Los Angeles Noir 2

by Denise Hamilton

  “I never noticed no smell.”

  “How many elephants was there?”

  “Three.”

  3

  He brushed wisps of hay off his denims. They had been fairly new, but now they were black with the grime of the coal gond. Suddenly his heart stopped, a suffocating feeling swept over him. The questions started again, hammered at him, beat into his brain.

  “Where that coal dust come from?”

  “I don’t know. The freights, I guess.”

  “Don’t you know it ain’t no coal ever shipped into this part of the state? Don’t you know that here all they burn is gas? Don’t you know it ain’t only been but one coal car shipped in here in six months, and that come in by a misread train order? Don’t you know that car was part of that train this here detective was riding that got killed? Don’t you know that? Come on, out with it. WHERE THAT COAL DUST COME FROM?”

  Getting rid of the denims instantly became an obsession. He felt that people were looking at him on the street, spying the coal dust, waiting till he got by, then running into drugstores to phone the police that he had just passed by. It was like those dreams he sometimes had, where he was walking through crowds naked, except that this was no dream, and he wasn’t naked, he was wearing these denims, these telltale denims with coal dust all over them. He clenched his hands, had a moment of terrible concentration, headed into a filling station.

  “Hello.”

  “Hello.”

  “What’s the chances on a job?”

  “No chances.”

  “Why not?”

  “Don’t need anybody.”

  “That’s not the only reason.”

  “There’s about forty-two other reasons, one of them is I can’t even make a living myself, but it’s all the reason that concerns you. Here’s a dime, kid. Better luck somewhere else.”

  “I don’t want your dime. I want a job. If the clothes were better, that might help, mightn’t it?”

  “If the clothes were good enough for Clark Gable in the swell gambling-house scene, that wouldn’t help a bit. Not a bit. I just don’t need anybody, that’s all.”

  “Suppose I got better clothes. Would you talk to me?”

  “Talk to you any time, but I don’t need anybody.”

  “I’ll be back when I get the clothes.”

  “Just taking a walk for nothing.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Hook’s my name. Oscar Hook.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Hook. But I’m coming back. I just got a idea I can talk myself into a job. I’m some talker.”

  “You’re all that, kid. But don’t waste your time. I don’t need anybody.”

  “Okay. Just the same, I’ll be back.”

  He headed for the center of town, asked the way to the cheap clothing stores. At Los Angeles and Temple, after an hour’s trudge, he came to a succession of small stores in a Mexican quarter that were what he wanted. He went into one. The storekeeper was a Mexican, and two or three other Mexicans were standing around smoking.

  “Mister, will you trust me for a pair of white pants and a shirt?”

  “No trust. Hey, scram.”

  “Look. I can have a job Monday morning if I can show up in that outfit. White pants and a white shirt. That’s all.”

  “No trust. What you think this is, anyway?”

  “Well, I got to get that outfit somewhere. If I get that, they’ll let me go to work Monday. I’ll pay you soon as I get paid off Saturday night.”

  “No trust. Sell for cash.”

  He stood there. The Mexicans stood there, smoked, looked out at the street. Presently one of them looked at him. “What kind of job, hey? What you mean, got to have white pants a white shirt a hold a job?”

  “Filling station. They got a rule you got to have white clothes before you can work there.”

  “Oh. Sure. Filling station.”

  After a while the storekeeper spoke. “Ha! Is a joke. Job in filling station, must have a white pants, white shirt. Ha! Is a joke.”

  “What else would I want them for? Holy smoke, these are better for the road, ain’t they? Say, a guy don’t want white pants to ride freights, does he?”

  “What filling station? Tell me that.”

  “Guy name of Hook, Oscar Hook, got a Acme station. Main near Twentieth. You don’t believe me, call him up.”

  “You go to work there, hey?”

  “I’m supposed to go to work. I told him I’d get the white pants and white shirt, somehow. Well—if I don’t get them, I don’t go to work.”

  “Why you come to me, hey?”

  “Where else would I go? If it’s not you, it’s another guy down the street. No place else I can dig up the stuff over Sunday, is there?”

  “Oh.”

  He stood around. They all stood around. Then once again the storekeeper looked up. “What size you wear, hey?”

