South Central Noir

Dunbar Hotel

1

September 24, 1935. Riverfront Substation, LAPD

I heard crowds outside the window. Every now and again, a shout would break out far off, down the way — and closer, in the hall outside. The colored folks that got rounded up with me was getting pushed around. Sound like they was pushing back, fighting, banging the walls.

The cop that arrested me would sometimes stare out the window. Like he was expectin’ to see another colored girl pulled out the river, dead. Wasn’t but one light turned on in the room and the room was dusk dark except for where I was sitting. His boots was so heavy, even when he was behind me I could follow him. And every time he came into view, clomping past, light came in the window, and I could make out the scars and wrinkles in his face.

There was a knock at the door. The cop went over. Laid his ear against it. Like he could tell who was knocking just from the sound. He cracked the door, “Whatd’ya want, officer?” he said.

A lady cop answered, “Detective Hanniday, the chief wants to know when you’ll be finished with the colored boy. The niggers are rioting. He needs to see you, pronto.”

“Tell the boss I’m ’bout done,” Detective Hanniday said.

He closed the door and, before I could track him, snuck up beside me. Bent close. “You kill that girl?” he said.

My throat clinched. “Naw, naw,” I finally told him.

“I ain’t got devilment enough to torment a fly. I was hiding near the river with some Oklahoma white boys and some Mexicans we fell in with when we jumped off the train. We was looking for something to eat. Some fellers from the camp tore past us shouting that a white girl been kilt. Colored boys did it, they said, and the cops was coming to kill us all. I took off. Tripped. On a stump I thought. In a slippery place, up from the water. I looked ’round. Seen that poor girl tangled in the weeds. She was a goner. Dent in her head. Blood ’round her neck. Dress pulled up. Her bloomers was gone. I like to died, seeing that.”

“And?” Detective Hanniday said.

“Cops drove up. One stepped out a long black Packard. His lights shined right on me. He was big as a mansion. Two guns on his hips.”

“Chief Hopalong,” Detective Hanniday said, talking to hisself. He walked to a picture on the wall. Pointed to a fat man — the one in the Packard.

“That him?” Detective Hanniday said.

I nodded.

“You’ve met our remarkable chief of police,” Detective Hanniday said. “Shirley ‘Buster’ Hemingway.” He looked back at me. “Then what?”

“The cop doors flew open. Dogs jumped out. The chief blew a whistle. Sicced ’em on us. They tore acrost the riverbank. Two ran up on me. They was biting the little girl too. Some cops pulled ’em off.”

The memory of the dead girl raised the hurt and scaredness I was trying to forget. Detective Hanniday had took off my handcuffs. I was grateful for that. My wrists was still stinging. I tried to mash the hurt down. Didn’t work. I touched my legs where the dead girl touched them. The blood was drying quick and hard.

“Go on,” Detective Hanniday said.

“‘Round up them niggers,’ Chief Hopalong said. And they did too, but not just coloreds. They beat on anybody they fount. That’s when Chief Hopalong came over and started to whup me. Accusing me of killing the white girl. He was whupping me good and proper, till a colored cop came over and stared at the dead girl. ‘This ain’t no white girl, Chief,’ the colored cop said. ‘She just a yella gal.’

“‘A yella gal?’ Chief Hopalong said. ‘We wasting all this time tending to a nigger?’

“He stomped back to his car, getting madder and madder just from saying that. That’s when he called you over. Remember?”

The detective didn’t say nothing. Staring out the window, smoking his cigarette, studying nothin’ but his own thoughts. Then he said, “Yeah, I remember, kid. I’m the resident nigger-lover ’round here. Pride of the LAPD.”

He kept quiet a spell, then looked at my naked feets. “Damn, boy, you got the biggest feet I ever saw on a child. How tall are you?”

“Five something,” I said.

“Five something? What was your name again?” the cop said.

“Theus,” I told him, like before.

“How old are you?”

“’Bout fourteen or fifteen, I ’spect.”

“And you say you came in last night with that gang of Okies camped on the river?”

“Nawsuh, I came in with some new Okies. And I didn’t meet up with them till I left out from home...”

“Home? Where’s home?”

“Jardin,” I told him. “Jardin, Mississippi.”

“Where are your folks?”

“My pa got kilt sassing a white lady back in ’29. Then ma got the nervous sickness. My big sister Paradise caught it too.”

“So, why here? This is a white man’s town. Why not run to Chicago or Detroit? Your people seem to be getting on there.”

“I’m huntin’ my Uncle Balthazar. ’Fore Ma quit talking right, she showed me his picture and said he a big pooh-bah in one of the colored hotels downtown. Figure if I throws in with him, I might can make it.”

“What hotel?”

“Can’t remember. It start with a D or a G.”

“You mean the Dunbar?”

“Yeah, that’s it. Dunbar. Ma said everybody that stays there’s rich. Pullman porters, movie stars. If I throws in with my Uncle Balthazar, I figure I can get somethin’ to eat. Get rich too, by and by. That’s why I had to come here.”

Detective Hanniday thought on that a minute then pressed a buzzer on his desk. A colored cop, Officer Kimbrow, came in. “Unlock the charity bin and find this boy some clothes. Forget shoes, he’ll have to get those clodhoppers shod elsewhere. Once he’s decent, drop him off at the Dunbar.”

2

We drove up from the river through some mean-looking streets. Officer Kimbrow didn’t say nothing. Then he looked at my feets. “Damn, son, those is some gigantic feets!”

Seem like he couldn’t decide when to look at the road and when to stare at my feets. It tickled him and he told me when he was ’round my age he had big feets too. “Nature evens it all out quite nicely as you grow.”

He started talking. Told me colored folks ain’t got a chance in hell to make a life in this mean ol’ town. Said he believed white folk, not colored boys, was killing all them Black girls — it was a warning. Keep out, the warning said.

We drove past ragged shacks, me thinking about the warning. Directly, we turnt onto a pretty street named Central. Seem like the whole town cheered up. Stores and buildings everywheres, brand new. Fancy cars and jalopies pushed in around us. Like we was joining a parade. Loud music played a ways down. Horns honked, folks jumped on the running boards, cheering.

I asked Officer Kimbrow, “What’s the matter? They all happy. Ain’t they heard ’bout the poor girl?”

“Naw, they ain’t heard,” Officer Kimbrow said. “They happy about the fight.”

“What fight?” I said.

“Goodness, boy, don’t you know? Joe Louis just knocked out Baer in four. He’s the number one contender now. A colored man is gonna be champion of the world. And there ain’t nothing these crackers can do to stop it.”

3

Officer Kimbrow fount a parking space and pulled me through the crowd. When we reached the hotel, seem like the whole block reared up right in front of me. Balconies and windows jumped into the clouds.

Officer Kimbrow said, “Hurry up, son,” and walked in.

I couldn’t move. That Dunbar Hotel looked like a secret golden palace for white folks, tucked smack in the middle of Negro town. The white folks I knew about didn’t truck no colored boy walking, bold as a prince, in through the front doors of they personal palaces. I wanted to hunt for the colored entrance.

“Come on, boy,” Officer Kimbrow said again. I followed him, on the lookout for a whuppin’.

There was fountains, paintings, and flowers everywheres. Some ceilings was glass, staring at the cloudy sky. Walls was done up with sand-colored tiles. Flowers and gold curlicues twisted ’round them. The front rooms and all the shops was filled with peoples.

Nobody talked about the murdered girl. Everybody was trying to say something important about the big fight. We went to the front desk. A man, around seventeen, asked if we was booking a room. He was dressed in a fantastic brown suit covered with buttons. A little red hat sat on his head neat as a cherry. On his pocket was the words Tiger Smalls, Bell Captain.

Officer Kimbrow told Mr. Smalls we was looking for my uncle, Mr. Pin. When Mr. Smalls smiled at me I could tell my uncle was sho-nuff a poo-bah of some quality there.

“Captain Pin is in the barbershop,” Mr. Smalls said. “Follow me.”

The shop had four brass chairs. The barbers moved like dancers. They conks slick as race cars. Pearl buttons ran acrost they white shirts. A sign above the mirrors said, House of Style.

A giant radio sat beside the front window. Folks was watching it like a picture show. The colored station KGFJ was replaying the fight.

The head barber seen us come in. Before we could talk, he pointed to a tall, prosperous-looking gentleman getting his conk did back of the shop. The gentleman peeked his head out from the hair dryer as we approached. His conk sparkled like glass. He stepped to the mirror. Patted his doo, studying hisself. He looked back at us in the mirror. “Something the matter, officer?” my Uncle Balthazar said.

4

His office was big enough to fit a desk and a visitor’s chair. A sign on his desk said, Balthazar Pin, Plant Captain. The walls was decorated with photographs of my uncle in his brown tuxedo, posing with rich colored folks. I didn’t recognize but one of them, the famous runner Jesse Owens.

