Bad Boy Brawly Brown

— 15 —

I didn’t get to sleep until five. I dreamt of a dead man who took turns being Mouse and Aldridge, Brawly Brown and his inhuman strength, and a revolution in the streets of Los Angeles.

I woke up at seven-thirty and called in sick to work.

“Tell Newgate that I got that bug,” I said to Priscilla Howe, his sixth secretary in two and a half years.

“You bet, Mr. Rawlins,” she said. “I hope you feel better.”

After that I got the kids out of bed. Jesus helped Feather dress for school and I made breakfast. It was lonely without Bonnie, but the children and I had a rhythm of life that worked perfectly.

“Where’d you go last night, Daddy?” Feather asked me.

“To see Jackson Blue,” I said.

“Did he give you my money?” Jesus asked.

“He said that he’d have it in a few days.”

“Jackson Blue is funny,” Feather exclaimed, and then she started giggling.

Before she was finished we were all laughing and spilling our juice.

Jesus walked Feather to school and I went back to bed.

In the dream I was sitting in a bar when Raymond walked in.

“What’s wrong, Easy?” he asked me.

“It’s John,” I said. “He wants me to save his girlfriend’s boy, but the kid’s in too deep.”

“Kill him,” Mouse said.

“Kill who?”

“The boy. Shoot him. Tell John you don’t know what happened. Get it over quick, so him and his woman can start to heal.”

Raymond turned to walk away.

“Ray.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry, man. Sorry I let you down.”

“You let me die,” he said, correcting me. “You let me die.”

The anguish I felt was like a grease burn; it started out painful enough but then it dug deep.

The doorbell was a relief, a lifeline thrown out to me from some unknowing stranger. I climbed out of bed and stumbled to the door in only my boxer shorts.

The white man standing there wore a suit that could have been handed out at the Salvation Army. He was on the short side with light green eyes and curly hair that defied my color sense. It could have been red or gold or brown, depending on how you looked at it.

“Mr. Rawlins?”

“Yeah?”

He produced a ratty, worn-out wallet displaying an identity card and a badge.

“Detective Knorr,” he said. “Can I come in?”

There were many things wrong with Knorr showing up on my doorstep. Not only was he shabby beyond anything I’d ever seen on Chief Parker’s police force, but he was also alone. The L.A. police didn’t travel solo. Or if they did, it was because they were on some clandestine assignment. And even if that made sense, what could he possibly have wanted with me? I was a senior custodian at a public junior high school. I was a homeowner, a taxpayer. I had just been sleeping in my bed, innocent of any crime.

Any of these reasons would have been enough for me to have sent Officer Knorr away. But he saved me from the total despair of my dream and I was grateful for that.

“Do I have to get dressed?” I asked him.

“Not for me.”

I swung the door wide and stepped back for the policeman to enter.

“Excuse me,” I said. “I just got up. I got to hit the head.”

I came back wearing a bathrobe and house slippers. Knorr was sitting in my reclining chair.

“Feel better?” he asked.

“What can I do for you, Officer?”

Knorr sat at the edge of the comfortable chair. He had a medium build with small hands and thick eyebrows. The eyebrows were the same color as the hair on his head, only darker.

“The police department and the city of Los Angeles need your help, Mr. Rawlins.”

“You want some coffee?” I replied.

Knorr was not easily disturbed. “Sure,” he said. “Two teaspoons of milk and one sugar.”

I went to the kitchen and he followed me.

“Why aren’t you at work today if you don’t mind me asking?” he asked.

“Hard weekend,” I said while filling the kettle from the faucet.

“Parties?” His smile had no warmth or humor to it.

“It’s just instant,” I said. “That and Cremora.”

“Perfect.”

“So what do want from me?” I asked.

Knorr’s green eyes settled on the lawn outside my back window. He was beaming that cold smile.

“There’s blood boiling under the surface of Watts,” he said.

The subtle hiss of the gas jets accented his words with a sinister edge.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“The Negroes are getting anxious for some changes,” he said. “They want to end de facto segregation. They want better jobs. They want to be treated like war heroes after coming home from World War Two and Korea. Some even question going into the army and fighting for their country.”

I couldn’t tell if there was sarcasm or concern in his voice. Like his smile, his tone was enigmatic.

“That’s outside my field of expertise, Officer Knorr. I’m a janitor. I wax floors and empty trash bins. Boiling blood is some other department. And I already did my stint in the army.”

