A Little Yellow Dog

13

Idrove down to the district office of the Board of Ed.

Bertrand Stowe was short and gray-haired, with a nose that thrust straight forward. He had eyes that were absolutely sure about things and a voice that his mother must have pulled out of a well.

He stood up, as far as he went, and put out his hand. “Easy.”

The fact that he used my street name meant that Bertrand had known me before I became a respectable workingman.

We met in the fall of ’61. I’d just recently gotten out of the hospital. I’d been recovering from a wound inflicted upon me by an old friend. While convalescing I reflected on my life, wondering how it could be that I was in danger even from my friends. I had decided, upon coming home, to concentrate on getting honest work.

I was reading the want ads when a woman called me at home one afternoon.

“Easy? Easy Rawlins?”

“Yeah? Who’s this?”

“It’s Grace Phillips. You remember me? I’m John’s friend. We met down at his bar.”

“Oh,” I said, thinking, Oh no. “Yeah, yeah.”

I didn’t ask what she wanted.

“John told me to call you, Easy. He said that maybe you could help me.”

“Oh?”

“Uh-huh. Could I come over your house?”

“What you want, Grace?”

“Well, um, okay… you know Sallie Monroe?”

“Sure.” Sallie was the toughest gangster, next to Mouse, in Watts.

“Well, Sallie think he own me.”

“He your pimp?”

“It ain’t like that really, Easy. Sallie just give some parties, that’s all. If I wanna go an’ have some fun, well, that was up to me. But he never owned me.”

I knew the kind of parties she was talking about. Sallie, or some other gangster, would rent somebody’s apartment for the night and sell tickets for a hundred dollars or so to his customers. He’d bring booze and reefer and sometimes something stronger. He’d also bring the girls. He’d give them twenty dollars or so to come and then they’d work a tip out of the man they danced with.

“So,” I said. “If you don’t wanna go, don’t go.” I was ready to hang up. I would have hung up if it wasn’t John that had given her my number.

John was my friend, one of my best and oldest friends, solid and stronger than rock. I knew John from the old days back in the Fifth Ward, Houston, Texas. He was a hard man. He had to be in his line of work. He’d run a speakeasy down in Watts in the forties. Now he owned a restaurant-bar.

“You ain’t heard me yet,” Grace complained. “I don’t go no more. I only ever went in the first place ’cause I thought it was fun. But I got me a boyfriend now.”

“So?”

“Well.” She hesitated for a moment. “Well, I met my boyfriend at Sallie’s and now Sallie wanna mess it up.”

It took a long time to get the story out of her. She was embarrassed, and I didn’t blame her. The head custodian at Sojourner Truth before me was named Bill Bartlett. Bill had taken his boss, Bertrand Stowe, to one of Sallie’s parties, and Sallie had paid Grace to be extra nice to Bert. He told her not to ask for tips and to do everything that Bert wanted. She said that she didn’t mind because Bert was sweet. He didn’t really know what the party was all about. He thought that she just liked him.

“You know,” she said. “Bill Bartlett got Bertie all excited about goin’ out an’ havin’ a good time. He told’im that he should go out an’ see how his workin’ staff relaxed. Bertie didn’t think he was gonna meet no girl — not an’ like her too.”

The next day he sent roses and chocolate. That weekend he told his wife that he had to do work at Sojourner Truth with Mr. Bartlett but instead he spent long afternoons of love with Grace.

Soon he was helping her with her rent and had agreed to help her get into Los Angeles City College to get a degree in office management. If she passed her courses, he told her, he’d get her a job working in the central office with him.

He even talked about getting a divorce.

“But now Sallie wanna mess up all that,” she said.

“How?”

“He got pictures.”

“Of you two?”

I could almost hear her nodding over the phone.

“Where’d he get that?”

“He had somebody take’em on the sly at the party when we was, when we was in one’a the back bedrooms. The door didn’t have no catch on it. I didn’t even see’im take it. He showed’em t’me an’ said if I didn’t get Bertie to help’im he gonna make sure that he’s fired from his job.”

“Help him what?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Come on, Grace, I don’t have time t’be messin’ on the phone.”

“I don’t!” she whined. “It’s sumpin’ about the inventory for his district. They want to make Bill Bartlett his assistant an’ then say that things is used an’ things is broke. I don’t know.”

But she did know. So did I.

