“One day Gerry gets the flu. He calls in sick, sayin’ that he cain’t pull himself out the bed. The boss man, Q. Lawson, says okay, take it easy. But the next day he’s on the horn wonderin’ why Gerry ain’t here. They had a function that night and were relyin’ on Gerry’s overtime. Well, to make a long story short, four days went by and Gerry was fired. I lent him money for two months’ rent, but you know I couldn’t go no further than that.
“Gerry was dead in five months’ time. Kicked outta his house and sick inside somehow. Every maid, porter, bellhop, and waiter in this buildin’ was at his funeral, but do you think Q. Lawson sent even a lily to the grave? No, sir. You better believe I ain’t gonna strain my back or damage my health for him or any other white man.”
“But you got colored tenants in here now, right?” I asked.
“Couple of ’em,” Melvin said. “But they all special cases. If they got some tap dancer in a Hollywood movie or some delegate from a foreign nation. Sometimes when a rich white person is stayin’ at some hotel in Beverly Hills, they send what they call their nonessential staff to be down here. I mean things is changin’, ain’t no doubt to that. Marion Anderson or James Brown could stay just about anywhere they please. But your everyday Negro still have the door shut in his face.”
“But didn’t that man get killed down Compton live in here?” I asked. “That’s what made me wanna come ask for this job. When I read that a nice hotel had colored residents, I thought to myself — Leonard, that would be a good place to work for.”
“No, brother,” Melvin said in a friendly but condescending tone. When he leaned back in his chair his oily face glinted in the electric light. His skin had the color and radiance of wood resin. “No, brother. Only special Negroes stay here. An’ they less likely to spare a kind word or an extra coin than the white residents.”
“So that man…that…that…”
“Henry Strong.”
“That’s it, that’s the name. Henry Strong. He was a movie actor or somethin’?”
Melvin pursed his big brown lips and frowned, ever so slightly. I was a hair over the line, but just that. Not enough to be out of order. Not enough for him to think that I was anything other than Leonard Lee, hopeful to be a bellhop at a hotel where famous Negroes sometimes stayed.
“Naw,” Melvin Royale said. “He was some kinda gangster turned rat. I mean, they said in the papers that he was a political communist or somethin’, that he worked with a group of black protesters. But you know the only peoples that came up here to see him were white men in cheap suits and white prostitutes.”
“Really?” I said, widening my eyes as if the idea were too strange to comprehend.
“Uh-huh. On’y white people. The men paid his rent — in cash.”
“Why you say ‘rat’?” I asked.
“Because them men brought him here had badges, they said that they wanted to keep Strong on the quiet.”
I whistled and Melvin smiled at my country naïveté.
“Damn,” I said. “A month’s rent in a nice place like this must be a whole lotta money.”
“Month?” Melvin said. “Hank Strong been here over a year — on and off.”
“Oh,” I said, thinking of Alva and how much information could be held in just a word.
I FILLED OUT the application form that Melvin gave me. I put down a Social Security number, an address, a phone number, three references, and a job history going back seven years. It was all lies. I told him that I’d come in at eleven that evening, ready for work. I said that all I needed from him was a red cap size seven and three-quarters. I said all that and walked out the door.
THE APARTMENT BUILDING where Strong seduced Christina was on 112th Street, four blocks down from Central. It was a wood-frame building covered with plaster and painted to look like stone brick. Henry’s apartment was toward the back, its door facing a small concrete path half obscured by untamed bushes. There was nowhere to hide around his door. I was sure he took the place for just that reason.
The lock was too sophisticated for my card trick, but the door was so cheap that my forty-four-year-old shoulder was good enough to break it in.
The room seemed to be oval shaped. I think that was due to a failure of architectural design. There was a bed and a coffee table, a rocking chair and sink. None of the furniture matched, and there was a thin layer of dust over everything. He had three good suits in his closet and six pairs of shoes. There was a brown and black Stetson hat hung on a nail in the wall and a box of Havana cigars on the floor next to a glass that once held bourbon whiskey. There was a small metal box with a red cross on it under his bed. In there was the half-drunk pint of whiskey, a pack of three condoms (with one gone), and a straight razor.
