Gray Dawn

21

Back behind my grand desk I made a call.

“Mr. Blue’s line,” the well-dressed executive secretary answered.

“Hey, Mister, it’s Easy for him.”

“Hello, Mr. Rawlins. I’ll pass you right through.”

“Easy,” Jackson hailed. “You got a job for me?”

“Not yet, Jackson. I just need a little information you might have.”

“What’s that?”

“Where are the best seven-card stud parlors in LA?”

Jackson didn’t even have to think. He told me that they were all in Gardena and then rattled off the names of the three best.

He loved games of chance.

“They keep me honest,” he liked to say.

The next call was a number I had to look up.

“Books and Things,” Myrna Salt, bookstore owner, Paris Minton’s wife, answered.

“Hey, Myrn.”

“Hi, Easy, how you doin’?”

“Good as Fearless on a bad day and Paris on a great one.”

“Fearless on a...” she quoted, abortively. “And Paris the other side. You sure know them. Which one you want?”

“Fearless there?”

“He out back diggin’ up the lawn for me to make a vegetable garden.”

“Could you get him, maybe?”

The next voice I heard was Fearless’s.

“You need me, Ease?”

“Parked my car out in front of a dying man’s house last night. I called the ambulance, they brought the cops, and my ass ended up behind bars.”

“You need me to get your car?” he asked, completely unperturbed by my brush with the law.

“I sure would appreciate it.”

“You in a rush?”

“Naw. Where I’m goin’ next, I could take the Lincoln. Extra key is taped to the inside’a the back left wheel guard.”

“Okay, gimme the address and I’ll get Paris to take me when he can. He likes to drive. We’ll drop it off at your office.”

The first place I went to in Gardena was the Dreamland Casino. It was a big round building on a street of restaurants, a large used-car dealership, and an open-air vegetable market.

I went to the front door, feeling good in my dark suit.

“Yes?” said the greeter, a very tall and skinny white man in tux, tails, and a top hat, all black.

“Comin’ to lose my hard-earned wages,” I said with a grin.

“Not here, brother man,” Top Hat said.

“You not open?”

“We’re open. You’re just not comin’ in.”

It took me a minute to absorb his words. Because no matter how long it is that I’ve been Black in America, it always throws me off when I confront Top Hat’s kind of prejudice. This ridiculous red-faced man had decided or been instructed to keep certain people out of the establishment based on the color of their skin. This was more absurd than Red Face’s suit. At that time Gardena had a Japanese mayor, and this man was still saying that I couldn’t walk in through a casino door.

“You heard me,” Top Hat insisted.

I had heard him. Once again, I wanted to fight, to make noise. But you can’t spend your whole life fighting. I mean, I guess you could, but that would end up being a short life indeed.

The next stop was Martinel’s Gambling House. They let me in there. I bought three hundred dollars in ten-dollar chips and sidled up to their seven-card stud table. I played my heart out. The only thing I got for it was a free martini from a lovely waitress who had never heard of a woman named Lutisha James.

Jackson Blue’s last suggestion was Harold Stein’s Emporium. It was the largest place. I knew from the minute I walked into the establishment that at Harold Stein’s my luck was going to turn either very good or very bad. This because the first thing I saw was a platinum-blond-haired Black woman playing seven-card stud. There were five players, including the dealer, surrounded by an audience of watchers. It had to be a good game, the kind of match that excited the dreams all gamblers lived for — hoping, that with the odds stacked against them, they would persevere and come out on top.

There was a one-armed bandit that I could play while watching the game unfold. It was an expensive slot machine that took only silver dollars. I bought a hundred of the Liberty-headed suckers and started to feed the machine. I lost and won and lost while watching the middle-aged blond-haired Black woman play. The hair of her wig hid part of her face and, also, she wore sunglasses. These incidental details didn’t bother me. I didn’t know what Lutisha James looked like anyway.

Her play was magnificent, folding at just the right moments and then winning either by holding superior cards or, even better, by subtle bluffs and well-placed bets. The house couldn’t beat her. The other men at the table couldn’t beat her. Nobody could defeat that woman, not that night.

Looking at her, I knew that this had to be Lutisha James. It was almost like we were old friends who knew each other on a first-name basis.

Her chips piled up into precarious little towers. The pit boss had come over to watch. There were cheers for every hand that Blondie won.

Enjoying the show for about an hour, I finally ran out of betting cash, like all the other lifelong losers. I then went to get another tray of silver dollars. There were two people in front of me, but they were served soon enough. Still, by the time I got back to the slot machine, Blondie was gone.

I went to the cashier’s window, but she wasn’t there. I asked the cashier had she come there, and he said, “Yeah, collected her money and split.”

I went over near to where the restrooms were, hoping that she’d gone in there to hide the money in her corset or maybe under her wig. But after ten minutes, no one even faintly resembling the woman came out.

I couldn’t believe it. She was right there and then she was gone. I was definitely losing my edge.

I hung around maybe a quarter of an hour longer. I was sure she wasn’t coming back, but what else could I do?

Realizing there was no answer to this question, I took my leave from Harold Stein’s Emporium.

The desert darkness had fallen once more, and the large parking lot was filled to capacity. I had to walk up and down a few lanes before seeing my midnight-blue Lincoln. Approaching the WRENS-L company car, I could see through the window that someone had taken up residence in the shotgun seat. I tried to think if I’d locked the doors. I knew that I’d done the driver’s side but couldn’t remember leaning over to press down the passenger-side lock. When I got closer, I could make out the blond wig. That brought a smile to my face. Somehow Blondie knew that I was there for her, and she wanted to know why. I unlocked the driver’s door and scooted in behind the wheel.