We met with John at his restaurant and discussed the matter. John liked Grace. I could see why. Her skin was blackberry and her lips had never lost a thing from her African forebears. She was the kind of small that every man wanted to help. I asked what she thought Stowe would do.

“He’s a good man, Easy. He’d either turn us in or kill hisself.”

“Then why don’t you go someplace else?” I asked. “Get outta L.A. an’ let Sallie dig his own hole.”

Grace pouted with those beautiful full lips.

“She don’t wanna run, Easy,” John said. “If that was all she wanted I could help her to do that.”

“How come you say that this man Stowe is so good an’ he’s goin’ to one’a Sallie’s reefer parties?” I asked.

“It wasn’t no reefer that night,” she said. “It was only liquor an’ Sallie made it seem like it was just a party. You know Bertie just ain’t got no experience with that kinda stuff.”

Grace wasn’t in love, I thought, but it was something. I couldn’t figure it out at that time. But I could see that I had some possibilities.

“Okay,” I said.

“Okay what?” asked John.

“I know what to do.”

“Really?” That was Grace.

“Yeah. I do. You go tell your boyfriend everything.”

“Everything?”

“Well… you don’t have to say that you was at a whole lotta Sallie’s parties. But just say what Sallie and Bill Bartlett wanna do. Tell’im about the pictures, tell’im all that, an’ then tell’im about me. Say that if he wanna get out of it he should give me a call.”

I had already been to the main personnel office for the Board of Education to see what I could see. Grace Phillips offered me some possibilities — that much was for sure.

Three days later I got the call. I had been taking a nap because I was still recuperating from the deep infection that settled in after my wound. Stowe told me that he’d talked to Grace, and then Bill Bartlett. He wanted to know what I could do. I made an appointment to meet him at his office. At first he balked, but I held firm.

I liked the man. He was straightforward and nervous. I guess I’m always a little gleeful when I’m in the seat of power with a white man.

“Grace says I should trust you, Mr. Rawlins,” he said. “What can you do for me?”

“It’s easy, Mr. Stowe. You just sit at your desk and wait till I come to you. I’ll have the photographs, whatever they are, and a promise that Sallie will leave you be.”

“How can you do that?”

“I cain’t give ya all my secrets now,” I said. I smiled and so did Stowe.

“And how much do you charge, Mr. Rawlins?”

“I want Bartlett’s job.”

“You what?”

From my jacket pocket I took out an application form that I had filled in for the job of supervising senior head custodian. I handed the sheet to Stowe.

“I’ve managed apartment buildings with the Mofass real estate agency for over fifteen years. And I know how to work with people. It says in the handbook I got with the application that someone can be hired at a higher position at the discretion of the area supervisor. I figure if I can make all this happen smoothly then you might wanna recommend me.”

Stowe was amazed at first and then he began to laugh. He laughed very hard and for a long time.

When he was through laughing we had a deal.

Sallie Monroe was a life-taker; a man who had a good mind and great strength of will and body — but nowhere legal to use them. He took up a lot of space, dominating almost every situation with his girth. Sallie hated white people because, on the whole, they didn’t respect his mind. He was a buck to them, suited only to tote and break under the weight of unrelenting labor.

Like most black men Sallie took out his anger on other Negroes. But he was always looking to have sway over a white man, or woman. Usually it was a woman. A prostitute or drug addict. White women or white trash men were an easy target for Sallie, but he didn’t indulge his hate much, because, first and foremost, he was a businessman — he never did a thing unless there was a profit to be made.

I knew all that going into Petey’s Rib Hut on the corner of Central and Eighty-third Place.

The Rib Hut had started out as a stand, a patio in front of a small enclosure where Petey and his wife smoked the ribs that they sold through the window. As the years went by Petey made enough money to surround the patio with a high wooden fence. After a few more years the fence turned into walls covered by an aluminum roof. The floor was the same painted cement and the furniture was still redwood benches but Petey had himself a restaurant all the same.

Sallie spent every afternoon sitting at the back of the Rib Hut. He liked sucking ribs and doing business at the same time.

Sitting with him was Charles Moody, his driver and bodyguard, and Foxx, a small dandy-looking man who was always whispering into Sallie’s ear.

Little Richard was shouting “Good Golly, Miss Molly” on the jukebox.

When Sallie saw me coming his eyes went over my shoulder. He was looking for Mouse, I knew. Mouse was my friend, and that meant something on streets from Galveston, Texas, to the San Francisco Bay.