There was nothing in any pocket, nor was there anything under the mattress. There were no books or newspapers or even a drawer where he could have hidden some kind of note. I had searched the whole place in less than ten minutes. And then for some reason I went back to the bed. It was neatly made, like a soldier’s bunk. The fitted sheet over the mattress, another sheet and blanket folded back under the pillow so that you could see all the layers of bedclothes.
I patted the tight fitted blanket from top to bottom.
Something was there between the sheets and mattress.
I pulled off the blanket, finding nothing but the covering sheet. I pulled off the second sheet, revealing nothing but the pristine whiteness of the fitted slip. But under that I found something that might have been the best sleeping aid a poor man could have: rows of twenty-dollar bills fanned out under the sheet. Under the twenties was a layer of fifties and hundreds. When I’d finished counting, it came to just under six thousand dollars.
Under the money I found an envelope and a slender notepad. The envelope contained two tickets for the Royal Northern cruise liner headed for Jamaica.
The tickets were issued to a Mr. and Mrs. J. Tourbut, the date of departure was Friday afternoon. The names meant nothing to me. The notepad was empty except for a memo scrawled on one of the center pages.
Saturday A.M. 6:15, 6:45.
The time meant nothing, but the day reminded me of something Conrad had said while he was being beaten. The money looked nice. It had its own special mathematics. It might have been money that Strong was holding for the Urban Revolutionary Party and other revolutionary organizations. But it might also have been a nest egg for Mr. and Mrs. Tourbut — provided by the man who had been paying his rent.
I wondered if Tina knew that the money was under her bottom when Henry was touching her neck.
I rolled the cash into two big wads and shoved them into my windbreaker pockets. I took the tickets and the note, too. Then I got into my emerald-colored car and headed for a place that most black people weren’t aware of in 1964.
33
ON MY WAY to Laurel Canyon I considered the money that was now under the carpet in my trunk. It was probably from the white men who also paid Strong’s rent in cash. It smelled like a police payoff to me. I mean, it might have been money that Strong intended to give Xavier to fund his brave new world — but I doubted it.
I had already refused money from the police, but this was different. They hadn’t given me this money. They’d lost it betting on a rat. I decided that I’d wait and see if any of Stone’s heirs could be found. If they couldn’t, then I’d have Feather’s college tuition in a foil-lined paint can at the back of my garage.
MOFASS AND JEWELLE lived on an unpaved path that cut away from a tributary off the main canyon road. The little artery probably had a name, but I never knew it. Jewelle liked to keep a low profile because even though she was hardly out of childhood, she had made dangerous enemies. There were members of her own family who hated her for freeing her elder boyfriend, Mofass, from their control.
Jewelle had taken Mofass’s fairly meager real estate investments and turned them into something resembling an empire. Through Mofass’s real estate company she controlled and managed property all o
ver Watts, including two small six-family dwellings that I owned. There was a group of white businessmen, the Fairlane Syndicate, who worked with Jewelle because she had a knack for finding just the right deal and knew how to exert leverage to make that deal come through.
She was no more than twenty but she had proved to me that the color line was a minor impediment in America if you knew how to deal with the credit line. I had played with the idea of trying to become a real estate mogul. But once I saw Jewelle in action, I knew that I was not equipped to compete.
MOFASS ANSWERED the door.
“Mr. Rawlins,” he said in that deep gravelly voice. Then he coughed for half a minute, bent over almost in half with his perpetual housecoat hanging open, revealing a big brown belly and faded blue boxer shorts. When he regained his composure he ushered me into the living room, across the vast tiled floor to a small table they had against a window that ran the full length of the wall. Seated at that table, we had a bird’s-eye view of the Los Angeles basin.
