Bad Boy Brawly Brown

by Walter Mosley

  Tina’s eyes darted at a door that stood perpendicular to the window. I went into it and relieved myself without closing the door behind me.

  When I came out Tina had propped Xavier up to a sitting position on the floor, but he was still too stunned to rise.

  “I’m sorry I had to hit you, man,” I said. “But you don’t treat somebody like that. You don’t push a gun in his face when he ain’t done nuthin’ to you.”

  Tina was too scared to talk and Xavier was still seeing double, wondering which image of me was the one talking to him.

  “Can I take another cigarette?” I asked Tina.

  She nodded and I picked up her purse from where she’d dropped it on the floor.

  “Gimme one, too, will ya?” she asked.

  I lit two at once and handed her one.

  Xavier groaned and put his hand to his head.

  “You didn’t have to hit him,” Tina said.

  “No. Instead I could have peed in my pants. But let me tell you, it take a badder motherfuckah than your boy here to make me do that.”

  “What do you want?” Xavier managed to get out before he grimaced in pain.

  “I been tellin’ you the whole time, man,” I said. “I been asked by Brawly’s mother to make sure he was okay. If he isn’t in too deep, I’m gonna try and rectify the situation. The only thing I care about the First Men is that Brawly is a part member.”

  “I don’t know where Brawly is,” Xavier said.

  He held out his arm and Tina helped him to his feet. I doubt if he weighed more than she did.

  “I know that. I know that. But maybe you could help me anyway.”

  “What?” Xavier wasn’t afraid even though I had his pistol and proved my superior strength.

  I really liked the kid.

  “First,” I said. “What are you guys doin’ with them guns?”

  “What guns?”

  “The guns at Brawly’s girlfriend’s place. Guns like this one here.” I took out the .45-caliber pistol I’d taken from underneath BobbiAnne’s bed.

  Both kids were impressed by the size and heft of the gun.

  “You got that from Clarissa’s place?” Xavier asked me.

  “No, from BobbiAnne’s.”

  “Who’s BobbiAnne?”

  I went through the same talk with Xavier that I’d had with Tina. Both of them claimed that they didn’t know of any white girl that Brawly ran with.

  “We don’t make people do anything, but it’s frowned upon when one of the Party takes a white woman over one of our black sisters,” Xavier said. “We wouldn’t say he couldn’t be with her but we would damn sure know if he was.”

  “And what about Henry Strong?” I asked.

  Tina stiffened and Xavier asked, “What about him?”

  “How long has he been down here?” I asked. “The other night it sounded like he was just down from Oakland to give a talk to your organization. But from what I’ve heard since then, it seems like he’s been here for a few weeks at least.”

  “Why?”

  “Because somebody murdered him,” I said. “They murdered him not five blocks away from where Brawly worked up until a few weeks ago. That ties in Brawly, so I’d like to know how.”

  “Mr. Strong is connected with various political organizations in the Bay Area,” Xavier said. “He’d been watchin’ us for a while and wanted to bring some money down our way. You see, they had some supporters in Berkeley that liked what we were doing. The special thing we wanted to do was to start a school for kids from the first grade to the eighth. We were going to buy the old Kleggman Bakery on Alameda but we needed more money.”

  “And Henry was going to get you that?”

  “He’s been coming down for the past few months, havin’ meetings with some of the officers of the First Men,” Xavier said.

  “Then why would he ever know Brawly?” I asked.

  “Brawly said that he knew builders and contractors that were black,” Tina offered. “When he first came to us and he heard that we wanted to make the bakery into a school, he started talking to us about his mother’s boyfriend and the project he had down Compton.”

  “He said that John could help with your school?”

  “At first he was just bragging,” Tina said. “You know, how he was a contractor and he could get together a good black crew. We didn’t listen until he said that there was a woman, a black woman who helped finance his mother’s friend’s project. When Henry heard about that, he began talking to Brawly.”

  “You don’t say,” I mused.

  “How did you find out where we lived?” Xavier asked.

  “Lakeland,” I said. “He got your picture, your history, your numbers, and all the gold fillin’s in your teeth noted down on paper in a file cabinet.”

  The lovers clasped hands.

  “Tell me about this school,” I said. “From everything I’ve heard and read so far, I thought you guys were trying to bring down the system, not educate children.”

  “That’s just your fear talking,” Xavier, the flyweight, said. “If you really listened, if you really read our manifesto, you’d know that the school is our first priority. We want to start a school, a publishing house, a community center, and a lunch program for our children and our elderly.”

  Tina’s eyes were fastened on her skinny boyfriend’s profile. I wondered at her — in love with two powerful men. She was at the center of everything she loved and held dear.

  After a while she got into the conversation. She said that black women had to learn to love their own beauty and their men.

  “We can’t let them dictate how we live and love and learn,” she said. “That’s our responsibility and if we don’t take the reins, we’ll never be truly free.”

  I wondered who she included with them. Was I one of the ones holding back the black race?