Uncle Balthazar sat at his desk; I sat in the visitor’s chair. The cop talked about murdered girls — four since June. They’d died awful ways. Cut, beat, strangled, raped — then kilt and throwed away.

Just before he left out, Officer Kimbrow said, “Mr. Pin, I am honor bound to tell you, you can’t rely on any of the sworn officers of the LAPD, colored nor white, to protect you. I suggest you look to your own menfolk. To stand up as men must; and, if it comes to it, to trust in the authority of Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson to deliver due justice on our behalf.”

5

Uncle Balthazar stared at me a long time after Officer Kimbrow left out. Then he came ’round the desk and studied me some more. “Mercy, you got some big feets, boy,” he said at last. “How tall is you?”

“About five seven,” I said.

“Well, that won’t last long.”

He took a step back. Studying me. “Your daddy was a runt as a kid. Grew tall and big as a bear. Mean too, quiet as it’s kept. I loved your ma, though. She was God-fearing and sweet-hearted. Prettiest in the bunch.”

“She ain’t pretty no more. Nor God-fearing neither,” I said. “She stopped loving the Lord when Pa got kilt. She stopped being pretty when the nervous sickness got her. It ruint her. Ruint Dise too.”

“Well, boy, the Good Lord done sent you to me. If you works hard, I’m your man. But if you come up shiftless and short, you out the door — understand?”

“Yes suh.”

He pressed a button on his desk. Directly, a lady, ’bout eighteen, stepped in. Pretty as a movie star. The writing on her pocket said, Cleopatra Chimes, Chief Housekeeper.

“Miss Chimes, take his young man down to the infirmary. Dress his wounds, give him some proper vines, and feed him.”

“But there ain’t no room, Captain Pin,” Miss Chimes said. “We full up with help: janitorial, bellboys, waitstaff. We don’t need no more staff.”

“Then we’ll just have to make a place outta no place,” my Uncle Balthazar snapped. He thought on it. “He’ll serve as my personal factotum until we can find him suitable employment.”

They was using words I’d never heard of. “Fact... fact... tote...” I tried.

“Factotum,” my uncle corrected me. “That mean, every damn thing I say is a fact. And if I point to a heap of satchels yonder by the elevator, I expects you to hop up and tote ’em where they needs to go. Fact-tote-um — get me?” He turnt to Miss Chimes, said, “Now, he can’t bunk here. F’now, get one of the bellhops to make him a pallet back of the pantry. He can stay there till we find lodging downtown.”

“Yes sir, Captain Pin,” Miss Chimes said.

She cleared a space behind the pantry. A bellboy named Chipper came with the bedding. He didn’t say nothin’ to me, nor hardly look at me all the while he made the pallet. He knew there wasn’t no jobs, and here I was, the captain’s pet, getting one.

Chipper left out soon. In the infirmary Miss Chimes brought in supper, some cornbread and a bowl of gumbo. I swallowed it all before it stopped steaming. Then Miss Chimes pulled out a first aid kit. “Be strong, shorty. This is gonna hurt,” she said.

’Cepting my ma, I ain’t never had a growed-up woman touch me like Miss Chimes did that night. Now, she wasn’t trying to touch me in no sinning way (I don’t think), but all while she was rubbing me and dabbing me with Vaseline and stinging cream, and sticking bandages and cotton balls all up and down my legs, seem like my privates (which she never touched) was getting healed and scrubbed and rubbed and pampered some too. I thanked the Lord when she quit.

6

The smell of biscuits got me up ’round four a.m. ’Round five, Flip Cromwell, one of the busboys working mornings, brought me a pressed white shirt and pants and a white-and-black cap a milkman would wear.

My first uniform!

Flip Cromwell said, “We ain’t got no ski shoes to fit your big feets, so you gotta wear socks till we can find some. So, get cleaned up, scrub. Breakfast’s waiting in the break room. Chow down and report to Captain Pin in the lobby. Six sharp.”

The break room was all white, with a long counter, stools, and booths. Photos of celebrities was on every wall. Most of the talk was about the big fight, where the great Joe Louis knocked out Baer in four. When Miss Chimes came in with the maid staff and heard what all them folks was talking about, she banged a fork on her water glass and yelled, “Stop!”

Everybody stopped.

“The fight? The fight!” Miss Chimes said. “What about the colored girl dead by the river? What about her? What about her fight? Why ain’t none a you talking about her?”

Nobody said nothing after that. The only sound was the clinking of forks on plates. Miss Chimes glared at us the whole time. We was happy to run out of there at about a quarter to six.

Uncle Balthazar stood in the middle of the lobby. Wearing glasses, like a professor, and a chocolate tux with a bright-red bow tie. We sat around him on the big leather couches. He called for reports from the top peoples: head chef, bartender, waiter. Then said, “Friends, there is a killer among us. Killing our babies. Discarding them like garbage. The damn cops won’t help us. The damn mayor won’t help us. We alone and must be vigilant. Ever vigilant and ever ready to ensure our homes are safe for our chirrens, our grandmothers, and for our own selves. It’s up to us. So, be careful and be aware.”

A discussion of the murders followed. Once the speakers had their say, Uncle Balthazar turnt to me and said, “On a final note, comrades, I’d like to introduce you to the newest member of the Dunbar family. Master Prometheus Drummond. He my nephew and go by the nickname Theus. I have seen fit to establish the post of factotum for him. That mean he a lackey, lowest rail on the stool. Please spy on him. Torment him. If he slip up and sass back, I’m gonna kick him back to the river where he come from.”

He said these shocking words then looked around at all the faces. All but mine.

“Understand?”

They nodded, yes suh, Captain Pin.

“Okay. Now, get to it,” he said.

They hustled to they posts.

7

Uncle Balthazar sat at his desk signing papers. Cold as an icicle. Ack like he didn’t know me. “So, I took a chance and hired you last night, nephew,” he started off, “but you ain’t legit and on the books, official like, till daybreak Monday. That give you six days to familiarize yourself with your responsibilities as a steward and representative of the greatest colored hotel west of the Mississippi. Or six days to mess up. Got me?”

He pushed the button on his desk and directly Miss Chimes walked in. “Miss Chimes will give you a comprehensive tour of the facilities,” he said. He winked at her and began his rounds.

My uncle wasn’t gone good before Miss Chimes grabbed me by my factotum shirt and jerked me outside, back to the trash bins in the alley on 42nd. She shoved me against a bin. Smiled. Her bottomless brown eyes was especially frightening.

“Now listen, squirt,” she said. “I know Captain Pin said I got to work with you. But I ain’t got to like you. Understand? If you don’t pull your weight, I’ll kick your Black ass myself.” She jerked her hand inside her pocket and took out a pack of smokes. Pulled one out. Perched it between her lips. Stopped fussing long enough to stare at me. “Got a light?” she said finally.

Said it like a girl who don’t want no light but just want to shame you and show you that you ain’t got nothing she can use. So don’t try to ack like you do. You ain’t got nothing I want, Negro, she was saying without saying it.

I searched my pockets and shook my head no. Shamed.

“Thought so,” she said, real mean.

I liked to died when she pulled a lighter out her own pocket and lit the smoke. “You mens is always buttin’ in where you ain’t needed,” she said. “And as for protecting me, I don’t need no damn man, ’specially no half-squirt half-a-worm like you running behind me. If that killer or any-damn-body run up on me, he gonna take his johnson home in a thimble. We clear?”

“Yes, Miss Chimes,” I said.

I was shaking inside, looking for somewheres to run. She blew out a cloud of smoke and said, all serious, “Now, here are the rules, Wormboy. More important, these are my personal laws for getting along with me anytime you walk past me in this fabulous hotel. First, ain’t no cussing on the premises. Got that, mutherfucker? And two, ain’t no smoking, at no time, and that mean from right now till Doomsday, y’understand?” Another toke. She added: “No drinking, no dawdling, no overt familiarity with the guests — they’re our patrons, not your buddies — no offensive or boisterous behavior, no spitting, in the street or nowheres, no stealing. And no sassing your betters, that mean me. Understand?” She flicked the butt into the street.

8

There are a hundred bedroom suites in the Dunbar. Sixty of them luxury, with private bath, sitting room, and gardens. Radio in every suite. Phonographs when requested. Miss Chimes pointed out the quirks in every room. Each flaw and flourish now my personal responsibility. She showed me what she called “hidden nooks” where dust and the occasional spider hid. How the beds must be made, pillows fluffed, linens folded; the daily flowers set out, watered, and arranged.

She showed me lockers lined with mops and brooms; shelves of brushes and rags. Disinfectants, bleaches, candles, soap, scents. I managed to pocket a small box of matches.

