Gray Dawn

15

In the mood for a well-deserved break, I drove out to Santa Monica after lunch. On weekdays there were always empty parking spaces near the beach. Barefoot, I walked for an hour or so through the moist sand down near the shore. There was a lot to think about and nothing to do. Amethystine was on my mind, like a line of music from a nearly forgotten song. I could come up with a word or two but wanted more.

On the way back to the car I bunged myself into a phone booth.

A woman’s voice answered, “Stenman Service. How can I help you?”

“VIP51,” I replied.

“Yes, ummm, let me see, oh, there it is, Mr. Rawlins.”

“Hi. I’m sorry I can’t place the voice.”

“Char,” she said. “Char Bostick. I just started last week.”

“Welcome.”

“Thanks. Um, let’s see. There’s a message from Niska Redman. She left a phone number.”

“Hello?” There was a little tremor of excitement in her voice.

“You rang?” I asked.

“I bought a Cohiba cigar for fifteen dollars.”

“You smoke it?”

“Sure did. How did you know?”

“That’s what I woulda done.”

“It made me a little nauseous, but I still loved it.”

“So, tell me what happened.”

“I got all dolled up. That’s what they say in the old movies, right?”

“It is,” I allowed patiently.

“He was the only salesman there. I told him that I was getting the cigar for my dad. I said I wanted an El Laguito, that’s the first kind of cigar they ever made for Castro.”

“Where’d you learn that?”

“I went to a cigar store yesterday and talked to them about Cohibas. There was this one guy named Fyure who knew all about ’em. You know Castro first thought about starting the company when his bodyguard gave him a cigar that a friend of a friend of his made.”

She was talking a mile a minute, so excited that she had to remember to breathe.

“Then what?” I asked.

“Huh?”

“What happened when you talked to Delroy?”

“Uh-huh, right. Um. I was all dolled up and, and — I smiled a lot...”

“Calm down, Niska. If you get too excited, then you’re liable to make a mistake.”

“Yeah. Right. It took a minute. He had this beard and was wearing glasses. But I could tell by his eyes that it was him. He was nice, and he talked to me about my father. And then he asked me if I wanted to get lunch, and I said I had to do something, but I’d like to sometime. And he asked about dinner tomorrow night and I said yes.”

“A beard and glasses,” I repeated. “Tell me the last name he was using again?”

“Magi.”

“That was on Anatole’s list?”

“Yeah, but he only used it when passing bad checks. He didn’t ever go by that name.”

“So, somebody might be after him.”

“Other than me and the police?”

“Maybe the police. Maybe somebody else, somebody he’s scared of. Can’t be sure, but that’s what I’d bet.”

“Why?”

“The glasses and beard seem kinda extra cautious for somebody committing crimes like the one you’re looking for him for.”

“Wow.”

“What’s your next step?”

“Go to dinner and have Doreen come in halfway through.”

“Hm. Okay. Make sure you talk to me before you do anything.”

“What for?”

“Your plan sounds good, but on your first job, the hardest thing to get right is the execution.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Which is why we need to talk.”

I made it down to South Central soon after sunset. When I got there people were beginning to leave the Brotherhood of Free Negroes Everywhere. They were at the end of their workday, heading out on the long migration home. The church had been painted a pale shade of lime green. There was nothing for me to do until the place was empty, so I went to a pay phone across the street and called Jackson Blue’s office.

First, I got his assistant.

“Mr. Blue’s line.”

“This is Easy Rawlins. Mister, right?”

“Yes, sir. Did you want Mr. Blue?”

“What’s your last name, Mister?”

“Strong.”

“Now, that’s a name.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Pass me on through, Mr. Mister Strong.”

“Hey, Easy,” Jackson said, loud and clear.

The parade of people leaving the deconsecrated church had slowed.

“Mr. Blue.”

“What ya need?”

“Nothing. I had to kill some time and so I called.”

“Waitin’ on that hot date?”

“That was day before yesterday. Right now, I’m tryin’ to vet a client.”

“You don’t trust his ass?”

“I don’t trust nobody’s ass.”

“Hey, hey, that’s the way. What’s wrong with the client?”

“Everything from the dirt on his shoes to the oily wad of cash in his pocket.”

“Man, I sure do miss them days,” Jackson opined. “You know, when we was in the street kickin’ up so much dust they could not ever find us.”

“Except when they did,” I cautioned.

“Except when they did,” he agreed, with a touch of sadness.

“What’s wrong, Jackson?” I asked, realizing that this question was why I had called.

“I’ont know, brother. Things is just too easy.”

Across the street a man came out of the big double doors at the top of the granite stairs, stairs that parishioners had used for many a Sunday before the dissolution of the congregation of the Church of the Savior. A woman met the solitary worker down at the curb. They shared a friendly kiss and then walked away, arm in arm.

“Don’t you deserve a rest after all the mess from back when we were young?” I asked.

“Yeah, but, you know, it’s hard to appreciate what you got if there ain’t nuthin’ to protect it from.”

Another solitary man had come out and was working at the locks on the door, securing them.

Evening was coming on.

“You got a wife and child, Blue. That’s what your job is now,” I lectured, trying to channel the mountaintop philosopher, Erculi Longo.

“I know. I do. But what gets to me is just the thought of hangin’ out at some pig’s-feet juke joint and Little Walter or Son House playin’. People laughin’ and drinkin’, dancin’. Women who know just what you need right then and there. Not tomorrah, or the day after that, right gottdamned then.”

The man finished with the locks and went over to the left side of the church, where there was a parking lot with a solitary Pontiac, waiting.

