Farewell, Amethystine

22

In a parking lot two blocks away from the county jail, Fearless and I reached my car. I got in behind the wheel, while he lowered into the seat next to me.

After a block or two he said, “You know, Easy, I didn’t want you comin’ here to throw my bail or bringin’ that cop to make ’em let me go. A man got to take care his own business in this world. I ain’t nobody’s child nor bitch.”

“Only reason I’m here, Fearless, is ’cause I need your help, and gettin’ that help conflicted with your situation.”

“I did not assault that cop. He just pushed with less strength than it takes to move a man like me.”

“I know that. If Fearless Jones assaults you, you have to consult with either the doctor or the undertaker.”

“Paris send you?”

“I went to Paris lookin’ for you. He told me that you forbade him lookin’ me up. But he didn’t look me up. I went to him. Lookin’ for you.”

Fearless absorbed my words, adjusted his newly free heart, and, finally, nodded.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Nuthin’ to it.”

“So, what you need?”

“Lotta things. But first, how’s your Ping-Pong?”

“I played every day in jail. You know they got niggahs in there could beat the Olympics.”

I laughed. Almost everyone that knew him thought that Fearless had the limited intelligence of a child. They didn’t understand the natural genius of a natural man.

“Um,” Fearless hummed. “You know, Easy, I’ll help you any way you want, but first I’d like to take a room at the N&T Hotel on Grand, take a shower, and then have two cherry juice and bourbon cocktails like they make.”

“We could pick up the fixins and I could take you home.”

“Ain’t got a home right now, brother. I was livin’ with Bonita Williams, but she told me that the next time I get in trouble I’m out.”

“Maybe she changed her mind.”

“I used four collect calls to ask her that. She refused every one.”

The N&T Hotel was a pencil-thin six-story pink building down among warehouses, furniture builders, a sewing machine factory, and an illegal clinic that pretended to produce rubber gloves.

Inside, the N&T was very plain and businesslike, with the exception of a smaller square room made from blue-tinted glass that sat in the middle of the entranceway. Seated in this office within an office was a white man, also pencil thin, who wore a tan suit, sporting an ultrathin mustache.

“Mr. Cargill,” Fearless greeted the crystal-encased concierge.

“Mr. Jones. You need the usual?”

“And two cherryB cocktails.”

“Two thirty-two,” said Cargill. He put the flat of his hand against the blue pane before him and slid it to the side.

I didn’t understand the mechanism involved. No glass extended past the limits of the cage. Nothing seemed to move at all, but an empty space appeared before Cargill.

“You know I ain’t got the money, Easy. But I figure you plan to pay me anyway.”

I counted out the requisite bills and handed them over.

“Room six-A,” the hotel clerk told Fearless.

We walked down a hall behind the glass office, turned left, and came to a small elevator door.

“He didn’t give you a key,” I said.

“Naw,” Fearless grunted, “NT don’t have no keys. Elevator don’t have no buttons except down to the first floor. Other than that it’s all automatic.”

The door slid open and we went inside.

The walls, floor, and ceiling of the lift were painted a festive yellow in a chamber that might accommodate four men. The moment we were in, the door closed and the chamber began its ascent.

“What you mean no keys, no floor buttons? Somebody got to run this shit.”

“This here is the most private roomin’ house in LA,” my friend replied. “Back in the day Khrushchev and Kennedy could’a met here and wouldn’t anybody ever know.”

Our elevator reached the sixth floor and I was surprised that there were two exits, on opposite sides. One had the letter A on it and the other had B. Door A slid open.

We stepped right into a well-appointed and surprisingly large room. The furniture was modern and the window the kind that could look out while no one else could look in. Two dark-red cocktails sat on the table next to a sky-blue sofa. Fearless sat next to the libations.

“You want me to send down for a drink for you, Ease?”

“Naw, man. I just need to make a call.”

“Go through that do’ right there,” he said pointing. “There’s a phone on the night table.”

“How you ever find this place, Fearless?”

“They needed protection once or twice and one’a their regulars suggested me.”

The bedroom was done all in white, with mirrors on three walls. The phone was next to the bed.

“Stenman Service,” said a woman whose voice I didn’t recognize.

“Rawlins, VIP51.”

“Hello, Mr. Rawlins, my name is Pixie, Pixie Lowman. I just started today.”