When I was ’bout wore out, I followed Miss Chimes into the cool darkness of the ballroom. Seats for a hundred. She summoned the head chef and all the waitstaff. Made me tell my name and shake hands. Our tour took four hours to complete. When we was done, Miss Chimes took me to the entrance on 41st.

“Look down, little Negro,” she said.

My big socks was standing on the threshold of the hotel. The flagstone was imprinted with the words Hotel Somerville.

“They calls it Dunbar now,” Miss Chimes said. “After the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, and that’s all well and good. But every time I say ‘Dunbar’ with my mouth, I say ‘Mrs. Somerville’ in my head. This is her hotel, not his’n. Sure, Mrs. Somerville had a good man — Dr. Somerville — to help her, with love and support and cash like a good man should, but she was a doctor too, and rich as hell, and all this pomp and majesty you see around us is her doing; the work of a single colored woman — Mrs. Vada Somerville. Her husband didn’t do shit but get married to a lady genius. Understand?”

I did.

9

A sharecropper’s boy ain’t no stranger to hard work, and I decided I was gonna make my Uncle Balthazar, Miss Chimes, and all them California Negroes confess I was the hardest-workinest feller, colored or white, any of them ever seen. I shot up at four a.m., threw on my factotum uniform and cap, swallowed a biscuit, and had the bannisters, tables, and main room floors sparkling before the six a.m. meeting. I kept up a hot sweat till well after quitting time. Made sure every wandering eye seen me. I didn’t take no break, nor dawdle, nor cuss, nor sass back at my betters, nor slacken my pace till moonlight rose over the avenue.

To help with my chores, I’d been given a bike, with Dunbar Flyer painted on the frame. My Cadillac. Uncle Balthazar fount me a place downtown, walled in with some Okie tents and run-down shacks for families on the dole. My neighbors was poor and grief-worn. From sunrise to long after sunset, when they wasn’t walkin’ around looking pitiful and stunned, they filled the air with curious sounds and voices; singing and playing mandolins, guitars, fiddles, and accordions, all mixed in.

10

The Dunbar paid for Rosalinda and Delroy Teal — the parents of the murdered girl — and all seven of they surviving children to come to LA as guests of the hotel and the legal fund of the NAACP. Saturday, after the murder, the Central Avenue Colored Women’s Brigade held a rally and a march from the steps of the Dunbar down Central to the river. Where Magnolia Teal was fount.

Fount by me, folks was saying.

’Bout five hundred protesters showed up for the march. The speechifying was led by Mrs. Charlotta Bass, editor of the colored paper, the California Eagle. That tiny lady was as loud and convincing as a Holiness preacher. The real target of the murders, she said, was Negro life and culture itself.

“I want to address the Negro women, here and across our great city,” she said. “Ladies, it is up to us to do something about the violence being done to our bodies, our hopes, our families, and especially our children. Many are the stories of heartrending courage that Negro women of the slave period have handed down to us. They endured as our sisters, our daughters, our mothers, and the mothers of a hundred rebellions — all of which our standard history texts have conveniently forgotten. Well, we have not forgotten. And we will not fail to root out this cancer festering in our midst.”

The crowd got quiet when Mrs. Bass stepped aside and introduced the parents of the murdered girl.

The Teals put me in the mind of my own ma and pa. Unschooled, dirt-poor laborers. They words was sorrowful and heartbreaking. They sobbed the whole time they was talking. So did they children. All the speakers expressed outrage at the murder of one more colored girl — four since June.

Cops, white and colored, was out in force. Marchers called them buzzards. Eagle reporters passed out posters with pictures of the girls — Etna Pettipeace, Marietta James, Paulina Crabtree, and Magnolia — all who, Mrs. Bass said, was defiled and left like garbage on the street.

Uncle Balthazar made me meet the Teals. It all but wrecked me. They was kissing and hugging and thanking me for finding Magnolia, when all I did was trip on her. Their mistake kept me embarrassed the whole time I was meeting them. Uncle Balthazar seen I was too emotional to hang with the Teals. Told me I could take off.

On the way downtown, I fixed posters on every post and tree I passed. Following the rally, all the colored hotels — the Dunbar, the Monarch, the Clark, etcetera — pledged escort services 24/7 for any colored womens and children requesting them. I volunteered.

11

My job as factotum gave me the perfect perch to learn my new hometown. My duties took me into every corner of the Dunbar and acrost the far-flung districts of the city. Uncle Balthazar told me places a Negro could go, and which ones they couldn’t. My uniform was my ticket in, he said. White folks welcome coloreds long as they think theys working for them. My coworkers and several of the old customers took pride in schooling me.

12

Sister Chimes was my standout teacher even in that bunch. One of her most thought-stirring ideas was the “golden coffin.” She explained it one day when we was delivering gumbo and sweet potato pies to some rich white folks in the Hollywood Hills. They was hosting a fundraiser for LA’s mayor, Fineas A. Stankey, who lived in a segregated neighborhood just above the Hollywoodland sign on Mount Lee. Mayor Stankey was a Canadian boy. Had a fondness for hamhocks and greens, but not for the peoples that cooked ’em.

The delivery shoulda been done by bellhops or waitstaff, but Miss Chimes, boss of housekeeping, insisted on delivering it. We met at the Dunbar garage off 39th, and picked out the longest limo in the fleet to tote the grub. She wanted to show them crackers that Black folk could arrive in a limo too, if they felt like it.

We delivered the order and Miss Chimes fount a wide-open space overlooking the city. Dusk was coming. We parked, got out, walked a minute, under the trees. Directly, Miss Chimes pulled out a cigarette. “Gotta match?” she said. She smoked it down to a twinkle. Mashed it out and said, “Let’s ride.”

We took the limo west, down Sunset. Past the Strip. The expensive hotels. The mansions in Beverly Hills. Miss Chimes pointed out places where movie stars lived and the famous restaurants for white folks where exciting things was happening. Next, the Pacific Ocean rose behind the hills, wide and black as the sky. Snow-white waves curled along the bottom of the blackness, marking the waterline. The boulevard curved back and forth under the headlights.

We reached Malibu and rolled south. Past Santa Monica, Venice, past the scrap of beach set aside for colored folks. “White folks calls it the Inkwell,” Miss Chimes said. We took Washington east, back acrost the city. It was a thrilling and breathtaking trip.

I was still tingling when we dropped the limo off at the garage. I asked Miss Chimes if I could escort her back to her quarters at the Dunbar. The killer was still loose, after all, and although I was pretty sure Miss Chimes was capable of kicking the ass of any street hoodlum she met, having a friend at your back in a fight with a monster has advantages.

I said it and Miss Chimes looked surprised, like she was amazed I even knew her name.

Neon lit the avenue. We could see the Dunbar just ahead, growing brighter as we approached. The King Cole Trio was headlining next door at the Club Alabam. Fans was milling in the street waiting for the doors to open for the eleven o’clock show.

Miss Chimes paused. I lit her cigarette, and we stepped into the street to admire the scene. After a while, she said, “So what did you think about your tour of our beautiful city?”

“My tour?”

“The hotels, the mansions, the ocean.”

I took a good while expressin’ amazement for all I had seen.

Then, bluntly, Miss Chimes said, “Well, my wide-eyed worm, ain’t none of that for you — the hotels, the mansions, the ocean — you ain’t welcome in none of that. None.” She turnt to face the avenue, waved her hand acrost it. “Look at all this joy and prosperity. Cadillacs and jalopies scrubbed and waxed like they heading to a wedding. Eager customers, flashin’ and frontin’ everywhere you look, broke as a joke but dressed to the nines. What you think of that?”

“Beautiful,” I said, confused a little, trying to figure where her speech was heading.

“Well, this is your coffin,” Miss Chimes said. “A golden coffin stuck in the mud beside a deadly river. There ain’t no signs on the streets showing the walls of the coffin, but if some lost Negro step a foot beyond First to the north, Alvarado to the west, Slauson south, or cross the river, east, they begging for a beatdown. Our liberty is an illusion. Look around you, boy! Watch! Listen! The neon, the moonlight, the music, the dancing, the glow of prosperity, the hundreds of colored homeowners nestled safe, hopeful, and happy all around us — that is an illusion too.”

“Illusion?” was all I could say.

“Tell me, Wormboy, what do you call a trough — a gorgeous, golden trough, filled with pretty flowers, that every day gets dumped on with fresh flowers and soil? Well, soon the trough fills up. But there ain’t no way for the flowers that’s already inside to crawl out. Nowheres to get sunlight nor nourishment. No air. And the gardeners tending the box just keep dumping on more dirt and flowers, covering the pretty flowers already inside. Soon, them at the bottom — once sweet-smelling and exotic — grows withered and stale. Start to suffocate. Rot. Dying inside the trough. That’s what’s happening on Central now, but we can’t see it for the golden walls, dazzling us, seducing us to keep inside. It’s a coffin, a golden coffin. Life and beauty overhead, all untouchable. And in the beautiful coffin, no air, no sunlight, no escape.”

