Bad Boy Brawly Brown

— 17 —

Anton Breland was in the directory. I looked him up in a phone booth at the back of a Thrifty’s Drug Store. It was about two in the afternoon on a Monday. There could be no better evidence that I was losing my grip on the straight and narrow. As I sat there looking at the name in the white pages, I tried to convince myself that I had done my duty by John and it was time to go back to work. There was no reason for me to follow revolutionaries and murderers. Bonnie would be home in thirty-six hours. My life could be sweet once again.

But then I realized that in the past few days my waking hours had not been tinged with remorse about the death of my friend. Only my dreams revealed these feelings. As long as I moved forward trying to unravel the trail of Brawly Brown, I was in a kind of safety zone where guilt couldn’t touch me.

I lit up a cigarette and tore out the page.

Anton lived on Shenandoah, a small tributary off of Slauson, in a house that looked like a brick bunker. The lawn was neat but dead. The four-inch-high grass was straw colored. I imagined that Anton first lost interest in the lawn about fourteen or fifteen months before, but it continued to grow because it was the middle of the rainy season. With the coming of summer, the lawn died, leaving what looked like a pygmy wheat field.

The driveway was empty and there was no green Caddy to be seen anywhere, so I decided to wait in my car awhile.

The house in that field of dead grass looked to me like many abandoned structures I had come across on the outskirts of Berlin at the end of the war. Not important enough to bomb or burn but too dangerous to live in.

I lit up another cigarette and waited.

It was winter in Los Angeles, the only time of year that the smog let up. Winds came in from the desert and cleared the skies. That same wind made the clouds a panorama of ever changing sculptures suspended in a brilliant blue background. One moment there’d be a one-eyed lion, prowling out toward the mountains, then it would transform into a multi-armed anteater rearing up on its hind legs to display clawed limbs.

Those drifting giants made me smile. I was too small for them to notice, just a black dot beneath their domain. It gave me the illusion of safety.

When I saw Anton/Conrad’s green Cadillac drive up and him get out so nonchalantly, I realized that all safety is an illusion.

Conrad walked into the yard as if he were minor royalty living as well as could be expected among the poor. While he strolled toward his front door I considered my next move. Conrad had a gun and was reckless with it. He made decisions without regard for the security of his friends, bystanders, or even himself. I couldn’t just ring the bell; he might shoot me through the door. On the other hand, walking up to him also caused problems. He was fool enough to pull out a gun in broad daylight. I might have been able to disarm him, but then his neighbors might see our struggle and intervene.

While I was wondering what my next move should be, a white man emerged from a brand-new Ford parked halfway up the block. I had noted the car but not the man in it. He was obviously waiting for Conrad, too. The man wore a comic-book green suit and moved stealthily at first and then very quickly.

Conrad had just opened his door when he sensed or maybe heard the white man moving behind him. Before he could turn around fully, the white man hit Conrad in the temple and the arrogant young man fell into his house. The door closed quickly behind them, and I was left to consider the new situation.

My first thought was to drive down to the corner, call the police from some phone booth, and drive away. Even in the days when I was a fixture of the shadier side of Watts, I knew better than to get involved with the business of the streets.

And this was definitely street business. The white man in the green suit wasn’t a cop or a revolutionary, nor was he a member of the Klan or a jealous husband. He was there to perform a sort of criminal bookkeeping that used rope instead of ledger paper and brass knuckles instead of an adding machine.

I should have left but I had another kind of business at hand. There was my friend John and his need. There was the fever burning like a funeral pyre over Mouse’s death in my mind.

I waited for fifteen seconds or so and then went to the house next door to Anton’s. I pushed the buzzer but no one answered. I knocked loudly, just in case.

This house was a ranch-style wooden building. Freshly painted with a beautiful and delicate lawn surrounding it. The backyard had a large vegetable plot but most of the plants were dead. Only one hardy tomato bush still held about half of its green leaves — one medium-sized deep red fruit hanging heavily from an upper branch. There was a nervous hunger gnawing at my gut, so I plucked the tomato. California supermarkets never had tomatoes that tasted so sweet. They were all grown in hothouses without the benefit of nature.

While still swallowing the sweet flesh, I picked up a terra-cotta pot from the back porch of the ranch house and leapt over the waist-high wire fence that separated Conrad’s lot. I went silently to his back door and pressed my ear against it.

“Please!” a man shouted. “I’ma have it by Sunday. By Sunday mornin’, I swear.”

There was a thud of a blow being delivered, then a groan, and then the heavier thud of a body falling to the floor.

“Mr. London don’t wanna hear your nigger jive, Anton,” another voice said.

Conrad groaned again, making me suspect that he’d received a kick in the ribs.

“Sunday, man. Sunday, I swear,” Conrad whined. “It’s all set up.”

Another thud. Another groan.

“I know you gonna pay, nigger,” the white man said. “I know because after I burn your ass, you won’t ever forget to pay anybody ever again.”

Maybe, if the thug stuck to his regular job, that is, a sound beating for a late payment, I might have stood by until he was through. My best bet was to wait for him to soften Anton up. And then, when he’d gone, I could come in and ask a few questions about Brawly. But anything having to do with ropes or fire when it comes to black-white relations was bound to set my teeth on edge.

Conrad’s back porch was just a door and two concrete steps. I smashed the pot on the stairs and then plastered my back against the bricks. The first effect was complete silence, then fast steps coming toward the door. When he rushed out I caught him on the side of the jaw with a short right that had all of the evil intentions of Archie Moore. I followed with a left and then two more right hooks. The final punch missed because the white man in the ridiculous suit was already on the ground. His eyes were open but I doubt if they saw very much.

