Charcoal Joe

by Walter Mosley

“When will her family be here?”

  “First flight from San Francisco is in at six thirty,” I said. “Mr. Natly will have her up here as soon as he can after that.”

  “You’ll have to wait until her family gets here,” Max informed me.

  Saul had prepared me for that.

  —

  Max was big and brawny for a woman but gentle as a kitten putting Lolo in the wheelchair. I walked next to the girl holding her hand as we rolled down a long, dimly lit hall of closed doors. Now and then there were cries and moans from the rooms. Whenever someone called out in pain, Lolo squeezed my fingers.

  When Max was rolling her into one of the cell-like hospital rooms, Lolo said, “Will you wait with me?”

  “I’ll be right outside the door until your mother gets here,” I said.

  “Is Mama gonna be mad?”

  “Not at all, honey. She’s just worried but when she sees you everything will be all right. Believe me, I know.”

  —

  Max went away to get things in order for the mother’s arrival.

  I sat in an ornately carved walnut chair in the hall, hearing the sporadic sighs and whimpers from the inmates.

  I was thinking about Willomena Avery and Tom Willow. I was sure that he was the lover she was talking about in her journal, because of the thick platinum and sapphire pinky ring he had on when he died; that and the business card I’d given her. That ring was more than a year’s salary for Tom.

  Augusta had told me that Uriah wanted her to break into Jasmine’s aerie, and Willomena had been seen multiple times with Tony Gambol and Peter Boughman. Tom Willow was Charcoal Joe’s mailman and so he’d likely know about the Malibu house.

  “Easy.”

  I opened my eyes to see Whisper and a tall, buxom black woman maybe just a few years older than I. She was wearing a fancily brocaded dress in the colors silver and blue. Maybe, I thought, she had just come from an upscale event when Whisper’s call came in. She’d been too distraught and exhilarated to undress, so she just waited for the morning to come so she could go to the airport and fly down to save her child.

  “This is Mrs. Bowles,” Whisper was saying as I made it to my feet.

  “Pleased to meet you, ma’am.”

  I held out a hand. After a moment’s hesitation she shook it.

  She seemed fragile, uncertain about everything she came into contact with.

  I learned from Whisper a few days later that Keisha Bowles came from an upper-class family. Her white husband was a high-powered lawyer from an important San Francisco family. They met when she was at Radcliffe and he at Harvard Law. Neither side of the family approved of the marriage but love won out.

  “Can I see my daughter?” Keisha asked.

  Max came up from behind, opened the door, and ushered the big, brittle woman into the room.

  “Thanks, Easy,” Whisper said when they were gone. “You know it’s not a whole lotta people that I’d trust with something like this.”

  “What time is it?” I had taken off my watch to wash Lolo and forgot to put it back on.

  “Almost eight.”

  —

  “Hello,” a lovely and very feminine voice said into the receiver at my ear.

  “Mary.”

  “Easy,” she said. “How are you, hon?”

  “I wish I was back in the desert lookin’ for you.”

  “That bad?”

  “I need eyes at the sides as well as in the back of my head.”

  Mary’s laugh was strong and knowledgeable. She understood the nearness of death and could laugh at it as well as any man I knew when I was a soldier on the front lines of the largest war in history.

  A deeper voice boomed somewhere behind her laughter.

  “The ogre commands,” she said.

  The next thing I heard was, “That you, Easy?”

  Melvin always got protective around Mary. In turns she had been a grifter, a con woman, a counterfeiter, and probably worse. But she was beautiful and, at least for the time being, in love with the surly cop.

  “You heard about the murder of a man named Tom Willow in West Hollywood?”

  “No, but I was in meetings most of yesterday.”

  “A detective named Trieste was the officer in charge.”

  “So?”

  “You should ask Trieste if Willow had a gun.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if he did I’ll give you three-to-one odds that if you check it against the bullets you pulled outta Boughman and Brown, you’ll find a match.”

  “Where’d you get that?” Suggs asked. He had to.

  “Sittin’ in a chair thinking about Boughman, Gambol, that Malibu house, and Willow. If he heard anything about that house around Tyler and his people at Avett, he might have decided to go into business for himself. And if he did that then he’d be a cinch for a hit.”

  The reasoning was thin but the words were true.

  “So you’re telling me this just so you can get your client off?”

  “That’s the job, Melvin.”

  “You don’t want anything else?”

  “Not from you.”

  “From whom, then?” Melvin had proper grammar when he needed it.

  “Melvin,” I said like a vexed piano teacher. “Did I not just hand you a murder suspect who won’t argue back?”

  “I’d like the money he stole.”

  “I don’t have it, man. But you got a whole police department and a house full of clues. You don’t need me to do everything, do you?”

  “Bye, Easy!” Mary yelled from somewhere in the cavern of the room. “I’m going to work!”

  “You let her have a job?” I asked Melvin.

  “Even your friend Mouse wouldn’t try and stop a woman like her.”

  “Where she workin’?”

  “Santa Monica Public Library.”

  —

  Thirty-two minutes later, by the nurse’s folding desk clock, I made the next call.

  “Avett Detainment Facility,” the operator announced.