Miss Chimes was attracting a crowd.

“Mind what I say: one day soon, this coffin gonna explode,” she told the crowd, “its golden prettiness flying and burning across the sky. Scalding and smoldering and rotting and stinking up the streets. And folks will be asking themselves — what happened?”

She mashed her cigarette in the street.

“Just wait,” she said.

13

Seem like the escort services was working. Wasn’t no murders from September to November. Once more mens signed up, I allowed myself a day off. Took a part-time job Sunday afternoons working the stockroom at Komix & Kandi. My favorite spot on the whole damn street.

Komix & Kandi not only had chocolate bars and red hots, they carried the spookiest comics in the city: Dr. Fate, Hourman, Captain Zog. Candy was sold in front, comics out back — in a room hid behind a curtain, so the scary scenes on the covers was out of view of lady customers.

Mr. Zimmerman, the owner, hired me, he said, to show solidarity with his Negro customers facing not only a killer but the LAPD. Mr. Zimmerman was a shutterbug. A two-dollar Brownie, each with a neck strap, sat ready on every shelf. He used them to snap photos of the kids that came in.

The shop was closed Sundays, while I swept the back room. Out front Mr. Zimmerman sat at the register, balancing his books. My chores took twenty minutes to finish. The rest of my three-hour shift I relaxed with a 3 Musketeers, reading Krazy Kat.

Last Sunday I heard pounding at the door. Mr. Zimmerman told the customer we was closed. Didn’t stop the banging. When I peeked out the curtain I seen Mr. Zimmerman, mad as hell, grabbing his keys to let the guy in.

It was a colored cop. Big ugly high-yeller bald man with muscles like a boxer. Looked like a Fisk gym coach. Didn’t look like no cop. Wore sneakers. Uniform didn’t fit. It wasn’t no friendly meeting neither. He cussed Mr. Zimmerman. Dragged him to the register. Pinned his neck against the wall with one hand, banged the register open with the other.

Something made me snatch up a Brownie. Poked it through the curtain. Snapped some shots. It was over in a minute. After he stolt Mr. Zimmerman’s money, he stolt a fist of candy too. Then left out laughing.

I ain’t no kind of hero, but soon as that mean ol’ cop went away, I pulled the Brownie ’round my neck and ran out back where I’d parked the Flyer. Raced ’round the block in time to see the cop’s brand-new Plymouth chugging down Central. Most of the shops was closed till after church, but the cop seemed to know which ones had somebody inside working inventory. He went in nine shops. Robbed them all. I was able to sneak up to the window at three of them. Snapped the crook red-handed.

Mr. Zimmerman got the pictures developed two days later. I showed them to my Uncle Balthazar. Officer Kimbrow came down soon as my uncle called him. He flipped through the photos, amazed at each one he studied.

14

From late September when I first arrived in the city, until the beginning of November when I got promoted from factotum to bellhop, finally making some money, I’d growed like a weed. An impossible weed. Once five feet seven on its tippy-toes, now a towering palm tree, six feet five on naked feet. I was growing so quick, I ran through four factotum uniforms before I graduated to bellhop. Puzzling as it sounds, I didn’t notice the changes in my body till Miss Chimes started looking at me different. She started calling me Prometheus ’stead of Wormboy.

15

It got to be a hot December.

Tripple digits since the third. Leftovers from Thanksgiving supper was barely out the icebox when Christmas decorations went up all over Central. Coal-black Santas and chocolate elves and angels was seen on every street from 1st to Slauson.

In the main lobby of the Dunbar, a steady stream of tourists lined up to see the baby Jesus, brown as a nut, lying in a manger, with his colored family and admirers kneeling nearby. A big ol’ tree got shipped down from Sonoma. Miss Chimes and her girls dressed it with blinking lights and sugarcanes.

16

Off 8th and Central was a curious house painted curious colors. Yellow and pink. At first I thought it was a settlement house for orphan girls, ’cause the chairs and davenports on the porch was always filled with poorly dressed young womens, looking lonely, with nothing to do. Then I thought it was a pet store run by ladies and specializing in expensive cats, until Tiger Smalls told me that ain’t what a ‘cat house’ mean. It was a shop all right, Tiger said, where pretty girls was rented out for dates. If they sold anything, he said, it was love.

The girls came onto the porch at sunset.

Didn’t pay no mind to the weather. Fanning theyselves when it was boiling hot; playing cards and reading magazines when it was cool. The broke sign over the porch claimed it was a hotel called the Come On Inn. But that was a sign from the old days, Tiger said. Pink House is what folks calls it now.

Don’t need no sign.

Madam Carmelita Sweet was the lady that ran it. Miss Sweet was old like a grandma, but she wore big hats and high heels, like she was a pretty young girl fixing to go to church. Her lips and cheeks was painted bright red.

I started to notice that mens that shopped there would drive past the inn real slow first, picking out the girl they wanted to date, then hunt for a parking spot out back. Or they’d park way down Central, pretending they was shopping somewheres else. Then sneak back.

The entrance was somewheres in the rear.

Both Miss Chimes and Tiger Smalls warned me to steer clear of Madam Sweet and her girls. And I did too, till one night when I was heading home. Just past 26th I rode over some glass. Blew both tires. Had to walk the Flyer thirty blocks home. Past Pink House.

One of the ladies on the porch called out to me. I’d have stopped for that voice even if it wasn’t calling me. Was like singing. Like Ma calling me, when I was a boy. I looked around. There musta been five girls on the porch. I could only really see one of them, the girl in the middle. She was dressed in yellow, her face ink-black in the shadows of the awning.

She got up. Kept her eyes on me and descended the steps. Thirty-nine paces in all from the porch to the street. I counted every step.

She came close.

I could smell her body.

Her perfumes and her sweat.

Lord, she was fine.

Eyes bigger than spotlights at the Club Alabam. Her face round like a walnut.

She pulled out a cigarette. “Got a match?” she said.

’Course, I seen that California trick before. Was ready. I pulled out a match, smooth, like Humphrey Bogart. Lit her cigarette.

She smiled. Could have studied that smile all night. “Lordy, you tall. How big is you, cutie?”

“Six foot five,” I said.

“My goodness, tall as sugarcane. Sweet inside too, I bet,” she said, studying, making sure it was so. “Mmm, you a whole lotta man to drink in. So, where you headed, handsome?”

“Home,” I said.

“Oh yeah? Where’s home?”

“Couple blocks up Broadway.”

She thought about that a moment, smoking her cigarette, looking me up and down, not saying nothing. Her eyes was fingers, searching me.

“I seen you gliding by,” she said finally. “On your pretty bike. In your pretty uniform. Watching me. You been watching me, sweetie?”

“No ma’am,” I said. “I just be going home. I don’t look at nobody.”

“Don’t look at nobody, huh?” she said laughing. “Well, you ain’t having no trouble looking at me now. Is you, cutie?”

“No ma’am,” I said.

“What’s your name?”

“Theus. Theus Drummond.”

“Work at the Dunbar?”

“Yes’um,” I said.

“Man, I’d love to go there. I hear it’s like a palace. A palace run by colored folks. I just love thinking about that.”

She got serious a minute, smoking her cigarette, then she said, “Say, Theus, you think maybe one night when you ain’t got nothing to do, and I ain’t got nothing to do, you can maybe show up and take me out to see what’s going on at the Dunbar? Mix in with all those rich folks and celebrities? I’d like that fine if you could.”

She said that, then turnt away real quick, then back, like she was ’fraid I was fixin’ to say no. Instead, I said, “Yes’um. We can do that.”

“Oh Theus,” she said, like a little girl, amazed at what I said, and before I could say nothing else she’d threw her arms ’round me and kissed me full on the mouth.

I ain’t never been kissed like that.

I suspect nobody has.

She fixed her dress where us mashed together had mussed it, then looked at my busted tires. “I see you got work to do. I won’t keep you. Just wanted to make your acquaintance — Mr. Theus Drummond. I been wishing for a strong handsome man to squire me ’round this fabulous city. Back home they say Central Avenue is glamorous and fun. But it ain’t been no fun for me so far. Anyways, a girl without a companion is looking for trouble. Can’t be too careful, y’know? With that killer on the loose. Raping and killing women who’s unprotected and all alone. Alone like me.”

“Yes’um,” I said.

I don’t remember walking the Flyer home. Only that when I got there, and fixed the busted tires, I was too happy to sleep. All I could think about was the lady in yellow. I popped open a Coke-Cola, pulled up the window, and listened to my neighbors fussin,’ playin’ music, and laughin’ outside. Listened till the sun came up. Then I realized, Damnit, Theus, you ain’t got her name.

