Gray Dawn

16

Sitting alone in my lighthouse-like mountain home, I studied what the BFNE thought they knew about Santangelo. He’d told them that he’d moved to Los Angeles from La Marque, Texas, not Pistol, having been born in St. Louis. His mother was listed as unknown, his father too. Santangelo’s acceptance for admission to full membership was still under review after four years because a couple of members of the admissions board thought that his anger represented some kind of instability. This seemed strange to me, because the original members of the BFNE back in the 1830s were men just like Santangelo. Today they might have been dentists and lawyers, shopkeepers and bank clerks, but back then they were desperate men forced to buy their freedom, or to steal it, from the men who held the entire race as inferior.

As far as I was concerned, the only important details in the file were his address and phone number.

I considered dialing Mr. Saint Angel’s number but decided that, unless we met face-to face, he’d never answer my important questions.

So, instead: “Stenman Service. How can I help you?”

“Hey, Julie.”

“Hi, Mr. Rawlins. How are you tonight?”

“Still breathin’.”

“You got pencil and paper?”

“Right here on the table.”

“Okay. First, you have Niska Redman. She’s going to meet Delroy for lunch tomorrow. She said to make sure you know it’s lunch, not dinner, and Doreen will be there to make the identification. You get that?”

“I did.”

“Okay. A woman named Ama, Amat, Ama-thigh...”

“Amethystine.”

“Yeah. That. She said that she wants to go mountain climbing again when you have some free time.”

“Got it.”

“Mr. Jones called. He said you two have got to get together, that it’s important. He doesn’t have a phone, so you’ll have to meet him at Maynard’s Coffee Cart tomorrow morning.”

“How many more?” I asked.

“Just one. A Miss, or maybe Mrs., Alice Fab-ri-cant called and said that Geraldine is staying with distant cousins, the Ellenbogens, and that they need you to help them communicate with the child. Here’s the address.”

After writing it all down, I asked, “That it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Thanks.”

“Hello,” she said in a sleepy voice.

“I wake you?”

“Uh-uh. I was just, um, resting my eyes.”

“Okay then, when and where?”

“Delroy called and told me that tomorrow is his day off, so lunch would be better, for some reason, and he wanted to meet at a place called Clooney’s Diner, that’s on Wilshire.”

“I know the place. What time is the date?”

“Twelve thirty.”

“Okay. How long’s Whisper gonna be gone?”

“Until next week sometime.”

“Then you, me, and Doreen should meet at the office at eleven, no, no, make it eleven thirty.”

“You don’t trust me to handle a lunch on my own?”

“If I didn’t trust you, I’d be the one meetin’ Delroy.”

“Okay,” she said, only half convinced. “Should I keep Clemmie on the front desk?”

“Of course. You’ll be out doin’ detective work.”

Later, I went outside with the three dogs and played fetch for an hour. The little guys got tired after ten minutes or so. They spent the rest of the time around my feet chewing on dried-out cowhide. But, like his wolfen ancestors, Valiant was tireless. He ran back and forth, barking and baying like a bloodhound. He retrieved that stick again and again till my throwing arm went numb.

After the dogs had eaten and fallen into a heap at the door next to the terrace, I went upstairs and made the call.

“Hello?” Amethystine Stoller purred into my ear.

“Hey.”

“You get my message?”

“I did.”

“So, when are we gonna get to it?”

“I’m workin’ right now, juggling jobs like a full rack’a bowlin’ pins.”

“Do you wear a circus costume when you do that?”

“Always.”

“Always?”

“Yeah.”

“Even with me?”

“Probably.”

“You know, it doesn’t have to be that hard, Easy.”

“So they tell me.”

I was up at 5:00 a.m., dressed by 5:09, and on the road at 5:29.

By 6:31 I was at Maynard’s Coffee Cart, down around Seventy-Sixth Place and Central. Fearless Jones was already there, perusing a copy of Jet magazine.

I bought my coffee from Maynard, who spent every morning, except Sunday, selling coffee and doughnuts to whoever needed them.

Maynard was a short guy with good eyes — eyes, he claimed, that could see everywhere all at once. Medium brown of color, he’d spent some time in prison for a felony that he never talked about. May, as we called him, hailed from Austin and had come north at the age of fourteen, the day after his father was beaten and stomped to death for talking back.

“Is that you, Easy?” Maynard asked.

“In the flesh.”

“Fearless told me you was gonna be here. I bet him a dollar that you wouldn’t come.”

“Com’on, May, why you gonna do me like that? I come to see you... sometimes.”

“You haven’t been here in four months. Too busy bein’ a fancy detective on the west side’a town.”

We laughed and then I went over to Fearless, who was reclining on a concrete bench that seemed to have no other purpose than to provide seating for Maynard’s Coffee Cart.

