“The bell?”
“Yeah. Then Jean-Paul bought the alarm company and gave Jackson a bonus. It could be a chime like I got or a loud alarm. Jackson convinced me that because of the company I keep I might want a heads-up. I guess he was right….I’m sorry to put you through all that.”
“That’s okay, I don’t mind.”
“You don’t?”
“Not really. I ’ave seen my father kill German soldiers on the road late at night. I ’ave seen what the Nazis do when they break down a door and drag people into the street.”
Just at sunrise we got to her apartment building on Olympic in Santa Monica.
My breathing was almost normal by then.
“Easy?” she said with her fingers on the door handle.
“Uh-huh?”
“I want to see you again.”
Our kiss good-bye reiterated that claim.
19
I got to the office a little after five, took my bath from the restroom sink using a red washrag and a bar of Ivory soap. After that I went to my private office to change. There was a brown suit and a pale green shirt in the closet, hanging there just in case.
In the kitchen I made scrambled eggs, pork sausage, and coffee strong enough to open my eyes.
It didn’t surprise me that the men who invaded my home didn’t know about WRENS-L. It was a new company and my name was nowhere in evidence. The agency name was listed but there was no address given, not even on our business card. Saul, Whisper, and I decided that we didn’t want clients picking us out of the yellow pages and walking in from off the street. Enough people knew who we were to keep the boulder rolling downhill.
I had already decided to move houses by the time the second silver chime rang. They could kill me, that was all part of the job, but Feather had to be safe.
Working on my third cup of coffee, I tried to imagine why three white toughs would be after me. I was hired to prove, or disprove, a young man’s involvement in murder—but who even knew that?
There was a time that if white muscle came at you then there were white men behind them. But that truth was no longer absolute. Black and white worked together in the new world of integration.
As Mouse often said, “Even crime got a bottom line.”
“Mr. Rawlins?” Niska Redman said in a tentative voice from the front of the offices.
“In the kitchen,” I called.
She came in wearing a light rose-colored dress that fell in an elegant line from her shoulders to her knees. Her eyes showed some worry.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“You never get in before me.”
“Is it seven already?”
“Six forty-five.”
“I better be goin’ then.”
“Why are you here?”
“This is where I work.” I stood up.
“That’s a nice suit.”
“Tell Whisper and Saul that I’m down in the coal mines.”
When I moved to go past the young woman she said, “A man called you yesterday afternoon.”
“What’d he say?”
“Nothing.”
“He had to say something.”
“He asked for you and when I said you were out he said to tell you that Mr. Stapleton had called.”
“That’s all?”
She nodded.
“Do you know who he is?” I asked.
“No.”
—
The county courthouse was a well-appointed and large white stone building that loomed over a gentle park where retirees and winos stopped to rest on the redwood benches now and then. Homed and homeless, they were all on their various roads to oblivion.
A big brown bus from the county jail pulled up on the side of the structure just as I was about to enter the building.
The door to the bus came open and five uniformed guards assembled to flank the long line of men in gray prisoner garb and street clothes. The captives were chained hand and foot and to one another. They were being led toward some side entrance that I couldn’t see.
As I watched the men shuffle out of sight, I wondered if one of them was Seymour Brathwaite; but most were young and black or brown with their heads bowed down. He could have been any one of them.
“Easy.”
Fearless Jones was almost always a source of happiness and inexplicable pride. Wearing the same cheap suit he had on the day before, he was bright-eyed and clean-shaven, ready to go to work.
“Fearless.”
“Poor guys chained up,” he said. “White people don’t know that when black folk see a parade like that we thinkin’ ’bout a whole different circus.”
There was no need for further comment so I said, “You ready, man?”
“Am I black and blue?” he replied with a smile.
—
“Hey, Dora,” Fearless said to a dour white woman who sat behind the only small window cut into a lacquered cedar wall that was forty feet wide and over thirty feet high.
The nameplate on the ledge before her read MRS DUBITSKY. I wondered about the missing period and the fact the Fearless knew her first name.
Dora Dubitsky had at least ten years on me. The flesh of her face was succumbing to the pull of gravity and her glasses had a severe glint to them, mostly obscuring her eyes. The sour turn to her mouth seemed to say that she hadn’t smiled in a very long time. But when she looked up and saw Fearless she actually grinned.
“Mr. Jones,” she said, leaning forward as if intending to walk right through that wall. “How are you?”
“I woke up this morning,” he said. “Them stairs and railin’ for your father holdin’ up?”
“He loves them,” she averred. “Now he can get out of the house with no problem. But he told me that you wouldn’t take his money.”
“Just a few hours’ work for one of my elders. You cain’t put a price on somethin’ like that.”
Fearless couldn’t do long division but he could build a house with a hammer, a saw, and a few nails.
“This my friend Easy Rawlins,” Fearless said.
Dora’s smile diminished but not so far as a frown.
“He’s here to get out a client of Mr. Sweet’s,” he continued.
“Name?” she asked me, not unpleasantly.
