Charcoal Joe

by Walter Mosley

“This is Sarah Sanderson. You left a message here under my previous name—Garnett.”

  “Oh,” I said, calculating the time back east. I supposed that she waited until her new husband was in a deep sleep before calling. Maybe she put a sleeping powder in his warm milk.

  “Where did you get my number?”

  “I got a friend has access to a service. He could hook me up with Mao Tse-tung’s digits if I wanted. We met once quite a few years ago.”

  “I remember you,” she admitted. “What do you want?”

  “Before your first husband, Vernor, murdered your daughter, she put her baby with Sylvia Bride, whose real name was Phyllis Weinstein. Before Vernor killed Sylvia she put the baby with someone else. After it was all over I took the girl and brought her home to live with me and my son. Your daughter christened her Feather and I stayed with that name. It’s all she has left from her blood relations.”

  While I spoke the mother made various unintelligible sounds, reminding me of Mania the elder.

  “And do you want money?” she asked after I was finished.

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Then why did you call?”

  “Didn’t you hear what I just told you? You have a granddaughter in the world that you have never met.”

  “So?”

  “So? Little Feather wants to know her grandmother and her uncle. She’s a great kid and deserves to at least meet her real family.”

  “I’m sorry but that would be impossible.”

  “Why?” I wanted to know.

  “She’s…You understand, Mr. Rawlins. She’s not, not white and I could not include her in my life. I’m very sorry but there’s nothing I can do for the child.”

  “She is of your blood, Mrs. Sanderson. She’s your dead daughter’s child.”

  “I thought that she was dead,” she said as if in answer.

  “You hoped she was dead, you mean.”

  “I am not a monster, Mr. Rawlins. I’m just a woman trying to survive.”

  “Your husband was a monster. He murdered Robin. And now you’re killing the memory of her by turning your back on Feather. You’re just as evil, just as much a demon.”

  She made another few noises and then hung up.

  I sat there for a few minutes, holding the phone. I loved Feather. She was my child and I could not understand how her own blood could turn on her because of pigments in the skin.

  When the tone of the receiver turned into a louder beep I pressed the button and then dialed another number. I hadn’t dialed it in a very long time but I remembered it because it spelled out a sexual epithet.

  “Top Shelf,” a woman said brightly.

  “Hey, Doris.”

  “Who is this please?”

  “Easy Rawlins.”

  “The Prodigal Son,” she declared. “I thought you were dead.”

  “Lotta that goin’ around. Augusta Tryman still with you?”

  “And more beautiful every day too.”

  “Ask her to drop by,” I said, and then gave her my new address.

  “Yes, sir.”

  32

  An hour later the silver chime of my alarm system sounded.

  I was at the front door with a gun in my hand before the doorbell rang.

  Through the peephole, under the porch light, I saw a hale white man in an eggplant-colored double-breasted suit; no hat, oiled and combed wavy hair, clean-shaven, and with empty hands in evidence at his side.

  He stood there alone and assured, as American as redwoods and Manifest Destiny.

  Pocketing the piece, I opened the door, my mind a blank slate in preparation for whatever this fancy stranger brought with him.

  “Yes?” I said, taking inventory of his broad shoulders, thick neck, and big if empty hands.

  “Mr. Rawlins?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “My name is Eugene Stapleton. My friends call me Gene.”

  “And people in the know call you the Cinch.”

  He accepted my knowledge with equanimity the general public does not usually associate with gangsters.

  “May I come in?” he asked.

  —

  My once sparse living room now had three stuffed chairs, a sofa, and a small round mahogany table with three straight-back chairs of the same wood and style. Even though Feather and I lived alone, she had friends come over now and again.

  I sometimes entertained also.

  The Cinch took the couch and I pulled out a hard chair just in case I had to jump up shooting at a moment’s notice.

  “Nice house,” the bad man commented.

  “It’s late, Mr. Stapleton, and I’ve had a long couple’a days—very long.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry for coming over at this hour but our kind of business is demanding and it doesn’t run by a clock.”

  “What business is that?” I asked.

  “I have an apology and a question for you,” he said instead of answering the question.

  “Apology for what?”

  “I sent three men to break into your house and question you. You weren’t at home but the same men grabbed you out of Seymour Brathwaite’s apartment and tried to force you to play our game. I apologize for underestimating you. And I’d like to add that I won’t make that mistake again.”

  His words were an offering of respect and a threat rolled up into one; in short—it was poetry.

  “How did you even know to be looking at me?”

  “I know many things, Mr. Rawlins.”

  “And what is the question?” I asked.

  “Where’s the money?”

  One thing you learn when dealing with bad men and bloodletters is that money is a very touchy subject, whether a dispute over a thin dime or the disposition of a bag full of gold doubloons.

  “I haven’t had anything to do with any money,” I said.

  “But the people you’re around have,” he rejoined.

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  “Then why are you involved in the Boughman murder?”

  “I’m only involved as far as it has to do with Seymour being cleared of the crime.”

  Stapleton’s eyes were a jaunty brown but when those orbs drilled into me I felt anything but cheerful.