“Easy.” Sallie grinned at me.

“Hey, Sal. S’appenin’?”

“They say I’ma be free if I just get offa my fat ass an’ walk down the streets of Selma wit’ my hands in my pockets.” Sallie slapped Charles on the back and laughed loud enough to drown out the song. His henchmen laughed, and looked really pleased, but I don’t think they got the joke.

I didn’t have to laugh because Sallie didn’t pay my bills.

“What you want, Easy Rawlins?”

“Talk,” I said.

“Then talk.”

“Just you’n me, Sal.”

Charles and Foxx both gave me a who-is-this-fool? look — but I ignored them. I had a strong reputation in the streets and Sallie knew it.

He also knew Mouse.

“Give us a minute,” he said to his men. After they moved away he whispered, “This better be good.”

I sat down and pulled my jacket closed, hoping that no one saw the weight of the .38 in my right pocket.

“I’m here for a friend’a mines,” I said.

Sallie gestured for Petey to bring over more food.

“Bertrand Stowe,” I continued.

That got Sallie’s attention. “Don’t get yo’ nose caught up in my business now, Easy.”

“I ain’t messin’ wit’ you, Sal,” I said. “Stowe called me when he heard that you was gonna mess wit’ him. He told me that he wasn’t gonna do what you say an’ that he was gonna go down to the police.”

“Say what?”

I gave a small but definite nod. “You got to understand, Sal. Bert’s from a straight white family. He cross at the crosswalk an’ leave a dime in the cigar box when the paper boy ain’t around.”

“He gone leave his liver under my back tire he call cop on me,” Sallie said. I knew he meant it. Sallie was a hard case. He didn’t play.

But I was serious that day too. I had shared the same sour air with men like Sal and his lackeys for my whole life. One day one of them was bound to kill me — unless I could make the break.

I could have gotten a job as a dishwasher or stone buster, I could have become a regular janitor for the city or state. But I was like Sallie when it came to the disrespect shown to blacks by white men. I needed a job with responsibility and, at least, some pride.

“That’s what I told him,” I said. “I told’im that you cain’t play wit’ Sallie. Sallie will fuck you up.”

The gangster eyed me. He didn’t know where I was coming from — yet.

“What you want, Easy Rawlins?” he asked again.

“Bert’s gonna go to the cops you push’im,” I said. “That’s a fact. He’s a straight arrow an’ only go one way. I know that you’ll go after him. All that is cut in stone. But it don’t have to be.”

Sallie stared at me.

I let my hand drift toward my pocket.

“So I got another choice,” I said.

“What’s that?” Sallie mouthed the words with no voice.

“I give you seventeen hundred and sixty-two dollars and you give me the snapshots — and the negatives.”

I was a shorebird crying at the sea.

Sallie gauged me for a moment. The record on the jukebox switched and “Stagger Lee” came on. It played down to the sax solo before Sallie spoke again.

“Tell me why I don’t reach over there an’ break yo’ neck, Easy Rawlins.”

He wanted me to say Mouse. He wanted me to run for cover under the protection of my friend. All I had to do was call out Raymond’s name and Sallie would have slapped me silly and then gone to have a sit-down with Mouse.

Maybe I would have been smarter to say his name.

But not that day.

No.

“Because if you reach at me,” I said, dead serious, “I got a little something right here in my pocket for you. I got it right here.”

I’ve run across quite a few white men who have bragged to me about how they worked their way through college; about how they worked hard to get where they’re at. Shit. I’d like to see any one of them working like I did with Sallie that day. I had my hand on the trigger and my eye in his. There was going to be blood or money on the table before long because neither one of us was walking away until the issue was settled.

If it had been Mouse sitting across from me I would have shot without any words. If it had been Mouse I wouldn’t have even made it into the room. Mouse would have seen trouble coming and shot me for luck.

But Sallie wasn’t on Mouse’s level. He was a bully, a pimp; an angry man — but not a courageous one.

“Twenty-five hundred dollars,” he said.

I stuck to my number because it was all the money I could get. I decided that I would pay for Mr. Stowe’s freedom and he would pay me back with a job.

The trade happened the next morning.

I went alone to Petey’s to meet with Sallie and his thugs. I was a fool, I know, not to have brought Raymond with me. But it was my own move. It was a chance at a new life and I was willing to gamble everything for that chance.