—
Fearless earned his day rate just cutting the red tape at that window. Dora filled out the forms for me and gave me the release card to get Brathwaite out of lockup.
“What did you do for her?” I asked when we were waiting for the prisoner to be brought down to room 1001-B, the prisoner-release room.
“I seen her a lot ’cause Milo send me down to get thems that he’s worried about; you know, so they see me and know I’ma be the one be aftah them if they run. One day Dora was on the phone soundin’ all worried. I aksed what was wrong and she said it was her father, that he was old and couldn’t get out the house. I said did he need a nurse ’cause I had a girlfriend right then did that kinda work. She said what he needed was some steps out the front’a his house. Said the ones he had broke and the landlord was draggin’ his feet. By the time I got my prisoner released I had made plans to fix her father’s front porch.”
“And you didn’t take any pay?”
“He’s a old man, Easy. You know it’s good luck to do somebody his age a favor.”
“Rawlins,” a man’s voice called.
It was one of two courthouse policemen. Standing between him and his partner was a bespectacled and slender brown man wearing green cotton trousers and a once-red T-shirt that had faded almost to pink.
I stood and handed the guard that called my name the card Dora gave us. He studied the three-by-five pass and then nodded.
“See you at trial,” he said to the prisoner.
Seymour winced and adjusted his glasses. The lenses were rather thick and bifocal. He rubbed his wrists and then looked at Fearless.
“You got me out?” Seymour asked.
“Mr. Rawlins here,” Fearl
ess said.
Seymour then turned to me. He had an angular face and a short Afro that looked like it hadn’t been combed since the time of his arrest.
“Who are you?” he asked me.
“First you say thank you,” I told the younger man.
“Yes of course,” he said, adjusting his glasses again. “I’m just confused. They arrested me and questioned me all night and through the next day. I called Mama Jasmine. I didn’t think she’d be there but she was and she told me that she’d get a lawyer. He came later but he didn’t say much. Neither did I. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
Giving up on the thank-you, I asked, “When was the last time you ate?”
“Yesterday.”
“Then let’s get you fed.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m Mr. Rawlins and this is Mr. Jones. We’re representing a client that wanted us to get you out of jail and help with the defense.”
“Oh,” he said; a man who gets an answer but still does not understand.
—
Across the street from the courthouse and its Park of Lost Souls was an old-fashioned diner named Dolores. I’d already eaten and all Fearless ordered was a fried egg over easy and a glass of grapefruit juice. I knew this was because I was paying but I didn’t argue. Seymour, who didn’t look to be much older than twenty, ordered strawberry pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon, and a pot of coffee.
I let him eat about halfway through the meal before starting the interrogation.
“How do you know Charcoal Joe?” was first on the list.
That caught Fearless’s attention but Seymour looked bemused.
“Who?” he asked.
“He’s the one who asked us to try and prove that you didn’t kill Peter Boughman,” I said.
“Is that one of the dead men’s names?”
“You don’t know?”
“The police didn’t tell me. They didn’t tell me anything. They just kept asking why I broke in and what had I done with the weapon.”
“And you don’t know Joe?”
“No.” The young postgrad student stared at me through those thick lenses.
“What about the name Rufus Tyler?”
“Rufus,” he said, pondering. “He’s a friend of Mama Jasmine’s. He would bring us a turkey on Thanksgiving sometimes. Once, when I was little, we all went to Redondo Beach together.”
Something about the topic killed the young physicist’s appetite.
“Well,” I said. “Mr. Tyler has asked us to prove that you didn’t kill Boughman. So I need to ask you a few questions.”
“I’m really very tired, Mr. Rawlins.”
“So tired that you’re willing to spend the rest of your life on a cot in San Quentin?”
That gave him a face as sour as Dora Dubitsky’s.
“What can you tell me about the night you were arrested?” I asked.
“I was looking for Mama Jasmine. I had called her but she didn’t answer. Then I went to the high house but she wasn’t there. I asked her husband about it—”
“Uriah?”
“Yes. He said he didn’t know where she was but I didn’t believe him.”
“Why not?”
“Mr. Hardy never liked me too much. It was like he was jealous that I got to stay up in the high house with Mama Jasmine while he lived down the stairs.”
“So how does that get you to the house at the beach?”
“Mama Jasmine has lots of jobs,” he said. “She does catering and flower arranging and there’s a few clients she has that have her do cleaning. She’d been a housekeeper down at the Malibu house ever since I can remember. Sometimes when the owners were on vacation she’d stay overnight. She’d sleep on the couch and leave the beachside sliding doors cracked so she could listen to the waves. I stayed down there with her a couple’a times when I was little.”
“Jasmine was the housekeeper in the house where Peter Boughman was killed,” I said, just to be clear.
Seymour nodded.
“Was she there that night?”
“No.”
“Okay. Tell me what happened.”
