Farewell, Amethystine

13

I owned twelve apartment buildings at that time. A hundred and one units. Jewelle Blue’s real estate company collected the rent for.08 percent of the gross and managed the properties. Her company was too large for this to make business sense except for the fact that we traded favors back and forth over the years.

My profit on each unit averaged out to about $21.33 a month. The rest went to the mortgages, upkeep, and Jewelle. That worked out to an income of roughly twenty-six thousand a year. At that time most white families made just under ten thousand annually, and brown families were quite a bit below that. I didn’t pay rent for my mountaintop home, because the owner there used me now and then for my investigative skills. Again, favors.

I wasn’t rich, but I sure didn’t need to be going out among hammerhands and scalawags in the middle of the night at some desolate warehouse in Canoga Park.

No, I did not.

“Hello?” she said on the sixth ring.

“Vu?”

“Easy.” I could hear the faraway smile in her voice.

“He there?”

“No.” There was reticence now in the Vietcong’s tone. “What’s your number?”

I read it off the dial.

“That’s your place?” she asked.

“A pay phone.”

“I’ll call you back.”

It took twelve minutes for her to make that call. The feds must have been pressing hard on Raymond.

Finally, the phone rang.

“What’s wrong, Easy?” Vu Von Lihn asked.

“I’m lookin’ for a guy. His ex just told me that he wanted to meet at a warehouse in Canoga Park... at midnight.”

“Are you gonna go?”

“Got to,” I said, not able to keep the gravitas out of my voice.

“You have a gun?”

“Not on me.”

“Meet me at the garage.”

Vu Von Lihn’s garage was on Eighth Street, in what they called the Mid-Wilshire area. Immigrant Koreans had been moving into that neighborhood for a few years by then. Lihn was Vietnamese but she knew how to fit in.

I parked on the street and walked to the customer door. Before I could knock, the portal opened, Lihn standing behind.

“Come on in, Easy.”

She led me through a small office into a large area big enough to service six cars. From there we went to a side door that led down to the secret basement.

When she turned on the garish construction lights used down there, I could see three cars in the work area — a late-model bright-red Cadillac, an emerald-green Lincoln Continental sedan, and a golden oldie: a Jaguar E-Type from 1961. Each car was in some state of being broken down. Doors, wheels, light fixtures. One car’s engine had been excavated and set aside.

“Looks like a job undone,” I said.

“I sent the ladies home so they wouldn’t have to lie if someone asked about you.”

In the far left corner of the basement garage sat a flat metal cabinet that was secured with an impressive padlock. Lihn went to the locked box and took out a key. Inside was a trove of weapons — everything from bayonets to hand grenades.

“What’s your poison, Easy?” she asked.

“How you even know how to say that?”

“They used to sneak me into the officers’ club in Saigon when they showed American films. Mostly westerns.”

“And they didn’t suspect you?”

“I was pretty before this,” she said, touching her scar.

“You’re beautiful now.”

The love of Mouse’s life looked down shyly, and I switched my attention to the munition trove.

Lihn was definitely loaded for bear, but I just needed a little insurance. I plucked out a comparatively innocuous pistol and said, “This thirty-eight’ll do.”

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll take the sniper rifle.”

“What you need that for?”

“I’m going with you.”

“The hell you are.”

When she stood, the long-distance rifle in her left hand, I realized that there was no gainsaying her resolve.

“Do you think you’re going into a trap?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Mouse would skin me alive if I let you go out there alone.”

“What would he do to me if I let you get killed?”

Lihn’s leer was both encouraging and terrifying. Looking at that pale eye floating inside its scar, I knew that she was coming along and that she would survive any weak Western opposition.

We got there two hours early. There was no name on the block-wide building, and only one light over a featureless door near the center.

“If you go to the front door I’ll be able to see you through the scope,” Lihn said. “I could get up on the fire escape of the building across the street. All you have to do is stay outside.”

There were drawbacks to her plan but, all in all, it was probably the best idea among the bad choices we had to choose from.