“How’s it goin’, William?” I asked my onetime apartment manager.
“Every twelve weeks the doctor tell me that the emphysema’s gonna get me in three months,” Mofass replied. His voice sounded like the old baritone, only with a towel shoved down his throat. “Then, when the time’s up JJ brang me back down to him and he looks at me and says, ‘You got twelve weeks.’ JJ say, do I wanna go to a different doctor but I tell her, hell no. I could live another thirty years with a doctor like this one here.”
I laughed and Mofass choked. I hadn’t seen him outside of that house or in real clothes in over a year. He was like one of those tough old alligators that could dive to the bottom of a river and not surface for weeks. You think, He must have gone by now, but still you take the long way down to the bridge rather than set foot in the water.
“Mr. Rawlins,” a girl’s voice called.
Jewelle still dressed in one-piece, square-cut dresses. This one was light brown, about her color, and loose. She had pigtails with red ribbons at the end. But I also noticed that she had been wearing lipstick within the last few hours. Her lips seemed fuller and there was something in her eyes that denied her childlike appearance.
“Jewelle,” I said. I stood up and kissed her cheek.
“Watch it now,” Mofass growled. “That’s my baby there.”
“It was just on the cheek, Uncle Willy,” she said with a giggle. “Can I get you somethin’ to drink?”
I didn’t need anything. Neither did Mofass.
We all sat down around the small table and looked out over the smog-choked city.
“So what you need, Mr. Rawlins?” Mofass asked.
Jewelle did everything. She cooked and cleaned, made sure that the maintenance was kept up on the house and car. She ran the business and kept the bank accounts. All Mofass did was sleep and eat and bask in the warmth of that young girl’s blind love.
That was the way things really were with them. But in Mofass’s mind things were different. In his mind he was the chief of the tepee, Jewelle did his bidding, and without him she’d have been lost. She never contradicted his account. Jewelle fell in love with Mofass when she was fifteen and he would be her god for the rest of her life.
“I needed to know some things about those tract homes you’re building down with John,” I said.
“What for?” he asked with all the solemnity of a judge.
“Well.” I hesitated for effect. “You see John’s girlfriend, Alva, has got a son, Brawly Brown, who’s in trouble. He was workin’ for John down there but stormed off in a huff — some kinda tiff with his mother, you know.”
“Kids today don’t have no kinda idea how hard life is,” Mofass said. “I see ’em on the TV shimmyin’ and shakin’ and losin’ they minds. They need to get a job and stay on it.”
“We had some trouble at one of the sites, Mr. Rawlins,” Jewelle said. “But it was a couple’a blocks over from John’s lots.”
“Are you interruptin’ me, JJ?” Mofass scolded.
“Sorry,” she said.
“That’s what I’m here for,” I said to Mofass. “I was wondering if the trouble down the street could have had anything to do with Brawly.”
“I see,” Mofass, the king of the blind, said. “That’s something to think about. You know, um, I oversee the whole operations, not every little detail. I’m tryin’ to train JJ here so that one day she can run the whole kabob. But she still just in trainin’.”
“Do you think she would know anything?” I asked the paper lion.
“Can you help Mr. Rawlins, JJ?” he asked.
“I think I can,” she said with real deference in her voice. And then to me, “Robert Condan and his cousin Renee the ones buildin’ over where the trouble was. They got a record store down on Adams. They had a shootin’ two days ago at about four or five in the morning. The police came over and shut us down for the day. But it wasn’t nuthin’. You know, just some thieves or drug addicts usin’ the place as a hideout for the night.”
“But the man killed wasn’t a thief,” I said. “He was a political organizer.”
“I know that’s what they say in the paper, but the captain I talked to told me different.”
“What captain was that?” I asked.
“How many police captains you know, Mr. Rawlins?” Jewelle said with a challenging grin.
“More than I would like to admit,” I said. “For instance, I’d bet that the cop you talked to was Captain Lorne.”
