“I’d like you to walk me around the lower campus,” Principal Masters said.
WE VISITED SEVERAL CLASSROOMS. The teachers looked wary until they saw Mrs. Masters smile at them and wave. She wasn’t like the previous principal, Hiram Newgate, who only dropped in to see what infractions he might find.
We also spent a while in the garden: the biology and agrarian science department of the school. Out there the students grew radishes and studied elementary anatomy.
Finally we came to the custodians’ bungalow. The rest of my crew was out working by then so we had the room to ourselves. It was a big rectangular space with a large table down the center of it. Along the walls were shelves crowded with cartons of paper towels, toilet tissue, and boxes filled with bottles of ammonia, window cleaner, and bleach. There were five-gallon cans of wax piled in one corner and an entire wall of pegboard hung with dozens of sets of keys next to the door. The table was strewn with newspapers, overflowing ashtrays, empty paper coffee cups, and plates with half-eaten cakes on them.
“Nice place,” Mrs. Masters said. “The kind of place where the job gets done.”
“Sorry about the mess. But, you know, if I want ’em to keep the school clean I can’t complain about this room until Friday after lunch.”
“I understand,” she said. “May I have a seat?”
“Please do.” I was thinking that Newgate never asked permission for anything. He’d stand up if you didn’t offer a seat and nurse a grudge against you from then on.
“Can I get you a cup of coffee?” I asked.
“No thank you. I am very happy that you’re back, Mr. Rawlins,” she said. “You know the faculty and the students talk a lot about you.”
“They do?”
“Yes. It seems that they’ve come to rely on you for many problems that have nothing to do with the maintenance of the plant. Many of the women teachers, some men too, say that they depend on you for discipline when some of the more aggressive students have problems.”
Ada Masters had a mild way about her. She was small and unthreatening. In that manner she had gotten more out of her new charges than harsh-mouthed Newgate ever could.
It was true that students and teachers alike came to me when there was a problem. I was a black man in charge at a black school. No boy student was big enough to challenge me and the parents trusted me more than they did the white teachers. I was well read too. I’d perused every textbook in the school and often found myself instructing the kids on how to do their homework and even how to use the library.
I never neglected my own work, at least not until the past few weeks. It was coming up on the first-year anniversary of the death of my friend, Raymond Alexander. I felt responsible for Raymond’s death. He had been trying to steer clear of trouble but he helped me out one last time and got a bullet in the chest. His wife, EttaMae Harris, carried him out of the hospital just before they were about to declare him dead. I’d been looking for him, for his grave if that’s where he was, but Etta had disappeared and there were only whispered rumors that Ray hadn’t actually died but had gone back to Texas or up to the Bay Area or down in Mexico.
Lately I had been spending afternoons roaming around the city looking for clues about EttaMae or Raymond, who most people knew as Mouse.
I thought that the new principal had walked me around to gently let it drop that I shouldn’t miss any more days, but then I realized that she was going to stop me from working outside of the job description for the supervising senior head custodian.
“I wanted to thank you,” she said.
I girded myself thinking that this was the soft caress before the slaughtering knife.
“…for taking such good care of the school.”
“Say what?” I said.
“You have been the spine of Sojourner Truth,” Mrs. Masters said.
“I have?”
“You know you have. There are paintings of you in the art class, letters from thankful parents on file in the main office. The only negative notices are the job evaluation reports from Principal Newgate. He thought that you were insolent and insubordinate. I suppose that if he had been a better principal some future artist might have drawn him.”
“Oh they did,” I assured her. “There were quite a few portraits of Principal Newgate that I’ve had to wash off of the children’s rest room walls. If he had found them I would have probably got a transfer letter in there too.”
Mrs. Masters’s laugh was hushed but hardy. She covered her mouth and leaned forward in her chair. A tear rolled down her cheek.
“Easy?” It was a man’s voice.