“I tell you what, Blue,” I said. “If I need any help with this job I’m on, I’ll call ya.”

“You will? Really?”

“Talk to you later, man.”

Ten minutes after hanging up, I stepped away from the pay phone, concentrating on my next move. That man who’d driven away in the Pontiac was probably the last worker of the day. He might have been the one I’d talked to earlier. Deep desert darkness was falling from the sky and my senses were peeled to detect any sign of life.

It was that blind focus that got me into trouble.

“Turn out your pockets, niggah,” a voice that sounded like an out-of-tune stand-up bass with a bad cold said.

I turned to the left, toward the source of those words, hiding with that movement the fact that I was sliding my hand into my right-side jacket pocket.

“Say what?” I asked, feigning innocence.

“Say what?” he mocked. “You heard me, mothahfuckah. Turn out your goddamned mothahfuckin’ pockets, ’fore I break yo’ neck.”

Instead of answering I looked away, down the street.

“Ain’t nobody gonna save you, niggah. Ain’t nobody gonna come.”

His words somehow scared me even though I wasn’t really scared.

Big, Black, and ugly, he’d been cursed with a face not even a grandmother could love. He had fists made for fighting, and you could tell by his scarred sneer that he liked making people hurt.

That scornful leer was relishing my defeat when I swung the fist of my left hand out in an arc that landed its big knuckle on his diaphragm. He oofed and then genuflected. I took the right hand out of my jacket pocket, my fist grasping a solid aluminum set of brass knuckles.

I hit him again and again and again, cracking bones, knocking out teeth, planting deep blows that just had to be causing internal bruises to his torso and arms. When he fell onto the pavement, I knelt down next to him, fully intending to keep the beating going.

I’d hit him on his left cheekbone when a voice said, “He had enough.”

The words came from an old, very old man, whose rheumy eyes held no judgment. He was simply telling me that I had already dished out whatever my attacker deserved.

I stood up and away from the mugger, staring down into the old man’s eyes. I wanted to apologize, but that didn’t seem right. No words would fit that moment of communication between us.

The mugger groaned, moving slowly from side to side, at last sitting up. Finally, he rose to his feet, blood streaming from his mouth and other busted-up parts of his face. His posture was crooked, and his face grimaced in pain. He glanced at me and the old man for only a second before moving away. Trying to run, realizing he couldn’t, he shambled down the street. He could barely stand up under his own power, so he made his way leaning up against storefront walls and fences, headed back to whatever den he used to lick his wounds.

When the mugger made the end of the block, the spell of silence broke.

“You need a ride home, sir?” I asked the old man. It was a warm evening, but he wore an old tweed coat that came down to his knees.

“No, I don’t need no ride. I only live a couple’a blocks from here.”

“I could walk wit’ ya.”

“No, brother, no,” he said, waving the four fingers of his left hand like a tightly woven fan. “I got the Lord on my left side, where my heart is at, and...” He patted the overcoat pocket on the right side, adding, “a snub-nosed twenty-two on my right.”

Some people, hearing about the violence I used, might think that I took unfair advantage of that mugger. But, as ugly as he was, he was also young, no more than twenty-five years. Past fifty, I’ve known for quite some time that fighting is a young man’s sport. That’s why I carried the aluminum knuckles. One day I’ll give up the streets completely and live on top of my mountain till the lights go out.

I cracked the lock on one of the back doors to the clubhouse. Inside I used a penlight to guide me.

For all the changes they had made to the church, it still had the solemn and silent feel of a house of God. It felt chilly despite the summer heat outside, and there was a scent soaked into the wood that was pleasant though not sweet.

Mary, the mother of God, gazed down on me from a stained-glass window that was at least twenty feet high. She held out one hand as if blessing me on my mission. The illumination came from the sidewalk streetlamp that stood before the failed church.

I was suddenly very tired. I wanted to sit down, to lie down and rest, before continuing my desecration. Then I laughed, imagining lying down on some bench and sleeping till the next morning when the brothers of freedom came in to find me.

I had to pry open the dead bolt to the membership office door.

Luckily the file cabinet therein was not locked.

Sifting through the manila folders, I found the file concerning Santangelo Burris. It wasn’t a very thick file, but it contained enough pages to keep me from remembering or writing down all of what I needed. Rummaging through the membership official’s desk, I found a leather pouch in a lower drawer that had $386 in a tin cashbox, and a small .32 revolver in the pencil drawer. I took both. The money so that they’d think I was a simple thief and the gun in case my would-be mugger had friends.

My Dodge was parked four blocks away. I was walking down San Pedro when a woman approached me.

“Mister,” she said in a beseeching tone.

Somewhere in her thirties, with light sienna skin, she wore a turquoise-colored T-shirt and navy-blue pants, both fabricated from tight spandex. Her figure was a little more than those tight clothes could contain comfortably, but the whole package delivered the idea she intended.

“Mister,” she said again.

“Yeah?”

“You got a dollar?” The words came across more like a simple question than a request.

My reply was supposed to have been What do I get for that dollar?

Then she would have said, A smile and a handshake.

I would have wondered aloud what I’d receive for ten dollars, and, after that, the real conversation would develop.

But I wasn’t interested in that dance right then.

I took the wad of cash I’d taken from the BFNE and pressed it into her hand. When she saw what I’d given her, her eyes opened wide.

“Take it, sister,” I said.

“I’ma feed my kids with this,” she promised.

“Give ’em a kiss good night from me.”

She got up on her toes to kiss my cheek, in order to take both my gifts with her.