A Little Yellow Dog

23

Down on Pinewood street, somewhere on the road from Watts to Compton, was a small turquoise apartment building. Not many people knew that Jackson Blue lived there.

His door was on the ground floor. I knocked. I rang. I called out. I knocked again. I was so persistent because Jackson had become shy about public appearances ever since the white gangsters of downtown and Hollywood had gotten interested in his gambling operation.

After a long time the window to an apartment on the third floor slid open. Someone was leaning away up there, staring down while remaining hidden in shadow.

“They gone!” a woman’s voice called.

“Doris?”

“Easy? Easy Rawlins, is that you?”

“Yeah.”

“Well come on up here and say hey.” Her words were gay but she didn’t sound that happy.

She opened the door and came outside, looking both ways down the hall as she did. Doris was a deep brown woman with features that were a series of perfect circles; her nose, her nostrils, her eyes, even her mouth. Her hair had been straightened and now stood up, held by stiff hair spray, like a manicured lion’s mane.

Doris pulled her robe close at the chest. She gave me a worried, searching look and then peered down the hall again.

“You alone, Easy?”

“What’s goin’ on, Doris?”

“Jackson gone. They after him, Easy. Them bookie men wanna kill’im. They send some colored mens down here after him.”

“Where is Jackson, Doris?”

She looked up and down the hall again.

“Doris, I ain’t got time for this.”

“I ain’t s’posed to be sayin’ t’nobody.”

“All right.” I could live with that. I turned away.

“He’s at thirteen twenty-seven and three-quarters Morton Street,” she said to my back.

I kept walking.

“Did you hear me?” she asked. “Easy?”

I kept walking.

I walked down the stairs and out to the car. I saw Doris looking from the window above but I didn’t acknowledge her. I was thinking that Jackson’s help might not be worth its price.

Jackson and his evil friend Ortiz had been running a numbers and bookie operation to oppose the established white gangsters. Jackson had developed a tape recorder system that he could attach to the telephone lines. That way nobody could catch him at his phone center because there was no phone center. Jackson made a few connections at the telephone company and crazy Ortiz ran the collections.

They made more money in three years than an honest man could make in a lifetime.

I imagined a school bell ringing and the scuffle of children’s feet down the halls of the administration building. But that was all very far away.

“Who’s there?” Jackson shouted from somewhere in the room beyond the door. I figured that he was to the right, behind a corner no doubt.

“It’s Easy, Jackson. Lemme in.”

“Easy?”

“Yes, Jackson. Easy.”

The door swung open quickly. Jackson was behind it. All he let me see was his frantically beckoning hand.

“Com’on, com’on, com’on, come on, come on!”

It was dark in the small room.

Jackson Blue, the smartest man I ever knew, was also one of the most untrustworthy. He was wearing black slacks and a long-sleeved black turtleneck shirt. They were both tight-fitting and so displayed his skinny frame.

It was hard to distinguish Jackson’s skin from his clothing. He held his shoulders high and his head down as if he were continually ducking from a blow.

There was a rounded couch covered by a shaggy rug and a dark wood rocking chair in that room. To the right was a door half open on a kitchen.

The only light in the room was from a streetlamp outside that shone brightly on the drawn shade.

“Can we turn on a light, Jackson?” I asked.

“No no, brother, no light.”

“You standin’ over there in the kitchen when you hollered at me?” I asked.

Jackson looked from the kitchen to the front door. I didn’t have to tell him how easy it would have been to shoot him through the wall.

“What you want, Easy? You here about who after me?”

“No. Who is it?”

“It’s not just one. Gangsters done put a bounty out on my head. Whole bunch’a soul brothers out to make a grand on my hide.”

When he swallowed it was like his whole body was the throat.

“What about Ortiz?” I asked. “He think he could take anybody.”

When Jackson sat down on the shag-covered couch a dusty odor rose in the room.

“What’s wrong, Jackson?” I asked. It struck me then that I was unarmed. I had gone unarmed in the streets of L.A. for over two years but this was the first time that it made me feel light.

“It’s all fucked up, man. All fucked up.”

“You mean the money on your head?”

I wasn’t being truthful with Jackson. I knew about his problems. That’s why I had sought him out. I’d heard from Mouse that Ortiz had been arrested; I figured that would have put Jackson in a vulnerable position.

“That, yeah. But it ain’t just him. It’s just bad luck.” Jackson shook his head and stared at the floor. “Bad luck.”

“What kinda bad luck?”

Jackson had his head down with his hands clasped at the back of his neck. He raised his head without releasing that grip, looked at me for a hard moment, and then sighed.

“Ortiz in jail,” he said.

“What for?”

“Two dudes got it in their heads to hijack our runners. We got hit twice. Lost twenty-six hunnert dollars near ’bout. But they got greedy and went in for number three. One’a my people recognized’em an’ Ortiz went down to a bar where they hung out, down on Slauson. They saw’im comin’ but they decided to fight instead’a runnin’.” Jackson shook his head at their foolishness. “But you know Ortiz got some heavy fists. Heavy.”

“So it was just a fight?” I asked.

“Yeah. Ortiz busted’em up pretty bad but he’s in jail because them white bookies got to the judge. Cops and the prosecutor actin’ like Ortiz is public enemy number one. They wanna have a big trial an’ meanwhile Ortiz up in jail with no bail.”

“And with him in jail your butt’s in a sling,” I declared.

“Yeah, they figgered it was a good time t’pick me off.”

Jackson rubbed his hand over his face and turned in my direction. “Can you help me?” he asked.

Like I said, I knew that Jackson was in trouble. But I had washed my hands of trouble. When I’d heard about Jackson’s dilemma I worried that my buddy might get killed but I didn’t do anything to help him. I didn’t do anything because he had chosen his road and I’d chosen mine. But now I saw where our paths might intersect again. I’d come looking for him knowing that he’d ask for my aid.

“Help you how?”

“I don’t know, Easy. I wish I did.”

“What were you plannin’ to do, Jackson? You just gonna sit here till somebody come in here with guns blastin’?”

“No… I mean, what could I do?”

When it came to Jackson Blue, things never changed.

“I need something from you, Jackson.”

“Anything, brother. ’Cause you know long as I’m helpin’ you I gotta still be breathin’ to do it.”