17

Whenever I rode past Pink House, I was on the lookout for the lady in yellow. Didn’t see her nowheres. I started to fret she left town. Finally I got up the gumption to knock on her door at Pink House. I tapped real polite-like, at first. Could hear folks stirring. Nobody came to the door. I gave it a bang. Could hear Madam Sweet howling inside, like she’d been shot. “Bust that door, boy, and you done bought it,” she said through the closed door.

“Sorry, ma’am, I was huntin’ for one of the ladies that stays here.”

“What lady?”

“The pretty girl in yellow,” I said.

Madam Sweet was quiet a minute, pretending she was looking for something. Then said, “Ain’t nobody here matching that description.”

“Y’mind if I come in? Look around?”

“Fuck yeah, chile. ’Fore you can step up in here you gots ta show me the dough-ray-me.”

“I got money,” I said.

She cracked the door open. “Show me.”

I pulled out my wallet, fat with greenbacks.

Madam Sweet pulled the door wide open. Inspected me head to toe. “Why, you just a baby. How old is you, son?”

“Almost twenty-two.”

“And youse a lyin’ sack a shit,” she said. “Come back when yo’ dick grows big as yo’ feets.”

She slammed the door.

18

Uncle Balthazar allowed me to work the graveyard shift Thursday night, December 12. I could spend all my time Friday shopping for Christmas gifts. Mostly, I was trying to figure what the glamorous lady at Pink House would like — something shiny and expensive, I was thinking.

I decided to take a break from all that thinking and hunting, and rode the Flyer over to Komix & Kandi. I happened to glance in my mirror: I was being followed.

A Model A, long as a boat, had eased up behind me. It was still light out, and plenty of folks was on the street. The driver paid ’em no mind. Like there wasn’t nobody on the street but me — and him. I hollered at the creep. He ack like I was talkin’ French. ’Round 55th, that raggedy boat jumped right onto the sidewalk. Penned me against the fence. The driver left the motor running. Jumped out. Ran around. Jerked me off the Flyer.

It was the phony cop from Zimmerman’s. I felt the cold edge of a straight razor layin’ against my throat. He took his time. Made the blade flash and flare under my chin.

“Now listen, you pissant beanpole,” the phony cop said. “I know you been following me.”

“Following you?”

“Yeah, following me!” he shouted. “Like you don’t know. I gots eyes every-fuckin’-where. Don’t you think I seen you? And you tryin’ to ack like you ain’t doggin’ me? Snapping nasty pictures. Niggah, please.”

I was tryin’ to tell him I ain’t never followed nobody, and even if I did, I... The pig-ass punk hauled off and punched me in my eye. I fell hard. My beatdown commenced from there.

Folks yelled. Honking they horns. Telling the man to let me go. But nobody got out to help me.

When the phony cop was done whuppin’ me, he kicked me in my eye. Got in the car.

“If you know what’s good for you, ya little roach, you’ll keep my activities out yo’ mutherfuckin’ brain. You dig?”

I did.

He drove off.

That was December 13 — the night of the Louis fight. A right uppercut to the body stopped Paulino Uzcudun at the Garden in four rounds. From the main stem, all the way downtown, the streets was swarming with fans. Cheering the champ. Dancing wild. Crazy drunk. Acting a fool. Like nothing serious was going on, ’cept the fight.

They fount another murdered girl that night, off Avalon, behind the dugouts at Wrigley Field.

I learnt about the murder Saturday morning after I got to work. Uncle Balthazar made me wear an eye patch all day. Just before my shift ended he called me into his office. Officer Kimbrow was there. Wasn’t in uniform. Was dressed like a colored banker: briefcase, Borsalino, pin-striped blue suit, beat-up brogans.

He couldn’t stop staring at my busted eye.

“Lord amighty, Theus, is you missing a headlight?”

“I rather not talk about it,” I said.

“Well then, let Officer Kimbrow talk,” my uncle said. “Tell him.”

“I’ve been fired,” Officer Kimbrow said.

“Cops get fired?” I responded.

He explained all the troubles he’d been having as a colored cop, serving a force openly hostile to colored folks. Following the noninvestigation of the Magnolia Teal murder, Officer Kimbrow launched his own investigation. Snuck ’round, copied files, surveilled suspects, took photos. All firing offenses.

“I started to notice a pattern,” Officer Kimbrow explained. “All the killings was at nighttime. On some festive occasion that brought large crowds of Negroes together. All the killings was perpetrated on pubescent girls, helpless and alone.

“Those is the facts. Any event that inspires happiness and civic unity is a target. Etna Pettipeace was kilt on June 19, Juneteenth; Marietta James was kilt on the Fourth of July; Magnolia Teal was kilt on September 24, the day Joe Louis stopped Baer in four. Last night, again after a Joe Louis fight, LaDora Ragland got kilt.

“The ringer in the bunch is Paulina Crabtree. She was kilt on August 22, a curious choice for your run-of-the-mill murdering simpleton. August 22 is obscure, neither a local nor a national holiday. But those historically in tune, like I is, knows August 22 marks the arrival of the last slave ship on American shores — Mobile, Alabama, August 22, 1859. Now how many folks knows that?

“That’s how I knew the killer was a Black man; a Black man with deep knowledge of Black history; a Black man with a deep hatred for Black life, for himself, and for Black womens in particular.

“I developed detailed profiles of likely suspects — all noted Central Avenue intellectuals. My list topped twenty souls. Only two suspects stayed uppermost on my list, both graduates of Black colleges. Two brothers. Theotis Palsey, notorious con man, wife killer, and rapist. That’s the cat you photographed at Zimmerman’s. Ten years ago, he ran a bullshit church west of the Furlong Tract named the Holy Temple of the Living God the Redeemer of Zion. Meaning himself.

“He began his killing there. First his teenage bride. Then two girls in the choir. Theotis is supposed to be rotting in county prison, but he ain’t. He escaped from a maximum-security cell back in March. While he was on the lam, he put out a statement blaming Black womens for his incarceration. The colored girl killings started three months later, in June.

“His younger brother, Cleotis, is a disgraced former vice cop. He was a proud henchman for Chief Hemingway before he was indicted for raping a colored girl in custody two summers ago. Once Cleotis got canned, his connections landed him a plush job as a tax assessor for the city. The extortion con works like this: Using city records, Cleotis identifies a mark, some mom-and-pop struggling to make the rent. Theotis sneaks out of hiding, shows up at the business. Flashes a tin badge and phony documentation alleging the victims are tax cheats. Those that don’t pay get beat up or worse.

“I realized these colored crooks couldn’t operate without protection. And the protection racket points to the top. To our trigger-happy chief, all the way to our sleaze bag mayor, Fineas Stankey.”

Officer Kimbrow laid his briefcase on the table, snapped it open, and pulled out two large envelopes. On top was one addressed to the mayor. The next one to Chief Hemingway. Each envelope contained photographs I took of Theotis Palsey, dressed in fake cop clothes with his dime-store badge, shaking down shopkeepers. But the killer snaps was took by Officer Kimbrow hisself.

Cleotis and the chief, on a quiet street ’cross town in the white neighborhood of Leimert Park. They was took the night of the LaDora Ragland murder. The men was photographed in the back of the chief’s Packard, laughing like school kids. There was a note in each package that read.

The note was signed, The Universal West Coast Protection Committee.

I’d never heard of any Protection Committee. Officer Kimbrow shrugged and said, “I’m it.” He musta seen I was confused. He picked his next words careful.

“I’ve started a small detective agency on Vernon. I calls it Central Security and Detection. I’ve rented office space and applied for my license. My agency has initiated its first civil action today. Charging the city with corruption, extortion, and complicity in murder. If my suit goes through, you’ll certainly be called to testify, Theus. Can you stand up in court and tell the truth of all you have photographed and seen?”

When I didn’t say nothin’ Officer Kimbrow got nervous. “Come on, son,” he said. “You can do it. Steadfastness and courage are all we have.”

Testify? Court? Didn’t know what the hell he meant by that crazy talk. I nodded anyway.

“So, if called, will you testify?” he said.

I thought a minute. “Mmm. No suh,” I decided.

19

That meeting with Officer Kimbrow got me upset. Scared too. I promised myself I wouldn’t never talk to him again. That night, I was lyin’ in my crib tending to the shiner that punk-ass thug put on me. I heard a knock at the door. I hustled out of bed and fount a butcher knife in the kitchen.

When my front door banged again, I jerked it open. Ready. Standing on my doorstep was the lady in yellow, now a beauty in pink.

I liked to keeled over.

She smelled like roses.

“I followed you home a couple of times, cutie. Hope you don’t mind,” she said, strolling in. “I was too shy to knock.”

