Charcoal Joe

by Walter Mosley

  “I don’t have any money,” she said again.

  “Listen, honey, the man looking for this money told me that he’d kill somebody if he even thought that they might know one thing that could get him closer to getting it.”

  The lady farted. She was so scared that this bodily function didn’t even embarrass her. Tears were coming from her eyes, and tremors traveled up and down her limbs. In the days alone in the house in the woods she had worked out that Peter wasn’t coming back, that the trouble he was in might come back on her.

  My information just proved her suspicions.

  “I don’t know what to do,” she admitted.

  “Do you have a car?”

  “No.”

  “You just stay up here and wait for Peter to come?”

  “The market at the bottom of the hill makes deliveries.”

  “Do you have a friend?”

  “Peter and I live pretty much separated from our old lives. He does business and goes to work but we don’t socialize. I used to have friends.”

  “Anybody you still talk to?”

  “There’s one man I used to know. I call him now and then when Peter’s gone for a long time.”

  “Can you trust this guy?”

  “He doesn’t know anything about Peter, not even his name. We had a thing before and, and I think he still wants something.”

  “Call him now. Tell him to pick you up at the art museum parking lot and I’ll drop you off there. Go through your suitcases and take only what’s necessary. This will not be a vacation.”

  I waited outside while she did as I asked. She might have had another gun in there. She might have called the police. But I wasn’t worried. Women in her position knew when they were looking at their last chance.

  —

  “Why are you helping me?” she asked as we crossed Sunset Boulevard.

  “Why do you believe that what I’m telling you is true?”

  “Because Peter promised me that he’d be home last Sunday night. Because if he didn’t come he would have at least called.”

  “I’m helping you because it’s the right thing to do and if you feel like I’m okay you might tell me something.”

  “What?”

  “Is there anywhere other than your house and the hotel that you could get in touch with Peter?”

  “I’m just wondering why a black man would go out of his way to help a white woman,” she said.

  I had all kinds of answers for that question but they didn’t seem worth voicing. So we drove on in silence.

  —

  When I pulled into the parking lot of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, she reached into the backseat to take her small suitcase. I pulled into an empty space and waited for her to garner her resources.

  She opened the door and put one foot on the asphalt.

  “What happened to Peter, Mr. Waters?”

  “He tried to rob his bosses but before he could get away with it another thief killed him,” I said. It was as close to the truth as I had come.

  A sob escaped her throat.

  I put a hand on her shoulder.

  “And what do you care about it?” she asked.

  “The police have blamed a young man for the killing. I’m trying to get him off.”

  “Did this, this young man kill my Peter?”

  “Not a chance.”

  “I met him when I was waiting for standby tickets for The Magic Flute,” she said, one foot in the car and the other on the tarmac.

  “The opera?”

  “He loved opera. He had a box. He offered to, to let me sit with him. I had come to L.A. from Omaha with a boyfriend. He left for work one day and didn’t come back. I was really lost and Peter was a perfect gentleman.”

  “What about the guy you’re meeting?”

  “He’s a good guy but he doesn’t make any money. He wanted me to live with him so I could help pay three months’ back rent. Peter paid my rent and took me to the opera four weeks in a row. One time we flew up to San Francisco. He was good to me.”

  I stayed silent.

  “I didn’t have any other way of getting in touch with him,” she said. “But one time, maybe eight months ago, he left a package with me and said that I should wait a few days and then have the people at the market put it in the mail.”

  “Big package?”

  “No. Small, but it was heavy.”

  “Do you remember the address?” I was hoping that it was something simple that stuck in her head.

  “No, but I remember that it was addressed to Beulah Edwards. I remember because I wondered if she was a lover. He told me that I didn’t have anything to worry about so I didn’t.”

  “Beulah Edwards.”

  She nodded and climbed out of the car.

  37

  Miss Edwards was in the West L.A. directory. She lived on Cushdon, near Westwood Boulevard.

  It was Sunday and I could have taken Feather to Marineland, Knott’s Berry Farm, or even Disneyland. I wanted to relax and see my daughter but Denise Devine might have the same thoughts I did, or maybe her on-again boyfriend would help her with the white pages. I drove to the address, then around the block, and parked. I walked up the street and to the front door, which, like many L.A. homes, had the doorway secluded by a trellis grown over by a few dozen sweet pea vines.

  The flowering creepers reminded me of Bonnie’s abandoned home, and of the crippled hero Joguye Cham.

  No one answered my knocks or the buzzer. The mailbox was overflowing with junk mail. Local newspapers, menus, and various flyers littered the welcome mat.

  I considered lighting a cigarette but decided against it; that was my optimism operating.

  I had brought with me two detective and/or burglar tools: the loaded .22 and a twelve-inch gooseneck crowbar that fit uncomfortably under my jacket.

  The crowbar could be used as a defensive tool if Beulah turned out to be a big bruiser instead of a fat grandma. But if, as I suspected, the house was abandoned, then I could pry my way through the front or back door and see what evidence I might find.

  The windows all had pink-painted iron bars over them, and the doorjamb was reinforced with two long metal slats.

  But I persisted.

