Charcoal Joe

by Walter Mosley

  “Sofa turn into a bed?” I asked.

  “You want some lemonade?” she said, her eyes smiling about the bed.

  “Sure.”

  “Vodka in that?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Too early?”

  “I gave it up.”

  “Religion?”

  “Life.”

  Jasmine took a moment to appreciate my one-word response and then said, “Take a seat and I’ll make your drink.”

  I sat on the couch and she brought me a green plastic tumbler filled with frosty lemonade from the fridge. She placed my drink on the coffee table next to a red book-box that contained three full-sized volumes and a smaller book about two-thirds the height of the others. The cover read THE FEYNMAN LECTURES ON PHYSICS. I picked it up. It was heavier than it looked.

  “Kid’s book?” I asked.

  “When I asked Seymour what was it that he did he gave me that book. He said it was everything any layman needed to understand the science. He called it the holy scriptures of physics. I never got past the second page but I keep it there because it reminds me of him.”

  I put the collection down.

  “That’s the second one he give me. I loaned the first one to my girlfriend because she wanted a big red book like that on her bookshelf,” she said.

  “You’re a detective?” she then asked, doubt laced through the words.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Were you a cop before?”

  “No.”

  “Then how did you even start something like that?”

  “That’s a long story, Mrs. Hardy.”

  “Call me Jasmine.”

  “It’s a long story, Jasmine, and I take it we have more important things to talk about.”

  Sitting down next to me, she let her shoulders sag.

  “I don’t know what I’d do if they framed my son.”

  “Your foster son,” I said for clarification.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you and Seymour live here in this house?”

  “He had the bedroom and I slept out here on the fold-away.”

  “One of these doors a bedroom?”

  “That one,” she said, waving her hand at a pink door across from us. “First it’s the toilet and on the other side is Seymour’s old room.”

  “Was he a good boy?”

  “The best,” Jasmine said with emphasis. “I took him in when he was a baby and, and never regretted it for even one minute.”

  “Then why let him go?” I asked.

  The question seemed to hurt. I was thinking that the tea was bringing out something else in me; a callousness, or maybe just simple objectivity.

  “I didn’t want to, Mr. Rawlins,” she said. “I never wanted to be parted from him. But Sy is some kinda genius and there was this science family up north in Walnut Creek. The father, mother, sister, and brother was all scientists or at least science students. They met my son at the state science fair where the mother was a judge, and after a while they decided to take him in and show him how to be what he could be.”

  I did not doubt her sorrow or sacrifice.

  “Have you talked to him?” I asked.

  “He called me when he was arrested. He told me that he’d found the bodies and that the police arrested him for murder. That’s when I called Joe and asked him to get a lawyer for Seymour.”

  “Have you gone down to see Seymour?”

  Her initial response was to look away, as if there was a courtroom lawyer there to tell her how to answer the question.

  “They, they wouldn’t let me in because I’m not blood.”

  “But you were his legal guardian, right?”

  Just the question was painful to her. She turned away again, made to stand, and then didn’t.

  “Seymour was abandoned as a baby,” she said. “He was left in a basket in front of a church where a friend of mine’s husband was deacon. They didn’t want to turn a poor baby over to the state orphanage so they asked me and I took him.”

  I didn’t believe her. But it didn’t matter that she was lying. I hadn’t been hired to find out where Seymour had come from.

  “What about Rufus?” I asked.

  “What about ’im?” The feeling in her face shifted from anguish to something ambivalent.

  “How does he fit into all this?”

  “He don’t have nuthin’ to do with Sy,” she said. “We was friends a long time ago and he knew the boy. Rufus is what you call a rough customer and so, like I said, when Sy got arrested I called him for help.”

  “He told me that you spoke for him.”

  “Only because’a Seymour, only because’a him.”

  As we spoke, Jasmine seemed to become more vulnerable. I was aware that this vulnerability was also dangerous.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “When?”

  “To get your foster child arrested.”

  “Um, he said, he said that he knew a woman lived out there somewhere,” she lied. “He went to the door, saw that it was open, and walked in. He called out but nobody answered. Then he found the bodies and the police came. He was gonna call the cops himself but they got there before he could.”

  “You believe all that?” I asked because I had to.

  “I believe that he didn’t know those men or kill them, or have any idea who did.”

  It was a rehearsed response but there was truth in there.

  Jasmine reached behind the arm on her side of the sofa and came up with a shiny black handbag.

  She reached inside. There might have been a pistol in there but I figured that I was close enough to wrest it away if I had to; besides, she had no reason to shoot me, not yet.

  What she came out with was a very large stack of new bills—hundred-dollar bills.

  Handing the stack to me, she said, “Eighteen thousand dollars.”

  “What’s this for?”

  “You need it to get Sy out on bail.”

  “They’ve given him bail?”

  “The lawyer Joe got said it had somethin’ to do with there bein’ no witness and no weapon.”

  “Why don’t you go do it?”

  “Rufus said I should tell you.”

  I took the money. I almost always do.

  Jasmine brought her left leg up on the cushion, revealing the greater part of her thigh. The movement caught my attention; the form held my eyes.

