Bad Boy Brawly Brown

— 43 —

Jesus was sitting on the front porch waiting for me when I got home. He’d already set up a place in the living room for me to sit while he stood and read.

“You could sit down, Juice,” I said. “Forty-five minutes is a long time and I want you concentrating on the words, not your feet.”

Jesus grinned. I had missed that grin. It was a brief thing, like sighting a rare scarlet bird in the deep woods. A flit of the wing and it was gone again.

I had gotten a large hardcover copy of Moby-Dick from the Robertson library for our first reading. While Feather and Bonnie puttered and played in the kitchen, Jesus read to me about Ishmael and his ill-fated voyage.

The reading was difficult. For many of the words he had to stop and use the Webster’s Dictionary we kept under the coffee table. But when it was over I was surprised at Jesus’s understanding of the story and its implications. We were twelve pages into his education and already we were a success.

Jackson called a few minutes after dinner. Jesus and Feather were working on the dishes while Bonnie hovered over them, making sure they didn’t miss any spots.

“How’s it goin’, Easy?” he asked. Before I could answer he said, “I been workin’ my butt off earnin’ that two-fifty.”

“All I need to know is about the payroll.”

“Manelli pays his men once a month. It’s always a Saturday payroll,” Jackson said. He paused and then added, “Except for this week.”

“What’s that mean?”

“I went in to the assistant secretary, in the office bungalow, and made friends. She said that she was studyin’ for her bookkeeper’s two-year degree and I showed her how she could make a couple’a shortcuts in a year-end tax application with deductions.”

I wasn’t surprised that Jackson had studied accounting. Since he was both brilliant and a thief, it stood to reason that he’d study stealing from the inside out.

“After I was so helpful,” Jackson continued, “I asked her if I could get a partial paycheck tomorrow because my rent was due and the landlord needed at least a li’l taste. She told me that maybe she could process it for Monday because they had heard that tomorrow’s payday was going to have to be put off until Monday. She asked me not to tell nobody ’cause it was a secret. She was upset because she knew the men needed the money, especially since they had to balance everything on a once-a-month nut. I asked her why the delay, but she didn’t know. I got an idea, though.”

“What?”

“Well, Easy,” he said, “I don’t know what you into, but if the payroll is switched secretly at the last minute, then it’s got to be something big. You know them construction workers like to riot if they don’t get tomorrow’s cash. I think it’s a setup and I think you know why.”

“Thank you, Jackson,” I said. “I’ll bring your money by in a couple’a days.”

“What you into, Easy?” he asked. “You gonna start hittin’ payrolls?”

“Jackson, how could you be so smart and so stupid at the same time?”

I drove past the gang’s hideout later that evening, but it looked empty. I went in through the back porch. Everything but the food containers had been cleared out — even the girly magazines were gone.

But Isolda was at home. She was still in her bathrobe, but her hair was done and she had put on her makeup. I was carrying a small satchel that was open so I could get to my pistol quickly.

“Mr. Rawlins?” she said, looking down at the brown leather bag. “What is it?”

“Can I come in?”

Her pouting lips curled back into a smile, but I felt nothing. Young men respond to women purely by animal instinct. But in maturity our minds are sometimes able to short-circuit those impulses.

We went to her window. Even though the sun was down, there was a bright light shining in from a street sign. She poured me an iced tea, which I put down on the jury-rigged, sheet-covered table.

“I’m surprised you came by again,” she said.

“Why?” I asked. I was surveying the corners of the room. There didn’t seem to be any place where a grown man could hide.

“You were so angry — you know, about me and Brawly.”

“Yeah,” I said, “Brawly. That’s why I’m here.”

“What about him?”

“Where is he?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” she said, revealing from her choice of words that she was a daughter of the South.

“Oh yeah, baby,” I said. “You know damn well where he is, or at least you know who knows. So let’s not fuck around.”

“Mr. Rawlins,” she protested.

“I said, don’t fuck with me, Issy. This is not the time to be coy. This is the time to talk turkey.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m sayin’ that you are the one that holds it all together.”

“Holds what together?”

“You’re the one who knows everybody. Brawly,” I said, holding up one finger, “Mercury—”

“I told you I only met him in passing.”

“— Henry Strong,” I said, putting up the third digit. “And you been with Aldridge on and off for years.”

“Aldridge, yes,” she said. “But I don’t have anything to do with the other men.”

“No,” I said. “You were with Henry Strong. You met him through Brawly and you let him stay over a night or two. But he didn’t know that Brawly told you everything. He didn’t know that Brawly told you that he was planning a robbery just like his old man.”

“You’re crazy,” Isolda said, and then she moved to stand.

“I already knocked out one woman today,” I said. “And I liked her.”

Hearing that, Isolda settled back down.

“Like I said,” I continued, “Brawly told you what he was doin’ and I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts that you found out that Henry was a spy. He was going to run with you on the day before the robbery.”

“That’s crazy talk,” Isolda said. She wouldn’t even look in my direction.

“Your bikini says different.”

She turned to me, the question in her eyes.

“I saw the pictures,” I said. “You in a tan bikini on a bed that I didn’t come across for a few days. It didn’t strike me at first, but then I was in another bedroom and I remembered.”

“What the hell are you saying?”

“Strong took pictures of you in his bedroom,” I said. “I bet you were modeling for him, practicing for how it was gonna be down in the islands.”

“Who told you that?” Issy’s neck twitched.

“The same little bird who told me about Aldridge being Brawly’s uncle’s partner in that robbery.”