“The door was open and I went in. I called out in case there was anyone there and then I saw them on the floor. One guy was on his back in the middle of the floor. There was blood on his face and chest. The other one was on his face on the floor. There was blood all over and his hand was against the sliding glass door that looked out on the ocean.” Seymour looked nauseous. “I tried to see if I could help either one but they were dead. I went around the house afraid that I’d find Mama Jasmine too but she wasn’t there. I was about to call the police when they came in the front door with their guns out and shouting. They made me lie down on the floor in the blood, and later they said that I had a dead man’s blood on me as if that proved I was the killer.
“Excuse me,” he then said, “but I have to go to the toilet.”
20
“What do you think?” I asked Fearless when the young man was gone.
“He ain’t lyin’,” Fearless replied, his words just part of a greater answer.
“But?”
“Everything the boy said was true, it’s just that he ain’t sayin’ it all. I think he’s just as worried as you is about where his Aunt Jasmine fits into this. And did I hear you say somethin’ about Charcoal Joe?”
“He’s the one hired me,” I said.
“How you get mixed up with him?”
I explained the situation.
“Damn, Easy,” the intrepid sideman said. “Trouble got your name tattooed on the inside’a his eyelids. He be studyin’ you in his sleep.”
Just when I began to worry that he’d ducked out on us, Seymour returned. He looked every bit the frail young man and I believed that Fearless was better than any lie detector, but I had also learned to be suspicious of everyone and it was not a habit I intended to drop.
“I need to get home, Mr. Rawlins,” Seymour said, his breakfast forgotten.
“That would be ill-advised,” I said to the college man.
“Why?”
I told both him and Fearless the abridged version of my previous night’s home invasion.
In conclusion I said, “This is the only case I’m on and there’s nothing my partners are into that would bring bloodthirsty chiggers like that out the woodwork.”
“But why would they be after me?” Seymour asked reasonably.
“Same reason they broke into my house in the middle of the night,” I said. “Something happened in that beach house and the job’s not over yet. Rufus Tyler is what you would call a gangster, and I suspect him getting you outta jail has to do more with business than it does with your foster mother.”
“Mr. Tyler? He’s just a sweet little guy that plays fiddle sometimes.”
“That description fits Nero too.”
Seymour glanced over in the direction of the toilet.
“Look, son,” I said in my most avuncular tone. “You were chained up and jailed for murder. There is no other suspect that I know of. If the police find anything that ties you directly to the crime, like for instance your foster mother was somehow involved with Boughman, then they’ll come to your residence and drag you off with no bail offered.”
Young Brathwaite ran his palm over the unkempt ’fro. He swallowed and thought over the little speech. Then he shook his head and crinkled his eyes.
“Where should I go then?”
“Where you stayin’ at, Fearless?” I asked.
“Got a beautiful garden house behind this big place off’a Highland.”
“You got room for Seymour there?”
“Why don’t I go with you?” the lifelong student asked.
“Because people already know I’m in this shit. They got men with bad attitudes breakin’ down my door. And Fearless? This man might not look it but he’s a goddamned force of nature. He put you behind his door and you might as well be in Fort Knox.”
Seymour looked at Fearless, trying to im
agine my words on his shoulders.
“I don’t have a car, Easy,” Fearless apologized.
“How’d you get to the courthouse?”
“Bus.”
“Bus? What time you get up?”
“I didn’t really make it to bed last night. Beulah Tonk had a party and all the old crowd was there.”
“Beulah’s all the way out in Compton.”
“Yeah. It took three buses,” Fearless said. “I don’t think you want me takin’ son here on the RTD and you probably want him near a car.”
“Let’s go,” I said.
—
Primo’s Garage and Car Repair was on Gage near 1st Street at that time. It was a big lot occupied by old junkers, a little shack where the mechanics took their breaks and did business, and a twelve-by-twelve area sheltered by a flat aluminum roof where cars were raised on a hydraulic lift when Primo or one of his men were working on some poor automobile that should have probably been put out of its misery.
Surrounding the lot were two fourteen-foot-high wire fences, one behind the other, haloed with bales of razor wire. In the space between the two fences, four vicious dogs patrolled. The brown and black canines weighed between sixty and eighty pounds each and looked more like hyenas than dogs. They hated everybody in the world except for world-weary Primo and fair-skinned Peter Rhone.
A man I knew named Nino opened the gate for us to drive through.
I parked and told Seymour to wait for us in the backseat.
“Easy,” Primo hailed when I got out of the car. “And Fearless Jones. Hector! Hector, ven acá!”
Primo was short and stout with a belly that could have been two pillows. His skin was amber and three of his teeth silver. Children loved him and most women saw him as a shield against the hard world. He was a good friend, and the natural expression on his face was a cautious smile.
The ten or twelve men that worked with Primo, including tall blond Peter Rhone, started to come out of the aisles and corners of the car yard.
Primo was barking out commands in Spanish. In short order a squat wooden barrel and two metal chairs were brought to my car.
The man Primo called Hector swaggered toward us. He was maybe five nine but his chest was huge and his arms bulged with muscle. His hands belonged on a man twice his size.
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