Bad Boy Brawly Brown

— 37 —

By the time I got home the children had eaten and gone to bed. Bonnie was curled up on the sofa, reading a French novel in tight pants and a blue velvet shirt that was buttoned only halfway up the front.

When I walked in she came to me and kissed me. She didn’t ask why I was late or where I had been. She knew. She didn’t need me to apologize for being me. I felt, at that moment, that Bonnie had known me for my whole life.

Dinner was waiting on the stove. Baked chicken and rice under a peach gravy with brussels sprouts on the side. We ate and talked about her travels in Africa and Europe with Air France. She was a black stewardess working in three languages in a country I once considered living in because it seemed so much better than America.

“It’s better in some ways,” Bonnie once said when I suggested that we live together in Paris. “But it’s not without prejudice.”

“Do they hang colored people in the countryside?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “But that’s because in France they aren’t afraid of blacks, just certain that we are from a lesser culture. We are interesting, but in the end just primitives. At least here in America the white people I’ve met are afraid of Negroes.”

“And that’s better?” I asked.

“I believe so,” she said. It was a turn of a phrase that she’d learned along the way. Bonnie picked up things from the way people spoke and then used them in her own manner. “If you’re afraid of someone, then in some way you are forced to think of them as equals. It is not a child but a man you face.”

She was a deep soul and I was lucky for the time I had to spend with her.

That night we didn’t make love but just held each other. I listened to her breathing until it turned deep and I knew she was asleep. I drifted on behind her, murder just a distant thunder in my mind.

I had twenty-seven sick days accrued at that time and a pretty good union, so I called in sick the next morning and drove off to see John at his construction site.

He had on white overalls and old alligator shoes, one of which had worn through over the little toe. He wore a tool belt and a wristwatch with a thick gold band, and he was hammering away at a nail in an awkward, one-handed fashion.

“Hey, John,” I said.

“Easy.”

“I hope you using enough nails on that sucker,” I said.

“I done had to buy so many nails that I do believe these here houses could be called armored homes.”

We both laughed and clasped hands.

I suppose I was sensitive around that time. John and I rarely shook hands. We were real friends with no need to express our peaceful intentions. But that day there was an obstacle, maybe more than one, between us. We held on to each other to make sure that we didn’t get separated.

“I heard that you were out by my house yesterday,” he said.

“I needed to get the truth from her, John. You know I couldn’t do that with you in the room.”

“That truth gonna help you find Brawly?” There was an angry edge in his tone.

“Findin’ him ain’t gonna be nearly as hard as savin’ him.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Alva was right,” I said. “Brawly’s in sumpin’ bad.”

“It’s them First Men,” John said.

“Some of ’em,” I agreed. “But it’s more than that, too.”

“What more?”

“I’m not sure yet,” I said. “But did you know that Henry Strong, one of the mentors to the First Men, used to come around here and see Brawly?”

“No.”

“Did you know that Aldridge Brown used to come around to see his son, too? They had lunch together more than once.”

“I don’t believe it. Brawly hated Aldridge.”

“Did he tell you that?”

“Alva did,” John said. “He’s her son. She should know.”

“Your mother’s still alive, ain’t she?” I asked.

“You know she is.”

“You tell her everything you feel? You always tell her the truth? I mean, Brawly knows how his mother feels about Aldridge. Why would he tell her if they squared up and started talkin’ again?”

“Maybe that’s true,” he said. “But even if it is, how’d you find out?”

“I came out here one day when you were gone and talked to Chapman and Mercury. They told me because I asked.”

“And here they supposed to be my men.”

“They wouldn’ta said anything if I didn’t ask, John. And you know we go back. Me an’ Mouse pulled their fat outta the fire when they robbed those dockworkers.”

“Okay,” John said. “So Strong and Brawly’s father came out here. So what?”

“So what if Brawly killed Aldridge? Strong, too? I caught a glimpse of the man who shot him. It could’a been Brawly, I don’t know.”

“So? What you sayin’?”

“If Brawly killed them people, he’s way past a good talkin’-to and sowin’ his wild oats. What you want me to do if he’s a double murderer?”

John looked at me, taking long, slow breaths. I had counted six exhalations when he asked, “How was Strong killed?”

“Ambushed, chased down like a dog, and then shot in the back of his head.”

John did not like that.

“Could you just walk away?” he asked.

“I’m in it already, John. The police know I’m in it. They are, too.”

“I knew I shouldn’ta called you, Easy. I didn’t want to, but Alva needed to feel like she was doin’ somethin’. She had lost him for so many years and there she was, losin’ him again.” John bit his lip and shook his head slowly. “She asked me to bring you in, so what could I say?”

“I don’t know.”

“Find out, Easy. Find out what happened.”

“And if she lose the boy?”

“She still got me,” he said.

Mouse had been my closest friend since I was a child, but I never respected any man as much as I did John. He was taciturn with a mean temper, but in the end you could always count on him to do what was right.

“Mercury and Chapman out around here someplace?” I asked.

“Chapman is,” John said. “Mercury quit.”

The fever I’d been feeling for days broke at that moment. Half the puzzle fell into place and I wondered, as one always does in hindsight, why hadn’t I seen it before.