  When I looked up Jasmine was staring at me. There was great feeling in her.

  She stood up and said, “You like my dress?”

  I looked at her shapely legs and nodded.

  She turned her back to me and raised her hands high as if surrendering to the police. The hem of the dress rose up almost to her waist; she wasn’t wearing anything under that.

  I suppose that I have seen more lovely derrieres in my experience but I could not, and cannot, remember when.

  There was something almost ceremonial about these gestures. First the money, then the woman; after all that, I could go out somewhere to die.

  I rose, put my hands on her hips, and guided her down to her knees on the sofa. A few moments later I entered her. The growl that came from my lips was new to me. A moan rose from her and we started rocking back and forth.

  When I pressed forward she slammed back. At some point we tumbled from the sofa to the floor, but the motion never stopped. The whole connection lasted three minutes, maybe four.

  When it was over I had to tell myself not to close my eyes.

  We both sat up.

  “Kiss me,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Just so I know that you know I’m here.”

  I expected a peck but Jasmine Palmas-Hardy gave me a passionate tongue that spoke in a language beyond words and maybe even ideas.

  “Will you save my son, Mr. Rawlins?” she asked after completing the kiss.

  “If I don’t,” I said, “then he is beyond saving.”

  14

  On the way down t
he stairs I wondered why I had asked for that kiss. I also speculated about Jasmine; why she sealed our meeting with sex. The late sixties was an uninhibited era where people changed apartments and had sex at the drop of a hat. But there was something else going on with Jasmine. She had to connect with me, not because she was after release or a feeling of power, but because she needed me to want to do what I had promised.

  And why did I respond? I was almost half a century old. I had known many women. Usually when there’s a jealous husband nearby I demurred when being offered sex. Why put my life on the line?

  Maybe Jo’s tea really had opened a door in my bruised heart.

  “What happened up there?” Uriah Hardy put words to my unspoken questions.

  He stood at the gate to the street, this time blocking my egress. There was a tremor throbbing at the back of his neck and his left hand was held at hip-level, balled into a fist. This reminded me of Joguye Cham’s paralyzed hand, but with the memory came no anguish.

  “I’m looking for reasons to get Seymour Brathwaite off the suspect list for murder,” I said. “You know Seymour, don’t you?”

  “That woman up there is my wife,” he said, telling me that he wasn’t concerned with my questions. “We were married at city hall with a witness. I got the government certificate to prove it.”

  I noticed that my breathing got deeper. We might as well have been two dogs snarling at the bait of pheromones on the air.

  “Seymour Brathwaite,” I said. It was only then that it dawned on me that I should have asked Jasmine for a photograph.

  “What about him?” The question wanted to be a curse.

  “Do you know him?”

  “He used to live in the little side room off the toilet upstairs.”

  Upstairs; that was the word he used to pretend that Jasmine was still his faithful spouse.

  “When was the last time you saw him?”

  “Not for a long time.”

  “Have you spoken to him?”

  Uriah resented the question but he said, “I don’t know. A couple’a weeks ago I guess. He called looking for Jasmine but she wasn’t here.”

  “Did he own a gun?”

  “This is California, man. One thing you could be sure of is everybody got a car and gun.”

  “So he had one?”

  “His mother do.”

  “You mean Jasmine, his foster mother?”

  “Yeah. Right.”

  “You have a picture of him?” I asked as politely as possible. I was trying to prove that I was there in the role of PI and had no other interest.

  But my attempt was off-target. Uriah glared at the question. It was as if I was trying to condemn him.

  “She’s my wife,” he said.

  “I asked for a picture of Seymour, not your marriage certificate.”

  “The foster mother thing was her job. He wasn’t none of mines. Why I wanna have his picture?”

  I thought of asking for a family photograph or maybe hoofing it back up the stairs to Jasmine’s stronghold. But none of that seemed possible. Uriah was not a part of Jasmine’s family and he had a car…and a gun.

  It was time for me to get into my car and drive off.

  “Excuse me,” I said, looking past his shoulder at the gate.

  But Mr. Hardy did not budge.

  “I don’t want you comin’ ’round here no more,” he said.

  I should have felt threatened. My breathing was that of a worried man but there was cold logic flowing side by side with the hot blood in my veins.

  “You realize that the next time Mr. Tyler asks me to come around here I’ll have to say, ‘Her husband told me to stay away.’ ”

  “You think I’m ascared’a Charcoal Joe?”

  “Everybody else I talked to seems to be.”

  The cuckold gave my words serious consideration. Maybe if other people also were afraid of Joe then he wouldn’t be so much of an unmanned coward.

  “What she tell you?” Uriah asked, and I felt that the conversation had finally begun.

  “That Seymour was her foster son and that Joe hired me because he was a family friend.”

  “Friend,” the little man spat. “That’s like sayin’ a mosquito is your friend. A stroke is your friend.”

  “If Tyler’s that bad then why did he call me to visit him in jail and ask me to prove Seymour innocent?”

  “Her.”

  “Jasmine?”