“How ya doin’?” I said to my welcome but uninvited guest.

The moment the door closed, she produced a .22 revolver.

This was the second time in only an hour that I’d underestimated the woman. I broke out in a cold sweat, hairs all over my body standing on end.

Being in a gambler’s state of mind, I figured that the odds were against my survival.

Taking off her sunglasses, she said, “Easy Rawlins,” in a way that was familiar both in her mouth and on my ears. This was no stranger from Texas.

I peered intently at her face, and a whole lifetime of memories flooded through. I remembered helping an older girl carry her shopping bag and then refusing to accept her offer of a tip. So, instead, she gifted me three fresh grapefruits and two store-bought cigarettes. I recollected waiting for the end of her shift at her late-night place of employment, where she took in stolen goods, always paying thirty-three percent of the street value. At the tender age of fourteen I went up against a full-grown man, trying to protect her. All I got was stabbed. There I was, on the ground, bleeding from a shoulder wound, and happy that she had pulled out a pistol, shooting that man to death. Later that night, in a makeshift living space down by the Galveston docks, I was still bleeding but at the same time being made love to by Anger Lee. It was a blood ritual that bound her forever in my heart.

“A-A-Anger,” I stuttered, trying, once more, to will my heart back down into my chest.

“Yeah, baby, it’s me.”

She sat up straighter with an emotionless smile stitched across her face. I could see in that disguise how she’d hidden her identity from the world.

“You remember when we got kicked outta my room at Toolie’s speakeasy and you and me snuck up into the horse barn them white people owned?” she asked, reminding me of that night and a thousand other stories we’d shared in the months we knew each other.

“The Parkers,” I said.

“Yeah, that was their name. That old guy, the one called Nate, he heard somethin’ out there and ran out with his scattergun. Shit, we run outta there, screamin’ so loud that he didn’t even remember to shoot.” She laughed, reminding me again of the children we’d been.

“I...” I said.

“What, baby?”

“Whatever happened with you?”

“I rode a Mississippi riverboat for a while and then moved to East St. Louie. Sold stolen merchandise and then I started gamblin’. I went to prison once for killin’ some fool tried to love me with his fists. After I got out, we moved down to La Marque, my two kids and me.”

“You got kids?”

“Oh, yeah. Hannibal and Santangelo.”

“Santangelo is your son?”

“Yeah. You know him?”

“He the one hired me to find you, told me that he was your nephew.”

“Saint did?” She actually seemed surprised. “I–I thought you just happened in on me. You know, I been in LA long enough that I always expected to run into you one day.”

“No. He hired me to find you.”

“Oh. He did? Huh.”

“What’s this all about, Anger?”

“I don’t know, Easy. I mean, I knew you was around. Now and then, when I passed through LA, I used to see your friend — Mouse. He talked about you but he didn’t know about us. I heard that you was a detective and shit.”

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“No reason, really. As far as I was concerned you was a part’a the past.”

“All right,” I said, accepting her judgment. “Then why did your son come to me claiming you were his aunt and that he needed me to find you?”

“I have no idea. Saint didn’t even know that I knew you. I guess it coulda been Hannibal. Maybe he told Saint about you.”

“Hannibal?” I asked, hoping for more detail.

“Yeah. He’s my other son, the good one.”

“Anger.”

“Yeah, Easy?”

“Could you please put that gun away?”

She looked down at her gun hand. This seemed to cause some kind of inner turmoil. Her lips moved but she didn’t say anything. Her free hand clenched and then she shoved the pistol back into her purse.

“Somebody shot Santangelo,” I said, once the pistol was safely away.

“You?” There was a deep feeling imparted to that one word.

“A white guy,” I said softly, while shaking my head to the accusatory tone.

“Is he all right?” the mother in Anger asked.

“I don’t think so.”

“Take me to him. Take me now.”

I called Melvin at home. He told me what hospital Santangelo was in. He said that he’d call ahead to make sure we got in to see him.

Santangelo Burris was laid out on one of those mechanical beds with a tube up his left nostril and one down his throat. There were three IVs dripping their holy waters into his veins.

“Oh my God no!” the hardest woman I’d ever known hollered in despair.

She ran to the side of his bed while I pushed up a chair for her to sit in, next to him. She settled in, holding his hand and muttering invocations to God, his angels, and probably even Lucifer if he’d listen.

It was a holy moment. Mother and child at the end of their journey. After a while Anger ceased her mumbled pleas. She just sat there, holding Santangelo’s hand and gazing at him. Spread across her face was the naked pain of all the mothers who ever felt for children they could not save.

I backed up against the slender window that looked in on the two. It felt as if my job was to be the witness to the saddest event that could befall a woman.

We stayed like that for hours. The room was almost absolutely silent, except for the hissing of the respirator that struggled to keep his breathing even. When the sun finally began to make its presence known in the sky outside, a large-bodied, pale-skinned, redheaded nurse made her way to the other side of the bed. She felt around for Saint’s pulse, and, after maybe two minutes, she stopped.

“He’s gone, ma’am,” she said to Anger.

“What?” Anger replied in the most fragile voice I’d ever heard.