tony’s cousin.”
“What’s that?”
“Useless ain’t gone be found he don’t want it.”
“You think you can find Fearless?” I asked then. “Could you find him?”
“Oh, yeah. I think I know where he’s at.”
He probably did. For a man who stayed inside 90 percent of the time, Bobby had more knowledge about the comings and goings of Watts personalities than a station full of cops.
Wh e n I g o t b a c k t o G o o d N e w s the evening clientele had begun to arrive. My plate was still at the bar, but Ha had moved to the back in order to work with his immigrant kitchen help.
There were four waitresses on duty, two more than he needed at that hour, but the trade would be brisk soon.
Mum came up to my station and smiled, not that she needed to; she would have been beautiful frowning or crying or bemoaning the dead. Her skin was olive with a hint of lemon therein, and her dark eyes were both wise and youthful — I never really knew how old she was. Unlike the common impres-sion that most people had of Asian women, Mum was full of good humor, quite forward, and blessed with a great figure.
I was appreciating this last quality when she asked, “So how are you, Mr. Paris?”
“Quite fine, Miss Mum. Quite fine. I got money in my pocket and someplace to be in the morning. I don’t have a job, which is a good thing, and nobody’s trying to get me put outta my house.”
She didn’t have to smile to maintain her beauty, but it didn’t hurt.
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“How are you, honey?” I asked.
“Getting better.”
“Better? Was something wrong?”
“All kinds of things,” she said, pushing a shoulder forward deliciously.
“Like what?”
“I move outta my place on Grand Court over to Peters Lane. I got a nice green door with a red lantern over it.”
“You like the new place better?”
“Yeah. It’s closer, and you know I don’
t get off till ten and so I like to get home before the news.”
“It’s closer but is it nicer?”
“It’s nicer because I don’t have stupid Vincent in there anymore,” she said with a sneer.
“Who’s Vincent?”
“He call himself my boyfriend but he wasn’t no friend to me. Don’t have a job, don’t do a thing. When my mothah get sick he won’t even go with me to the hospital.”
“How’s your mom?” I asked, following my cue. “Is she okay?”
Mum smiled and put her hand on mine.
“You’re sweet, Mr. Paris. She much bettah now I have free time to come see her every day.”
“Sometimes gettin’ rid of a boyfriend is better than gettin’
one,” I said.
She laughed and laughed. At Ha Tsu’s Good News I was a laugh riot.
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swing. Some people recognized me and came my way, but after a while I pulled out a paperback copy of The Stranger by Albert Camus. My mother died today, or maybe it was yesterday . . .
I liked reading about the heat of North Africa combined with the oppression of European culture.
N o w a n d t h e n a well-dressed man or two would show up and speak to one of the waitstaff. They’d linger around the checkered curtain until Ha would come out and admit them to the stairway to Jerry Twist’s.
Mum came by every fifteen minutes or so to touch my hand and ask if I needed anything.
The Stranger, Meursault, found himself getting deeper and deeper into trouble just for living a life in the world.
“ H e y, F e a r l e s s ! ” someone shouted. “What’s happenin’, man?”
My friend was wearing a loose white shirt with big red flowers patterned on it and dark brown pants. Fearless’s hair was always close cut, and he had a slight limp from one time when he saved my life by taking two others.
He slapped hands and kissed women all the way to the counter. Fearless was popular, and unlike Van, no one felt that he was about to go crazy on them.
“Paris,” he announced. “What you need?”
“I got a hankerin’ to see some pool bein’ played,” I said.
“Well, let’s go there, then, my man,” he said.
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