“Fearless,” I said.

“Easy.” He sat up to make room for me.

“Paris Minton told me that you was down Texas.”

“I took the overnight bus day before yesterday after Earline Pickens called.”

“Earline? I thought you guys didn’t speak anymore.”

“We don’t.”

“Then why she call you?”

“Orem Diggs.”

“What’s a Orem Diggs?”

“He’s what the white hoodlums call a — a middleman.”

“Middle’a what?” I asked, even though I knew the answer.

“If somethin’ need to be done but it ain’t in yo’ family, then Orem the man that makes it happen.”

“And what does Earline say he’s makin’?”

“She know a guy who know a guy who Orem aksed to tell ’im ’bout you.”

“Me?”

Fearless nodded. He was long and lean, black as a man could get. If we were standing upright, we’d be eye to eye, but if the measure was courage, then I’d be down to Pygmy size in comparison.

“What’s this Orem want with me?”

“I don’t know exactly, but it’s some kinda hoodlum shit. And you know it’s serious ’cause it would take a sitiation of life and death for Earline to look for me.”

Women loved Fearless. He was courteous, truthful, the baddest man in almost every room he ever walked into, and his intelligence was emotional, not intellectual. His eyes and hands, and his words, all spoke to what almost any woman was feeling.

The problem with all that love and affection was when those same women couldn’t get Fearless to be what they wanted him to be.

One day, a few years before, Earline told Fearless that he was the only man that she ever truly loved. When he didn’t say those words back, she threw him out of her house and her life.

“Okay,” I said, thinking that my plate was already full. “What do I need to do about Orem Diggs?”

“I’d lay low if I was you.”

I had rarely heard Fearless suggest retreat. He’d participated in three wars and the only gear on his utility belt was attack.

“He’s that dangerous?” I wondered.

“He ain’t scared’a you and so he’ll do whatever he please. I don’t know if goin’ up against him would be worth the aggravation.”

“What kinda aggravation we talkin’?”

“The kind where a whole bunch’a blood gets spilt.”

If Fearless cared about you, he became the closest thing you’d ever know to a guardian angel. To ignore his advice would always be the wrong choice. But I was in love for the first time in a long, long while, and that would not be denied. Love made me brave, foolhardy, and wrong.

“So,” my friend asked. “What you gonna do?”

“I got a couple’a jobs right now, Fearless. I can’t drop the ball on them.”

He shrugged, gave me a grin, and said, “Okay. I’ll stick with ya, then.”

“It’s that bad?”

“Or worser.”

“You got a car around here?”

Shaking his head, he said, “I slept last night on Paris’s bookstore floor. I walked to here from there.”

“Okay. But I got a place or two to get to before we get serious.”

The next stop was a small house on Alcott Street, near Casio — a block south of Pico Boulevard. I pulled to the curb in front of the cottage-style home.

“I probably should go in here alone, Fearless.”

“That’s okay. I got a call to make.”

“Good. I don’t think it should be more than a half hour.”

“See ya then.”

It was a nice property. Six feet back from the curb, sporting a manicured lawn, it was a perfect little box with a pointy roof, its teal-green walls fringed by bushy blue dahlias.

A small white woman answered the doorbell. She was in her forties, most probably, and shaped like a pear. The faded gray-and-green dress she wore was what Eastern European Jews called a schmatta. I thought of that because this was a Jewish neighborhood.

“Yes?” she asked timidly. “Can I help you?”

“Ms. Ellenbogen?”

She gasped silently, I assumed from hearing her name spoken aloud.

“Y-y-yes?”

“I’m Ezekiel Rawlins. The social worker, Mrs. Fabricant, told me to drop by,” I said, and then added, “For Gigi.”

“Oh. You.”

I smiled and nodded. “Yes. Can I see her?”

“Oh.” She backed away from the door and I strode in, feeling like some kind of brigand or barbarian in the process of razing the town.

The living room I entered was small, maybe twelve feet by ten. There was a sofa and a sofa chair set against each other at a right angle.

“Teddy,” the small woman called out.

“What, Trude?” came a man’s voice from a doorway on the opposite side of the sitting area.

It was a surprise seeing him come in. He was very tall, thick-limbed like a lumberjack, and clean-shaven. He wore a lime-green T-shirt and blue jeans. His walnut eyes wondered about me while I speculated on how such a big man negotiated that tiny home.

“Yes?” he asked me.

“I’m here to see Gigi.”

It was like the murder mansion all over again. Gigi ran out from somewhere and slammed into me. She held on tight, my own private barnacle. I lifted her into my arms again, holding her to face me. There were tears in her eyes.

“Uncle Easy,” she dubbed.