She seen my beat-up face. My eye shining like a coal. Said, “Oh my, Theus. Your gorgeous face! Who did this to you? Come here, darling.” She kissed my wounded eye. “There, that should fix it.”

We chatted a bit — the murdered girls, the heat — then she said, “Say, Theus, I heard the Dunbar is hosting concerts Christmas week to New Year’s. Bessie Smith, Chick Webb — top stars. The Will Mastin Trio is headlining Christmas Eve. If you ain’t busy, I was wonderin’... you think we could go out on a real date? Mix in with that glamorous crowd? I’ll pay.”

I couldn’t say yes’um quick enough. She told me I couldn’t pick her up at Pink House no more ’cause Madam Sweet put her out. She’d hired a room somewheres west of Figueroa. On the night of our date she’d just walk to 9th, down the street from Pink House. We could take a taxi to the Dunbar from there.

She got halfway down the walk before I ran to stop her. “Excuse me. Miss?”

She turnt. Smiled. “Something I can do for you, prettyman?”

“I don’t know your name.”

“My name? It’s embarrassing to say out loud, but... my name is... Angel. Angel LaBrie.”

20

Officer Kimbrow’s evidence must have arrived on Chief Hopalong’s desk early Monday morning. On Mayor Stankey’s desk too. Like Kimbrow figured, they thought the photos and all was from somebody white. In the chief’s afternoon press conference, he mentioned, for the first time, the murders of Negro girls taking place along the Central Avenue corridor. Dogged police work, he said, had brought the monsters who did the killings to light.

A dragnet was set to snare the wrongdoers — two brothers, Cleotis and Theotis Palsey. One a corrupt county official, the other, a bloodthirsty homicidal fugitive. No Angelino was safe. Updates on the investigation would be forthcoming. Neither the mayor nor the chief mentioned their involvement in the crimes.

21

Next morning at daybreak, LA Vice tracked the Palsey brothers to an abandoned horse farm in Compton. Surrounded it. The brothers was ready. Started shooting, battled more than an hour. Two officers kilt. The LAPD set the farm afire. Cleotis got burnt to a crisp but his murdering brother got away. There was a citywide alert: Theotis is crazy, armed, and deadly. Vowing vengeance. Womens and girls in extreme jeopardy.

22

Them relaxed, rich hotel guests went buck wild. Poured out the doors like cattle. Hunting for taxis: to Union Station, the Valley. Anywheres but here. Uncle Balthazar gathered the staff in the break room, tolt us to keep calm, stay professional. Assure the guests they was safe long as they stays inside the Dunbar.

Didn’t work.

The customers that was left hurried over to the House of Style. Crowded ’round the radio. The mayor was making an announcement. The fugitive, Theotis Palsey, sent a warning to all the radio stations and newspapers in town. Promised murder and destruction to a long list of folks: the mayor, the chief, everybody in the phone book. The radio guy read the outlaw’s message:

23

Streets was deserted from the river to the ocean. Cop cars, bumper to bumper. Beat cops prowling alleys. Dragnets laid acrost the city. The thin blue line swelling everywheres.

Theotis was a ghost. Seeping through the holes in the net. By the start of my morning shift Tuesday, two more murders was alleged in his tally. White folks. A old white lady, home alone, raped, beat, and stabbed to death on Miracle Mile. A few hours later, a banker, shot to death, ten blocks south of there. Changing a tire.

The Redeemer of Zion wasn’t just killing colored folks no more.

24

Uncle Balthazar canceled the Will Mastin show around noon. The Memo, the Last Word, Club Congo, Murrays, and the Basket Room canceled they Christmas shows too.

Soon as my shift ended, I flew down to Pink House. I had to find Angel. I banged on the door, begged Madam Sweet to let me know where my Angel was staying.

“You tell that thieving bitch if she step her ugly feets ’round here, I got a .22 slug with her name writ all over it!” Madam Sweet yelled through the door.

25

I raced home. Maybe Angel had stopped by. I got crazy wondering when I would see her again. A couple blocks from my crib, I seen a gathering. Gave me a sick feeling. I got closer and seen cops stringing tape acrost the alley. I squeezed in close enough to see a body wedged between two dirty row house walls. The sheet thrown over it failed to cover the victim’s blood-streaked hair. The bloody fringes of her dress.

I pushed in under the police tape. Ran to the body, pulled back the sheet.

There was my Angel. Her teeth broke out, scattered acrost her chest like glass busted out a window. Her forehead was bashed. She had been stabbed. Her red dress was pulled up. She was naked from her tits to her feets, with a red line curved acrost her neck, where she had been slashed.

The sight of her burned my eyes. Seem like the garbage and the weeds and the peoples in the alley was hot coals rather than folks and things. The nosy crowd flicked flashlight beams acrost the body.

I couldn’t sleep that night. I paced through every corner of the crib. Like I could walk away a million miles of pain just by turning ’round and ’round.

26

Only staff without families was allowed to work the next day, Christmas Eve. Uncle Balthazar tried to make me go home, but I insisted on staying. I wanted to be out. Hunting the killer.

27

Around eleven a.m., our skeleton crew met in the break room. Miss Chimes was determined to deliver a load of food and toys to the needy. Especially to the mission off Santa Barbara, and the Salvation Army on 5th. Uncle Balthazar was against it. “We’ve exposed our family to too much risk already,” he said.

Miss Chimes allowed it was true. Wasn’t having it anyway. She dropped a quarter in the cuss jar and said, “I’m not letting this evil fuck steal my Christmas.”

I dropped a quarter in behind her. “Fuckin’ right,” I said.

Uncle Balthazar finally agreed to it, but only after Miss Chimes told Officer Kimbrow he could escort her.

28

Officer Kimbrow showed up at two. The plan was to get done before sundown. I loaded the gifts. Couldn’t shake the notion the killer was watching us.

Officer Kimbrow taped a mug shot of the suspect, Theotis Palsey, on the dash. ’Fore we left out, the officer had second thoughts. Tried to get Miss Chimes to let him go alone. She reached into the pocket of her smock and pulled out a tiny .22. “Look what Santa brought me,” she said.

“Cute,” Kinbrow said. “You know how to work that popgun?”

“Watch and learn,” Miss Chimes said.

I asked Officer Kimbrow if he had another firearm lyin’ around. Case of a gunfight. Miss Chimes laughed out loud. Said I was too young to get turnt loose on the street, crazy, armed, lovesick, and inexperienced. She searched among the gifts, pulled out a Louisville Slugger.

Ash wood.

Jet black.

Hard as iron.

I gave it a couple of test swings and climbed in the cab.

Our route took us down Central, from 51st to 5th.

29

Streets was deserted, but I wasn’t scared no more. Was ready to fight or die. If Officer Kimbrow and Miss Chimes was willing to risk they lives in a Christian act of love, why not me? I was doing an act of love too. Avenging Angel, my murdered girlfriend.

30

We’d made fifteen stops by the time we turnt the corner on 5th Street — heart of Skid Row. We was passing an alley when Officer Kimbrow noticed a rusting Buick twenty yards in. The hood was raised and a burly Black cop was leaning over it doing something with the engine.

The wreck was on blocks. No other cops, colored nor white, was in the area.

“What the hell?” Officer Kimbrow backed up. Nosed the truck into the alley. Rolled to a stop, unholstered his Magnum. Opened his door and eased one foot into the alley. Half in, half out the cab, he leveled his pistol. Said, “Turn around slowly, officer. Let me see your hands.”

The cop spun.

Shot Officer Kimbrow right through the windshield. Splatter washed acrost the cab. Kimbrow grabbed his throat, gasping. Blood spurting through his fingers. Slipped behind the open door, shielding hisself. Miss Chimes fumbled for her gun. Fell out the door, on top of Officer Kimbrow, firing as she landed. The Black cop ran toward us, Miss Chimes’s bullets thumping acrost his chest.

He kept coming.

I grabbed the Slugger. Raced ’round to where Miss Chimes and Kimbrow fell. Got there in time to whack Palsey acrost the jaw. He turnt, gave me a scolding look. Quick as Joe Louis, I swung the Slugger down acrost his neck. Then the rib cage. A combination.

His pistol dipped. Dropped. Bounced into the weeds.

“Devil!” Palsey cried, snatching at me. His reach was short. I stepped back and whacked him again. He caught the barrel of the bat and pulled me forward like a fish. Seized me. Swung me ’round. Throwed me in the weeds.

He hunched down. Pulled a knife out his waistband. Miss Chimes rolled clear of him, emptied her pistol. Palsey looked confused. Had blackened his skin with greasepaint. Like an actor in a minstrel show. He swung the knife, stabbing nothing. Frantic. Huntin’ ’round for his pistol.

I seen it first.