“Wow,” she said. “Yeah. It was him. Tall with silver hair?”
“I’ve never seen him,” I said. “But his name came up on the sunny side of the storm.”
“Uh-huh,” she said, not really understanding. “That’s all I know.”
There was a loud snort right then. We both turned to see that Mofass had fallen asleep. His head had slumped down to his chest and he was drooling slightly. JJ jumped up and ran from the room. Mofass snored three more times and she was back with a blanket and a towel to wipe his face. Touching him lightly on the sides of his head, she got him to lie back in the chair. She covered him up to his chin, smiled, and kissed his forehead.
I knew many people who thought that a love affair between a child like her and a man almost sixty was a disgrace. I would have agreed if I hadn’t known them. But as gruff and overbearing as Mofass was, I knew that he loved that girl with all his heart. And JJ needed a man to go through the motions of being the one in charge.
“What about the police that patrol the area?” I asked when she was through with her ministrations.
“You mean the cruiser cops?”
“Uh-huh.”
“They’re there mainly for the Manelli family.”
“Who’s that?”
“It’s the big contractor. They got seventeen different building sites around Compton. They buildin’ sixty-two blocks over the next three years, over six hundred employees.”
“And they got the police workin’ for them?”
“Yeah,” JJ said. “The Manellis think that people been stealin’ from ’em. So they got the police questioning everybody not on their payroll.”
“I know that,” I said. “They braced me a few days ago.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. You know, they usually leave us alone.”
“Why’s that?”
“A couple’a times when Manelli had to push some overtime to finish their model homes, John and his team lent a hand. John did it ’cause his own budget was tight and he might’a had to lay off Mercury and Chapman. So instead, he let Manelli pay their salary for a couple’a weeks.”
“John always knew how to make ends meet,” I said. And then, “Well, I better be goin’.”
When I stood up, Mofass opened his eyes. I got the feeling that he’d been pretending to be asleep.
“You got what you need, Mr. Rawlins?” he asked.
“You better believe it, William. That JJ’s gonna be a terror one day.”
“One day,” he said. “Yo
u can let yourself out. You know I get tired in the afternoons.”
JJ walked me to the door.
“Is there gonna be any problem out at the sites, Mr. Rawlins?” she asked when I reached out to shake her hand.
“I don’t think so, honey. But if there is, I will call you, okay?”
“JJ!” Mofass called from across the big room.
“Comin’, Uncle Willy,” the woman pretending to be a child said.
34
THE NEXT STOP I made was Clarissa’s apartment.
There was at least two days of mail in her box and no answer to my knock.
PROBLEM WITH THE COLD WAR is not when it’s cold but when it gets hot.…” Sam Houston was regaling some poor soul who just wanted his lunch in a brown paper bag to go. The man wore blue jeans and a red checkered long-sleeved shirt. His sparse hair was curly gray, and his skin was black under a layer of fine white dust.
The googly-eyed restaurateur was about to make some other global pronouncement when he caught sight of me.
“Excuse me,” he said to the silent workman.
Sam took off his apron and lifted the door-board to the kitchen. Then he strode out to meet me in the middle of the room.
I had never seen Sam come out from behind his board, so I girded myself for war.
He had two inches on me in height and reach, and his thin body might have carried more punch than it appeared. I had learned, when I met a man named Fearless Jones years before, that some thin men could be stronger than bodybuilders.
“You know it ain’t right to come in someplace and sneak around a man’s back,” Sam said, touching my chest with a long, accusing finger.
The men sitting to my right discontinued their conversation to behold the encounter.
I didn’t want any eavesdroppers, so I said, “Why don’t we step outside, Sam?”
That took him off guard. He was angry at me but had no reason to think that I’d come back hard. For my part, I didn’t know how to shut his big mouth without taking it outside. And I didn’t know how to take it outside without saying so.
Bad Boy Brawly Brown Page 18