“Little Gigi.”

“Did you come for me?”

“Not this time. But soon.”

“You’re the one that that woman Fabricant sent?” the lumberjack asked.

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“Am I what?”

The question did its job. I could see realization dawning in Teddy’s eyes. Why else would I be there?

“Oh,” he said. “Okay. Yeah.”

Cradling Gigi with my right arm, I asked either one of the couple, “Are you related to the family?”

“Her mother was my second cousin, once removed,” Trude, probably Trudy, said. “When she, um, you know...”

Gigi laid her head against mine at that moment.

“...well, anyway, that’s why Mrs. Fabricant brought her to us,” the woman called Trude concluded.

“Is she supposed to stay here with you?”

“No,” Gigi said sternly. “I’m gonna go with Uncle Easy and live with him and Auntie Lutie.”

“Can I talk to her alone a minute?” I asked the couple.

“Outside, in the backyard,” Teddy suggested. “There’s a picnic table out there.”

And, I thought, you could watch us through the back window.

It was a working-class neighborhood with small houses that had small yards out back. The patio was defined by the rear of the house, the wall of the garage, and two chain-link fences that were overrun by passion fruit vines. The flora reminded me of the internal greenhouse belonging to the murdered cattle baron.

“You want to sit in a chair, sweetie?” I said to the child who had adopted me.

“No.”

“Okay.”

I sat on one of the folding aluminum chairs with the ghost girl on my lap.

“Have Teddy and Trude been nice to you?” I asked the child.

“I don’t like them.”

“How come?”

“They don’t do anything.”

“Do they feed you?”

“Yeah.”

“Do they hurt you?”

“No.”

“But you want a better place to live.”

“I want to live with you.”

“Hm.” I had a notion. “I’m gonna have to think about that.”

“Really?”

“It might not be exactly what you want, but something. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Now can you do something for me?”

“What?”

“I’m lookin’ for your aunt Lutie. But I don’t know where to go. Is there anyplace she goes that she told you about?”

“Um...” The serious expression on Gigi’s face was adorable. She was trying so hard and coming up with nothing.

“She... she likes playin’ for money with seven cards,” she said at last. “Um, yeah, seven.”

“Three cards?”

“No, silly, seven cards,” she said, giggling.

“Seven?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You’re sure?”

“That’s what she said,” Gigi huffed in faux exasperation. “She told me that playin’ cards relaxes her and... and helps her think about things.”

We talked a little longer. She reminded me of when I was younger, having one-sided conversations with Jesus and later conversing with Feather. I liked taking care of kids. When I told her that I had to go out to look for Lutie, she accepted that with a stern nod.

Fearless was waiting for me in the car. I hopped in and drove the six blocks to my office.

Clementine Bowers was at the reception desk, doing nothing that I could see.

“Hi, Mr. Rawlins.”

“Hey, Clemmie. This is my friend Fearless Jones.”

“Hi, Mr. Jones.”

Fearless stepped forward and offered a hand. For some reason this gesture charmed the temp.

“When Niska and this other girl get here, send ’em on back,” I said.

“Okay.”

In my office, I explained about Niska’s training as a detective and a little about the job she’d undertaken.

“She wanna be like you, huh?” Fearless asked.

“Yeah. What you think about that?”

“I think women should be policemen, paratroopers, presidents, and priests. That way the world would work better.”

“Why you say that? You think women are better than men?”

“Not bettah, different. And if somebody think different is half’a the world, then they should be a part’a what make the world go round.”

It was a good argument. I had nothing to add.

“So, we gonna he’p Niska,” Fearless offered, “and then we go see about Orem Diggs?”

“You think that’s the best way to go about it?”

“I think so.”

“I thought this guy was so dangerous.”

“He is, but that’s when he comin’ up behind ya,” Fearless said with a smirk. “Face-to-face we could parley.”

There was something about his crooked grin... I would have asked about it, but just then Niska and her client, Doreen, walked in.

Both ladies were dressed up. Niska wore a tight blue calf-length dress that I might have expected Clemmie to wear. Doreen had on a dark green minidress and a necklace with a single pearl hanging from a thin gold chain.

Doreen was a white woman, pink of skin with a broad face that belonged on a larger body. But for the while she was young and slender.

“Hi, boss,” Niska said. “This is Doreen Anton.”

“Nice to meet you.” We shook hands. “This is Fearless.”

“Hi, Mr. Jones,” Niska said while Doreen shook his hand.

“Hey, baby,” Fearless replied.

Niska said to me, “I thought you were coming in at eleven thirty.”

“Yeah. Fearless and I had some business in the neighborhood, and we came here after it was over. Why don’t we go get breakfast and talk over what you guys gonna do.”