  29

  WE TALKED FOR QUITE A WHILE. Xavier was a dreamer, that much was sure. He lived in the possibilities scrawled down by idealistic philosophers far from the front lines and battlefields. He wanted free hospitals and schools and no war whatsoever. The Urban Revolutionary Party was the first step in his broad global plan. People like Handsome Conrad and idealistic Brawly were a part of that plan, though they may not have completely understood the goals.

  Xavier was the mouthpiece and the visionary, but Tina was definitely the smarter of the two.

  “If we don’t do anything,” she said, “then the world will pass black people by. We’ll still be takin’ the bus while other people will be takin’ rockets to the moon.”

  Her argument reminded me of Sam Houston telling me about my rattling automobile.

  “This BobbiAnne told me that Conrad and Brawly had brought the guns to her place,” I said. “You think that they would be so different from you that they’d plan to do it with guns rather than schools?”

  “There you go with that BobbiAnne shit again,” Xavier said. “Brawly don’t know no girl but Clarissa.”

  “He wouldn’t even let me kiss him good-bye,” Tina added. “There’s no girl on his mind but her.”

  “Big girl,” I said. “Red-blond hair and freckles comin’ down off her nose…”

  Xavier shook his head but Tina said, “That could be the girl that’s been hangin’ around Conrad. What was her name?”

  “Yeah. Conrad’s friend,” Xavier said. “She’s been coming around for a couple’a months now. Mostly she’d just be sitting in the car, waiting for him. I don’t know if he ever even said her name.”

  “I know where she lives,” I said.

  It was closing in on four in the morning.

  THE FRONT DOOR of the building was locked late at night. We rang the bell, figuring that Conrad or BobbiAnne would open up for the secretary of the Party. But there was no answer.

  I did my card trick on the door and once again winded myself on the stairs. I tried to hide my weakness from Xavier, but I didn’t need to worry about him. He was concentrating so much on the acrob
atics of his mind that I doubt he would have noticed if I stopped and put my hands on my knees.

  There was no answer to our knock on BobbiAnne’s door.

  T HE GUNS WERE GONE and the closets were empty, but she didn’t take the photograph of her and Brawly when they were teenagers.

  “Is this the girl?” I asked the revolutionaries.

  “Yeah. Yeah, that’s her,” Xavier said. “But this is an old picture.”

  “You think it’s a coincidence that this woman is Conrad’s girl now and that I saw a box of weapons under her bed?”

  “No guns there now,” Tina said.

  “So if you can’t see ’em, then they don’t matter?” I asked.

  From the corner of my eye I thought I saw the doorknob jiggle.

  Then the door flew open.

  When I saw the doorknob turn, a dozen thoughts went through my mind. The first was that it was Anton/Conrad with BobbiAnne and Brawly, all of them armed to the teeth and prepared to end our lives. That’s when I thought of going for my pistol, but there wasn’t enough time. By then the first uniformed cop was in the room and I was glad I hadn’t tried to shoot him through the door. I was even glad that I wasn’t with Mouse, who would certainly have killed the man and, probably, his partners. Then I remembered that Mouse was dead and that I was carrying a concealed weapon. These last thoughts drained all of my will to resist.

  “Police!” the second cop shouted.

  “Hands in the air,” the fourth one said.

  We were shoved against the wall, disarmed, handcuffed, and dragged down the stairs.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Xavier asked, trying to stand still. “You have no right —” he commanded before he was struck in the head with a truncheon.

  Christina Montes cursed those officers with language I couldn’t imagine coming from her mouth. I was forced to my knees. I stayed there, knowing when to pick my battles.

  After Xavier was propped up between two cops, we continued our downward journey.

  Tina was dragged from the building and put in the back of a cruiser. Xavier and I were also put in a backseat. He, knocked senseless for the second time in one evening, and I trying to understand the forces at work.

  The policemen didn’t talk to us much. Xavier was completely malleable, and I did as I was instructed.

  We were separated at the downtown station. I was taken to an office and manacled to a heavy metal chair.

  Through the slatted blinds I could see various uniformed policemen and plainclothes detectives sitting at desks, drinking coffee, talking on the phone. No one looked at me. No one cared that I had to go to the bathroom. I could see a clock through the slats — two hours had gone by. Somewhere there must have been a window because I could tell that the sun was coming in.

  I would have paid a five-hundred-dollar fine just for a cigarette.

  A squat man came in at last. He wore a cranberry-colored suit with a nametag that said lt. j. pitale. I didn’t know how to pronounce the name and I didn’t try. I didn’t ask for a toilet, a cigarette, or a reason that I was chained without being charged.

  “Rawlins,” the squat man in the ugly suit said.

  “Lieutenant,” I replied.

  “Possession of a concealed weapon,” he said as if I had asked for the charges. “Breaking and entering. Resisting arrest. Assault on an officer…”

  I must have frowned at the last charge because Pitale said, “Officer Janus sprained his thumb subduing your pal with his club.”

  I let out a chuckle.

  “You think this is funny, Rawlins?”

  “No, sir,” I said simply.

  “Then why do you laugh?”

  “To charge a man for assault when you break your fist beatin’ him,” I said. “I will use that story to teach my kids how to survive.”

  “You got kids?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Because I don’t think your children will be seeing their father for a long time.”

