Gray Dawn

25

Big and bearlike, Cosmo Longo lumbered out from the sentry’s hut at the bottom of the mountain I called home.

“Mr. Rawlins,” he greeted.

“Mr. Longo,” I hailed. “What’s goin’ on up the hill today?”

“She is gone,” he said.

It was a warm evening, but a chill ran over my scalp.

“Ama — Amethystine?” I managed to say.

The hirsute guard smiled and said, “She told me that she left you a note in the kitchen and that she would be back tomorrow.”

I was a little lightheaded and unsteady just standing there.

“She is beautiful,” Cosmo said, reading my mood.

“How you doin’, Big C?” I asked to change the subject. “Your father told me that you been goin’ down to the beach on your days off.”

“I like the ocean,” he confessed. “It is, how you say, vass?”

“Vast, with a t at the end.”

The towering Sicilian grinned.

“Sometimes I swim out a mile, more. There dolphins swim, and sharks sometimes too, I think. There is no more freedom than the ocean. It is a place where everything else is small.”

Amethystine’s note, written with a No. 2 pencil, was on the dining ledge on the second floor. Sitting on one of the high stools, I considered the block print, which was so neat and precise, as if she had been straining to pass on meaning far beyond the words she wrote.

Rereading her note at least eight times reminded me of my teen years spent in love with Anger Lee. Every breath, back then and right now with Amethystine, was imbued with the subtle vibrations of that love, that obsession.

Prince Valiant came into the room and hopped up, draping his forelegs across my lap. His big head lay there.

Love gets love, Theressa Edgington used to say. She was an old woman, a neighbor of mine who lived on the first floor of a tenement we both lived in, in the Fifth Ward. Love gets love, baby. Because it shines like a beacon and strikes like lightnin’. You can see it and hear it, feel it an’ smell it on the air.

The answering service had been kept busy taking messages for me. Jackson Blue had been able to get in to see Waynesmith Von Crudock. Mary said that she had information for me too. The last message was from Hannibal Lee. He’d merely left a number for me to call.

I decided to contact the lady first.

“Hello,” Melvin Suggs answered. “Who is this?”

“Damn, Melvin, you gonna interrogate me on your private line?”

“Can’t this wait till tomorrow, Rawlins?”

“It could, but them patent lawyers don’t like me too much I don’t think.”

“Patent? Oh, you callin’ for Mary?”

“I am indeed.”

He banged the receiver down on something hard. After that, I heard him calling his wife.

“Hello?” she said sweetly.

“He’s such a brute,” I joked.

“But he’s my brute,” she said, after a laugh.

“So, what you got for me?”

“The BNDD agent with the backward punctuation scar under his lip is Drake Simmons. His title is investigator, but I couldn’t find out any more than that about him and the agency.”

“No, no, that’s more than good enough. Where’d you get it?”

“I know a dude on the highway patrol, a dispatcher. He said that the BNDD did a joint operation with the CHP a while ago. Simmons was the federal contact. My guy there said that the chief was dissatisfied with the results of the investigation, but my contact didn’t know why.”

“Thanks, Mary, this gonna help.”

“I still owe you, Easy. Call whenever you want.”

“At the lawyers’?”

“No. They fired me.”

“Why? You not a good secretary?”

“They didn’t like the company I keep.”

“Easy,” he said in my ear.

“How you know it was me, Jackson? You got some gizmo on that phone tell you who’s callin’?”

“I got seven phones, Ease.”

“Seven phones? You only got two ears.”

“Between me and Jewelle and my son, that’s six ears.”

“And one phone too many.”

“No, no, no, no, no, no, Easy. Each phone has a purpose. My business line and personal line; Jewelle’s business and personal; our family line, doctor’s line, and finally there’s you.”

“Me? I got my own dedicated line?”

“Yeah, man.”

“Then how come you never said my name before when I called?”

“’Bout six months ago I changed all the numbers around, got Mister to tell everybody we in touch with that the numbers have changed. We would still get a stranger callin’ on your line every once in a while, but nowadays it’s most usually just you.”

“Damn.”

“You wanna hear about Waynesmith?”