  It took longer than it might have because I was trying to keep the racket down.

  Half an hour and I’d made it inside.

  It was a house but not a home. There was very little furniture anywhere, and the only light came through shaded windows and from electric lamps set here and there on the floors of the small empty rooms.

  No tables, one straight-back chair, a few empty cartons of Chinese and Mexican food, and six very big sack-like leather bags sitting on the otherwise empty bedroom floor.

  The denominations were twenties, fifties, and hundreds neatly wrapped for easy counting. The smallest bag contained $175,000. I didn’t count the rest. The total was probably more than one million; less than one-point-five. It was enough so that I felt a trickle of sweat run down my cheek.

  If Feather wasn’t in my life I would have been out of L.A. that night.

  But she loved her Ivy Prep and had had enough pain in her thirteen years.

  I was doing okay; and starting up a new life at the age of forty-eight, like Bonnie and Joguye were doing, didn’t have the appeal it might have in the younger years.

  The telephone had been disconnected. There was no radio or TV, no book or even a magazine. The house was so barren that not even a black ant was bumbling around. I went to the front door, tried to make it look unmolested, and then picked up a copy of a local paper, the Pico Post.

  There were various notices and ads, the local police blotter, and an article about some oil wells that had been drilled up and down Pico. The derricks were camouflaged by big aluminum structures made to look like windowless buildings. A neighborhood artist, Pepe Hernandez, had offered to paint giant murals on them but the four town councils concerned had turned him down.

  Again I was like th
e little ant at Seymour’s apartment. I had found a morsel so large that I couldn’t move it and there were no fellow colonists around to help me out.

  —

  And so I waited. I read the paper, four menus, and flyers about everything from fortune-telling to department store sales.

  At one point I lay down on the floor, placing my head on a hundred-thousand-dollar pillow.

  My sleep was unsettled but it was a way to kill time.

  When I woke up the sun was going down.

  I walked around the gangster’s hideaway wondering what mischief beyond the stolen cash had gone on there.

  I considered going out back to see what might be hidden in his garage but decided that I had enough to keep me occupied. So I sat in the straight-back chair with all the electric lamps turned off and waited—for hours. That was the real discipline of the private detective.

  —

  When my watch said that it was 10:17 I went around the block, picked up my car, and backed into Miss Beulah Edwards’s driveway.

  On the eastward drive I tried to think of someone who might keep the cash while I finished my job.

  I couldn’t think of a soul who would be able to resist the temptation of a million dollars that would never be reported stolen. Not Mouse or Jackson, not John the Bartender, and certainly not Milo Sweet. Jean-Paul of P9 wouldn’t be impressed, but getting to him would take time. Loretta might have taken it but I saw no reason to put her in harm’s way. Fearless alone would have been trustworthy, but he had Seymour in tow and I know nothing about him.

  So I drove home, parking my Dodge in the garage. The trunk of that car would be my bank vault.

  —

  I stayed awake all night long with a .45 on my lap.

  It occurred to me at 3:07 a.m. that this was how all wealth had to be treated: with fear of loss and eternal vigilance. It was the first time that I understood that being rich was not necessarily an enriching experience.

  38

  I reached the Avett Detainment Facility at 11:13. The same flush-faced and blowsy guard sat sentry.

  “Your friend’s already in there,” he said, waving me on.

  Once again the ectomorph guard sat at the small table on the other side of the locked doors. As before, he ignored me until I knocked, and once again he advanced on the door angrily.

  But this time he recognized me and said, “Your friend’s down in Stieglitz’s office.”

  Fearless was facing the handsome assistant and she was taking him in. That day Fearless was wearing a dark red suit that was a cut above his sodbuster ensembles but still not equal to my dark green outfit. Dorothy looked up at me and smiled. That was a gift, considering she had Fearless to grin at.

  “Mr. Rawlins,” she said, rising from the chair.

  “Easy,” Fearless said.

  “Administrator Bell has given me permission to allow you to see Mr. Tyler at any time during visiting hours,” she said.

  “Fearless,” I said. “Give us a minute here.”

  My friend and temporary employee stepped from the broom closet of an office out into the spacious hall.

  “You don’t call Mr. Bell ‘warden,’ ” I said.

  She smiled and touched my right forearm.

  “What did you want?” she asked.

  “I know this isn’t the time or place but could I have a phone number for you?”

  “Avett’s listed,” she said with a challenging smile on her lips.

  “Not here.”

  “I live in Santa Monica. That number’s in the book too. All you have to do is remember how to spell my name.”

  —

  We were met in the hall by a tall brown man in the uniform that all Avett guards wore.

  “This is Frederick Smith-Hall,” Dorothy Stieglitz said. “He’ll see you to the visitors’ hut.”

  “Where’s Tom Willow?” I asked.

  Fred Hall’s chest and biceps bulged under the gold and brown costume. I thought that he must have been a football player wherever he went to high school—two or three years before. His frown wondered how I knew a guard at Avett by name but he said, “He didn’t come in today. They called me to take his shift.”

  The accent in his voice had some high notes in it, like people I’d known from St. Louis.