  He had a wash at a tap in the backyard, then changed there, between piled-up boxes and crates. The storekeeper gave him a white shirt, white pants, necktie, a suit of thick underwear, and a pair of shoes to replace his badly worn brogans. “Is pretty cold, nighttime, now. A thick underwear feel better.”

  “Okay. Much obliged.”

  “Can roll this other stuff up.”

  “I don’t want it. Can you throw it away for me?”

  “Is pretty dirty.”

  “Plenty dirty.”

  “You no want?”

  “No.”

  His heart leaped as the storekeeper dropped the whole pile into a rubbish brazier and touched a match to some papers at the bottom of it. In a few minutes, the denims and everything else he had worn were ashes.

  He followed the storekeeper inside. “Okay, here is a bill, I put all a stuff on a bill, no charge you more than anybody else. Is six dollar ninety-eight cents, then is a service charge one dollar.”

  All of them laughed. He took the “service charge” to be a gyp overcharge to cover the trust. He nodded. “Okay on the service charge.”

  The storekeeper hesitated. “Well, six ninety-eight. We no make a service charge.”

  “Thanks.”

  “See you keep a white pants clean till Monday morning.”

  “I’ll do that. See you Saturday night.”

  “Adios.”

  Out in the street, he stuck his hand in his pocket, felt something, pulled it out. It was a $1 bill. Then he understood about the “service charge,” and why the Mexicans had laughed. He went back, kissed the $1 bill, waved a cheery salute into the store. They all waved back.

  He rode a streetcar down to Mr. Hook’s, got turned down for the job, rode a streetcar back. In his mind, he tried to check over everything. He had an alibi, fantastic and plausible. So far as he could recall, nobody on the train had seen him, not even the other hoboes, for he had stood apart from them in the yards, and had done nothing to attract the attention of any of them. The denims were burned, and he had a story to account for the whites. It even looked pretty good, this thing with Mr. Hook, for anybody who had committed a murder would be most unlikely to make a serious effort to land a job.

  But the questions lurked there, ready to spring at him, check and recheck as he would. He saw a sign, 5-Course Dinner, 35 Cents. He still had ninety cents, and went in, ordered steak and fried potatoes, the hungry man’s dream of heaven. He ate, put a tencent tip under the plate. He ordered cigarettes, lit one, inhaled. He got up to go. A newspaper was lying on the table.

  He froze as he saw the headline:

  L.R. NOTT, R.R. MAN, KILLED.

  4

  On the street, he bought a paper, tried to open it under a street light, couldn’t, tucked it under his arm. He found Highway 101, caught a hay truck bound for San Francisco. Going out Sunset Boulevard, it unexpectedly pulled over to the curb and stopped. He looked warily around. Down a side street, about a block away, were the two red lights of a police station. He was tightening to jump and run, but the driver wasn’t looking at the lights. “I told the
m bums that air hose was leaking. They set you nuts. Supposed to keep the stuff in shape and all they ever do is sit around and play blackjack.”

  The driver fished a roll of black tape from his pocket and got out. Lucky sat where he was a few minutes, then climbed down, walked to the glare of the headlights, opened his paper. There it was:

  L.R. NOTT, R.R. MAN, KILLED

  The decapitated body of L.R. Nott, 1327 De Soto Street, a detective assigned to a northbound freight, was found early this morning on the track near San Fernando station. It is believed he lost his balance while the train was shunting cars at the San Fernando siding and fell beneath the wheels. Funeral services will be held tomorrow from the De Soto Street Methodist Church.

  Mr. Nott is survived by a widow, formerly Miss Elsie Snowden of Mannerheim, and a son, L.R. Nott, Jr., 5.

  He stared at it, refolded the paper, tucked it under his arm, walked back to where the driver was taping the air hose. He was clear, and he knew it. “Boy, do they call you Lucky? Is your name Lucky? I’ll say it is.”

  He leaned against the trailer, let his eye wander down the street. He saw the two red lights of the police station glowing. He looked away quickly. A queer feeling began to stir inside him. He wished the driver would hurry up.

