Charcoal Joe

by Walter Mosley

  That made it easier for the angry customer. Two against one meant that he could back down with no shame.

  “Fuck this shit!” he yelled. He walked to the hatch and out into the street.

  Lena laughed and went back to her head of hair.

  Looking after the retreating delivery man, I thought of Uriah and all the black men and women I knew who woke up angry and went to bed in the same state of mind. Life was like a bruise for us back then, and today too. We examine every action for potential threats, insults, and cheats. And if you look hard enough you will find what you’re looking for—whether it’s there or not.

  “What you need, Easy?” Angelo asked.

  “Just a razor line.”

  “You got it.”

  The barber lowered the back of the chair and raised the whole seat until I was almost prone, with my head at his diaphragm.

  —

  I liked the nameless barbershop because it was old-fashioned. They used real barber’s chairs and straight razors sharpened on leather strops attached to each station. There was always good company and often a crap game going in a corner. At the barbershop people read the newspapers and discussed racism and politics. The stylists wrapped hot towels around your face and you could close your eyes and relax for that precious few minutes that might be the difference between harsh words and hard blows.

  “You want a little color up top, Easy?” Angelo asked while I was drowsing.

  “Color?”

  “You got a few gray hairs, baby….Don’t want the girls thinkin’ you a old man.”

  “What I need is more’a them suckers,” I said, in full barbershop mode.

  “More? Why?”

  “Gray hair is the smart man’s bait.”

  “Bait for what?”

  “Female company.”

  “How you figure?”

  I opened my eyes and saw that Lena was glancing at us, listening in.

  “When a man looks at a woman, what’s he thinkin’ about?” I asked Angelo.

  “Her butt,” he said. “Maybe her face.”

  “Now what’s the woman thinkin’ about, lookin’ back at him?”

  “Hearth and home,” he chanted. “Hearth and home.”

  “That’s right. A man is thinkin’ about right now tonight, but the woman got her eye on the future. She might like that man. Hell, she might lust after him, but at the same time she could tell you what kinda drapes she wants in the house you haven’t even thought about yet. She can tell you what kinda silverware you will eat with at two thousand Sunday suppers.”

  “What’s that got to do with a few gray hairs?” Angelo wanted to know.

  “Girl see one or two and she thinks maybe the man done aged enough to calm down, make somethin’ outta himself. She willin’ to let him look so maybe she could see what his prospects are like. That way a man like me might get a great night or a lifetime of pot roasts, fat babies, and halfhearted regrets.”

  “Halfhearted regrets!” Lena shouted like a parishioner agreeing with the preacher’s words. “That’s why Easy Rawlins is a detective. That man knows some shit!”

  She laughed so hard that she had to hold the razor away from her client’s face.

  “Damn!” Lena cried.

  —

  Angelo used his razor to even the line around my short hair and then to shave the stubble from my chin. We talked about the Dodgers and the Lakers, the state of Watts and Vietnam. His wife’s mother had come up from Louisiana to live with them.

  “Wife in the bedroom,” he said, “and her mama’s in the kitchen. All I got to do is bring home the mortgage payments and my life is perfect.”

  —

  I liked the community of black barbershops. I liked Angelo and the tough love of his establishment. But I was there for another reason altogether.

  Barbers were like telephone poles carrying the intelligence of a whole community at their stations. Los Angeles was once small enough that most black people knew one another, but the population was too large for that by the late sixties. The major players, however, were known in pool halls, barrooms, and barbershops.

  And Angelo Broadman knew just about all the names.

  When he was almost finished with my face I asked, “What you been hearin’ ’bout Charcoal Joe?”

  Angelo stood up straight and looked at me with his glassy green eyes. He pondered a moment, wiped the blade with a towel, and then pursed his lips. He leaned closer than he had to to shave my right jawline.

  “They sayin’ that he wants to move out the country,” he whispered.

  “Where?”

