Bad Boy Brawly Brown

— 33 —

On my way to Laurel Canyon I considered the money that was now under the carpet in my trunk. It was probably from the white men who also paid Strong’s rent in cash. It smelled like a police payoff to me. I mean, it might have been money that Strong intended to give Xavier to fund his brave new world — but I doubted it.

I had already refused money from the police, but this was different. They hadn’t given me this money. They’d lost it betting on a rat. I decided that I’d wait and see if any of Stone’s heirs could be found. If they couldn’t, then I’d have Feather’s college tuition in a foil-lined paint can at the back of my garage.

Mofass and Jewelle lived on an unpaved path that cut away from a tributary off the main canyon road. The little artery probably had a name, but I never knew it. Jewelle liked to keep a low profile because even though she was hardly out of childhood, she had made dangerous enemies. There were members of her own family who hated her for freeing her elder boyfriend, Mofass, from their control.

Jewelle had taken Mofass’s fairly meager real estate investments and turned them into something resembling an empire. Through Mofass’s real estate company she controlled and managed property all over Watts, including two small six-family dwellings that I owned. There was a group of white businessmen, the Fairlane Syndicate, who worked with Jewelle because she had a knack for finding just the right deal and knew how to exert leverage to make that deal come through.

She was no more than twenty but she had proved to me that the color line was a minor impediment in America if you knew how to deal with the credit line. I had played with the idea of trying to become a real estate mogul. But once I saw Jewelle in action, I knew that I was not equipped to compete.

Mofass answered the door.

“Mr. Rawlins,” he said in that deep gravelly voice. Then he coughed for half a minute, bent over almost in half with his perpetual housecoat hanging open, revealing a big brown belly and faded blue boxer shorts. When he regained his composure he ushered me into the living room, across the vast tiled floor to a small table they had against a window that ran the full length of the wall. Seated at that table, we had a bird’s-eye view of the Los Angeles basin.

“How’s it goin’, William?” I asked my onetime apartment manager.

“Every twelve weeks the doctor tell me that the emphysema’s gonna get me in three months,” Mofass replied. His voice sounded like the old baritone, only with a towel shoved down his throat. “Then, when the time’s up JJ brang me back down to him and he looks at me and says, ‘You got twelve weeks.’ JJ say, do I wanna go to a different doctor but I tell her, hell no. I could live another thirty years with a doctor like this one here.”

I laughed and Mofass choked. I hadn’t seen him outside of that house or in real clothes in over a year. He was like one of those tough old alligators that could dive to the bottom of a river and not surface for weeks. You think, He must have gone by now, but still you take the long way down to the bridge rather than set foot in the water.

“Mr. Rawlins,” a girl’s voice called.

Jewelle still dressed in one-piece, square-cut dresses. This one was light brown, about her color, and loose. She had pigtails with red ribbons at the end. But I also noticed that she had been wearing lipstick within the last few hours. Her lips seemed fuller and there was something in her eyes that denied her childlike appearance.

“Jewelle,” I said. I stood up and kissed her cheek.

“Watch it now,” Mofass growled. “That’s my baby there.”

“It was just on the cheek, Uncle Willy,” she said with a giggle. “Can I get you somethin’ to drink?”

I didn’t need anything. Neither did Mofass.

We all sat down around the small table and looked out over the smog-choked city.

“So what you need, Mr. Rawlins?” Mofass asked.

Jewelle did everything. She cooked and cleaned, made sure that the maintenance was kept up on the house and car. She ran the business and kept the bank accounts. All Mofass did was sleep and eat and bask in the warmth of that young girl’s blind love.

That was the way things really were with them. But in Mofass’s mind things were different. In his mind he was the chief of the tepee, Jewelle did his bidding, and without him she’d have been lost. She never contradicted his account. Jewelle fell in love with Mofass when she was fifteen and he would be her god for the rest of her life.

“I needed to know some things about those tract homes you’re building down with John,” I said.

“What for?” he asked with all the solemnity of a judge.

“Well.” I hesitated for effect. “You see John’s girlfriend, Alva, has got a son, Brawly Brown, who’s in trouble. He was workin’ for John down there but stormed off in a huff — some kinda tiff with his mother, you know.”