Scrambled to it.

Felt the iron settle in my grip.

I turnt.

Palsey raised the knife.

I fired. His eyes bucked. A bright-red dot, the size of a nickel, appeared on his forehead. A little stream of blood, edged in black, spurted out the wound.

He fell acrost Miss Chimes.

Dead.

31

I didn’t celebrate no Christmas that December, 1935. Not no New Year’s neither. When Uncle Balthazar took me down to Angelus Funeral Home to pick out a casket for my Angel, the undertaker met us in the showroom and said, “We have several elegantly crafted vessels where your loved one can abide in comfort and peace till Jesus comes, Mr. Drummond. Models in mahogany, teak, copper, platinum, silver, brass, and gold. Which would you prefer?”

I had to think on that a minute.

“Anything but the gold one,” I told the guy.

Crenshaw Boulevard

1

I watched the police officers take away the weeping Negro janitor from the St. Vincent’s Academy on Crenshaw and Slauson. They arrested him for murder. The headlines screamed it, hinting of other things that might have happened to the girl, things I didn’t quite understand. Story after story in the Los Angeles Times made much of her whiteness and his Blackness. In the end, his trial seemed like a foregone conclusion despite his pleading innocent. The jury wore hard faces throughout the trial, and those who read about it were ready for the verdict they expected.

Except... none of it was true.

2

All Jesus had to do was be crucified. He never had to go to an all-girl’s Catholic high school.

I hadn’t wanted to go. I wasn’t even Catholic. But my mother had said I was “out of control” and needed “guidance” and since there were no military schools for girls in 1961, this was it.

I borrowed some smokes from the janitor, a nice Negro man who didn’t mind sharing. I tried smoking in the bathroom between classes and sometimes during, but too many goody-goody girls reported me. Damn nuns smacked you good with those rulers. Later I discovered going behind the gym. No one went there. I could lean back against the fake-stone building and feel the bounce of the volleyballs inside me, like a drumbeat in my chest.

My friends were just as wild as I was, straining to break out of the box the nuns tried to crush us into. Conformity. Sameness. It was in the uniforms, the skirts at just the right length from knee to hemline. Moral training with prayer and sacrifice. Reading, writing, arithmetic. Certainly no boys. And smoking was strictly forbidden, even though the nuns couldn’t tell me exactly why.

I knew why.

Even though I’d seen them smoke in the walled gardens of their convent.

Later that evening in the dormitory, we all lay on my bed. “I am honestly sanguine about this whole thing,” said Josie, chewing on a straw she had stolen from the cafeteria. Her new favorite word for the week seemed to be “sanguine” and she used it all the time in almost every sentence, trying it out even when it didn’t quite work.

Maggie glanced at her over her horn-rimmed glasses. “I don’t think you know what that word means. It means the opposite from what you’re saying.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Josie said defensively, before she flipped over on her stomach. “Anyway, this dance is going to be extraordinarily lame.”

“A dance with no boys,” I sighed.

“What’s the point?” said Josie, twirling her dark ponytail in her fingers.

“Comportment, ladies!” crowed Maggie, suddenly sitting up and imitating the deep voice of Sister Conception.

The others laughed, even as they glanced at the clock. It was lights out soon. Lights out was the time we liked to go exploring.

3

I lay on the cold floor. Am I dead? Must be, I decided, as hands clasped my ankles and dragged me along the concrete. Of course, I didn’t feel it. But I was curious as to what would happen next. It should have scared me that “next” didn’t seem to involve clouds, angels, and the face of God, but instead the dark of a basement in this damned Catholic academy. Poor old St. Vincent’s. I wondered if there were many murders at the school... or if mine was the only one. Because I could only remember so much. And I didn’t like the thought of it.

I could hear crying, but I wasn’t sure where that was coming from.

I zoomed up to the top of the ceiling, in a corner. Didn’t even have to make it happen. I was simply... there. And looked down.

The figures dragged me. They were the ones weeping. Did they think they were rescuing me? Were they frightened about what could happen to them? They were surely in danger. Was there a way to help?

4

Ben Washington, the Negro caretaker, mopped the floors at night when all the students were supposed to be asleep. It worried him, sometimes, as the wet strands of the mop, like a dead woman’s hair, swished over the linoleum floor. These high school girls had no respect. This was supposed to be a religious high school. But not one of these girls had the respect they should have had for it.

The nuns had their hands full with these girls.

Sister Conception seemed to be the mildest about it. She was a stern-faced woman, as they all seemed to be, with starched white wimples cradling their faces, and their severe black veils and black habits that made them look more like shadows than women. Were they women anymore? If you gave up God’s gift of procreation, could you be considered a woman? A woman who gave it all up to live cloistered in this place?

Ben shook his head. There was one nun who scared him the most. He wasn’t Catholic, so it didn’t matter to him how he felt about her, even though his own fiery minister would tell him to love his neighbor. It was hard to love your white neighbor, to turn the other cheek, when they called you “boy” when you were a man.

Sister Sixtus didn’t treat him bad because he was colored. She treated him bad because... well, she treated everyone bad. He supposed she thought it would help their soul. “Crazy white woman,” he muttered, sweeping the mop from side to side in ever-growing arcs. He once saw her twist the arm of one of the students so bad the girl had to go to the doctor. They thought she’d broken it, but it was only a sprain.

He was glad he wasn’t married with children. How would he handle it if some white woman teacher sprained his own child’s arm?

He mopped more vigorously, until the floor shined in the dark.

5

Sister Sixtus had a face like a middle-aged man, even though she was supposed to be this side of thirty. That’s what all the girls said. And when she was angry, she never changed expression. She only got red in the face.

I tried to look contrite, with my eyes lowered. But the truth of it was, if I looked at her, I’d crack up. And then she would be even madder.

She caught me smoking and was yelling at me about it. “You need to pray about this, young lady! At your flouting the rules at every turn!”

“The nuns smoke.”

“What’s that you said to me?”

I raised my face then. I didn’t feel like laughing anymore. “I said, the nuns smoke.”

A sting and then my head rang. She’d slapped me... oh good and hard. I was like a doll with a spring for a neck because my head just knocked back.

I stared at her. My hand went to my cheek and it was hot. “You bitch.” It came out of my mouth before I could stop it. The hand came again and slapped me a second time.

“You will pray ten Hail Marys for that outrage, young lady.”

“I’m not Catholic!” I shouted back at her. “I’m not gonna say your witchy spells!”

Another slap.

“Sister Sixtus!”

My face burned. I turned toward the doorway where Sister Conception and two other nuns stood in horror. Like they never slapped anyone.

Sister Sixtus brought herself up, adjusted her habit and the rosary hanging from her belt, and walked away from me.

The nuns in the doorway parted for her, but all they did was stare at me. I sneered at them for just standing there, for doing nothing, for not even stopping her, for not defending me.

I stomped out of the room, pushing them aside because they weren’t moving for me like they’d done for Sister Sixtus.

6

Tonight’s expedition meant spying on Mr. Washington. He didn’t live on the premises, but he often stayed late. There were always spicy rumors about him, and we wanted to be front and center to see it.

I was not an instigator, but I liked to participate. We mostly got along with each other, though we also found pleasure at being cruel to one another. I seldom understood their cruelty, vaguely owing it to their indifference to the images of saints being tortured with arrows, being cooked on hot grills like a barbecue, or getting chopped up... all with those vacant expressions on their faces. The sisters liked to have those images around as teaching tools. As if this was the sort of thing the students could expect in the modern world. I often wondered if the nuns thought this was a real possibility. Or were they trying to be subtle? No, not possible from those stern faces that seldom cracked smiles. I was sure they fully expected that I would turn on a spit if I got out of line, dating the wrong boy or doing a little petting. I wasn’t sure if I believed in Hell, just the Hell of sitting in class and listening to the nuns babble on. That was surely Hell on earth. Say ten Hail Marys and get it over with.

We waited ten minutes as usual after lights out before we slipped on our regulation flannel bathrobes and set out.

The corridor outside the dorm was dark. Shadows were always moving from the roving headlights of traffic along Crenshaw. Light kept sweeping over our faces, and I caught a secret glance between Josie and Maggie with smiles meant only for the dark, and didn’t attribute it to anything other than our mutual eagerness.

I liked roving the empty corridors at night, seeing the closed doors on the sleeping classrooms. The quiet. I imagined the nuns settling down in little nests, like black-and-white-feathered chickens, clucking softly to one another, plotting their evil for the day to come.

First place we headed was the basement, because that was where Mr. Washington had all his tools, his shelves filled with cans of paint beside stiff brushes, coils of wire, buckets, electrical tape, coffee cans of nuts, bolts, screws, nails.

He wasn’t there so we poked about, looking into the cans of oily-smelling nails, brown with grease. We pried opened paint cans and sniffed their pungent fumes.

