Gray Dawn

34

There’s a red leather sofa chair in the corner of my third-floor bedroom, diagonally across from the bed. I was sitting naked on that chair while Amethystine slept peacefully, also naked, on top of the jumble of blankets, pillows, and sheets. I was going over and over the unwritten balance sheet of my work, so far, that week.

There was no proof that Jesus had been dealing drugs. There was, on the other hand, a mountain of evidence against the dead BNDD agents. I’d discovered that I had a blood son, Ivy League educated and committed to the struggle. The two most important lovers in my life, Amethystine Stoller and Anger Lee, each one more than I could manage, were coexisting under the same roof. This was a predicament that all Black men, maybe all men everywhere, hungered for even though it was clearly a bad omen.

I wondered if I should offer Niska a limited partnership at the agency but, in the end, decided to shelve that idea for a while.

Somewhere around 5:00 a.m. I realized that I was not going to sleep, so I dressed in a burgundy housecoat that my old girlfriend Bonnie had given me when we still had a future. I made French roast coffee in the kitchen and then went down to the living room to sit near the trickling stream that flowed through the ground floor of our home.

There were plans in motion. These stratagems were not completely mine, but they had something to do with me. I smoked my daily cigarette on the terrace, with the door to the house shut. The dogs had come along with me to look out over the broad plain and sniff the air.

I waited for the sun before turning on a transistor radio. Flipping the dial, looking for music that would soothe me, I happened upon what they called an important news bulletin.

Early this morning Waynesmith Von Crudock was shot and killed along with his bodyguard, Leon Mumford, in front of his office in North Santa Monica. He received multiple gunshot wounds and was pronounced dead on the scene. The SMPD reported that there were no witnesses and no leads.

That week I attended three funerals. The first of these was for the cattle king, his thirty-one-year-old niece-in-law, and her husband. Orchestra came with me because I asked her to. The Ellenbogens were there with Gigi. The minute the orphaned child saw me, she threw herself into my arms. She was crying and laughing, holding on for dear life.

Between her emotional outbursts I said, “Gigi, I want you to meet my good friend Miss Orchestra Solomon.”

“Hello,” the suddenly shy and definitely suffering child murmured.

Alice Fabricant came up to us around then.

“What are you doing here, Mr. Rawlins?” she asked, without even a hint of friendly concern.

“Came to see my girl.”

“She’s not yours,” the social worker intoned.

“Oh,” I said, “of course. Have you met my friend Orchestra Solomon? Sadie,” I then said to Orchestra, “this is Mrs. Alice Fabricant, the woman who controls the fate of this child.”

“I see,” the billionaire said solemnly.

For her part, Alice was dumbfounded. Everyone who had anything to do with fundraising knew about Sadie Solomon.

“It’s such a pleasure to meet you,” Fabricant sputtered. “Your, your generosity—”

“Mr. Rawlins tells me that this child needs a home,” Sadie said.

“Yes, yes, certainly.”

“Call my office. Talk to my lawyer.”

We left the somber LaCraig funeral with Gigi in tow.

I had to explain to the girl that I was unable to be there for a child and that Sadie, who lived right next door, wanted to adopt a little girl just like her.

“You can come to my house, play with my dogs, and my daughter can teach you all the different things that swimmers know,” I explained.

“But... but... but what about that man, that man in the house?”

“You mean the one wearin’ the yellow checkerboard?”

“Uh-huh.”

“He’s dead.”

“He really is?”

“They said so on the radio.”

With that she finally accepted the new life. And she loved the mountain once we got there.

Cosmo’s burial was the next day, on Orchestra’s mountainside. The mourners were all residents of the mountain, people who saw Cosmo nearly every day. Erculi thanked me for telling him where to find his son’s killers. He said that it meant that Cosmo could rest in peace.

Two days later we laid Santangelo Burris to rest at Forest Lawn. It was a small affair attended by Anger, Violet, Hannibal, Amethystine, me, and an old guy from the BFNE named Howard Loftus. No one spoke over the grave. We just bowed our heads while he was laid to rest. Amethystine held Anger’s hand through the entire ritual, until the backhoe had filled the grave with soil.

Walking down to the parking lot, Loftus fell in step beside me and said, “You know, he was a good man. Not so good with words or ideas that wasn’t real. But he believed in his own freedom and the freedom of all Black people. Some’a my brothers at the BFNE didn’t agree. They done started to think that bein’ more like the white man that made us slaves was the only way to liberation. But Santangelo knew that wasn’t true. He knew it in his bones.”

Loftus was one of those Black men with great power packed in a small frame. Something about his words, their presentation, reeked of truth.

Down at the parking lot Anger was standing next to the WRENS-L Lincoln Continental. Amethystine and Violet were climbing into the burgundy Buick that Hannibal drove.

“You mind givin’ me a ride down to the restaurant, Easy?” my first true love asked.

“No, ma’am.”

We went for quite a while without talking. I turned on the radio but she turned it off.

“I’m sorry, Easy.”

“That’s okay. I don’t need to hear nuthin’.”

“Not the radio, fool,” she said with a grin. “Back in the day I looked at you like you were a child. Like a little brother, or even my son. I realize now that I done you a disservice. You always been the best man I ever known.”

Most times in life I hear words and consider them. But in this case I felt what Anger was saying. Her words pressed down like heavy stones lodged on top of my mind.

“I hope that you and your crooked girlfriend make it,” she said into my silence. “And even if you crash and burn, I hope you have a good time on the way down.”

Later on that day, back at the house, in the rooftop rose garden, I was sitting with Hannibal. He told me some things about his younger brother.

“He was just mad sometimes,” Hannibal told me. “Because he was so rough he thought that people were laughin’ at him. But I loved him, you know what I mean?”

What I knew was to let him have his own feelings.

After a decent wait I asked, “What do you plan to do?”

“I don’t know. Mama’s goin’ back down Texas. She said I could come wit’ ’er, but them rednecks are too much for me. I got a double degree in literature and economics. I was thinkin’ that maybe I could get a job workin’ for a financial institution of some kind. Maybe a charity.”

“I got an in at P9.”

“You do?”

“Yeah.”

“What kinda in?”

“If I call the president and say I need to meet, he’ll ask when and where.”

Surprise showed on the Princeton graduate’s face.

“But,” I added.

“But what?”

“There might be a way that you could work for yourself.”

“Like how?”

“The man who was after Sasha and you, the man that had Santangelo killed, that was Waynesmith Von Crudock.”

“Uh-huh,” he grunted. “Who did that?”

“The police don’t know.”

My carefully chosen words had the desired effect. Hannibal nodded sagely.

“What’s that got to do with me having my own business?”

“Crudock was the one wanted that deed.”

“Yeah?”

“I have it now, and I know the rightful heir. I think we three could work out a contract where you could manage her properties for sumpin’ like a five percent fee. You do that and you’ll be wearin’ vicuna before next year is over.”

“Vicuna?”