Knorr smiled.

The kettle whistled. It began with a weak chirp that quickly became a scream, like the emergency that Knorr feared.

I poured our coffees into powder blue mugs with red roses stenciled on them. Feather had picked them out at a small shop we visited on a day trip to the little Swedish town of Solvang, just inland from Santa Barbara.

Knorr sat across from me, smiling through the rising steam. He reached into his breast pocket and came out with a small stack of photographs. He handed them to me.

They were grainy black-and-white shots, slightly blurred because the subjects were unaware of the photographer and so moved unexpectedly at times. There were many different people in the snapshots, but the constant was me: me talking to Handsome Conrad and skinny Xavier Bodan, me standing outside of the Urban Revolutionary Party’s front door, me running out the back, pulling Tina by the arm and rushing toward a Cadillac that I knew was green.

The fever I’d felt two days earlier returned as a chill. For a moment a dark part of my mind wanted to strangle Officer Knorr and then make a run for the state line.

“I showed those pictures around and came up with your name, Mr. Rawlins.”

“Why you wanna single me out?”

“I know everybody else’s name. Christina Montes, Jasper Xavier Bodan, and Anton Breland, who also goes by the name Conrad. I could lay a name and a few aliases on everybody at that meeting. Everybody but you.”

I was memorizing the names I didn’t already know while trying to keep my breath from driving me to violence.

“What’s the problem, Officer? Is it against some law to go to a political meeting?”

“What were you doing there?”

“Why?”

“It could have some bearing on a case that I’ve been assigned to.”

“What case?”

“We have reason to believe that these political activists are planning some kind of violent protest. Maybe even an armed attack of some kind. I mean to keep that from happening.”

It was impossible to read behind that cool expression or Knorr’s soft words. Did he believe what he was asking me? Or was this some complex ploy to trip me up or to somehow vilify those children?

“I went there looking for a young man named Brawly Brown,” I said.

“Why?”

“Because his mother was worried about him and wanted me to make sure that he was healthy and safe.”

Knorr winked at me. I didn’t know if it was a nervous tic or a sign that he was happy with my answer.

“Did you find him?”

“I saw him at the opposite end of room. Then your armored guard came through the windows and started breaking heads.”

“That wasn’t me. That was Captain Lorne. He thinks you can beat the Negroes by dispersing them. I know better.”

Slowly a picture of the internal man was coming clear.

“So you just take pictures while he abuses our rights?” I said.

“Rights,” Knorr said. “Those people don’t respect what America has given them. They don’t deserve rights.”

“That’s not for you to decide, Officer. Rights are guaranteed by the Constitution, not judged by some messenger boy from city hall.”

If it was possible Knorr’s green eyes got even cooler.

“This boy Brown,” he said, “is at the center of the trouble I’m working on. He’s been in contact with the people who are planning an insurrection.”

I wondered if what Knorr was saying was true. On top of that, I wondered if he believed what he said.

“Why you gonna come in here and tell me all this, Officer? You don’t know me. I might be Khrushchev’s man in L.A., for all you know. I could be lookin’ for Brawly to sign up for the war.”

“I’ve talked to a few people about you, Mr. Rawlins. Easy — that’s what they call you, isn’t it? You have a rap sheet but not for this kind of stuff. You work one-on-one. Sometimes you’re on the wrong side, but you’re a loyal American. I know your war record.”

“The war is over,” I said. “You won and I didn’t.”

“You don’t believe that shit,” Knorr said. “If you did, you wouldn’t have Jesus and Feather...”

When he mentioned my children’s names a chilly nausea invaded my intestines.

“You wouldn’t have that job at Sojourner Truth Junior High School. I heard that you even intervened when there was gang violence at your school; you called in the cops and gave them the information they needed to keep a gang war from happening.”

“What do you want from me, Officer?”

Knorr took a dirty white card from his pocket and placed it on the table.

“That’s my number,” he said. “Call me when you got something. As an informant we can come up with probably a thousand dollars’ reward. And as an American you’ll be helping your people and mine.”

I didn’t touch the card, nor did I look at it directly.

“Is that it?”

“Yes.”

“Then why don’t you leave?”

He gave me a one-eighth nod and frigid grin, then got to his feet and moved toward the door. As I watched him go, my mind went back to Mouse.

“Kill him,” my friend whispered from the grave.