  —

  Fred led us down the dank halls and through the metal doors, past the midget guard Maxie, and out into the huge exercise park.

  “Do I know you?” Fred asked when we were away from walls, corners, and doors.

  “I don’t know your face,” I said.

  “I graduated the LAPD police academy two months ago. They put a freeze on hiring but I start in January.”

  “Hard job,” I said.

  “You say your name is Easy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I heard about you. You friends with the motherfucker Mouse, right?”

  “Raymond and I came up together in South Texas,” I said.

  “And now you comin’ in to see Charcoal Joe,” he said, more as a pronouncement than an inquiry.

  I didn’t say anything and Fearless gave the linebacker a glance that should have scared him.

  “I’m just sayin’,” Fred continued, “that you a crook too, huh?”

  I stopped walking and turned to face my inquisitor.

  “You got the job and the uniform, man,” I said. “You got some knowledge and opinions too. That’s cool. But believe me, brother, when you start passin’ judgment on your own people because’a somethin’ you heard, you might as well be stabbin’ your own self in the back. Because believe me these white people here will not save you if anything goes wrong. And whether you from Bogalusa or East St. Louis, you better fuckin’ believe that somethin’ will go wrong.”

  Maybe it was my tone or just the content of the mini-lecture that put a question into the young man’s face. He sniffed at the air and went on walking, taking us ultimately to bungalow 11.

  This was a smaller building with just enough room for Rufus’s entourage, Fearless, and me.

  —

  Again CJ was seated with the accountant-looking brown man on his left and Ox Mason to his right.

  “Can you give us some privacy, Mr. Hall?” Joe asked Fred.

  An attitude of rebuttal dominated the guard’s face but still he exited, closing the door behind him with some force.

  “Fearless,” Ox said.

  “Mr. Mason.”

  “You’re Fearless Jones?” Rufus asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  The little kingpin stood up from his chair and held out a hand.

  As they shook, Joe said, “It’s an honor.”

  “Thank you,” Fearless replied. He would not lie about being honored by the gangster.

  “CJ,” I said. “I know this might be crossin’ some kinda line but could we speak in private?”

  The prodigy/tyrant smirked and then smiled.

  “Germaine,” he said. “Why don’t you and Ox take Fearless here over to the pool room? I heard tell he beat Fast Eddie Fontanot one time.”

  “You sure, boss?” the accountant asked.

  “Go on.”

  —

  Alone in the bungalow, I had time to look around the room. The table and chairs were the same make as in public schools I used to work at as a custodian for the Los Angeles Unified School District. There was a window that had a shade pulled down with the window open. The breeze wafted in and the green-leaf branch of some bush moved in and out also.

  Joe took a charcoal branch from a small box and began jabbing at a tan sheet of newsprint paper.

  “What have you got for me, Mr. Rawlins?”

  “Not much. The cops know that Seymour didn’t kill Boughman but they’re willing to let him be prosecuted anyway because they need to close the case. I know that you own the house where the murder occurred, that Jasmine Palmas was somehow involved in whatever was going on there, and if I’m not mistaken Seymour is your son and Jasmine his real mother. The way I se
e it, Boughman and Eugene Stapleton were involved in a negotiation to launder mob money but separately they planned to rob each other. Tony Gambol was moving the money and a woman named Avery was translating the cash into diamonds. I know that Avery was caught up in this business somehow and that Jasmine had to know something about it too.

  “What I do not know is if you hired me to clear Seymour or to somehow reclaim the money that I’m told was stolen. Word on the street is that you’re planning to leave the country, and I have it from pretty reliable sources that Jasmine has the same plans.”

  Joe was looking at me pretty hard toward the end of my report. Then he held up the newsprint to show a deft impression of me talking. His interpretation of my face giving the report was new to me but I believed that he got it right.

  “Raymond was right about you,” he said. “Nobody ever guessed about Seymour before.”

  “Why the name Brathwaite?”

  “He was supposed to be adopted and I had a cousin named Saline Brathwaite who had a son that she lost to crib death.”

  “Celine? The French name?”

  “No. Her mother, my father’s sister, was not an educated woman. A doctor once had her using a saline solution for an eye infection and she just liked the word.

  “You’re right about me and Jasmine too; I mean, we had made a plan to leave. That’s changed now. I mean I’ll still leave if I have to get Seymour out of harm’s way. But I’d rather he get exonerated and live his life as a scientist and a teacher. I’m proud of him.”

  “What’s different now that’s going to make you stay?”

  “I thought my business could function with me out the pocket, but just me being in here for ninety days and it all goes to shit.”

  “It would have been nice to know some of this before you sent me out blind and with a target on my back.”

  “I guess I didn’t see how all this other stuff concerned you. Raymond told me that you were connected to the cops, that you could work to help Seymour through them.”

  “But you could see my problem, right, CJ?” I said. “You call me in here to try and get the cops to back off from your son. But you don’t tell me he’s your son or that the house where the murder occurred is a place owned by you and used for underworld meetings. You don’t warn me that the murdered man is a known gangster or that other bad men are looking for anyone looking into Boughman’s death. You didn’t say that the man found dead with him was a hit man.