  “Dorothy Stieglitz, please.”

  “Who may I say is calling?”

  “Mr. Rawlins.”

  “Hold on.”

  The line clicked twice and maybe four seconds passed.

  “I thought you were going to call my house,” the assistant to the administrator said. She sounded happy to hear from me.

  “I still plan to but this right here is business.”

  “How can I help you?”

  “I need to speak to Inmate Tyler.”

  “I know that we seem pretty informal here at Avett, Mr. Rawlins, but prisoners don’t receive personal calls.”

  “This is anything but personal. It’s urgent.”

  There was a long pause and then, “Give me a number.”

  43

  I gave Dorothy the office number of Nurse Max. Seventeen minutes later the phone rang.

  “CJ?” I said upon answering.

  “This is Germaine Lang,” his jailhouse assistant said. “Mr. Rawlins?”

  “That’s me.”

  “Is this phone clear?”

  “Like water from the tap.”

  A moment passed and then came the low rumble of Charcoal Joe. “What’s so damn important, Rawlins?”

  “I need to speak to Jasmine,” I said. “On the phone’ll be fine.”

  “Why?”

  “If I can get her to answer one question I will be able to promise you Seymour’s exoneration.”

  “What’s the question?” he said. “I’ll ask her.”

  “You can ask her what the question was after we’ve spoken.”

  “You work for me, Rawlins.”

  “I’m doing this for Mouse, so either give me a number or I quit.”

  First I sleep with his woman and then I spit in his face. I was the consummate professional.

  “I’ll have her call you,” he said.

  A few minutes later the phone rang again.

  “Jasmi
ne?”

  “Mr. Rawlins. You wanted to ask me something?”

  “Anybody listening on the line?” I’d learned something from Germaine.

  “No. This number only has one phone.”

  “If you want Seymour to beat the charges you have to give me Willomena Avery’s address.”

  “Why?”

  “You can ask her that question tomorrow. Right now give me the address and don’t tell her that I’m coming. You might not want Joe to know either.”

  “What makes you think I would have it?”

  “Because when I said her name you didn’t ask, ‘Who?’ ”

  “What does Willomena have to do with any of this?”

  “Ask her tomorrow.”

  The back and forth went on longer, but in the end she gave me the address. I told her that if she warned her friend, Seymour would be the one paying the price.

  —

  Once I got to Santa Monica I took Highway 10 all the way to Pomona. I stopped at a downtown World Gas Station to get directions for 124 North Raleigh Street.

  The forty-something white attendant had handsome features and would have been thought attractive if he were only five inches taller and did some push-ups and sit-ups now and then. His ears hugged the skull, and his mouth had tasted something bad a long time ago, never really recovering from the experience.

  “Why?” he asked after I made the request.

  This reluctance and impertinence was no surprise to me. I was a black man in a brown suit asking directions that would take me into the middle of a white neighborhood. That made no sense at all across a broad swath of white America in the 1960s.

  So I reached into the backseat and pulled out a blue-leather notebook.

  The gas jockey took a step back when I unzipped the folder. He probably worried that I’d come out with a gun. After he saw the sheaf of printed papers I presented, his natural frown turned into a confused sneer.

  “Term life insurance,” I explained. “My company, Omaha Security International, OSI, offers a million dollar policy for one hundred dollars a year less than the ones Mr. Andrews currently keeps.”

  “What?” the man said. His widening eyes were the color of walnut shell.

  “I’m an insurance salesman. Life insurance my specialty.”

  “You?”

  “Yeah. A customer of mine got divorced and bought a term policy from me to cover his alimony payments just in case he died. It was only for twenty thousand but it’s the percentage rate says what’s what. That friend works for Max Wellman.” It was a name I made up on the spot. “Andrews works for the aeronautics industry and he’s got twelve employees need to be insured because of their jobs. When he heard what I had to offer he said he wanted me out at his house today.”

  “A million dollars?” the attendant asked, for absolute clarity.

  “Times twelve.”

  “How’d you get that job?”

  “Went to the sales office and offered to work on commission. You know I usually sell to colored people but the only color Andrews cares about is green.”

  The attendant, his name tag said CORKY, traded directions for a detailed explanation on what to say to an insurance company if he wanted a job as an insurance salesman. Once he grasped the value of term life insurance he thought that if they let a Negro sell it, then a card-carrying white man like himself could make it rich. He might have been right.

  —

  The house was a modest whitewashed cottage between a two-floor brick monstrosity and a three-story apartment building with a facade of gray and brown stone.

  After pressing the doorbell I stood there wondering about the case. For all intents and purposes I’d done the job Raymond contracted me to do. I was sure that Tom Willow had killed Boughman, because he was the connection between Joe and the other crooks involved—especially the diamond girl, Willomena Avery. The charges against Seymour would be dropped and Charcoal Joe could go away, or stay, with Jasmine while the young physicist taught The Feynman Lectures at Stanford or UCLA.

  I was standing still at the front door but that little black ant was twisting this way and that in my mind.

  It occurred to me that I could be implicated in the violent death of Redd Roberts. Maybe Lolo would remember the killing; maybe she believed she loved her captor. It was a bad situation but if Whisper hadn’t shot him I probably would have. I couldn’t fault my partner for better reflexes.