Chapman was applying a rough coat of plaster to a three-beamed wall when John and I walked in.

“John,” Chapman said. “Mr. Rawlins.”

He had a splotch of plaster on the side of his broad nose and plaster in his hair. Chapman had straightened hair that he combed down the back of his neck. With his light skin, heavy features, and straight hair, strangers often had trouble guessing his racial background.

John moved to stand against the wall on the other side of Chapman. He noticed that we had cut off his avenue of escape.

“I hear that Mercury quit,” I said.

“Yeah,” Chapman said. “Yeah, he sure did. Been threatenin’ to move down to Texas for so long that I guess he felt he had to do sumpin’ about it.”

“He left town?”

“That’s what he told me he was doin’.”

“But you his best friend,” John said. “Best friend should know for sure about his partner.”

“Have you called his house?” I added.

“He said he was goin’ to Texas, to look for work. Bought me a drink to say he was leavin’ the next day. Why I’ma call him if he supposed to be gone?”

“Supposed to be,” I said. “That mean you don’t believe him?”

“What is this? Some kinda police interrogation?”

“I was out at Mercury’s house the other day,” I said.

“So?”

“You know, that’s a nice house he got.”

“So?”

“Where do you live, Kenneth?” I asked the ex-burglar.

“Over on One-sixteen. The LaMarr Towers.”

“That’s projects,” I said in mock surprise.

“So what?”

“So how come you in the projects and Mercury got a house over in the nice part’a the slum?”

“He got some money from an uncle that died back in Arkansas.”

“Did you know his uncle?” John asked.

“Yeah. I went with him to the funeral.”

“Was he rich?” I asked.

“Rich enough to leave Mercury ten thousand dollars, I guess.”

“He bought the house for cash?” I asked.

“That’s what he said,” Chapman answered. I could see that an old suspicion was rekindled in his mind.

“I hear that they got extra police patrols because of thefts out around the sites,” I said.

“So what?”

“So maybe you two didn’t go as straight as you said you did.”

“You listen to me, Easy Rawlins,” Chapman lectured. “I put up my burglary tools right after you and Mr. Alexander got them men off’a us. I even took the five hundred you gave me and donated to my mother’s church. I already told you where Mercury said he got his money. That’s all I know.”

“When I was out to his place I asked him about you and Henry Strong and Aldridge Brown,” I said.

“Asked what?”

“Didn’t you use to hang out with Brawly and them?”

“We had drinks once or twice, but it was Mercury hung out with them. Why? What’d he say?”

“That you were thick as thieves with all three,” I said. “That they’d come and pick you up after work and you’d go off together.”

“That was him. Not me. No. I don’t like Aldridge, ’cause he’s a braggart. And Strong made you feel like he was keepin’ secrets. I don’t like a man like that. That’s why I never hung out with you, Easy.”

“How’s that?”

“Nobody ever know what you thinkin’,” Chapman said. “That day we went out to see them union men, we didn’t know that you was gonna bring Mouse along. And then when you made them pay us...I ain’t complainin’ about the help, but I knew right then you was too deep for me.”

“And you felt the same about Strong?” I asked.

“That’s right.”

“Why?”

“He had a way of gettin’ you to talk about stuff. Merc and me don’t like to brag that much about the old days, but the first night we saw Strong, Mercury started in on how when we were teenagers we’d break into candy stores. Strong wheedled it outta him. I was always too busy for drinks after I seen that.”

I glanced at Chapman’s plastering job. It was excellent. He used a circular motion of his knife to make every application neat and perfect. The swirls were all of equal size and depth. When he came back to level the wall, it would be just right.

“Blesta told me that you and Merc would go off and play snooker after work a few times a week,” I said.

“Used to,” Chapman said. “Used to, but we ain’t played in months.”

“Where you think he been goin’ lately?” I asked.

“Gettin’ his hambone greased,” Chapman said. He looked me in the face.

“Who wit’?”

“He never said a word about it,” Chapman replied. “I just knew by the way he was actin’ that he was gettin’ it on with some girl.”

Chapman looked me in the eye for a second and then he looked down.

“That all you got, Easy?” John asked me.

“Yeah.”

“Then I got a question,” the bartender said to Kenneth Chapman. “Why didn’t you tell me when Brawly’s father come around here?”

“Brawly’s a man, John,” Chapman replied. “I cain’t be workin’ with him and treatin’ him like a child, too.”

“Do you think Merc left town?” I asked Chapman.

“I don’t know.”

“You still don’t wanna help me after what I told you?”

“What you said is just talk, Easy. And talk is cheap.”

John walked me down to my car after our chat with Chapman.

“What you think about Mercury?” he asked me.

“Once a thief...,” I said.

“What’s that got to do with that group Brawly’s messed up with?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe nothing.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Maybe I been lookin’ at this whole thing wrong. Maybe you were right from the beginning. Maybe Brawly’s tied up with a bunch’a thugs and thieves.”

“What are they gonna steal?”

“If Mercury’s in it, it’s likely to be a payroll. There any big ones out around here?”

“Manelli,” John said. “They’re big and they pay once a month — in cash.”

“Oh yeah,” I said. “That’s the top of the list. You know when the next payday is?”

John just shook his head and scowled.