The knock on the door was soft, almost feminine, but I knew it was Suggs.
“Come on in.”
He wore a black suit. You know it has to be bad when you can see the wrinkles in black cloth. His white shirt seemed askew even with the red tie, and today he wore a hat. A green one with a yellow feather in the band.
“You didn’t have to get dressed up for me,” I said.
He was carrying a white paper bag in one hand and a briefcase in the other. He walked up to my visitor’s chair and sat down heavily. I could see in his exhausted posture that he had missed as much sleep as I had.
“Coffee and some doughnuts,” he said, placing the bag on the desk.
Another seminal moment in my life that I associated with the riots: a cop, a city official, bringing me coffee and cake. If I had gone down to the neighborhood barbershop and told the men there that tale, they would have laughed me into the street.
I took the coffee and a cherry-filled doughnut. And then I rolled out an edited version of my visit to Bill’s Shelter.
“How can you be sure that our Harold was one of the ones who stayed at this joint?” the cop asked.
“I can’t be,” I said. “But it’s someplace to start. Bill’s is the kinda place let a man like Harold be crazy but not have to answer for it. They don’t try and sell you anything or change you. It’s just a bed and a meal—a perfect place for our man. I figured that you could put some muscle into the Smiths and Joneses and I’ll concentrate on the others.”
Suggs stared at me with those watercolor eyes of his. He had mastered the textbook cop expression—the look that didn’t give away a thing.
“There could be as many as twenty-one,” he said at last.
“Twenty-one what?”
“Women.”
I was back in the frozen slaughterhouse, surrounded by dead women cut down in the prime of their lives; black women who shared their love with a white man and then paid the ultimate price for betraying Harold’s stiff sense of morality.
I clenched my jaw hard enough to crack a tooth.
Suggs opened his briefcase and handed me a sheaf of single-page reports.
Each page contained two photographs of a young black woman—one in life and the other in death.
“The bodies were almost all left on their backs,” Suggs was saying. “A couple weren’t quite dead when he left them. That accounts for the few odd positions.”
“You think it was all him?” I asked.
“Maybe not every one,” Suggs said. “But there are also probably some that I missed. It’s a shame. The homicide detectives should have picked it up. I’m really very sorry about this, Mr. Rawlins.”
An apology. A week before, it would have meant something to me. But right then I couldn’t even meet his eye. I was afraid that if I saw his sorrow, it might dredge up the rage and impotence I felt. So instead, I kept my eyes down and my mouth shut.
After a few minutes I heard the chair scrape the floor and his footsteps trailed away. Finally my door closed and I was alone with the dead women.
Suggs had done a good job. He’d read the files and typed up an abbreviated report, which he stapled to the back of each one.
Phyllis Hart was thirty-three when she died, choked to death in her auntie’s backyard on the fourteenth of July.
Many of them had known white men. Maybe all of them had. Suggs had called family members to get some of the details. He even asked about a man living in the street named Harold. There were three people who had seen a hobo hanging around.
Solvé Jackson was killed in her own bed. Her boyfriend, Terry McGee, was arrested for the crime. He had an alibi and witnesses to his whereabouts but still the jury found him guilty.
I sat there reading about dead women until I knew everything Sugg’s report had to say.
After a while I noticed that the tape on Jackson’s recording device had moved. I flipped the switch to “rewind” and then to “play.”
“Hello,” a man’s voice said. “This is Conrad Hale of the Cross County Fidelity Bank. Your company’s name was given as a reference for a Mr. Jackson Blue. Could you please return this call as soon as possible? We are considering hiring Mr. Blue in a responsible position and were wondering about his work history with your firm. I’m calling on Saturday, so you may not get this until Monday morning. But if you get this message earlier I’ll give you my home phone too. We are anxious to get going with Mr. Blue. We’d like to put him to work as soon as possible.”
There was a similar call from Leighton Car Insurance but they didn’t leave a home phone.
I realized that I had been of two minds about giving Blue a fake recommendation. It hadn’t felt right. I needed his help, so I said I would do it, but I still didn’t like it. With that stack of dead black women on my desk now, I felt differently. Nobody cared about them. I had told the police about what I suspected about Jackie Jay’s death. I’m sure there had been other complaints with so many women dead. But the denizens of Watts were under the law with no say. We were no different than pieces on a game board.
I dialed the banker’s number. He answered on the first ring.
“Conrad Hale.”
“Mr. Hale,” I said, “this is Eugene Nelson, manager of Tyler Office Machines. I hope it isn’t a problem calling you on a Sunday.”
“Not at all, Mr. Nelson. I have to hire ten men in the assembler lab here at the bank and your Mr. Blue is only the third person we’ve interviewed who passed the IBM exam.”
My voice was devoid of any accent. My words were a plain wrapper over a five-pound lie. Jackson was a mechanical whiz kid, I told Hale. He understood any machine and its inner workings. He worked overtime. He handled sensitive information. He was the most trustworthy employee I’d ever had.
On Monday, if necessary, I would extend my lies to Leighton Car Insurance.