  “Boughman had a great deal of my friends’ money,” the Cinch said. “Now he’s dead and no one knows where it is.”

  “Seymour was arrested at the scene,” I said, trying to sound logical. “He didn’t shoot Boughman and he certainly didn’t have any money on him when they dragged him off to jail. I’m not trying to say that somebody else didn’t steal it. But he was at that house looking for the housekeeper who was once his foster mother.”

  “Maybe I’m not making myself clear, Mr. Rawlins. There’s a great deal of money missing; more money than three generations of a dozen Catholic union men could make in their lifetimes. If somebody just saw the back of the thief’s head as he turned the corner I would want to know the color of his hair. I’d kill for that information alone.”

  “Killing doesn’t provide answers,” I said, giving up hypothetical reasoning for blunt fact.

  “But it is a great motivator.”

  “I don’t have your money and I have no idea where it might be. If I had stolen from your friends I’d be in Mexico City at this very moment with a new name on four senoritas’ lips.”

  Stapleton smiled and pursed his own lips in appreciation of my lyrical turn.

  “You mind if I have a drink?” he asked.

  “I been off the stuff for a while now. Nuthin’ stronger than orange juice in the box.”

  When my guest reached into the left breast of his many-buttoned suit, my hand drifted down toward my gun pocket. And I wasn’t embarrassed when he came out with a tarnished silver flask.

  He unscrewed the top, took a quick swig, then recapped it and put it away.

  He looked at me very closely and said, “I want my money.”

  “The closest I’ve gotten to it is asking Seymour
what happened at the beach house. He said that he went there looking for the housekeeper, found your man Boughman and some other guy, both dead. Before he could call the police they busted down the door.”

  “I don’t care about any of that,” the gangster uttered. “What I want to hear is where has the money gone.”

  “Help me out, Gene. What can I possibly know that would get you what you want?”

  “Who hired you to get the kid out of trouble?”

  I answered immediately but the matrix of thought behind that answer was convoluted and complex.

  I considered the truth, telling Stapleton that Rufus “Charcoal Joe” Tyler had hired me to help a friend of his clear her foster son of unfounded charges. But I didn’t know if Joe would like his name mixed up with a powerful mobster’s business. Then I thought of Jasmine; she was the reason that Joe even cared and so, in a way, she was the one that caused me to be hired. But it had been grilled into me since childhood never to put a woman in harm’s way unless there was no other choice.

  For a moment I thought of saying that Melvin Suggs was the source of my work. He had as much as told me that finding the money would be the fastest way to get Seymour cleared of the crime. But I had already used Melvin against Stapleton’s minions, and getting the police involved was never the preferred option. And, anyway, I didn’t want the Cinch to know that I had been aware of the missing money or what Boughman was doing with the cash.

  Those thoughts passed through my mind as quickly as the striking of a match. With the fire came a light.

  “Raymond Alexander asked me to do it,” I said.

  “The colored man they call Mouse?”

  “Me and Ray are old friends and he knows the kid from the neighborhood. When Ray asks a favor it’s hard to decline.”

  A new light of respect came into my well-dressed guest’s eyes. Mouse’s name carried weight from coast to coast for those in the know.

  “How is Mr. Alexander involved with Boughman?”

  “He’s not. Ray was clear that he wanted me to talk to the cops about Seymour. He knows that I have connections and he believed Seymour was innocent. He never said anything to me about suitcases full of money. But let me ask you a question.”

  “What’s that?” he allowed.

  “How did you know to send your men to my house just hours after I took the case on?”

  “Can’t tell you everything, Mr. Rawlins. If I did I’d have to kill you.”

  “Your men already tried that.”

  “You called the cops on them,” Stapleton said.

  “Look, man, your people had me tied hand and foot with a washrag taped over my mouth. Your boy Arnold Mayhew touched my temple with his finger and told me that he was going to shoot me there.”

  Recalling the experience unexpectedly ignited a rage in my breast. That’s how I knew that Mama Jo’s tea was still doing something.

  “Arnold’s wife is a widow,” the gangster said.

  “I’m sorry for her but happy about him. Those motherfuckers didn’t give me any choice but to fool ’em. Tie a man up and hold a gun to his head—fuck that.”

  I can’t say my anger intimidated the Cinch but he took it into account.

  “Did you ask your cop connection about the kid?” he asked; the dead men floating on waters that had already passed under the bridge.

  The question quelled my anger because I realized that I did have information for the mob man.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Boughman and the other guy had been dead a couple of hours before the cops grabbed Seymour, and there was no gun to be found.”

  “So they cleared him?”

  “Nobody cares about a dead gangster, man. And if they could blame some brother why not do it? You know that’s two birds right there.”

  “So you’re still trying to clear Mr. Alexander’s friend?”

  I nodded.

  “And Alexander’s not looking for any money?”

  “And I’m not talkin’ to him about it. All I want is charges dropped and young Seymour back at college where he belongs.”

  It was time for Stapleton to consider his options. I was sure one of these possibilities was my death.

  “So you might still come across some information about who killed Peter,” he speculated.