  “Listen here, brother,” Uriah cautioned. “Joe ain’t nobody’s friend. Even if he shake your hand and slip you a ten-dollar bill, it ain’t gonna turn out good. If Seymour’s in trouble then you could bet it’s on Joe. If that bitch upstairs pulls up her dress, he’s behind it. If the ground shakes and that house falls off its poles, then that’s him too.”

  He was saying that if I had sex with his wife while he waited down below that it was Joe doing it. This displacement, I thought, could work for me.

  “He hired me to prove Seymour innocent,” I said again. “What could be wrong with that?”

  “I know you a detective and all,” Uriah said. “Your ID card said WRENS-L company. I aksed information for the company numbah. I talked with a white guy called Lynx. I know you all sure and confident and think you know how things work but believe me, man, you don’t.”

  “How do things work?” I asked. I really wanted to know.

  The angry husband suddenly looked frightened. His fist released and I realized that the wrinkles across his forehead were from rage and not age. In a twinkling, the expression on the grumpy old man’s face transformed into that of an innocent who harbored a child in his heart.

  Uriah licked his lips instead of answering my question.

  “Really, brother,” I said. “I don’t need to be in no deep shit here. I thought I was just tryin’ to get an innocent man free.”

  “Innocent,” Uriah said. “You can’t even just be in a room with Joe and be innocent.”

  The anger was coming back.

  “Uriah!” Jasmine yelled from the platform above.

  Again we both looked up.

  “What?” he said in a voice that wanted to be in charge.

  “Stand out the way and let Mr. Rawlins get on with his business!”

  Uriah uttered a foul word under his breath.

  “Fuck you!” he yelled. “Fuck you all!”

  He turned abruptly and rushed into the orange and blue house.

  I looked up at Jasmine and she down on me. The sex we had had been no more than the complex handshake of a not-so-secret society.

  I nodded and went out through the gate.

  On my way to the car I wondered if the husband at the bottom of the stairs would get his gun; if he would shoot himself, Jasmine, me, or any possible combination of the three.

  15

  If Mama Jo had a phone I would have called her and asked about the tea she gave me. Failing that, I decided to go get a haircut.

  —

  On Pico Boulevard, three blocks west of La Brea, on the south side of the street there stood a small barbershop that looked like a big incinerator. The ash gray bunker-shaped building had inset windows that were long and thin. The door had a curved metal handle instead of a knob, making it looked more like a hatch than a portal.

  During business hours the front door was always unlocked. At the close of every day Angelo Broadman, the proprietor and head barber, snapped six heavy padlocks into their hinges and went home secure that nobody would break in.

  “Hey, Easy,” the New Orleanian greeted, rising from the lead barber chair. He wore the standard barber’s uniform—a white smock with black trousers and sensible, rubber-soled black shoes.

  There were six barbers lined in a row along the eastern wall of the small, sweet cologne–smelling room; five men and one woman. Angelo was the only barber without a customer in his chair.

  After thirty years shearing heads Angelo had saved enough to buy a shop, and so now he only worked on his regulars and friends.

&nbs
p; Half a dozen men waited along the west wall, sitting in chairs made of green leather cushions with chromium arms and legs.

  “Mr. Broadman,” I said, shaking his hand.

  Angelo was a short, green-eyed Negro with skin lighter than many white people I’ve known. His limp hair didn’t need to be straightened and his handsome features were closer to Clark Gable than Bill Robinson. As a matter of fact, the only reason we knew Angelo was one of us was that he claimed this ancestry, and in America, who would lie about that?

  “Hey, Easy,” Lena Arthur, mistress of the number-two chair, said.

  Lena had brassy skin with freckles and gold edging on her front teeth. She smiled and winked. Both she and Angelo had passed fifty but they didn’t look old.

  “Have a seat, Mr. Rawlins,” Angelo said.

  As I obeyed he took a folded white apron with almost imperceptible blue lines and spread it out over me.

  “I was next!”

  The speaker was of medium height with dark brown skin and a big belly, dressed in the milk chocolate–colored uniform of a national parcel-delivery service. Though the same in name, the colors of his skin and livery clashed. He had gotten to his feet.

  Angelo was tying the apron at the back of my neck.

  “You better sit down, brother,” the barber rumbled. “Sit down or get out.”

  “I been sittin’ here for forty-five minutes,” the delivery man complained.

  “You didn’t make no appointment,” Lena said in a voice that would have harmonized well with a trio of trumpets.

  “That’s okay, baby,” Angelo said to his stylist neighbor. “This man knows that I got a straight razor and a bad temper. He knows that barbers used to be doctors and dentists too, and so we accustomed to the sight’a blood.”

  The would-be customer’s face had generous features. His lips were thick and malleable, so it was easy to see the fearful reaction to the barber’s threat. But even though he was somewhat afraid, he didn’t want to back down—at least not immediately.

  “I’m just sayin’ that I been waitin’ and this niggah here just waltz in and you sit him right down.”

  “Niggah? You want me to take this sheet off, Easy?” the barber asked me, “or you gonna kick his ass with it on?”