“Welcome to the telephonic universe, Pixie,” I said. “You got any news for me?”

She answered on the third ring.

“Hello?”

“It’s Easy, Mary.”

“I been waitin’.”

“I been working.”

“You find Mel?”

“Not quite yet.”

“But you know where he is?”

“I think I do.”

“Where?”

“Mel didn’t tell you who was blackmailing him or who it was he let out of jail. That means he wants you out of it.”

“You are not my man, Easy Rawlins.”

“No. But I’m Mel’s friend, and I don’t want him mad at me for sending you out gettin’ inta all kindsa trouble.”

There was silence on the line for a few seconds.

“You got Mouse with you?” she asked.

“He’s outta town, so I drafted Fearless.”

“That’s probably better. Mel doesn’t really like Raymond.”

“Where’s Jewelle got you?”

“Studio City. In a garden apartment.”

“That sounds nice.”

She gave me the phone number and told me to call every day.

When I got back to the sitting room, the cherry cocktails were down to the dregs and Sarah Vaughan was singing “Can’t Get Out of This Mood.” Fearless was leaning back on the sofa, his eyes closed and his lips approaching a smile.

I sat quietly down on a sky-blue chair and waited for the full bloom of his grin. I liked Sarah too.

Maybe twenty minutes later, with his eyes still closed, Fearless said, “Gimme ten minutes for a shower and I’m ret to go.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

I drove us a little bit north to Chinatown and then a few blocks beyond. On a dowdy street above the Asian neighborhood was a storefront that had the sign KING PONG above it.

We parked across the street and surveyed the environs for maybe a quarter hour. This was eye work. There was nothing to say about what we intuited, but there was no reason for silence either.

“I was thinkin’, Fearless.”

“’Bout what?”

“That NT place.”

“What about it?”

“Seems like such a fancy and discreet place would cost more than two hundred thirty-two dollars.”

“I aksed that very question of the guy runs it, man name’a Charles Charles. Charlie told me that room rates were based on availability and other things.”

“What other things?”

“Well... Like, for instance, Charlie said that one time Kennedy really was there, meetin’ a man that he shouldn’t’a. Now, that there’s a whole different rate.”

After another five minutes I said, “I guess we got the basics.”

As we crossed the street Fearless told me, “I played Ping-Pong a whole lot durin’ the war.”

“Which war?”

“Korean.”

By then we were at the glass door of King Pong. We could see a very healthy young Asian gentleman sitting upon a high metal stool on the other side. Beyond him there were maybe eight Ping-Pong tables with at least six pairs of adversaries whacking away.

When the doorman climbed down from his throne I could see how lithe and light-footed he was. He pushed the door open, glanced at me cursorily, then took in Fearless from head to foot; he knew where the danger would come from.

“Hi,” I said.

“Private,” he replied, his eyes still on Fearless.

“I’m Easy Rawlins and this is Mr. Fearless Jones, here to pay our respects to Sir Francis Drake.”

The ocher-skinned Asian was no more than five six, but his movements were superior, like those of a feral cat on the hunt. He turned only his head toward me. I saw then that his eyes were pale blue, like the dim light of morning before the sun has broken the horizon. I wondered if this genetic anomaly was why this specimen had so much violence bundled in his shoulders and hands. Maybe he was treated as an outcast among the dark-eyed people of his clan.

“Not here,” the blue-eyed warrior informed me.

“Maybe he came in late,” I suggested as mildly as I could. “I make that mistake all the time.”

There was another man standing maybe eight feet away from us on the inside of the parlor. He was the doorman’s size, race, and nature, watching to make sure that if trouble happened it would go their way and not ours. Fearless had already sussed out the sentry’s threat. He was ready. I was hoping that my words would carry the day, and the gatekeeper was trying to disentangle his dignity from his job.

“Wait here,” he barked.

I nodded as obsequiously as possible.

He went away and the man backing him up came to the door. This man had dark eyes, lighter skin, and a scowl designed to wage war.

Again, Fearless and I were silent.

It was twilight and now and then a car trundled past, scenting the air with the fumes of burnt fuel.

My friend smiled at the second doorman. When the guard bristled, Fearless’s grin grew.