  “That’s a far cry from proof.”

  “I don’t need proof, Mr. Rawlins. I’m not the law. If you get a good idea of who might have done this I would like to know and I would certainly pay for that knowledge.”

  “How much?”

  “Fifteen thousand sounds right. That is if your information leads me to our money.”

  “What if you’re sure the man I point you at is the one that stole from you but the money is not there?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe a five-thousand-dollar kill fee could be arranged.”

  33

  I walked the Cinch to the front door at around eleven. I’d promised to tell him anything I found out about Peter Boughman’s murder and anyone who might have seen him in the days before his demise. He gave me three telephone numbers, saying that I’d find him at the end of one line or another.

  He stepped across the threshold and stopped, made a half turn, and regarded me.

  “Why haven’t you asked me for money up front, Mr. Rawlins?”

  “Same reason I wouldn’t steal from you, Mr. Stapleton. I don’t want you to think that I’d take your money without giving something in return.”

  He considered my answer, nodded, and said, “I’ll be waiting for your call.”

  He strolled down the walkway, past the sidewalk, and all the way to the curb. He stopped there and the headlights of a dark Lincoln Continental came on four houses down, across the street. The car pulled up to where Stapleton was standing. He opened the door to the backseat and climbed in.

  The Lincoln didn’t take off immediately. Maybe they were just discussing the next stop on their late-night rounds. Maybe. But I knew that if he didn’t like my answers the entire carload of killers would be at my door.

  As the car pulled off I realized that I had my hand on the gun in its pocket.

  “Mr. Rawlins?”

  The most courageous act I performed on the whole Charcoal Joe job was not shooting myself in the leg when petite Augusta Tryman called my name from behind the poinsettia bushes next to my front porch.

  She emerged from the dark boughs in a shimmery silver micro-mini dress; the darkness of her skin was equal to the blackness behind her. Stepping into the yellow electrical light of the porch, she was both smiling and scared.

  “Was that Eugene Stapleton?” she asked.

  “What would a sweet young thing like you know about a bad man like him?”

  Augusta had thick lips and a protruding rear end. The rest of her was quite thin.

  Her fear turned into a sneer. “Every man needs a woman sometimes. Prince or pauper, they all get down to that.”

  “How long have you been out here?”

  “I was comin’ ovah when I seen him. You didn’t tell Big D ’bout no party so I thought you had some business to take care of before.”

  “It’s nice to see you, Augie. Come on in and have a seat.”

  —

  I took her to the dinette off the kitchen. The small octangular room was surrounded by windows on four of its eight sides. The table was the same shape.

  I sat down and she sidled up next to me.

  “You want a soda or something?” I asked.

  “Tap water be fine.”

  I got her modest request from the kitchen and sat down to join her again.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Augusta had intelligent eyes. She was at least thirty but most bartenders would have asked her for ID.

  She took a drink from the tumbler then sat back and exhaled. In that sigh was all the pain and exhaustion of a whore’s life.

  “You sound like the weight of the world is on you, girl.”

  “You bettah believe it,” she agreed. “
He weigh three hundred and fi’ty pounds and his name is Oscar. He like me so much that he always sees me the first or second Friday of every mont’.”

  “Well,” I said. “You can rest here.”

  “People don’t pay me to rest,” she observed.

  “It’s good to think that way,” I said. “Because then somebody might surprise you.”

  “Surprise me how?”

  “If you could go home right now what would you do?”

  “Kiss my baby asleep in her crib, make a plate’a eggs scrambled in butter with some ketchup, an’ take a bath so hot the mirror be steamed.”

  “Go on upstairs and run the bath,” I said. “I’ll make the eggs while the water’s rising.”

  —

  When the butter was melting in the pan I dialed the kitchen phone.

  “Who is this?” EttaMae Harris challenged, answering on the third ring.

  “Easy, honey.”

  “Oh.” The anger dissipated. “Anything wrong, baby?”

  “I hope not.”

  “I’ll get him up.”

  I beat three eggs with a fork while she coaxed her bedmate to consciousness.

  “Easy?” he said.

  I was pouring the eggs into the skillet.

  “Hey, Ray. Sorry to wake you up but a guy named Eugene Stapleton was just here.”

  “The Cinch?”

  “That’s him.”

  “What he want?”

  “The name of the man hired me to help Seymour.”

  “You didn’t say our friend’s name, did you?”

  “I told him that it was you.”

  Using a rubber spatula I slowly shifted the eggs so that they cooked evenly and in layers.

  Mouse was quiet for fifteen seconds, no more.

  “All right,” he said. “All right. Yeah. What else you gonna say? He probably had a gunman or two somewhere close, so you had to.”

  “I just wanted to give you a heads-up.”

  “I appreciate that, Easy, but the Cinch ain’t gonna fuck with me. He got to get the okay to come after me.”

  “He does?”

  “Oh yeah, baby. People I know put the people he know to shame. But that don’t mean he won’t hurt you. So you did the right thing.”

  “What’s his thing?”

  “He used to have real power but the old heads and young guns have been pushin’ him out. He strugglin’.”