Fear of the Dark

Chapter 16

There weren’t too many joints where a woman like Angel would belong. Of course there were all kinds of men who would have wanted to go there with her: garage attendants and gangsters on the Negro side; directors, producers, and other high rollers on the white. But black men couldn’t get into the places she would have wanted to be, and white men couldn’t take her there — at least not for very long.

In 1956 a sophisticated and beautiful black woman had very few choices unless she wanted to be a good girl and wear midcalf skirts and milky rimmed glasses. I didn’t expect that Angel was that type of woman. If she was, I wouldn’t find her and I wouldn’t need to.

The only black club that would fit her bill was Apollo’s at the Knickerbocker Hotel off Central down in the forties. Apollo’s had jazz and fine food for black and white patrons. That was before the black part of town became off-limits to the casual white devotee.

I pulled up to a liquor store called Kenny’s Keg on Figueroa. I got a pack of Lucky Strikes and a pint of Greeley’s whiskey with a short stack of paper cups and a quart bottle of seltzer. I put the booze and water in the trunk, lit a cigarette, and then walked across the street to a glass-encased phone booth. I looked up a number by the yellow electric light and dialed.

“Hello?” a frightened elderly voice inquired.

“Kiko, please.”

“What?”

“Kiko.”

“Kiko?”

“Yes.”

A few hard knocks sounded in my ear and then, “Hello,” came a sultry voice.

“Loretta?”

“Paris?” she managed to evince both surprise and joy in her tone.

“You said call you, right?”

“I’m surprised you did,” she said.

“Why’s that?”

“I don’t know. You seem to think about some things until all the color is washed out, I guess. What do you want?”

“I got fifty dollars and a yen to hear some jazz.”

“The High Hat?” she suggested.

“I was thinkin’ more in the line with Apollo’s.”

“You know you need a reservation to get in there,” she said.

“I do, but Milo don’t.”

“And you just came up with this idea on a whim?” she asked. She was playing with me, but even when playing, cats use their claws a little.

“No,” I admitted. “I got to find out some things there, but I promise you a good dinner and fine companionship.”

“I’m not a cheap date, Mr. Minton.”

“I know how to act.”

I picked her up at her parents’ house twenty-five minutes later. They lived just south of Venice Boulevard on the west side of town.

That night Kiko “Loretta” Kuroko was a sight to behold. She wore a tight-fitting green gown that had sequins here and there, with a black velvet-and-silk shawl draped on her shoulders. Her black high heels made her taller than I by two inches, and her makeup was just enough to make any man from six to sixty-six skip a step in his gait.

I opened the door for her as her frightened parents gawped from a window of their small house.

Loretta’s whole family had been imprisoned in an American-run concentration camp during World War II. This caused her parents to be afraid of anything outside their small circle and it made Loretta hate all white people.

“Damn,” I once said to her. “My people been under a white man’s thumb for three hundred years an’ I don’t hate all of ’em.”

“That’s because they never lied to you,” she said on that weekday afternoon at Milo’s office. “But I always believed that I was accepted as a person and a citizen. After what I saw, I don’t care what happens to them.”

It was lucky for Milo and the black population of Watts in general. Loretta was a force to be reckoned with.

The bouncer at the club entrance at the Knickerbocker was a reptilian-looking fellow named Razor. He was taller than Fearless and broader of shoulder than Mad Anthony. But he smiled, showing more teeth than seemed possible.

“Loretta,” he said, not even deigning to recognize my presence.

“Mr. Hanley.” If Loretta knew you, she knew your last name and often used it as a mark of respect.

Loretta took a step across the threshold and I moved to follow. A big brown hand covered my chest.

“Where you think you goin’, boy?” Razor asked, no longer smiling but still showing his teeth.

I wish I’d said something smart or sassy, but I was flabbergasted and intimidated. All I could do was stutter.

“Paris is with me,” Loretta said.

“Really?”

“Yes.” Her smile really was something.

“You know you could do a lot bettah than a little man like this here,” Razor said, giving her an up and down look.

“I can see that you don’t know him as well as I do, Mr. Hanley,” she replied. “Paris here can’t fight to save his life, but you know when women get a man alone, fighting is the last thing on their minds.”

The club was crowded, and the bar was right next to the door. A few of the people standing around heard Loretta’s lecture and started laughing.