At the door stood Jackson Blue, himself a living doorway into another dimension of my life.
Mrs. Masters straightened up and wiped the tear from her face.
“You have work to do, Mr. Rawlins,” she said. “Come up to the office tomorrow morning and we’ll talk about what you think I need to pay attention to here at Truth, as you call it.”
She got to her feet and walked to the door. Jackson stepped out of the way and they both made graceful little bows with their heads. When she walked out Jackson closed the door behind her.
“What the hell are you doing here, Jackson? This is my job.”
“You walked in on me just a few weeks ago, brother,” Jackson replied. “At least I didn’t knock at the door and yell out that I was the cops.”
He was right. I had pulled that tasteless joke on him.
“So what do you want, man? You know that woman you just chased outta here is my new boss.”
Jackson snaked into the chair that Masters had vacated. He clasped his hands together and started rocking to and fro. He was a short man with small bones. His face was slender, sharp, and very dark. He wore black jeans, a black T-shirt, and gray rubber-soled shoes with no socks.
“Well?” I asked.
“It ain’t good, man.”
“Listen,” I said. “If I can’t cover it with a mop and a buck-et’a soapy water you don’t even need to tell me. My street days are over.”
“Jewelle MacDonald.”
Jackson stared at me with certainty. He knew he had me hooked.
“What about JJ?”
“You remember when you brought me over her house last year, when I was in trouble with them gangsters?”
“Yeah? What about it?”
Jackson’s shrug was as damning as a signed confession.
“You and her?” I asked.
Just before Mouse had been shot I brought Jackson to my real estate agent’s home in Laurel Canyon. His name was Mofass. Mofass lived with what we called an almost-in-law, Jewelle MacDonald. She was barely more than a third of his age but she loved him and ran his business since emphysema slowed him down.
Jackson had been in trouble because he was competing with the mob for the numbers game in Watts. He had information I needed so we traded favors: a foolproof hideout for some names and addresses.
“After it was all over,” Jackson said, “I went back up there. She told me that Equity Realty had a relationship with another company that manages that apartment I got on Ozone.”
“And then she brought you some groceries?” I asked.
“She was just lettin’ stuff off, you know. Then we started talkin’. She told me that she was brought up a Catholic in Texas. You know, fish on Fridays an’ like that. I told her that the whole philosophical structure of the Catholic Church was based on Aristotle hundreds of years before Christ was even born. You know I said it just to fuck with her head. She just told me that I was crazy but the next time I saw her she must have been to the library or something, because she knew about Plato and Socrates and them, and she wanted me to explain what I had said.”
I sighed. Jackson was winding up into a story. Most other times I would have cut him off but I let him go on because I didn’t really want him to get to the point. I was in no hurry to go into the world where men got shot down in the street for doing their friends a favor.
“So,�
�� Jackson continued, “I read her the riot act on Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas. You know, you’n me talked about all that stuff ten years ago, more.”
“Uh-huh,” I grunted. “So what?”
“I figured out up at her house that she liked talkin’ about books and shit. But I didn’t know that it got her hot. I never met a black woman who got hot over a man’s book knowledge.”
I wanted to tell him that he didn’t know my girlfriend, Bonnie Shay, but I thought better of it.
“So what, Jackson? Mofass can’t hardly leave the house. I guess if JJ wants a boyfriend, it’s okay.”
“It’s not that, man,” Jackson said. “I mean Jewelle made it plain from the start that she ain’t never gonna leave Mofass. She wants to be with me. She lets me stay in that apartment and helps me out if I need it. But I cain’t call her up at the house or stay with her the whole night because she got to get back up there to the canyon and take care’a him.”
“So you’re kinda like a married man’s girlfriend on the side,” I said, cracking a smile in spite of my trepidations.
“Laugh if you want to, man. But once I figure out the binary language of machines I’ll be inside them computers and you’ll be out in the cold.”
“What’s the problem, Jackson?”
“Clovis.”