“Shoot.”

“When I had Mister put a call through to Von Crudock he got right on the line. And when I talked about real estate, he said come on out, so I did—”

“Where?” I interrupted.

“A place on La Cienega, a restaurant and bar called Shorts. When me and Jewelle got there, I told him that Jean-Paul was lookin’ to expand his real estate portfolio in Southern California. You know we got all kinds’a reports sayin’ that the land is gonna quadruple in value ovah the next fifteen years.”

“That all sounds good. What was he talkin’ about?”

“He said that he’s puttin’ his money in the canyons around LA an’ buyin’ up orange and lemon groves around the outer borders of the valley. You know, cheapest investment for greatest profit.

“But that wasn’t nuthin’. Then he said that he’d heard that we got a computer system keep tabs on everybody in the world that was in any way involved with a policy issued by P9. I told him that I was the one set up that database.”

“Oh,” I said. “And what did that mean to him?”

“He wanted to know about a woman name of Shelly Dormer. He says that this Dormer woman is the owner of a lot out in Culver City and that he’s very interested in talkin’ to her, and if not her, then to her heirs.

“What you think about that?”

I had asked Jackson to have a conversation about business in general because if I had to speak to the man, I wanted him to think that I knew something about what he was into. But now...

“Did he seem excited about findin’ this woman?” I asked.

“Excited? Shit. It was like his dick been hard for the whole month his woman been gone.”

“Jackson!” Jewelle shouted from somewhere near at hand.

“Sorry, baby, I was just talkin’ to Easy, you know,” Jackson said to her. And then to me, “Yeah, man. You wanna get to him, tell ’im you got a line on this Dormer chick.”

“Thanks, Jackson. Thank you. That’s gonna be some help.”

“Cool. Hold on, Easy, Jewelle wanna shout at ya.”

I was already deep in thought about the information that Jackson had mined.

“Easy?”

“Hey, Jewelle. Thanks for keepin’ Jackson in line.”

“That man is a mess.”

“What can I do for you, darlin’?”

“I don’t need a thing, Easy. But I wanted to tell you that I had a friend who did business with Von Crudock.”

“Oh? Who’s that?”

“Lindhoff, Bertrand Lindhoff.”

“What about him?”

“Bertie was a nice guy if you remembered never to do business with him.”

“Why’s that?”

“Bertie felt that if you lost sight of the ball, then the ball was his. So, he got into a deal with Von Crudock. They were building a shoppin’ center or sumpin’. Bertie called me one day and said that he saw a loophole in their contract, so he was gonna take the project over. He wanted me to provide workers that Von Crudock didn’t have his hooks into. They were thirty million dollars in, and he was gonna end up with it all.”

“So, what happened?” I asked, though I didn’t have to.

“Bertie disappeared. The police came and asked me about it. I told ’em I didn’t know a thing.”

This was no surprise. I’d seen the mercenaries on Ayres and what had happened to my son’s brother.

“Thanks, J. I’ll be careful.”

“What’s going on with you, Easy?”

“About Von Crudock?”

“No. Your voice.”

“What’s wrong with my voice?”

“It sounds, I don’t know, kinda forceful, like you about to bust out your skin.”

“I’m at home, honey. Must be the altitude. You know, they say it affects the larynx.”

“Hm, if you say so.”

“I do. If you don’t mind, can I holler at Jackson one more time?”

It was a relief to get off the line with her. I often forget the deft perceptivity that Jewelle possesses.

“Ease,” Jackson said.

“Do me a favor, Jackson. Look up that Shelly Dormer and her heirs in your files, but don’t tell Von Crudock.”

“You got it.”

“Hello?” a woman answered. A woman who had the crisp and authoritative voice of Violet Welles, my son’s friend.

“Easy Rawlins, callin’ for his son,” I replied.

“He’s not here.”

“You expect him back?”

“Sooner or later.”

“Come on now, Violet. Why you got to be like that?”

“Is there anything else?”

“Yeah. Tell him that the same folks killed Santangelo are after him. I know who they are.”

“Who?” Violet asked, the angry tone draining from her voice.

I told her my phone number, twice, and then hung up.