I was happy to have Jackson on the inside of the world that ignored the women on my desk. I would have put Mouse in the White House if I could have.
34
There came another knock on the door.
I wondered if Suggs had found another twenty-one dead women. Maybe there were children too and old people and ministers. Maybe there was a whole factory of death working twenty-four hours a day under the city. Black people being thrown down onto rolling spikes that chopped them into pieces and then dropped the pieces into vats of acid. Maybe they were selling our blood and using our teeth and bones for ivory.
“Mr. Rawlins,” Juanda said, peeking into the office from the half-open door. “Can I come in?”
I stood up as she entered, closing the door behind her.
She was wearing a pink dress that only came down to the middle of her thigh.
I walked toward her and she to me. I put my arms around her and held her as tight as I did my mother when I was six and she was still alive. We may have kissed—I really don’t remember.
“You’re crying,” she said.
I didn’t even know that.
Somehow I was sitting on my desk. Juanda was standing next to me, holding me like the young mother she dreamt of becoming. My tears stopped. But the rage was still singing inside me.
“How did you know where I was?” I asked her.
“Phone book,” she said simply. “I needed to see you.”
“Somebody after you?”
“Naw,” she said. “I’m after you.”
I took a deep breath. My heart was pounding and I had an erection that I was sure she could see through my pants. My mind was tuning in and out like a radio receiver ranging over all of the things I was feeling and the things I had to do.
I wanted sex with that gorgeous young woman. Right there on the table with no foreplay or pretense. I wanted to be as blunt as she was, grunting out the anger in my body.
But that brought my fine tuner back to Harold. That was Harold running my mind, making me just like him.
“I love my girlfriend, Juanda,” I said.
“That’s ok
ay. I don’t mind.”
I pulled her arms from around my neck, standing up as I did so. I ran my hands down to her elbows and walked her toward the chair where Detective Suggs last sat.
“I’m just not that young anymore, baby,” I said. “If I was in the bed with you, then I’d have to give up something.”
“I ain’t askin’ for that.”
“But I would,” I said. “You know I would. That’s why you’re here. You can read me like a first-grade primer.”
She cracked a grin and pushed her shoulder in my direction.
“That’s why I like you,” she said. “’Cause you so smart. I bet you read all those books on that shelf over there.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Just about.”
I moved back to my chair. She crossed her legs and my heart thrummed. I needed a woman so much right then that I would have probably gotten excited over her picking her nose.
“You know a guy used to live in a cardboard shelter in a vacant lot over there on Grape?” I asked her.
“Oh yeah,” she said. “Harold.”
“He killed Nola Payne and a whole lotta other women.”
“What?”
“Killed her. Dead. He’s been killin’ black women for years. Any time one of them gets in with a man looks white to Harold, he kills ’em.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
Juanda had learned from a long line of tough black women to show a hard face even when she was laughing. But the crime I suggested wiped all that away. She uncrossed her legs and sat forward.
“For real?”
“Can you tell me anything about him?” I replied.
“No. Not me. All he ever said was good mornin’ to me. He really killed Nola?”
“Yeah.”
“How do you know? Nobody done said she dead.”
“Listen, Juanda. This is a serious thing here. Harold is a dangerous man. I don’t want you talkin’ about it because if he knows you and if he thinks you know about him he will kill you without thinking twice. You hear me?”
“Uh-huh. Yeah.”
“He’s a killer and I’m gonna take him down.”
“Nola’s dead?”
“Yeah. Her aunt Geneva found her and called the cops. They thought that it was a white guy did it, so they brought me in to help because they couldn’t work too well so soon after the riots. But it wasn’t that white man. It was Harold. He’s been killin’ black women around here for years.”
“He has? Why didn’t somebody stop him?”
“Because nobody cares about black women bein’ killed,” I said harshly. “Nobody cares about you, girl. A man could cut your throat and throw you in the river and if a cop see you floatin’ by he wouldn’t even drag you in because he might get his shoes wet.”
I experienced a vicious satisfaction hurting Juanda like that. It was wrong but I was angry.
“Can you drive me home, Mr. Rawlins?”
“Sure I can,” I said. “I’m going to give you my number here too. If you get scared or find out something you call me. I got an answering machine now and I’ll be sure to get the message.”
I walked her down to my car and then drove her home.
On the way she didn’t chatter about her relatives and the events of her life. She pulled close to me and put her head on my shoulder.
I don’t think I ever wanted to be with a woman more in all my life. I wanted to lick the tears from her face.
35
I came back to my office after dropping Juanda off at her auntie’s house. We were halfway to Grape Street when she decided that she didn’t want to be around where Harold had just been living. We kissed when she got out but that was just reassurance. She was scared.
I knew that by warning Juanda I ran the risk of people starting to talk about Harold and running him into hiding but I had no other choice. Juanda was a woman and there was a woman killer in her neighborhood. No secret was worth her life.