He was my friend and whenever we worked together it was him working for me. But Fearless was his own man. The first guard was trying hard to do his job, but his number two simply wanted to intimidate. And Fearless didn’t do well with bullies.

Luckily the first guy returned.

He pushed open the door and said, “You come with me.”

He led us down the aisle between Ping-Pong tables. When we got to an empty one Fearless stopped.

“Hey, Ease,” he said. “There’s a guy here look like he wants a partner. You don’t need me to talk to Francis, do ya?”

Fearless gestured to a chubby Chinese kid and I followed my usher through a wood door that had been slathered with green paint.

The back room was about the same size as the front. It was mostly empty, with some boxes, cleaning materials, folding furniture, and Ping-Pong paraphernalia along the sides. In the center was a green-felt-inlaid octangular table with seven poker players and a buxom brunette card dealer. Other than these eight seated inhabitants there stood Bernard Kirby, a beefy and darkish Black man maybe six two and carrying two hundred pounds.

Kirby eyed me and the doorman and then uttered something I couldn’t make out.

A dandy sitting next to the dealer looked up and slowly focused his eyes on me.

“Easy Rawlins,” the middle-aged rake hailed.

Francis was wearing a cream-colored suit jacket with a few bright-purple irises in its lapel. He was one of the rare male individuals of that era who sported an earring. It was a stunning blue gem embedded in his left earlobe. The light-brown mustache was reminiscent of a centipede and his nose looked to be whittled down from a greater edifice.

“Sir Francis,” I hailed.

“You wish to speak with me?”

“I do indeed.”

The turn of words pleased the gambler.

“Deal me out for a couple of hands, Inga,” he told the woman.

When he stood up, I could see that his trousers were midnight blue while his shoes were black with white spats.

We walked back out to the Ping-Pong room, followed at a respectful distance by Bernard Kirby.

Fearless and his rotund nemesis were going at it.

Francis noticed the fervor of the two players and said something to an older man standing near at hand. The man spoke in some dialect of Chinese and Francis nodded.

“That your friend?” Francis then asked me.

“Yeah,” I said. “People call him Fearless. They say he’s pretty good.”

“Is your business urgent?”

“We can watch if you want.”

“A hundred dollars on Min to win, giving you five points,” Francis said to me.

“What did your friend say?” I asked, exhibiting false hesitation.

“That the score was five to one, your friend having the one.”

“You’re on.”

The game got hotter after that.

“You know Raymond Alexander, right?” I asked Drake.

He was concentrated on the game but said, “Of course.”

“Mouse got his hands on a truckload of IBM Selectric typewriters. He busy with other shit and gave ’em to me to sell.”

“Why come to me? I’m a gambling man.”

“Oh,” I feigned. “I see. I must’a been misinformed when they told me that you facilitated deals like this now and then.”

That list of words earned me a centipede smile.

“Why don’t you come back round midnight, Mr. Rawlins. Maybe Kirby can do something for you after I leave.”

We shook hands and then turned our attention back to the game.

Fearless was a natural-born athlete. He was balanced and strong with lightning-quick reflexes, an uncanny sense of the next movement, and, of course, no fears whatsoever. Min, his opponent, had probably played table tennis for twenty-eight of his thirty years. He’d seen it all and despite his size he was no slouch.

Many of the other players stopped to watch. They cheered both men when they made an extraordinary effort, either defensively or in attack. After maybe twenty-five minutes the score was 11–10, Min in the lead. Eleven was the winning score except for the fact that victory had to be by at least two points.

Half an hour later the score was 20–20, even.

Both men were sweating, but Min seemed to lose the tiniest bit of focus. Fearless, on the other hand, was a veteran of at least three wars. Focus was a life-and-death thing for him.

Over the next volley Min went up by a point. Then it was Fearless’s serve, but instead he put the ball on the table and laid the paddle on top of it.

“I give,” he said, raising his hands in surrender.

Min exhaled deeply and voices around the table called no in a variety of dialects — including English.

“I suppose that makes you the winner,” Francis Drake said to me. He reached for a pants pocket.

“Naw,” I told the fop sportsman. “Fearless resigning means he’s the loser. If anybody should pay, it’s me.”

Francis smiled and nodded ever so slightly.

“Come back around midnight, Easy. I’ll be gone but Kirby will be here still.”

“Until that time.”