  “Canada,” Angelo speculated, “maybe Paris. You know he once played a trumpet and cello duet with Louis Armstrong over there.”

  “He’s that good?”

  “He’s that good.”

  “His people know he’s leavin’?”

  “If I do then they do.”

  The barber wiped my face with a hot towel and then raised the back of my chair while lowering the seat. He pulled the apron off and snapped it to discard whatever hair might be there.

  “How much I owe you?”

  “That story about the gray,” he said. “That’ll keep Lena happy for weeks.”

  “Thanks, man.”

  “And, Easy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Walk softly wherever it is you goin’. You know Charcoal Joe is a tombstone just waitin’ for a name.”

  16

  It was late afternoon when I was driving in my car again.

  I had already called Jewelle to pick up Feather at her school.

  On surface streets I made my way from the west side down to Florence Avenue and San Pedro, there to park in front of a three-story, brown-shingled building that housed a Laundromat on the first floor.

  In order to get where I was going I had to walk down the aisle that separated the coin-operated washers from the dryers to a red door that had a sign above that read STAIRS.

  The second-floor door opened into a short hallway that had two apartment doors on either side. At the far end of that corridor was a bright blue door with a red glass knob.

  I always liked that door. Every time I saw it I was reminded of a fairy tale that my father once read to me before he disappeared. It was a story about a curious young man who investigated every corner of every house he was in. The only details I retained from that story were the blue door and a little witch-girl he found imprisoned on the other side.

  With my hand on the faceted knob, I wondered if I had grown up to become that curious young man, opening doors and looking for my father.

  On my way up the last tier of stairs I decided, not for the first time, never to take another potion from Jo.

  The final door in my private fairy tale was black with an iron knob painted white. I didn’t try to open this door because it was always locked.

  “Who is it?” a sweet woman’s voice asked in answer to my knock.

  “Easy Rawlins.”

  The door came open immediately, revealing a man that was an inch or so taller than I, a shade or two darker, and maybe twenty pounds lighter. He was wearing a cheap, steel-gray suit cut from cotton cloth, designed for some Alabama sodbuster to wear when he went to the bank to ask for yet another extension on his loan payments. The man’s shirt was white dress with no tie and had long sleeves that came out of the cuffs of his jacket. His face was angular and well formed. Nobody would have called him handsome, but then again, I knew that there weren’t many women who could resist his charm. And Fearless Jones was not a conscious womanizer. He met women and bedded them but he would have paid for the dinner or done the favor they needed without recompense.

  “Easy Rawlins,” the black Prince Charming hailed.

  “Fearless Jones.”

  We clasped hands and smiled broadly. Fearless was a mighty friend to have. He was one of the three people that Mouse claimed he wouldn’t want to tangle with.

  “Come on in, man,” he invited, as if this was his ap
artment rather than Milo Sweet’s bail-bonds office.

  The reception area of the disbarred lawyer’s office was smallish but well appointed. There was an ornately carved rosewood desk, and three ash chairs along the wall to the left of the entrance.

  From behind the desk Loretta Kuroko was rising to greet me. Tall for a woman, five-ten or so, there was no questioning her beauty. Her dark eyes actually glittered and her long black hair was tied up into a bun, making her extraordinary features seem to jump out at you.

  “Loretta,” I said and we kissed.

  She was wearing a black silk jacket over a yellow satin dress. Her shoes, I noticed, were bright red and the sash around her waist was deep green, dark enough to be mistaken for black in low light.

  “Milo’s down at the jail,” she said.

  “I thought that he was usually back by now.”

  “As a rule,” she said as she made it back to her chair, “but they arrested Thaddeus Melford for manslaughter, and Thad’s lawyer needed Milo with him when he argued with the judge over him getting bail or not.”

  Loretta was like that blue door; she made me happy. As a child she spent three years in a detainment camp for Japanese Americans during World War II. This experience caused her to hate white people. That’s why she went to work for Milo. It’s also why she dressed the way she did and used her own Japanese-made furniture for the front office.