“Kids today don’t have no kinda idea how hard life is,” Mofass said. “I see ’em on the TV shimmyin’ and shakin’ and losin’ they minds. They need to get a job and stay on it.”

“We had some trouble at one of the sites, Mr. Rawlins,” Jewelle said. “But it was a couple’a blocks over from John’s lots.”

“Are you interruptin’ me, JJ?” Mofass scolded.

“Sorry,” she said.

“That’s what I’m here for,” I said to Mofass. “I was wondering if the trouble down the street could have had anything to do with Brawly.”

“I see,” Mofass, the king of the blind, said. “That’s something to think about. You know, um, I oversee the whole operations, not every little detail. I’m tryin’ to train JJ here so that one day she can run the whole kabob. But she still just in trainin’.”

“Do you think she would know anything?” I asked the paper lion.

“Can you help Mr. Rawlins, JJ?” he asked.

“I think I can,” she said with real deference in her voice. And then to me, “Robert Condan and his cousin Renee the ones buildin’ over where the trouble was. They got a record store down on Adams. They had a shootin’ two days ago at about four or five in the morning. The police came over and shut us down for the day. But it wasn’t nuthin’. You know, just some thieves or drug addicts usin’ the place as a hideout for the night.”

“But the man killed wasn’t a thief,” I said. “He was a political organizer.”

“I know that’s what they say in the paper, but the captain I talked to told me different.”

“What captain was that?” I asked.

“How many police captains you know, Mr. Rawlins?” Jewelle said with a challenging grin.

“More than I would like to admit,” I said. “For instance, I’d bet that the cop you talked to was Captain Lorne.”

“Wow,” she said. “Yeah. It was him. Tall with silver hair?”

“I’ve never seen him,” I said. “But his name came up on the sunny side of the storm.”

“Uh-huh,” she said, not really understanding. “That’s all I know.”

There was a loud snort right then. We both turned to see that Mofass had fallen asleep. His head had slumped down to his chest and he was drooling slightly. JJ jumped up and ran from the room. Mofass snored three more times and she was back with a blanket and a towel to wipe his face. Touching him lightly on the sides of his head, she got him to lie back in the chair. She covered him up to his chin, smiled, and kissed his forehead.

I knew many people who thought that a love affair between a child like her and a man almost sixty was a disgrace. I would have agreed if I hadn’t known them. But as gruff and overbearing as Mofass was, I knew that he loved that girl with all his heart. And JJ needed a man to go through the motions of being the one in charge.

“What about the police that patrol the area?” I asked when she was through with her ministrations.

“You mean the cruiser cops?”

“Uh-huh.”

“They’re there mainly for the Manelli family.”

“Who’s that?”

“It’s the big contractor. They got seventeen different building sites around Compton. They buildin’ sixty-two blocks over the next three years, over six hundred employees.”

“And they got the police workin’ for them?”

“Yeah,” JJ said. “The Manellis think that people been stealin’ from ’em. So they got the police questioning everybody not on their payroll.”

“I know that,” I said. “They braced me a few days ago.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. You know, they usually leave us alone.”

“Why’s that?”

“A couple’a times when Manelli had to push some overtime to finish their model homes, John and his team lent a hand. John did it ’cause his own budget was tight and he might’a had to lay off Mercury and Chapman. So instead, he let Manelli pay their salary for a couple’a weeks.”

“John always knew how to make ends meet,” I said. And then, “Well, I better be goin’.”

When I stood up, Mofass opened his eyes. I got the feeling that he’d been pretending to be asleep.

“You got what you need, Mr. Rawlins?” he asked.

“You better believe it, William. That JJ’s gonna be a terror one day.”

“One day,” he said. “You can let yourself out. You know I get tired in the afternoons.”

JJ walked me to the door.

“Is there gonna be any problem out at the sites, Mr. Rawlins?” she asked when I reached out to shake her hand.

“I don’t think so, honey. But if there is, I will call you, okay?”

“JJ!” Mofass called from across the big room.

“Comin’, Uncle Willy,” the woman pretending to be a child said.