Blonde Faith

11

Mel Marvel’s Used Cars was an institution in Compton. Every car on his lot was good as new; at least that’s what his late-night TV ads said. He was a rotund white Texan who kept himself surrounded by pretty white girls in bathing suits, smiling for the cameras. Very often he had caged lions and trained elephants on the lot. Marvel was a con man who knew that most people wanted to be fooled.

A few years before, I’d bought a car from one of Mel’s salesmen, Charles Mung. It was a sky blue Falcon. My Ford was in the shop for a couple of weeks, and I thought I’d drive the Falcon around until mine was fixed. Then I’d give it to Jesus.

The trouble was that a back tire broke off on the way home from Compton. It popped right off the axle and rolled down the street.

I hired a tow truck and brought the car back to the lot.

Charles Mung was a tall white guy with freckles and cornflower blue eyes.

“Tire broke right off,” I told him under a blazing sun on the five-acre lot. It was only three hours into my thirty-day guarantee.

“We don’t cover accidents,” he replied as he turned to walk away.

I grabbed his arm, and three very big men came out of nowhere. They crowded me, freeing the salesman from my grip as they did so.

“You owe me four hundred dollars,” I said over an ugly car thug’s shoulder.

“Show Mr. Rawlins off the lot, will you, Thunder?” Mung replied.

They didn’t hurt me. Just deposited me on the curb.

“Come back here again,” Thunder, a polar bear of a man, told me, “and me and my friends will break all your fingers.”

It’s funny the things that stay with you. I was so humiliated by that treatment that all the way home on the bus I planned my revenge. I was going to get my gun and go back there. If they didn’t return my money, I was going to kill Mung and Thunder.

I was in the bedroom loading my third pistol when Mouse called.

“What’s wrong, man?” he asked after I’d only said hello.

I told him my problem and my intentions.

“Hold tight, Easy,” he said to me. “I got friends down there. Why’on’t you let me call ’em first?”

“They humiliated me, Ray. I ain’t gonna stand for that.”

“Do me a favor, Easy,” he said. “Let me call my friend first. If it don’t work, I’ll go down there with ya.”

I agreed, and later on, after Feather and Jesus got home from school, I came to my senses. I was about to go on a killing spree over four hundred dollars and four fools.

I made dinner and put the kids to bed.

I was sitting in the living room, watching the ten o’clock news, when there was a knock on my door. It was Charles Mung. He wore a thick white bandage that completely covered his left eye, and his right hand was swollen, obviously the source of great pain.

“Here,” he said, handing me a big manila envelope.

Before I could ask him what it was, he rushed away.

The envelope contained automobile registration papers and four hundred and twenty dollars. The car, which was parked in front of my house, was Mung’s own ’62 Cadillac.

I used the money to buy another car and gave the Caddy to my old friend Primo, who made travel money by selling American cars down in Mexico.

I LEFT BEFORE EATING but promised Feather and Easter that I’d be back for dinner.

The huge car lot was twice the size it had been the last time I was there. Mel had bought out the property across the street and built a three-story showroom. The showroom was surrounded by huge columns of red and blue balloons and topped with a forty-foot American flag.

The place was so big now that it seemed like a military installation.

I parked in the customers’ lot and walked toward the glittering steel-and-glass headquarters. When I reached the doorway, a skinny man in a bright green suit approached me.

“May I help you?” the gray-colored black man asked. This was also a new addition, a Negro salesman.

His eyes were fevered. His smile twisted like an earthworm in the sun.

“I need to speak to somebody in records,” I said, showing him my PI’s license.

He held the card between quivering fingers. He was a pill popper, no doubt. I was sure that he couldn’t concentrate on my identification.

He winked, blinked, and grimaced at the card for a few seconds and then handed it back.

“Brad Knowles,” he told me. “Out on the lot somewhere.”

“What does he look like?” I asked.

“Knowles,” the hopped-up salesman said. “Out on the lot.”

I WANDERED AROUND for a while looking for somebody named Knowles. Most of the people walking around were customers pretending that they knew something about cars. But there was security too. After the Watts riots of ’65 everybody had security: convenience and liquor stores, supermarkets, gas stations . . . everyplace but schools; our most precious possession, our children, were left to fend for themselves.

I went up to this one big brawny white guy and asked, “Brad Knowles?”

He pointed over my left shoulder. When I gazed in that direction I spied a white guy wearing a cherry red blazer. He was gabbing with a young white woman. If somebody looked at me the way he was gawking at her, I would have run or pulled out a gun. But the woman seemed to be enjoying the attention.

“Thanks,” I said to the white muscleman, and made my way across baking asphalt, past a hundred dying automobiles, toward the wolf and his willing prey.

“Mr. Knowles?” I said in my friendliest voice.

Even in that awful coat, Knowles was a handsome devil. The woman, who was plain faced and well built, frowned at me.

“Excuse me a moment, ma’am,” I said through the rising heat. “I just need to ask Mr. Knowles a quick question.”

“What is it?” he asked.