I decided to make lasagna for dinner using three kinds of cheese, including ricotta, a tomato-based pasta sauce that I made once a month just in case my fancy turned Italian, and thick-cut pepperoni for the meat. I’m a fast cook and within thirty minutes my lasagna dish was ready for a 350-degree oven. I like the lower temperature for an hour of baking.

The meal had been cooking for a quarter hour when the phone rang.

“Hello?”

“This is Hannibal Lee,” he uttered, with words clipped and his baritone fully under control.

Those four words imposed a temporary silence on me. That was my son calling. The child of my blood.

“Anger tells me that you’re my son.” Even though I was deeply moved, I saw no reason to pussyfoot with the man.

“I’m callin’ because you said that you knew who killed my brother.”

“That’s why you called. I called you because of that and also because your mother claims my paternity.”

“I don’t care about that.”

“Okay,” I said and waited.

The seconds slid by.

“So, what do you want to ask me?” he said at last.

“I want to meet you, face-to-face.”

“That’s not possible.”

“Anything is possible, no matter how unlikely.”

That halted Hannibal again.

“All right. Tomorrow morning at eleven. The Penguin Club.”

“What’s that?”

“You never heard of the Penguin Club?” he accused.

“No. Where is it?”

“Down on a Hundred Twenty-Third. On the east side. You turn right at One Twenty-Three goin’ south on Central. It’s the first empty lot on the left. You can’t miss it.”

“Eleven o’clock,” I said.

“Eleven,” he replied, sounding as if he were correcting me.

I pulled up to the curb at 123rd in front of the empty lot at 10:31 the next morning. I remembered the big blue house that was once there. It was three stories high and proud-looking, an old place where a single family had lived at the beginning of the century. By the time I first saw it, the urban mansion had been subdivided and was then home to at least five families, only to be burned to ashes in the Watts Riot, August 1965.

The empty plot of land was covered with what looked like scorched earth. A light-gray-and-yellow dirt, rock-hard soil that wouldn’t give a micromillimeter under a man’s shod weight. Running the width of the back of the lot was a weathered wooden fence, maybe twelve feet high. At the far end, in front of the gray weathered fence, maybe eighteen cars were parked.

Driving to the back of the vacant field, I parked and got out.

From the street the fence looked solid, with no breaks. But up close there was a rope handle toward the center. I pulled on the hemp loop and the door gave way.

“Who is that?” a man demanded.

“Ezekiel Rawlins,” I declared. “Here to see Hannibal Lee.”

There was a moment of silence, and then from around the trunk of a solitary oak came a man in black slacks and a square-cut milk-chocolate-brown shirt. He had a mid-caliber rifle hanging down from the crook of his right arm.

“I heard’a you,” the light brown Negro allowed. “They say you hang out with pimps and pushers.”

“You just standin’ there, makin’ up shit, right, brother?” was my reply.

“Say what?”

“Have we met?”

“I, uh, don’t think so.”

“Then you should have the sense to know that people talk every day. They say all kinds’a shit. Don’t mean it’s true. Don’t mean it’s anywhere near right. And here you are, spreadin’ rumors ’bout your brother just like the white man want you to.”

I knew what kind of place I was in. I knew the words they used.

The high-yellow Black man considered a moment and then nodded.

“Follow me,” he said.

On the other side of the wood wall was a slender swath of grass.

“Why you need to have an armed guard at an open door?” I asked my guide.

“It’s not usually unlocked,” he said. “I keep watch on the lot, and when I saw you, I took the bolt off the door.”

“Oh.”

Beyond the strip of lawn there was a huge privet hedge, at least as high as the fence. The sentry led me to the center of the hedge and then through a man-size gate that had been overgrown with the dense cover of dark green and oval leaves.

The other side was a real surprise. It was a three-story white house, but instead of the back it was set up like the front. There was a generous porch and welcoming front door.

“Whoa,” I declared.

“What’s wrong?”

“What’s the other side look like?”

“That’s the back’a the house, on One Twenty-Fourth. Beyond that there’s an eleven-foot cinder-block fence to keep us secure.”

“Like a fort, huh?”