TANYA BRYANT, Bill Bryant, Joseph, Martin, JaneAnne, Penelope, and Felicia all lived in colored neighborhoods. I called their numbers asking for Harold. Not one of them knew a Harold with their last name. At least none of them admitted to it. There were two H. Bryant listings. Harvey and Helena.
Only Tom Lakely of the phone book Lakelys lived in a Negro community. But he didn’t answer his phone.
There were no Ostenbergs anywhere near SouthCentral L.A.
I knew that Harold didn’t have a phone, but he did have a relative. I tried to think about Harold. We only spoke for a few minutes the day I was snooping around Jackie Jay’s neighborhood. He talked about having the flu, about the police arresting him. About Jackie. He said that he didn’t know her at first but then he said . . . he said that his mother’s name started with a “J.” What was her name?
I was forty-five that year and my memory, though still pretty strong, had begun to drop certain details. Names of relatives and friends from long ago slowly floated away. Numbers and sequences blended together. I remembered the smelly Harold telling me that Jackie’s name started with a “J” just like his mother’s. But the name was . . . the name was . . .
I finally decided that it didn’t matter. I had the first letter. That would have to be enough.
I pulled out my phone book, and starting with the Brown listings, I called every “J” in our neighborhood. Janes and Joes answered most often. There was a Jeanette, a Julia, a Jules, and a Jay. One woman answered and I asked her if she had a son named Harold.
“No, mister,” she said. “Are you sure he said Jocelyn Brown was his mama?”
Jocelyn!
“Yes ma’am,” I said. “Thank you, ma’am.”
I spent the rest of the afternoon going through the Smiths. I called until the tip of my pointer finger was sore from dialing.
I made a few notes about people who sounded cagey, but no one seemed to be a good prospect.
Once when I hung up, the phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Hi, baby,” Bonnie said. “Are you still looking for that man?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’ve been trying to call you for hours but the phone line was always busy.”
“I think I might know the killer’s last name,” I said. “I’ve been calling all day trying to get a line on my guy Harold.”
“Do you need some help?”
I was born as poor as it gets in America. No running water, no heat, and only internal organ meat to eat once or twice a week if we were lucky. I never owned a new article of clothing until I was sixteen and already on my own for seven years. In my mind I still had that home to return to but I was no longer poor. Bonnie’s offer and Juanda’s embrace were gifts many a rich man could never claim. I was saved by the love of black women. Harold wouldn’t live to see 1966.
“Well,” I said, “I’ve only been calling in the Negro neighborhoods. I figure that his mother would be around here. But maybe they’re in the valley or down around Santa Monica. Maybe you could call those numbers.”
“Sure,” she said happily.
“You can’t give your name or anything else,” I said. “You can’t sound like there’s any problem at all.”
“Okay.”
I gave her the last names and Jocelyn. She took a deep breath and told me that she loved me.
I hung up the phone, wondering how long my perfect life could last.
The phone rang again.
“They call, Easy?” he asked even before I could say hello.
“Yeah, Jackson, they sure did. And I hope you plan to do right by these people and Jewelle.”
“What they say, man?”
“I only talked to the banker,” I said. “He gave me his home number. He said that they wanted to hire you for a responsible position. I told him that you were trustworthy and good. I hope you don’t make me a liar.”
“Easy, he don’t even know who you is, brother. It’s not like you put your name on the line.”
“It’s just like th
at, man. It’s just like that.”
“Well, don’t you worry, brother. I know them machines better’n the men who made ’em and I haven’t even seen one yet.”
Of all his failings, one thing Jackson didn’t suffer from was false pride. If he said that he was good at something, he was most probably the best. And if he said he was the best, then all the masters had better run and hide.
“I got somethin’ for ya, Ease,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“Boy name’a Harold. He cranky and mean and been livin’ in the street since he lost his job in nineteen fifty-six.”
“Where?”
“He been stayin’ at a mission over on Imperial Highway. They serve two meals a day there and let people stay as long as they don’t cause no trouble.”
“Did you get Harold’s last name?”
“Brown,” Jackson said. “Harold Brown.”
I held my breath. My luck was incredible. All I had to do was sit at my desk and whatever I wanted—sex or love or information—just poured in over my phone and through the door.
“I don’t get it, Jackson. Where’d you find all’a this?”
“Axed around, man. Axed around. You know, Easy, you takin’ care’a me. I sure in hell better make sure that you doin’ fine.”
“Who did you ask?”
“I got to keep my secrets now, Ease.”
“This is no time to play with me, Jackson.”
“There’s a sister work for the Congress of Negro Baptist Churches used to like me some,” he said. “I called and asked her if she knew how I could get a line on a man that’s homeless. I told her that his son just died. You know when you tell a woman about the death of a man’s son she’s all upset. Anyway, she give me a list of missions and I just called until I found the man meet your needs.”
“They just told you who he was?”
“I reeled out a story, Easy. You not the only one can do that. I told ’em that a man from their place, a big boy named Harold, had found my wallet and give it back to me wit’ all the money in it. I said that I wanted to reward him. You know wit’ a success story like that they was ready to let me spend a night with one’a their sisters.”
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