  Presently he went back to the headlights again, found the notice, re-read it. He recognized that feeling now; it was the old Sunday-night feeling that he used to have back home, when the bells would ring and he would have to stop playing hide in the twilight, go to church, and hear about the necessity for being saved. It shot through his mind, the time he had played hookey from church, and hid in the livery stable; and how lonely he had felt, because there was nobody to play hide with; and how he had sneaked into church, and stood in the rear to listen to the necessity for being saved.

  His eyes twitched back to the red lights, and slowly, shakily, but unswervingly he found himself walking toward them.

  “I want to give myself up.”

  “Yeah, I know, you’re wanted for grand larceny in Hackensack, New Jersey.”

  “No, I—”

  “We quit giving them rides when the New Deal come in. Beat it.”

  “I killed a man.”

  “You—? … When was it you done this?”

  “Last night.”

  “Where?”

  “Near here. San Fernando. It was like this—”

  “Hey, wait till I get a card…. Okay, what’s your name?”

  “Ben Fuller.”

  “No middle name?”

  “They call me Lucky.”

  “Lucky like in good luck?”

  “Yes, sir…. Lucky like in good luck.”

  THE NIGHT’S FOR CRYIN’

  BY CHESTER HIMES

  South Los Angeles

  (Originally published in 1937)

  Black boy slammed his Tom Collins down on the bar with an irritated bang, turned a slack scowl toward Gigilo. Gigilo, yellow and fat like a well-fed hog, was saying in a fat, whiskey-thickened voice: “Then she pulled out a knife and cut me ’cross the back. I just looked at ’er. Then she threw ’way the knife and hit me in the mouth with her pocketbook. I still looked at her. Then she raised her foot and stomped my corns. I pushed her down then.”

  Black Boy said: “Niggah, ef’n yo is talkin’ tuh me, Ah ain’ liss’nin’.” Black Boy didn’t like yellow niggers, he didn’t want no yellow nigger talking to him now, for he was waiting for Marie, his high yellow heart, to take her to her good-doing job.

  Gigilo took another sip of rye, but he didn’t say anymore.

  Sound bubbled about them, a bubble bursting here in a strident laugh, there in accented profanity. A woman’s coarse, heavy voice said: “Cal, Ah wish you’d stop Fo’-Fo’ frum drinkin’ so much” … A man’s flat, unmusical drone said: “Ah had uh ruff on 632 and 642 come out.” He had repeated the same words a hundred solid times … “Aw, she ain’ gibin’ dat chump nuttin,” a young, loud voice clamored for attention … A nickel victrola in the rear blared a husky, negroid bellow: “Anybody heah wanna buy …”

  The mirror behind the bar reflected the lingering scowl on Black Boy’s face, the blackest blot in the ragged jam of black and yellow faces lining the bar.

  Wall lights behind him spilled soft stain on the elite at the tables. Cigarette smoke cut thin blue streamers ceilingward through the muted light, mingled with whiskey fumes and perfume scents and Negro smell. Bodies squirmed, inching riotous-colored dresses up from yellow, shapely legs. Red-lacquered nails gleamed like bright blood drops on the stems of whiskey glasses, and the women’s yellow faces looked like powdered masks beneath sleek hair, bruised with red mouths.

  Four white people pushed through the front door, split a hurried, half apologetic path through the turn of displeased faces toward the cabaret entrance at the rear. Black Boy’s muddy, negroid eyes followed them, slightly resentful.

  A stoop-shouldered, consumptive-looking Negro leaned over Black Boy’s shoulder and whispered something in his ear.

  Black Boy’s sudden strangle blew a spray of Tom Collins over the bar. He put the tall glass quickly down, sloshing the remaining liquid over his hand. His red tongue slid twice across his thick, red lips, and his slack, plate-shaped face took on a popeyed expression, as startlingly unreal beneath the white of his precariously perched Panama as an eight ball with suddenly sprouted features. The puffed, bluish scar on his left cheek, memento of a pick-axe duel on a chain gang, seemed to swell into an embossed reproduction of a shell explosion, ridges pronging off from it in spokes.

  He slid back from his stool, his elbow digging into a powdered, brownskin back to his right, caught on his feet with a flat-footed clump. Standing, his body was big, his six foot height losing impressiveness in slanting shoulders and long arms like an ape’s.