The rifleman grinned in reply.

He led me up the stairs and past the front door.

The first floor of the Penguin Club was a large, open area where there were couches, chairs, and tables set here and there. Maybe a dozen club members were seated, deep in conversation, reading, writing, or just thinking. Everyone was Black.

“He’s on the second floor,” my armed guide said.

“What room?”

“They’ll tell you.”

The staircase was wide, with each step cushioned by royal-blue-and-maroon carpeting. The oak-wood banisters were well maintained and there were framed portraits on the walls: Black men and women from every century since the beginning of the Great Enslavement.

“How can I help you?” asked a woman seated behind a black desk. She was young, like almost everyone else at the Penguin Club. Her light brown hair was curly and teased out into an Afro.

“Hannibal Lee.”

“Down the hall to your left,” she said, looking me in the eye. “It’s the cream-and-cranberry door.”

The door of red and white was halfway down the hall and closed. So, I knocked.

“Come in.”

It was a small room, tastefully done in burgundy and wood-dark brown. There was a long slender window that looked over the houses to the east. Set before that frame were two deep red padded chairs, facing each other.

My son was an inch taller than I and dark-skinned like both his parents. His face had character — formed, I believed, by years of decision-making in the face of hard times and distress. In a similar uniform to the sentry down below, he wore black slacks along with a fancy green, square-cut short-sleeved shirt. There were two marks up near the bridge of his nose, telling me that he wore glasses, sometimes.

“Have a seat,” he offered.

I chose the chair to the left of the window. He settled across from me.

“I’m very happy to meet you, son.”

“That makes one of us.”

“Oh, come on now, man. It’s not my fault that I didn’t know about you.”

“You could have looked.”

“No, I couldn’t have. When your mama left Texas, that was all she wrote for me. She didn’t say how I could write, call, or get on a bus to her. And, as far as I knew, she wasn’t pregnant the last time we met.”

Hannibal’s face didn’t change from its stolid expression, except for his eyes. They seemed to be focused on some inner question.

“How old are you?” he asked.

“Fifty-two last September.”

After a brief calculation he said, “That’s impossible.”

“Why?”

“Because that would make you fourteen when I was conceived.”

Our eyes met. I didn’t look away.

“Is that true?” he asked.

“You wanna see my driver’s license?”

He wanted to, but didn’t press.

“You were a child,” he averred.

“I’d been on my own since the age of eight. Your mother had from the age of ten. The word child wasn’t in our vocabulary. I loved her more than I’m willin’ to remember. And she cared for me. Only thing I could think was that she thought I was too young to be a father to you.”

Hannibal mixed all those words in the cauldron of his mind. I assumed they jumbled up quite nicely because he couldn’t say any more about me abandoning him.

“What’s this about my brother?” he asked instead.

“Santangelo hired me to find a woman named Lutisha James.”

“My mother.”

“That’s what it turned out to be. The name I knew her by was Anger Lee.”

I told him the rest of the story and he listened closely.

It took him a minute or two to digest the complex tale. Then he said, “I was the one who sent Santangelo to find you.”

“So you already knew about me?”

“I knew your name, and that you were my father, by blood. But I didn’t know it all.”

“When I talked to your brother, after they’d shot him, he said that a white man, probably wearin’ a jacket looked like a checkerboard, was the one that did it. I went out lookin’ for you because whoever killed him, I figured, had you in mind too.”

“Okay,” he said, trying to regain the superiority he felt when I’d walked in. “Now you told me.”

“It’s not just the warnin’. You need to come with me. I can protect you.”

“You expect me to trust you?”

“Did you send your brother to me?”

“Yeah, so?”

“Then you must’a been told by your mother that I was a man to be trusted.”

From there my son went through an internal dialogue. I imagined him thinking of questions, or accusations, and then coming up with the answers I’d give.

Finally, he said, “Where would we go?”

I explained where my house was, reiterating that I wanted him to come there with me. Then I said, “But first you should call Violet and tell her to stay away from anyplace they could find her.”

“You think they’re after her too?”

“They’re after you. And if twistin’ her arm would bring you out, I’m sure they wouldn’t mind.”