  “He’ll be back soon,” she assured me.

  “Come sit with me, Easy,” Fearless offered. “I haven’t seen you in two, three years. How you doin’?”

  I went to the wall and took a seat next to the reluctant Lothario.

  “Cain’t complain,” I lied. “Started a new detective agency. We call it WRENS-L.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Whisper Natly is one of my new partners.”

  “Whisper,” he said with a smile. “Paris an’ me did some work with him some years back. He’s a real nice guy.”

  “Yeah he is,” I agreed. “Saul Lynx is the third partner. We were wondering what name we should use, and Whisper just took the initials of our first and last names and made as close to a word as he could.”

  “I like it,” Fearless said, a little uncertain. “It’s good to work for yourself. I mean most people who become bosses get all in your face and stuff. Better off without ’em. How’s that girl of yours? That Bonnie Shay.”

  “She’s doing very well, thank you. Happy as a clam.”

  Loretta gave me an inquisitive glance. It’s hard to hide a broken heart from a woman.

  “What you doin’?” I asked, to change the track of our conversation.

  “I been chasin’ down fools who buy bail from Milo and then run.”

  “I thought you did work with Paris Minton?”

  “He moved back up to San Francisco.”

  “Really? He left his bookstore?”

  Paris Minton and Fearless Jones were what I called a perfectly mismatched pair. Paris was as well-read and intelligent as Jackson Blue; he was just as much of a coward too. Fearless was not so smart but his will was indomitable, his heart attuned to truth, and physically he was the strongest man I ever met; possibly with the exception of Jo’s son—Domaque. Separately, Fearless and Paris were just two more black men destined for ignominy, but together they formed the perfect genius of the American spirit.

  “Me and Loretta open it up on weekends,” Fearless said, answering my question. “He got about ten thousand books in the upstairs storage area so we won’t even make a dent before he move back down.”

  “He’s planning to come back?”

  “He says no but Paris got to be down here. He know that between him and me there ain’t nuthin’ we cain’t do.”

  That was Fearless: He knew for certain things that he didn’t understand.

  “You want me to make you some tea, Easy?” Loretta asked in the lull of our conversation.

  Before I could answer, the black door came open. In strode Milo Sweet wearing a baby blue three-piece suit, brown shirt, mustard tie, and a brown hat that might have been a derby at one time, before the weight of the world came down upon it. If Milo’s skeleton was found in some troglodyte cave, the anthropologist’s first thought would be Neanderthal, not Cro-Magnon. Five-seven at the height of his youth and one ninety if he was an ounce, he smelled of the cigar between his lips.

  “Easy Rawlins,” he bellowed. Milo’s voice was both gravelly and low. His place would have been in the bass section of the church choir—if he ever joined some congregation. His skin was always the darkest in the room, unless, that is, Fearless Jones was in that room with him.

  “You had me goin’ this morning,” Milo said. “That woman callin’ me and sayin’ that I in some way represented one of her inmates, and that I had sent Easy Rawlins down to give him some message.”

  “Sorry about that, Milo. You know they weren’t gonna let me in and I had made a promise.”

  “That’s okay,” the ex-lawyer proclaimed. “When I heard it was Avett Detention I wasn’t worried.”

  “Why not?”

  “In a corrupt barrel, Avett’s still a bad apple. So you here to ask for another favor?”

  “Since you were so helpful on the phone I thought I’d come by and do you a good turn.”

  Milo grunted and gestured at the door behind and to the left of Loretta’s desk.

  —

  The bail bondsman’s office was three times that of Loretta’s space. He had a black desk the size of a baby grand piano. I often wondered how he moved that piece of furniture around but whenever we met, the business I was on kept me from idle chatter.

  There was a brown leather sofa under a row of three windows that looked over the palm tree–lined slum streets of South Central Los Angeles.