I wondered if I was a white man would he have put a sir on the end of that sentence.

“I bought a car from a man named Black,” I said as affably as I could. “He left his power tools behind the front seat. The only things I know for sure about him are that his first name is Christmas and he bought the car, truck actually, on this lot.”

Power tools, honest citizen — I had all the bases covered. Not only would I get the information, I might also receive a medal.

“Get the fuck off my lot,” Brad Knowles said to me.

I was actually speechless, so surprised that for a moment I forgot my deep sorrow. My mouth hung open.

“Do I have to call security and have you removed?” Brad added.

Despite my shock I could still shake my head and did so.

The plain white woman smiled at me, at my humiliation.

I turned and walked away, wondering what had happened.

Was it my interruption of his line on that woman? Was it racism? Or maybe they’d cheated Christmas on his truck. His complaint might have raised some hackles.

I OPENED MY CAR DOOR and waited a minute for the interior to cool down a little before I climbed in. I drove out of the lot and around the back of the big glass showroom, where a sign said there was overflow parking. I parked again and made my way into the building.

A young Asian woman, Korean I thought at the time, came up to me with a big smile on her face.

“May I help you, sir?”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said as I looked through the glass walls, hoping I hadn’t been seen by the indelicate lot boss. “Brad Knowles told me that I could find out something I need to know from somebody in records.”

“Miss Goss?” the woman asked.

“Yes. That’s who it is.”

“Third floor. The stairs are behind you.”

THE STAIRWAY was next to the glass wall. As I made my way up, I felt like a hornet in a clear plastic bag. Just a glance at the building would have shown Knowles that I was there. All he had to do was put down his foot to get rid of me.

I’d hoped that the records office had solid walls to hide behind, but it didn’t. All that separated me from the outside world was a wall of colorless glass. I was the best man trying to take the groom’s place at the top of a three-tiered wedding cake.

“May I help you?” another woman asked me.

I had expected a face to go along with the name Goss. So when I saw the lovely young black woman sitting in the dark red chair, I was surprised. I guess it showed on my face.

“I’m not what you expected?” she asked.

I tried to speak, but I didn’t want to call her name ugly.

She smiled and cocked her head to the side.

Miss Goss was not pretty. Her features were too pronounced and insolent to be pretty. Her high cheekbones and ready-to-be-angry eyes made her beautiful. For the first time in a year, without the aid of sleep or stress, Bonnie completely slipped away from me. But as soon as I realized Bonnie was gone from my mind, she was back again.

“Do you want something?” Miss Goss asked.

“No . . . I mean, yes. Brad Knowles said that you could give me some information.”

Speaking his name, I glanced out at the lot. As if by magic, he looked up at the same time and saw me seeing him.

The hourglass was set. I smiled, putting love on the back burner for a moment.

“That’s a lie,” Miss Goss said.

“What is?”

“Brad sendin’ you up here. He wouldn’t send anybody up here and certainly not a big black man like you. I’m surprised he didn’t call security.”

“The man I need to find is named Christmas Black. He bought a red truck from you within the last three weeks.” Pretending to scratch my neck, I got a glimpse of Knowles looking around — for security, no doubt.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Easy. What’s yours?”

“Tourmaline.”

That made me happy. I laughed and decided that the .38 in my pocket would equalize any situation that security might raise.

“My name is funny?”

“Quite the contrary,” I said. “It’s a beautiful name. A gem.”

“I like your name too,” she said.

I could almost hear the heavy breathing of overweight guards climbing the stairs.

“Why’s that?” I asked as if I had all the time in the world.

“It’s got two syllables. I hate one-syllable names. Mel and Brad and all the rest of them: Bill, Max, Tom, Dick — I especially hate Dick — and Harv.”

“Christmas has two syllables,” I said.

Tourmaline admired my ability to think for a moment that seemed to last minutes.

“What’s it worth to you?” she asked.

“A hundred dollars or dinner at Brentan’s,” I said. “Both.”

Tourmaline smiled and I saw a light somewhere.

That’s when my old friend Thunder and a black security guard just as big as he was came out from the entrance to the stairs.

“Hey, you,” Thunder said.

I swiveled my head to regard him and his minion.

Instead of snarling, he gave me a quizzical look.

But I wasn’t worried about what was on the big man’s mind. I wondered if I could take him down. I decided that it was possible. I’d get hurt in the process, but I was a man trying to impress a woman. I could maybe take him. . . . It didn’t matter, though. With his helper, Thunder would have torn me in two.

The big white security guard was looking at me, still pondering. I turned my head to see that Tourmaline was frozen, probably holding her breath.

“Mr. Rawlins,” Thunder said, and I knew that Mouse had had a talk with him too.

“Hey, Thunder. Listen, I know you gotta kick me out. Just give me one word with the lady here.”

“Come on, Joe,” Thunder said to his partner.

Joe showed no emotion, just followed his supervisor down the stairs.

I turned to Tourmaline, and she said, “I’ll meet you there at eight, Mr. Rawlins.”