Razor smiled and bowed his head to me.

“Excuse me, Mr. Paris, sir. I didn’t know.” He waved his hand and we were taken by a young brown girl in a tight pink dress to a table near the stage.

Milo had a running tab at Apollo’s, but I started my own. I lit Loretta’s cigarette and ordered good champagne. She was hungry and so we had them bring out a basket of battered and fried shrimp with two salads.

The Winston Marks Trio was playing that night. They were one of the most important components in those early days of the new jazz. Winston could be anything from a lonely whale to a hummingbird’s wing with his trumpet. He would have probably been world renowned if he hadn’t had an eye for every lady he met. One of those ladies was his bass player’s wife. Three weeks after that performance, Billy Stiles shot Winston in the brain, ending the trio’s career.

I spent most of my time talking to Loretta. At one point I went up to the bartender, Silver Martin. I showed him the picture of Angel and he admitted seeing her before. I handed him a picture of Andrew Jackson and he promised to send over anyone who knew something about her.

The music was great. Maybe Winston sensed his death that night because he played like I never heard anyone play before. There was one number where I knew instinctively that he was tracing the cracks of a broken heart that could never be mended. Fool that I was, I even shed a tear.

Loretta placed a hand on mine.

“You’re a sweet man, Paris Minton.”

“And you’re twice the woman of anybody else in this place,” I said.

She smiled and let her head loll a bit to the side.

“What?” I asked.

“Are we going to do something about all these fine compliments?”

Loretta liked black men. She liked us because we knew how she felt on the inside. She shared our rage and our impotence; she strained with us at the edges.

“Well?” she asked.

I was frozen in place. I didn’t know what to say. It was as though I had just been in my house talking loud and bragging about what I’d do with some movie queen, and then she strolled in and said, “Let’s get it on, son.”

Loretta grinned. She was not the kind of woman who would belittle the man she was with.

“It’s okay,” she said.

“No.”

“No?”

“You don’t get it,” I said. “You couldn’t understand because I’m just gettin’ to it right now myself.”

“What?”

Loretta’s eyes shimmered and her presence was absolutely assured. She felt more at home in my world than I did.

“I love you,” I said, and her smile was replaced with astonishment.

“What?” It was a whole different question this time.

“I see you sitting there with Milo. I see you loving him and caring for him and everybody he cares for. You’re beautiful and strong and hurt, but you never complain. That man tried to humiliate me, and you shot him right down. And I’m not even thinkin’ that you’re askin’ me to share your bed. Even if you just wonder if we’ll have another date, I’m scared to death about it. You know the girls I hang with might forget my name in the mornin’. And here you are looking into me like I was this glass’a water.”

The smile returned to Loretta’s mouth after a moment.

“Maybe later, then?” she said.

“Excuse me. Mr. Minton?”

I looked up and saw a short brown man with pockmarks on his skin that made him seem to be made of leather. He had a flat head and snake eyes but wasn’t at all threatening or even off-putting.

“Yeah?” I said, angered by the interruption of one of the few purely honest moments I’d had with a woman.

“Silver said you wanted to know about Angel.”

“Excuse me,” Loretta said, standing. “I have to go to the powder room.”

She left, taking the best part of me with her.

“What you got?” I asked the man, whose name I never knew.

“Angel live with a dude named Useless at Man’s Barn.”

“I got that already,” I said, taking a small fold of cash from my pocket.

The man eyed my money and actually licked his lips.

“What you need, then?”

“You seen her in the last week or so?”

“Naw.”

“You know where she work at?”

“Naw.” He bit his lip, seeing the possibility of a tip fade.

“What about anybody she’s tight wit’ other than Useless? Maybe some white dude?”

“I seen her with some white men but not with anyone more than a couple’a times. But she used to know this one guy, an’ it seemed like they stayed friends.”

“Who?”

“Guy name’a Tommy Hoag.”

“You wouldn’t have a number for ’im?” I asked.

“Don’t need it,” the leather man said. “Tommy is the only Negro agent for the Schuyler Real Estate office on Hooper.”

Andrew Jackson leaped happily from my hand, and just as happily the nameless leather man jogged away from my table.

I saw Loretta approach from across the room. The men all gave her glances. The women looked to make sure that she kept on going.