  He paused for a moment, undecided, a unique specimen of sartorial splendor—white Panama stuck on the back of his shiny shaved skull, yellow silk polo shirt dirtied slightly by the black of his bulging muscles, draped trousers of a brilliant pea green, tight waisted and slack hanging above size eleven shoes of freshly shined tan.

  The woman with the back turned a ruffled countenance, spat a stream of lurid profanity at him through twisted red lips. But he wedged through the jam toward the door, away from her, smashed out of the Log Cabin bar into a crowd of idling avenue pimps.

  The traffic lights at the corner turned from green to red. Four shiny, new automobiles full of laughing black folks, purred casually through the red. A passing brownskin answered to the call of “Babe,” paused before her “nigger” in saddle-backed stance, arms akimbo, tight dress tightened on the curve of her hips.

  Black Boy’s popped eyes filled with yellow specks, slithered across the front of the weather-stained Majestic Hotel across the street, lingering a searching instant on every woman whose face was light. Around the corner, down on Central Avenue, he caught a fleeting glimpse of a yellow gal climbing into a green sedan, then a streetcar clanged across his vision.

  He pulled in his red lips, wet them with his tongue. Then he broke into a shuffling, flat-footed run—through the squawk of a horn, across suddenly squealing brakes, never looked around. A taxi-driver’s curse lashed him across the street. His teeth bared slightly, but the bloated unreality of his face never changed.

  He turned right in front of the Majestic, roughed over a brown dandy with two painted crones, drew up at the corner, panting. The green sedan burnt rubber, pulled right through the red light in a whining, driving first.

  But too late to keep Black Boy from catching a flash of the pretty, frightened face of Marie and the nervous profile of the driver bent low over the wheel. A yellow nigger. He turned and watched the red tail-light sink into the distant darkness, his body twisting on flatly planted feet. His lower lip went slack, hung down like a red smear on his black face. His bulging eyes turned a vein-laced red. Sweat popped out on his face, putting a sheen on its lumpy blackness, grew in beads on his shiny head, trickled in streams down
his body.

  He turned and ran for a cab, but his actions were dogged now instead of apprehensive. He’d already seen Marie with that yellow hotel nigger. He caught a cab pointing the right way, said: “Goose it, Speed,” before he swung through the open door.

  Speed goosed it. The cab took sudden life, jumped ahead from the shove of eight protesting cylinders. Black Boy leaned tensely forward, let the speedometer needle hit fifty before he spoke. “Dar’s uh green sedan up front, uh fo’ do’ job. Latch on it ’n earn dis dime, big dime.”

  The lank, loose-bodied brown boy driving threw him a careless, toothy grin, coiled around the wheel. He headed into the red light at Cedar Avenue doing a crisp seventy, didn’t slacken. He pulled inside the line of waiting cars, smashed into the green while the red still lingered in his eyes. The green turned to red at Carnegie, and the car in front stopped, but he burst the red wide open doing a sheer eighty-five, leaning on the horn.

  “Ri’ at Euclid,” Black Boy directed through lips that hung so slack they seemed to be turned wrong side out. He was gambling on those yellow folk seeking the protection of their white folk where they worked, for they had lost the green sedan.

  The driver braked for the turn, eyes roving for traffic cops. He didn’t see any and he turned at a slow fifty, not knowing whether the light was red, white or blue. The needle walked right up the street numbers, fifty-seven at 57th Street, seventy-one at 71st. It was hovering on eighty again when Black Boy said: “Turn ’round.”

  Marie was just getting out of the green sedan in front of the Regis where she worked as a maid. When she heard that shrill cry of rubber on asphalt she broke into a craven run.

  Black Boy hit the pavement in a flat-footed lope, caught her just as she was about to climb the lobby stairs. He never said a word, he just reached around from behind and smacked her in the face with the open palm of his right hand. She drew up short against the blow. Then he hit her under her right breast with a short left jab and chopped three rights into her face when she turned around with the edge of his fist like he was driving nails.

  She wilted to her knees and he bumped her in the mouth with his knee, knocking her sprawling on her side. He kicked her in the body three rapid, vicious times, slobber drooling from his slack, red lips. His bloated face was a tar ball in the spill of sign light, his eyes too dull to notice. Somehow his Panama still clung on his eight ball head, whiter than ever, and his red lips were a split, bleeding incision in his black face.