Another name, another universe of danger.
“What about her?”
“Really it ain’t her. Or maybe it is,” Jackson speculated.
“What, Jackson? What you tryin’ t’say?”
“Misty Stubbs.”
“Who’s that?”
“She’s Jewelle’s half-sister on her dead daddy’s side.”
“Yeah? So?”
“Jewelle’s been writin’ to Misty down in Texas all these years since she been up here. She been askin’ Misty to come up but the girl got married when she was fifteen and had to stay with her husband. You know, like it should be. Anyway, I guess her and the husband started not gettin’ along a while back and Misty finally decided to come out here. We went down to Greyhound and everything but she didn’t show up.”
“But she said she was comin’?”
“Give us the schedule and everything.”
“Did JJ call her house in Dallas?”
“How could she do that, man? Misty was leavin’ her husband.”
“Maybe Misty changed her mind.”
“They closer than full sisters is, Easy. Misty wouldn’t do somethin’ like that and not say.”
“Well what do you want from me?” I said. “Girl got on a bus or she didn’t. Maybe her husband stopped her. Maybe she got pulled off somewhere on the road. Either way it’s the kinda story you tell to the cops.”
“But I didn’t say about Clovis yet,” Jackson said.
“Okay. Okay. Hit me.”
“Clovis come over to the real estate office three days ago. She waltzed right up to Jewelle’s desk like they never had no problems. You know Jewelle ain’t scared’a Clovis and them no more ’cause she got Jackie and Lorenzo workin’ for her. Those boys always go around armed.”
I knew Jackie and Lorenzo. They were okay. But Clovis MacDonald, Jewelle’s aunt, was deadlier than three men and almost as smart as her niece.
“Clovis was all smilin’ and pleasant,” Jackson continued. “So Jewelle knew that somethin’ was wrong. She axed Clovis why she was there and Clovis said that Jewelle done stoled Mofass’s real estate company from her and she wanted a piece of the business back.”
Clovis was wrong to have blamed Jewelle. It was really Mofass and I who pushed Clovis out of the business. But the real problem with her memory was that she had taken the business from Mofass in the first place. When Clovis was just a waitress, at a nameless diner we used to frequent, she seduced Mofass and then imprisoned him in her house. Jewelle helped him escape and then she took over the real estate office and turned it into a major concern. At one time I thought that I could be in the property business, but once I saw how good Jewelle was I realized that I would always be a little fish.
“What did Jewelle say?”
“She axed Clovis to leave. Clovis just smiled and put up her hands. But before she left she said, ‘I bet you Misty would be happy if you signed me back into the business. I bet you that she’d come hug and kiss you if you did the right thing.’”
I could imagine the chill in that evil woman’s smile. Mouse had once asked me if I wanted Clovis dead. He didn’t like hurting women but he made allowances now and then. I told him no, but deep in my heart I knew that it would have been the safe move to make.
“What you think about that, Easy?”
“What do you mean what do I think? I don’t think anything.”
“Come on, man. Clovis knew that Misty came down here. Somehow she fount out and grabbed her.”
“You don’t know that, Jackson. It could have been just some innocent comment. That’s all.”
Jackson Blue stood up from his seat with such force that the chair he was in flew five feet backward and crashed to the floor.
“Fuck you, man!” he shouted. “You know better’n that shit!”
I was amazed. I had never seen, nor ever expected to see, Jackson show anger or rage. He was a coward down into his bones and always fled from confrontation.
“What’s wrong with you, Jackson?”
“She’s up in that house with Mofass now. She cain’t eat or sleep or do her job. I axed her to come to you but she wouldn’t. She’s afraid that you might go against Clovis and get her friend killed. But you know tomorrow afternoon she’s gonna go down to Equity and sign half of the business over to Clovis. That’s what’s wrong.”