  I pressed the button again.

  No one answered but I remained there, remembering Roberts’s red Cadillac and the red rooms of the fifth floor of the Lily. His blood cascading over Lolo was also red, as was the diary that Willomena, incognito, had left with Seymour….

  So was the box that contained the three-volume lecture series….

  “Mr. Rawlins,” she said. I hadn’t heard the door open. “How did you find my address?”

  The jewelry store manager must have waited a full three minutes before answering the door. That was her mistake.

  “What’s your real name?”

  She paused for a moment, frowning, but then she smiled and said, “Irena. Irena Król. It is Polish.”

  “Jewish too?”

  Once again I managed to surprise her.

  “Won’t you come in, Mr. Rawlins?”

  “You know,” I said, “if this was just ten days ago I’d’ve taken you up on that offer. But ever since I got mixed up with this job I’ve gotten kind of skittish.”

  She was wearing a beige dress that had quarter-inch straps for shoulders, with a hem that came down an inch below her knees. Her thick hair was tied back and her shoes were dark red, a fitting punctuation for the end of my detective’s revelation.

  The little ant in my heart cried aloud for her sisters to come help.

  “You want to stand out here?” Irena asked.

  “There’s a coffee shop I saw right downtown. Why don’t we go there, where all I have to worry about is being considered suspicious?”

  “Let me go change.”

  I reached out to touch her left forearm.

  “You look fine,” I said.

  “I don’t have to go with you.”

  “You gave Seymour that journal for Jasmine,” I said. “But how did you get The Feynman Lectures back on the coffee table in her house without her knowing?”

  The coldness in those eyes for some reason brought to mind the hole in the back of Tony Gambol’s head. He had been looking for that collection of essays, but I’d bet he didn’t even know it.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  —

  Cha-Cha’s Grill and Diner had an almost vacant parking lot and most of the tables were empty.

  We were seated, given big, one-sheet laminated menus, and served ice water in squat glasses. The waitress was about the same age as Irena but she looked two decades older. Her name tag read MISSY.

  “No specials,” she said. “We’re serving the lunch menu now.”

  When Missy went away Irena asked, “What do you want from me, Mr. Rawlins?”

  “I’m a detective, Miss Król. Detectives want answers.”

  “Król is not a Jewish name,” she said, answering a question gone by. “But my mother was Jewish. She married my father to get us out of the ghetto. We attended Catholic mass but she taught me my letters at home.”

  “Have you decided?” The impatient waitress had returned while we were concentrating on each other.

  “I’ll have the pastrami sandwich,” I said.

  “Chicken soup,” the woman known as Willomena Avery added.

  For some reason our order bothered Missy. She was short with half-gray and half-brown hair, and wore an incongruously festive blue and yellow uniform. The look on her face would have gone well with Corky the gas station attendant. I thought that maybe breathing the heavy smog out in Pomona turned its permanent residents sour over time.

  “Is that all?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  When she was gone again I asked, “Why
did you kill Willow? Or should I call him John and you Julia?”

  “You speak Yiddish?”

  “This is not wartime Warsaw, Miss Król. There’s a lot of people who speak your language in L.A.”

  “You are a surprising man, Mr. Rawlins. Are you working for Joe?”

  “Is he looking for you?”

  “I didn’t think so. Not yet anyway.”

  “My job,” I said, “was to help Seymour Brathwaite get out from under that murder charge. Were you there when Tom Willow killed Boughman and Brown?”

  “No,” she said, but it might not have been true.

  “You loved him.”

  “Not love really, it was a…a terrible obsession. We were animals together, but when he said that he was going to kill Jasmine I had no choice.”

  “He thought she had Boughman’s money?”

  “Not the money. I told him that I had given her the diamonds.”

  “Packed neatly inside The Feyman Lectures.”

  “Yes. How did you know?”

  “That little fable at the end of your journal. You were talking about the lectures. I figure Jasmine gave you a copy to smuggle diamonds in. She had to ask Seymour for another. You carved out the pages to contain the diamonds.”

  “Yes.”

  “What I don’t understand is how you got the diamonds when Boughman still had the money.”

  “The man who owns Précieux Blanc, Sol Hyman, was in on it. He’d get diamonds and then the bagman would turn over the money. The client always paid twelve cents on the dollar for the diamonds, and Sol took twenty-five percent of the profit. He’d been doing it a long time. Nothing ever went wrong before.”

  “What if Jasmine had opened the book?”

  “Why would she? It had been gathering dust on her coffee table for three years. I switched the books from my box into hers so she wouldn’t notice anything different.”

  The waitress came with our food.

  I was hungry but Irena didn’t touch her soup.

  “So,” I said after the disapproving Missy had gone, “I figure that you know Jasmine because you both worked for Doris back in the day.”

  “You’re a very good detective, Mr. Rawlins. Yes, I worked for her. Doris always likes to have a couple of white girls on call. Some black men want that. Jasmine was my only friend. After she met Joe she quit the business and introduced me to one of her clients—Sol Hyman. We hit it off and I went to work at Précieux Blanc.”