“What do you mean that Hank was a spy?” she asked. “You didn’t know?” I asked. And then, “Of course you didn’t. If you did, they’d’ve called off the robbery by now.”

“What are you talking about?” Isolda said. By then they were just words. She knew she was caught. Now she was just looking for the way out.

“He fell for you and all,” I said. “He was plannin’ to run with you, to get away forever down on the beach. But he didn’t tell you that he was a rat. No. Proud man like old Hank wouldn’t do that.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Rawlins.”

“No. But you got the idea. I can see that in your eyes,” I said. “Strong told you that you were leaving on the boat the day before the job. For all he knew, you didn’t know about the plans he’d made with Brawly and Conrad. He didn’t have to tell you that he was a stool pigeon the whole time. He didn’t have to tell you that he set up members of the First Men to hit a payroll, get caught in the act, and so discredit the whole organization.”

My little speech made Isolda restless. I might not have been one hundred percent correct, but I had too much for her to dismiss me. She clasped her hands and turned her head from side to side. Then suddenly she hit a serious calm.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“I got the outline,” I said. “What I need from you is to fill it in with names and addresses.”

“And what do I get out of it?”

“First of all, I don’t call up Hank’s police masters and tell them that you’re in on the plan. Second, I don’t call John and tell him that you tried to frame Brawly for killing his father.”

“I’m not afraid of that,” she lied. “I’m innocent.”

“No,” I said. “You haven’t been innocent since you were a school-girl. What you think is that you can run away. But that’s wrong. If you don’t tell me what I wanna know, I’ma hit you upside your head, tie you up like a hog, and drive you down to police headquarters in the trunk’a my car.”

I wasn’t lying and Isolda knew it. I didn’t want to have to get so violent, but then again, this was the only chance I had to find out what was going on.

I must have impressed Isolda because she said, “And if you hear what you want, you gonna leave me be?”

“Let’s hear what you got to say,” I said.

Watching her was the most astonishing thing. The beauty just drained right out of her face. It was like a facade, a mask. Suddenly she was hard and angry — close to downright ugly.

“You were right about me an’ Hank,” she said. “The minute I saw him I knew that he was the man for me. He had that voice and knew how to dress. You know most’a the Negroes ’round here are country boys with holes in their jeans and shit on their shoes. They like it like that.”

“But not Henry,” I prodded.

“Brawly brought him by—”

“So you and Brawly still talked?”

“Of course we did. I was close as a mother to that boy. He’d get jealous when I had a man around. That’s why him and Aldridge fought—”

“So that did happen?”

“Yeah,” Isolda said. “Only it was just a push-fight. They were gettin’ close again already. It was just the whiskey that made them mad.”

“So what happened with Henry?”

“He said that he was tired of tryin’ to fight for equal rights, that he’d been active in politics all these years and nuthin’ was changin’, not really. He said that he was gonna make a big deal and then go to a country where black men knew how to be bankers and presidents. He said he wanted me to be with him.”

“He didn’t tell you that his money was really comin’ from the cops?”

“He didn’t say nuthin’ but that he was gonna make a deal. But now that you say it, it makes sense. You’re right, I knew what was happenin’ ’cause Brawly told me about it. Brawly tells me everything.”

“What’s Aldridge got to do with all this?”

“Brawly told him, too,” Isolda whispered. “He knew that it was Aldridge with his uncle in that robbery all them years ago. That’s why him and his daddy fought back then. He was mad at Aldridge ’cause he knew that Alva went crazy ’cause her brother died. For a long time he was mad but then he told Aldridge that he was gonna do the same thing. He was gonna rob a payroll.”

There was a lull in the conversation then. Isolda was getting on thin ice and I was afraid to find out who might fall in with her.

Finally I asked, “So did Brawly do it?”

“No.”

I couldn’t help the smile on my face. Even if Isolda was lying, at least she was protecting Brawly.

“Who did?” I asked.

“Mercury.”

I wasn’t surprised. Mercury had the build for the kind of violence that was visited upon Aldridge.

I wasn’t surprised but I asked, “How the hell did Mercury get in on it?”

“He was hangin’ out with all of us. And one day I found cotton panties with that little bitch Tina Montes’s name written in ’em — in Hank’s bottom drawer.”

“Oh.”

“He didn’t put no ring on my finger, so when he’d tell me he was too busy or he was tired, I’d call Mercury and get him to come by.”

“So you told Mercury about the robbery?”

“Naw. He was already in it. Brawly told Hank about Mercury and he asked him to help us plan it. Then Merc found out that Aldridge was makin’ noise that he wouldn’t let Brawly be part of any robbery. He told me to ask him to my house so they could talk, alone.”

“So you were in on the plan to kill him,” I accused.

“No. I wasn’t even in town. I was in Riverside, like I said. I didn’t know what Merc was gonna do.”

“What you think he was gonna do?”

“Talk,” she complained. “Like he said. But after...after he told me that Aldridge attacked him. It was self-defense.”

“And was Henry Strong self-defense, too?”

“I told Merc that Henry planned to run. I had to. Henry wouldn’t let me in on what they was doin’. He wanted to take me away but he didn’t wanna get married. What would I do if he left me high and dry in Jamaica?”

“So what was I doin’ there?” I asked her.

“Mercury told Henry that you were followin’ Brawly and Conrad. He said that he wanted to beat you up bad enough that you’d lay off until the job was over. Then he told Conrad that Henry and you was gonna throw ’em ovah.”

“So they planned to kill me, too?”

Isolda looked away.