“You that good a shot?”

“Better than Raymond.”

That was good enough for me.

She was dressed all in dark colors, looking up at the external latticework of the fire escapes across the street.

“I’ll go up there now,” she said, “and get settled in. We don’t have to talk until after the meeting is over.”

“How can I indicate to you if I’m in trouble?”

“Hit the ground if they come at you,” she said. “I’ll take care of the rest.”

I found a late-night diner six blocks away. There I worked my way through a chili-size with a serving of canned asparagus dressed with mayonnaise, and a bottomless cup of black coffee.

The beginning of Papillon was quite wonderful. For the French, a novel could be fiction or nonfiction; this was both. I almost forgot about the dangerous rendezvous I was about to embark upon. Something about not being innocent and, at the same time, not deserving of punishment and then trying your best to escape — this was the Black American race’s history rolled up into one Frenchman.

The time passed quickly and soon I made it back to the warehouse.

I tried to see Lihn somewhere on the fire escape across the street, but there was no sign of a sniper.

Then I approached the lighted door of the warehouse.

The building was so large that knocking seemed kind of pathetic.

He answered before I could knock a second time. A tall man in a powder-blue suit, dark-chocolate shirt, and raspberry-sherbet tie, his face had seen some punishment in its forty-something years. It was a face that looked as though it belonged to a hound whose only job was sniffing down blood.

“Rawlins?” the man asked.

“Yeah. Curt?”

The left side of the big man’s upper lip, the scarred side, rose to form a sneer. “No. My name’s Purlo, Ron Purlo.”

“Giselle said that Curt called her.”

“Why don’t you come on in?” was his answer.

“I like the night air.”

As he peered into my face I believe that he was wondering if he could press the invitation.

“Giselle called me,” he said instead. With this assertion he stepped across the threshold into the pool of light I occupied.

“Why didn’t she call Curt?”

“She don’t know that number.” His smile caused my muscles to tighten.

“His own girlfriend?”

“Curt’s under a cone of silence right now, for the time being. The girl knew that and called me because she knew he needed to be left alone.”

I had no response for this claim, so I stayed quiet, waiting for what else the powder-blue bad man had to say.

“She told me your name and I asked around about you,” he continued. “People say that you’re a man worthy of respect.”

This was no surprise. A certain element of the city knew that I was connected to various individuals, from Mouse the killer to the gangster Charcoal Joe.

“So, we decided to talk instead of kickin’ the shit outta you,” Purlo concluded.

“Thank God for small blessings.” There was no gratitude in my tone. “But I would still like to talk to Mr. Fields.”

“I told you, he’s what they call incommunicado.”

“I appreciate that. But he’s got straight-assed parents and they hired me to locate him.”

“Tell ’em you couldn’t find him.”

“What if they go to the police?”

“Cops’ll file him away under who gives a fuck.”

“But they hired me.”

Purlo’s left eye squinted, and I was glad to have Vu Von Lihn out there in the darkness.

“Then you tell them you heard he’s working for a big concern that needs to know that he can’t sell their secrets.”

“Yeah, okay, but how do I know you don’t have the kid chained up in some basement — or worse?”

Purlo did not like being questioned. He was the man in charge, the one whom lesser men bowed to.

He glowered and then, suddenly, he smiled and said, “Like Mr. Epsilon says, ‘He can see the ocean to the west and the mountains to the east.’”

I took a moment to digest his conscious, and unconscious, meanings and then replied, “I guess I’ll have to take your word on that.”

“I guess you will.”

I got in my car and drove to the sidewalk across the street. Lihn appeared a few minutes later. The forever soldier threw the canvas bag that contained the rifle into the back seat, then jumped in beside me.

“That went smooth,” I said as we drove away.

“I saw four men get there an hour ago,” Vu said. “They were waiting behind that door, I bet. It was good you stayed outside.”

“Good for stupid.”

She leaned over and kissed my cheek. I don’t think I’ve ever received a greater accolade.