It was wrong, there was no question about that. And there was no question about what I should do. JJ was a friend of mine. Equity Realty managed my three small apartment buildings in and around Watts. And Clovis was the closest thing I ever had to a true enemy.
“How can she do that, Jackson? Mofass owns the business.”
“She got the power of attorney ever since Mofass been sick. She the one wit’ the final say.”
I looked over at my pegboard of keys. They reminded me of the homemade Christmas ornaments we had when I was a child.
“You know I have to talk to her, Jackson.”
“Yeah.”
“She’s gonna be mad that you came to me.”
“I know she will, brother. But what can I do? Clovis be like a cancer once she get in there.”
I took a deep breath and wondered if a vengeful supreme deity actually existed. Or maybe it was Hindu karma that had caught me by the tail. Something was pulling me back into the street.
I DROVE UP TO MOFASS’S HOME. It was at the end of an unpaved path two turns off of Laurel Canyon Road. From the driveway of their hidden home you could see the Los Angeles basin. Ragged brown smoke clung to the atmosphere like some kind of evil spirit dancing the dance of the damned.
Jewelle opened the door. She wore a cranberry-colored dress with wide skirts and a tapered waist. The neckline was straight across and low cut. If it wasn’t for that frown she would have been captivating.
When I met JJ she was still a child. She was hopeful, filled with life and energy that made you want to laugh and do things for her happiness. Now, though sad, she had the figure and presence to make a man want to change his life for her. That’s what Jackson Blue had done. He had gone against everything that came naturally to him in order to bring me to that door.
“What you doin’ here, Easy Rawlins?”
“You know why I’m here, girl. ’Cause you need help.”
“I don’t need your kind of help,” she said.
She swung the door in my face. It would have slammed if I hadn’t put my foot across the threshold.
Jewelle possessed a powerful spirit. She had stood up to Clovis while still in her teens, saving Mofass from that evil woman’s clutches. She had borne the weight of her half-sister’s disappearance up until the moment that door would not close; then she f
ell up against me and cried. I walked her outside toward the sheer cliff that was the marker of their backyard. I held her as we walked because she would have fallen if I hadn’t. She was wailing by the time we reached the overhang.
“Tell me about it, baby,” I said.
“You shouldn’t be here, Easy. You shouldn’t.”
“I ain’t gonna do nuthin’ unless you say to, JJ. But you know you got to talk this out.”
“They’ll kill her.”
“Not if it means that Clovis don’t get Equity. She’d set loose Satan in the kingdom of heaven if she could just make a dollar and not pay the tax.”
It was true and JJ knew it. The woman-child smiled bitterly and pushed away from me.
“I’d give her every dollar I got to keep Misty safe,” JJ said.
“Has she told you that she has her?”
“No. Not in so many words. She says that Misty would be happy, that she’d come over and make me a toast if I did the right thing by the MacDonald clan.”
“Could she have heard that Misty was supposed to come down here? I mean if she knew that she was supposed to come and didn’t, then she could feed you a story and there’d be no way you could find out the truth.”
“She had Mr. Sunshine,” JJ said with trembling lips.
“Who’s that?”
“It’s a rag doll, a lion with jade-green eyes. Misty had that thing since before she could even talk. She always kept him with her.”
“And Clovis give this doll to you?”
“No. She sent it in the mail. I got it two days ago.”
“Any letter?”
“No. Just the doll in a cardboard box.”
“You got the box?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Let’s go see it.”
MOFASS AND JEWELLE had a big house. The entrance was like a dais that stood high over a gigantic living room. The back wall of this room was all glass looking out onto the vista of L.A. There was a table and four high-back chairs next to this window. JJ left me in one of these while she went to look for the doll.
I sat back and crossed my legs, appreciating the view in late afternoon. JJ was a real estate whiz kid. She bought and sold buildings around the county and turned a larger profit every year. She was able to lease that house, in a neighborhood most black people didn’t even know existed, because she was a valuable asset to the white men she dealt with.
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