I lifted him by his garish lapels and let go long enough to connect with a powerful right hand. I kicked him twice when he was down and out. I didn’t kick him out of revenge or rage, at least mostly those weren’t the reasons. This was a dangerous man who knew how to inflict pain and, probably, death. The impact of those body blows would slow him up even if he regained consciousness.

I removed the pistol from his belt, dragged him inside the house, and closed the door.

Conrad had risen, propped up on his left hand. There was a pistol clutched precariously in the fingers of his right. I plucked it free and put it in my pocket to go along with the gangster’s piece.

Feeling the weight of three pistols in my pocket made me smile. It reminded me of a well-spent and wasted youth in Houston. Many a night I carried my friend’s weapons when they were likely to be arrested or searched.

Various odors wafted through the air. A garbage pail that should have been emptied three days before, a toilet that should have been flushed that morning.

Conrad writhed on the floor, wrestling with gravity and balance; it was a losing battle. The gangster was dead to the world, but breathing.

I knelt down and pinched Conrad very hard on the cheek. He came to full awareness with a painful start.

“What?”

“You might be dead now,” I said. “If it wasn’t for me.”

“What?”

“Your boyfriend over there.”

Conrad turned his head to catch a glimpse of his attacker on the floor next to him, then he toppled over.

“Shit,” he said.

In the corner was a door that led to the fragrant toilet. I searched the unconscious gangster for any more weapons and then dragged him into the bathroom and closed the door after him. The window in the toilet was about the size of a cow’s head, too small for a full-grown man to crawl out of, so I wedged a metal-framed chair against the doorknob, assuring myself that we wouldn’t be interrupted.

Conrad had pulled himself up so that his back was against the wall. We were in a dark room that had once been a kitchen. Dark because there was only one small window and two forty-watt bulbs for light, and once because the stove was dismantled, the refrigerator was open and unplugged, and all the shelf space and the sink were piled with books and magazines, cans of paint, and various tools. The unfinished wooden table had one metal chair (which I’d used to imprison the thug), a typewriter, and various sheets of paper.

Conrad glared at me.

“I know you,” he said.

“I guess that means he didn’t knock the sense outta your head.”

“What you doin’ here?” he asked. “I mean, how’d you find me?”

“What’s happening Saturday?” I asked him.

Conrad’s attempt at looking innocent was enough to make me want to laugh.

“You know,” I said. “You told that man beatin’ on you that you could pay your debt on Sunday after you did something on Saturday.”

“I... I... I was just talkin’, brother. Tryin’ to save my ass from gettin’ kicked.” Conrad looked away from me, trying to hide the lie in his eyes.

“Oh,” I said. “I thought it had to do with those stolen guns you and Brawly took over to BobbiAnne’s house.”

Making no attempt to rise, Conrad looked up into my eyes. He did not blink.

“You and Xavier plannin’ some kinda war?” I asked, just to keep up the pretense of a conversation.

“No. No. I’m gonna move them guns is all. Move ’em and then split the money with Bad Boy. On Saturday.”

On a whim I asked, “What you got to tell me about Aldridge Brown?”

Again his eyes darted away.

“Did you kill him, or did Brawly?” I asked.

“I don’t know what the fuck you talkin’ about, man. I never heard’a no Alvin Brown.”

“Where’s Brawly?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Does he have a room somewhere?”

“I only see him at the meetins,” he said.

“You collect them guns at the meetins?” I asked.

“I don’t have to talk to you,” he said angrily. He was working himself up, getting ready to do something.

“The cops think that you’re about to blow up City Hall, Anton.”

“How you know?” he asked. “You a cop?”

I pulled out the gangster’s gun. It was a long-nosed .22, a killer’s caliber. I pulled back the hammer and Conrad’s handsome Caucasian features blanched.

“Get up,” I said, and he hopped to it.

“Take off your shoes and socks.”

He obeyed that command, too.

“Turn out your pockets,” I said. “And put everything on the table.”

By this time there was the sound of movement coming from the toilet. Conrad glanced at the door fearfully.

“Okay, let’s go,” I said.

“Go where?”

“Out to my car.”

We left the house and walked to my car. I stayed close to Conrad, with the gun always touching his side. I made him get in on the driver’s side and scoot over to the passenger’s seat.

“This gun don’t make no more noise than a cap pistol,” I told him, pressing the muzzle firmly into his side. “But it will tear your guts up.”

As we drove I asked him the same questions. He told me again that he and Brawly were in the gun business, that they were going to unload the weapons on Saturday so that he could pay his gambling debt to Angel London, a bookmaker from Redondo Beach.

I had a knotty problem. There was a semiconscious killer wedged into Conrad’s bathroom. The killer now hated me more than he did Conrad. I couldn’t let him see me or question Conrad about my identity. On the other hand, if I left Conrad in his house, he might have shot the gangster through the door or window. One way I’d be the target of a killer, and the other I’d be an accessory to murder.

So I decided to take Conrad on a drive up into Griffith Park. He was sweating and, I’m sure, expecting to be killed. So he breathed a sigh of relief when I kicked him out way up on a hillside. He didn’t even complain about being let out with no wallet and no shoes.

“Next time maybe you’ll give me a ride back to my car when I ask for it,” I said before driving off.

I doubted that Conrad would go back home, and I was sure that the gangster was already on the street looking for my name.