  I sighed for a cigarette.

  “Officer Janus can still swing that stick,” Pitale warned.

  “What do you want from me, Lieutenant?”

  “Why’d you break into that apartment?”

  “The door was left open,” I said.

  “What were you going to do with that gun?”

  “I found the forty-five on the living-room table. It bothered me that it was right out in the open like that, so I picked it up. When I heard people outside the door I shoved it in my pants, not knowing what to expect. What we intended to do was call the cops and get them to come down and investigate where BobbiAnne was and why that gun was just out lyin’ around.” Two hours chained to a chair gives you lots of time to think.

  It was Pitale’s turn to smile. He was accustomed to the stories concocted by felons.

  I saw a flames from the windah, Officer. And I was climbin’ up on the fire escape to see if anyone needed savin’. And… and you know when I saw that fine new TV, I thought that the owner would have wanted me to save it.…

  The story I gave was solid. I didn’t think that a judge would ever have to hear it, but a little insurance is always good to have.

  “What were you doing with members of a communist organization?” he asked.

  “Communist?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “You said communist. That’s the first I heard of any communist. Xavier and Christina are friends of my friend’s adopted son. I never knew that they were Russian.”

  “You could die in this room, Rawlins,” he told me.

  The threat didn’t bother me so much, but when he took out a Pall Mall I almost came to tears.

  “May I make my phone call, Lieutenant?”

  Pitale agreed to dial any number I gave him and hold the phone to my ear.

  I had two things going for me: one was that I have a good memory, and two is that I was pretty sure that D Squad was a twenty-four-hour operation. I called Vincent Knorr’s number and when a man answered I said, “This is Easy Rawlins callin’ for Knorr. Tell him that me, Xavier Bodan, and Christina Montes have all been arrested and are being held at the main downtown station. And tell him that Lakeland wouldn’t want me languishing here. Languishing.” I repeated the word because the early-morning cop seemed to have a problem with it.

  “Knorr your lawyer?” Pitale asked me when he took the receiver from my ear.

  “In a way,” I said.

  “Funny that such an innocent man would have a lawyer ready to jump to his defense any hour of the day or night.”

  “You been a white your whole life, Lieutenant?” I asked.

  “What the hell do you mean by that?”

  “I mean that Father Knows Best don’t need no lawyer. But you know Amos ’n’ Andy got to have one. You’d know what I was talkin’ about if you were ever chained to this here chair.”

  I believe that I saw a glimmer of comprehension in Pitale’s face. I think that he understood me, which wasn’t necessarily a good thing. The one edge black people have always had over whites was that they never truly understood our motivations. And just because a man understands you, that doesn’t make that man your friend.

  “It doesn’t matter how I feel or what I know,” Pitale said. “What matters is what you were doing in that apartment and where that gun came from.”

  “I already answered that question,” I said. “And I don’t want to say any more until my lawyer comes.”

  “By that time you won’t be able to talk…,” Pitale replied.

  I didn’t ask the question, but I believe that my eyes betrayed my fear.

  “… with your teeth being knocked out and all.” Pitale finished his sentence with a smirk.

  I was wondering when Officer Janus would be called in to increase the charge to double assault when the phone rang.

  It was a big black phone with five or six lights along the bottom. Pitale turned his head, watching for the next ring. When it came, one of the center light
s flickered. The lieutenant grunted and picked up the receiver.

  “Yeah?” he said, and then went quiet. While listening his face became softer, almost submissive. “But, Captain, we got ’em red-handed on B and E. But… Yes, sir. Immediately, sir.”

  He hung up the phone and stared at me.

  “Who’d you call just now?”

  “My insurance agent,” I said.

  “What the hell is going on? What are you guys into?”

  “Can I leave now, Officer?” I asked.

  I couldn’t help smirking.

  30

  “OLYMPIC AND SOUTH FLOWER,” I said into the pay phone. “Could you come and get me?”

  “Sure, honey,” Bonnie said. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “And don’t forget to bring me some cigarettes from the closet,” I added.

  I waited on a bus stop bench until Bonnie could get to me. Sitting there in the chilly morning dew, I thought about how alone I had been for most of my life. Mouse had been my closest friend, but he was crazy. The kids and I had a bond as deep as it gets, but they were still children with needs and desires that kept them from understanding the adult world.

  But Bonnie was in every way my equal. She took life head-on, and though I had known her for only a few months, I felt that I could call on her no matter how bad it got.

  She sidled up to the curb and I jumped into her small blue Rambler. My knees were up against the dashboard and there seemed to be space for only one of my arms, but I didn’t care. Bonnie gave me a deep soulful kiss and then took off down the street with no idea or care for where we were going.

  The first thing I did was open the pack of Chesterfields and light up. That was good. Six months later I would think back on that first drag with the memory of deep pleasure.

  “I got arrested last night,” I said after a few blocks.

  “Do you have to come back for a trial?”

  “No. They didn’t have anything on me and just cut me loose.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “My car’s parked over on Grand,” I said. “I’m sorry ’bout this.”

  “Is this boy worth the risk you’re taking?” she asked me.