  He had a dozen metal file cabinets of every color and size set in a row and stacked one on top of another. But what I liked the most about his office was the visitor’s chair.

  It was a gangly light brown seat that reminded you of a two-year-old doe coming out of the woods after an especially bad winter. The legs didn’t look like they could bear the weight of Loretta but I had seen Milo sitting on it, leaning back on the hind legs. That was the only chair I had ever seen that seemed to have a personality.

  I sat on the chair and Milo leaned back in his.

  “What you need, Mr. Rawlins?”

  I took out the stack of cash Jasmine had given me and set it on the tan blotter before him.

  The whites of Milo’s eyes were bloodshot. He wheezed when just walking. He had a smoker’s cough that was a fright, but for all that he seemed immortal.

  Those godlike glaring eyes fixed themselves on the pile of cash.

  “Eighteen thousand dollars,” I said.

  Milo had to swallow before asking, “For what? You want me to shoot my mother or somethin’?”

  “A man named Seymour Brathwaite has been arrested and charged with double homicide. This will cover his piece of the bail.”

  “Bail on murder? Is this a black man accused?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And is it black men they say he killed?”

  “White.”

  “And they still set bail?”

  “Charcoal Joe put his lawyer on it.”

  “How’d you get mixed up with him?”

  “Mouse called in a favor.”

  “Damn, Easy, you travel in some bad company, man.”

  “I vouch for the bail, Milo.”

  A light entered the Cave God’s eyes. He cocked his head to the side and said, “Then I will go down tonight. If everything you say is right they’ll let him free in the morning.”

  “There’s something else,” I said.

  “Yeah?”

  “The men they say Seymour killed were a guy named Peter Boughman and somebody else they call Ducky. You ever hear of either of them?”

  “No.”

  “I’d like to know what there is to know about Boughman, and Ducky too if it’s pos
sible.”

  Up until then Milo had been talking past the cigar clenched in his teeth. But then he plucked out the stogie and gave me a speculative look.

  “I heard you started a new office with Whisper Natly and a Jew,” Milo said.

  “Yeah?”

  “And Whisper done brought that fine young thing Niska Redman to be your secretary.”

  “He has.”

  “So why not just ask her?”

  “Come on now, Milo. I willin’ to pay for this and we both know Loretta is ten or twelve IQ points over you. Just give her the job and bill me what it’s worth.”

  “You ain’t no fun, Easy. Don’t you know you s’posed to haggle over shit?”

  I stood and said, “Eight a.m.?”

  “County courthouse, on the dot.”

  17

  In the outer office Loretta rose to kiss me again. I had once done her a favor and she wanted me to know that she remembered.

  When Fearless got to his feet and stuck out a hand I had a thought.

  “Fearless.”

  “Yeah, Easy?”

  “Now that I started WRENS-L I might, or Saul or Whisper might, need some help now and then. You know…an extra man, a strong back, maybe some bodyguardin’. That means we can pay in cash under the table but not have a full-time man.”

  “Okay,” Fearless allowed.

  “You’d be our first choice. Pays forty dollars a day, that is if you’re not too busy here.”

  “Problem with workin’ for Milo is that when people know I’m here they don’t jump bail too much. Mr. Sweet only pay me my bonus when I bring somebody in, so I’m usually hungry with nuthin’ to do.”

  “Why don’t you meet me down at the county courthouse tomorrow morning at eight? That’ll be at least one day’s pay.”

  —

  I called Jackson Blue’s office from a phone booth on San Pedro but he was out. I called Jewelle’s answering service but they didn’t know where she was. When I tried a third number my daughter answered, “Blues’ residence.”

  Blues’ residence. It struck me that this would be a good title for a poem or song; maybe even a novel.

  “Hey, honey.”

  “Daddy!” she cried. “Are you okay?”

  There are ten thousand perfectly good reasons not to have children but hearing the love in Feather’s voice trumped every one.