Mouse was in the room anyway. Sallie had to be thinking that he wanted me dead. Seventeen hundred dollars was nothing compared to what he could steal out of the Board of Education warehouses. But if he killed me it was only a matter of time before Mouse got to him.

I was playing a card that was still in the deck.

Sallie folded.

He gave me the photograph and negative. It was a blurred image of Grace half-naked, sneering happily down on Bertrand — who was on his knees.

I guess we all have to submit sometimes.

I told myself that that was the last favor in a lifetime of doing favors. From that day on I planned to work for my living; to put in my eight hours and take home my paycheck.

Stowe demanded Bill Bartlett’s resignation, got it, and then hired me. There was a lot of red tape but we got through it. Bertrand and I became good friends. I was his confidant.

He’d broken up with Grace after the whole thing was over. But almost every week he’d call me in, or come to my office, and talk about her. He’d tell me about her calling him at work and at home. I knew she did because she called me too, trying to find out how to get to him.

Finally, more than a year later, he broke down and went back to her after she’d gotten pregnant by some other man. That’s the way Bert was, he wanted to take care of somebody — Grace needed a whole lot of care.

“Bertrand.” I took his hand and shook it.

“Sit down, sit down,” he told me. “How’s it going?” Bertrand wore thick glasses that magnified his already intense eyes. His black-and-gray mustache stuck out like a bristle brush.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “I guess it could be better.”

“The police were here,” he said.

“Oh?”

“They told me that you were suspected for crimes at the Seventy-seventh Street station.” Stowe angled his lenses at me.

“I see,” I said. Each passing minute brought me closer to the tight-lipped attitude of my earlier years in the street.

“I never knew that you were suspected of murder.” Stowe looked at me for some kind of reply.

He wanted a declaration.

“Is that what they said?” All he got was another question.

“Is that all you have to say?” asked my boss.

“You didn’t ask me about what my record might be when you had problems with Sallie Monroe and Billy B. All you cared about then was your wife — and your girlfriend too.”

“Is that a threat, Easy?” Stowe was turning whiter, in more ways than one.

“You the one threatenin’, Bert,” I said. “The cops come in here an’ scare you an’ you ready to give me up. You already got your story all set about how you didn’t know anything.”

Bert took off his glasses and wiped them clean. He looked up at me with an indecipherable expression.

“Did you have anything to do with that man getting killed?” he asked.

“What do you think?” I asked back.

“I don’t know what to think. The police say that you’ve been involved in this kind of thing before.”

“And you believe that?”

Bertrand Stowe was confused. He didn’t see anything wrong with asking a man if he was implicated in murder. He didn’t see anything wrong in believing a stranger in uniform over a friend. It wasn’t a rude question — for him to ask.

“Don’t you understand me, Easy?”

“I understand you. It’s you who don’t get me.”

Bert sat down and I did too. He put his glasses back on. I crossed my right leg over my left.

“What do you want?” he asked me at last.

“You called me, Mr. Stowe. You wanted me to come here.”

“I told you,” he said. “The police called. They said that you were a suspect in the killing. They said that you knew something about the people involved and that you were involved in similar crimes in the past.”

“They said all that?”

“Yes they did.”

“And what did you say?”

“I didn’t say anything,” Bertrand said. “What was I supposed to say?”

“You could have said that you knew me, that I wasn’t the kinda man who went around killin’ folks. You could have said that I was an excellent worker who came in on time every day and who bent over backwards to make sure that my plant worked smoothly for the kids and teachers. You could have said that I got a hard principal but that, to your knowledge, I never lost my temper or spoke a word in anger.” I sat up straight in my chair. “You could have said I was a good friend to you who never asked you for nuthin’ without givin’ you something in return. It wouldn’t have cost you a dime to tell that man that you backed me up. Not a goddam dime.”

Bertrand Stowe had his strong stubby fingers splayed out in front of him on the desk.

“What do you want?” he asked me.

“Just don’t count me out unless I’m on the canvas. That’s all I ask you for. That, and I might be out of work a couple’a days. You could tell Newgate that you needed me for somethin’. Give him a call and tell him that I’ll be needed for a few days at the area office. Tell him that I’ll check in at the school but I’ll be out a lot too.”

Stowe gazed at me like some dumb animal mesmerized by a snake. He nodded after a while and took off his glasses — then put them back on again.

He’d do what I asked him to.

I’d do what I had to.