Bad Boy Brawly Brown

— 22 —

Lakeland’s office consisted of a large space with a broad desk dead center. There were a dozen chairs or so at various attitudes around the room. A powerful lamp hung maybe five feet above the desktop, illuminating the counter-sized work area and leaving the rest of the office in a kind of twilight. The room smelled heavily of cigarette smoke. That was when I felt my first real twinge of withdrawal.

I noticed that there were half a dozen or so diplomas in frames hanging on the wall near the door. A bachelor of arts from UCLA, a master’s degree from Caltech. I didn’t have time to make out the other degrees but I was sure that Colonel Lakeland was the recipient of each parchment.

“Sit,” Lakeland said as he made his way to a plush swivel chair.

I took a seat off to the left, not wanting to make it seem that I was the subject of our discussion. I was just another one of the guys, sitting on the edge of the project.

The nameplate before me read lt. l. lakeland. I just glanced at it and he said, “I’m a colonel in the army. I was tapped by city hall and Sacramento to run this operation.”

“Intelligence?” I asked.

I guess he heard the sarcasm in my question, and that’s why he passed it over.

“What are you doing here, Rawlins?”

“I could ask you that same question, Colonel.”

Lakeland’s face was also narrow. His lips seemed to belong on a corpse, they were so leathery and thin. His grin was a disgusting show.

“The Seventy-seventh Precinct captain thinks that you might be our man,” he said.

“Your man for what?”

“Didn’t Knorr tell you?”

“He said something about an insurrection. Sounded pretty crazy to me.”

“It’s not,” Lakeland assured me. “They’re stockpiling guns, shadowing the police.”

“With the police following them,” I added.

“It’s our job to ensure the safety of the people, Rawlins. That’s what they pay us for.”

“What’s that got to do with me?”

“Knorr offered you a job, did he not?”

“I’m no rat, Lieutenant,” I said.

“Colonel.”

“I’m speaking to the cop wants me to be a stool for him.”

Lakeland considered me. I presented a problem. I knew what he was doing and where he was doing it from. But then again, I had come into his lair, unafraid.

“What do you want, Rawlins?”

“Brawly Brown.”

“Again?”

“I got a friend named John. He’s got a close friend named Alva. Brawly is Alva’s son. He’s a bullheaded young man but not bad as far as I’ve been told and as far as I could see. What I want is to pull him out of any trouble he’s in with you and try to get him back home.”

“What do I get in return?”

“I don’t know.”

Those dead lips grinned again.

“Not a very good trade, now, is it?” he said.

“As far as I’m concerned, Brawly and me are innocent bystanders,” I said. “Just two black men in the wrong place at the wrong time. If I see something I think you need to know, I’ll tell you about it. I won’t be a rat for you but if we have some interest in common, I might let something drop in your lap.”

“I need more convincing than that,” Lakeland said.

“You won’t be gettin’ it from me, man. Listen, if I heard that there’s going to be some ambush or bombin’, I’d tell you in a minute, especially if innocent black people are about to get killed. All I’m askin’ you for is Brawly.”

Lakeland let his head loll to the side, to take me in from another angle.

“We could pay you...”

“You could...,” I said, and then I experienced a moment of dizziness. I was just then realizing how far I’d climbed into that lion’s den. I had taken steps, one after the other, without any real regard to my destination. I was speaking to a man who could have me killed, a man who was my enemy and my people’s enemy. But there was no turning away. “But I’m here for only one reason, to get Brawly home.”

“And what do I have to do with that?”

“I need some information.”

“What kind of information?”

“Addresses for Christina Montes and Jasper Bodan, president and secretary of the Urban Revolutionary Party.” I waited for a reply but none came. So I continued. “And some idea of what you have on Brawly.”

“I ask you again, Mr. Rawlins. What will you do for me?”

“You’ve read my files, man. And you know how deep I can get into a situation just seein’ me sit in front’a you. It wouldn’t hurt you to have me worried about some conflagration. I mean, if the man you got in there now isn’t doin’ the job so you need another source.”

“What do you know about our informants?” He tried to sound threatening but I could see the worry in those wormy lips.

“Just a guess, man. Only way you could keep tabs on one black man is through another one. That shit goes all the way back to the plantation.”

“All you want is Brawly Brown?” There was humor in Lakeland’s question. “And you don’t want to be paid?”

“That’s right.”

“How can I be sure that you won’t use what I give you against us?”

“You mean if I tell Tina where Xavier lives at?”

“Have you ever heard of Vietnam, Mr. Rawlins?”

“Yeah. That’s over in Asia, right? Where the French got their butts kicked.”

“There’s red-blooded American men over there right now fighting for your right to vote and pray and walk down the street without being molested. Those men are black as well as white. I was with them only six months ago. I don’t hate your people. I only hate the enemies of democracy. These radicals, these black revolutionaries are undermining the foundation of our democracy. I don’t care that they have a valid complaint. We all have problems. But regardless of those problems, we cannot threaten the land that our children and their children will inherit.

“Brown is just a misguided pawn. He doesn’t know anything. He follows whatever fool yells the loudest. People like this Xavier Bodan and his girlfriend Tina Montes, they have a whole army of young fools like him. If you can help us, we’ll help him.”

I was thinking that white America also had an army of young fools like Brawly, that all the young men in all the history of the world were like him. Young men fighting and dying for ideas they barely understood, for rights they never possessed, for beliefs based on lies.

“I was in the army,” I said. “I know what it’s like to fight a war. So believe me when I tell you that I know what you’re talking about.”

A buzzer went off and Lakeland picked up his phone. It flashed through my mind that the colonel was just talking to fill up the time, that he was having his people do some kind of check on me and now I was about to be arrested. I resisted the sudden urge to jump across the table and strangle the patriot.

“Yes? What?” he said. “No.” Then he looked up at me and asked, “What do you know about Henry Strong?”

The room turned cold, which meant that I had begun to sweat.

“Only what I heard that night at the meeting,” I answered honestly. “Never even heard of him before that night.”

“Did you know him?”

I thought of the pictures that Knorr had of me at the First Men’s storefront. Were there pictures of Strong and me at the late-night diner?

“Not really.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that I don’t know anything about Strong.”

Lakeland was suspicious of me. But he was suspicious of everybody right then.

“I have an emergency meeting to attend, Rawlins. Mona will give you the addresses you need.”

I stood up, a little surprised that I had managed to maintain my freedom.

“But don’t fuck with me,” Lakeland said.

That was a long time ago, 1964, when most white men in suits didn’t use the ghetto’s slang.

“Don’t fuck with me,” he repeated. “Or I will burn your ass down.”