It was Josie who got the idea.

She took a bucket and filled it with the smelliest white paint. We got a rickety old stepping stool, and placed it on the landing so we could position the bucket over the door, pulling it ajar. We had to figure out how to get out of the room and set it up, and we finally did. Then we scrambled around the corner in the dark to watch what happened.

It took a long time. We were getting bored waiting, and had to keep reminding each other it would only be really good if we saw it happen. But it seemed like hours. It might have been.

Finally Mr. Washington came around the corner, the squeaky wheel of his dented metal mop bucket echoing down the corridor. He pushed it forward, leaning heavily on it, like he had the whole world on his shoulders. He looked tired. For a second, a short one, I thought of stopping him... but then the idea of white paint all over that black face was starting to make me laugh, and I threw my hand over my mouth, stifling the sound.

He scuffed to the basement door and stopped. His eyes traveled up and down that doorway. I guess he wondered why it was ajar, but he didn’t think long about it before he pushed it open. The bucket came down on him, dumping a sheet of white on his head. It looked like a cloak, covering the roundness of his head and then his shoulders, before the bucket hit the floor with a loud clatter, and then bumped down each step. He swore some bad words that I wasn’t quite sure the meaning of, and slipped down a few of the stairs, yelling some more. He fell on his back and just lay there, swearing and crying.

We jumped up from our hiding place and tore through the corridors back to our dorm, slippered feet slapping the linoleum. When we got back inside the dorm, with whispered warnings to be quiet that only made more of a ruckus, one of the girls sat up in bed and scolded us, saying that they’d all get in trouble because of our shenanigans.

And all night I sort of regretted doing it. Though it had been funny at first, he was crying real tears because it had hurt when he fell, and maybe it wasn’t all that funny, and then I got mad at Josie and Maggie. And I knew we’d get in trouble bad in the morning.

But nothing was ever said about it. And when our guilt faded away, we plotted again.

7

Mr. Washington had a shed where he kept the lawn mower and other garden tools and bags of manure. He did a lot of work in there, sharpening shears and clippers. I hung around, eating peanuts in the shell that he always had.

And he’d always tell me, “You shouldn’t be in here, miss. You’re gonna get dirty with all them tools and grease.”

I hung out there sometimes because I wanted to get away from my friends. One day I asked him, “Where do you live, Mr. Washington? Do you live here at the school?”

“No, little miss. I live not too far from here in a house.”

“You work late. Why don’t you live here?”

“It ain’t right for me to live here. And I got a house.”

I wanted to ask more personal questions, but I didn’t know how to.

I don’t know why we played pranks on him. I liked him. But I liked doing things with my friends. Even though... even though they played them on me sometimes.

I have found dead frogs in my bed. I have found my toothbrush floating in the toilet. Once, they hid all my clothes.

I never got back at them. I don’t know why.

8

The corridors were quiet and dark. I liked to glide through them. Sometimes I’d come across the nuns in the hallways and I’d swirl around their silent figures. I whispered something nasty in the ear of Sister Sixtus once. Her face drained of color, then she babbled a prayer and ran to the chapel.

I began whispering to all the nuns, but only a few of them heard me.

Not one saw me.

9

Josie and Maggie stopped doing things together once I was dead. They never sat near each other in class, never passed the ball to each other in phys ed. Their voices sounded hollow and muffled to me. It seemed... they were hollow and muffled to everyone else. They didn’t seem to have any other friends.

Say ten Hail Marys and hope for the best.

10

“I don’t want to do those pranks again,” I said to my friends, when we nearly killed Mr. Washington with a wire strung across the corridor.

“He’s fine,” said Maggie.

We all sported the same ponytails on the backs of our heads, high as we could wrap the rubber band. I watched them bob on my friends’ heads as we prowled the corridor. The pranks seemed to be getting worse, and I don’t know why we did it to Mr. Washington when he did no one any harm.

“Why aren’t we doing pranks on the nuns? They’re the ones we don’t like.”

“Beca-a-a-a-a-use,” said Maggie, “we can get in trouble if we pull pranks on the nuns.”

So what? I was always getting blamed for things anyway. Things I didn’t do. Some of them.

That night we got a bucket of dirt and sprinkled it out on a floor that Mr. Washington had just mopped.

11

I stood next to Mr. Washington in his cell at the Lincoln Heights Jail near the LA River. If I had thought the basement was pretty bad, it had nothing on this. Bars as far as the eye could see. Trash, noise, dark. I was glad I couldn’t smell it.

Mr. Washington often stood in his cell at night, looking out through the bars. There were a lot of Negroes in the cells around him. Sometimes I’d drift by the others and peer within. Some cried at night. Some plotted with words muttered through gritted teeth. But no one else stood at their bars like a guard on the wrong side.

I stood with him. I didn’t know what to say, to whisper. I didn’t know if he’d hear me anyway. The other men slept and made noises. Their cheap bunks squeaked as they turned over and over. I could see Mr. Washington’s eyes in the dark. They looked sad... and scared. I peered down at his big hands, with their big fingers and flat nails. I thought briefly of holding his hand, but I’d forgotton how.

12

I stood in the corner of the courthouse as the trial went on. When I was little, we’d take the streetcar downtown past the courthouse. But recently they’d started ripping up the tracks.

The seats were filled with people and reporters. The jury sat to one side in a sort of box next to the judge on his high desk. One lawyer sat with Mr. Washington at a table covered with papers facing the judge. The other lawyer — he had two helpers — sat at the opposite table. That lawyer wore a smug look on his face. He argued against Mr. Washington and yelled a lot, and talked about me as if I were someone else. Told how innocent I was, how bright a future I had. None of that was true.

But back at the academy, I did whisper to Sister Sixtus at night. She spent a lot of time in the chapel alone, crying. I whispered to her how horrible she was and that she was going to Hell. She was ugly when she cried.

13

“Why do we always have to bother Mr. Washington?” I lamented for the umpteenth time. “Leave him alone. Let’s do Sister Sixtus.”

Maggie pushed her glasses up to the bridge of her nose. “It’s too hard to prank the nuns.”

“Go check to see if Mr. Washington is in the basement,” said Josie.

I rolled my eyes and crept toward the basement door, pushed it opened. It was dark. He couldn’t be down there if it was dark.

“He’s not there,” I whispered.

“Are you sure?” Josie had a little laughter in her voice.

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

“Go look over the landing,” said Maggie.

“Jesus Christ,” I mumbled, then stepped onto the landing and looked over. The basement smelled like oily grease and furnace.

I took another step just to get a good look... and that’s when the wire caught me at the neck. I tried to jump back but one side tore loose and it wrapped around my throat.

I heard their laughter behind me. Goddamnit.

I slipped off the step and suddenly the wire tightened. I couldn’t get a grip to tear it away. I couldn’t breathe. Panicking, forgetting it was a prank gone wrong, I twisted hard to try to free myself. It tore the wire completely loose, but by then I was leaning too far and I was disoriented by lack of air. I felt myself go headfirst over the stairs, hitting more steps as I fell.

I seemed to fall forever, tumbling, tumbling, and everything hurt, but mostly the terror took over and I couldn’t breathe.

When I finally toppled to the basement floor, I didn’t move. I couldn’t. I still couldn’t breathe because the wire was tight around my neck now and my head and shoulder hurt bad.

A scream vaguely in the background, hurriedly hushed.

Hands were on me. “Are you all right?”

“You’re okay, you’re okay...” like a prayer.

Then they tried to drag me up the stairs but that wasn’t working. I heard their feet running and stomping up the stairs, and I wondered if they were coming back.

I lay that way for a long while as I got groggier, coming in and out of consciousness. A figure loomed out of the darkness looking down at me. I thought it was Mr. Washington at first. But slowly, I realized the shape was wrong. It was like a pillar. A black column. And then I could see the edge of their face in the light from the street through one of the basement windows. A nun.

She knelt. “Looks like you got yourself into real bad trouble at last, young lady. You really are such a troublemaker.” I thought she was praying over me, but I kept thinking, Why aren’t you doing anything? I’m hurt!

She prayed for a bit more... or was she praying? Maybe she was just looking at me. After a while, she glanced around the dark basement and saw something. She rose and moved away from my vision. I heard something rustle and something like a wrench clatter to the floor. She came over to me and glanced down before kneeling again. “You can just be quiet now,” she said, and something rectangular came toward me. It was a smelly old towel. And she pressed it to my face. And then I really couldn’t breathe.

I struggled, but not much. My poor body was too broken for that. It smelled like oil and dirt and I couldn’t get any air. The darkness swallowed me up like a tunnel slowly closing in.

My heartbeat slowed... and then it was done.

14

I sat on top of Sister Sixtus’s wardrobe and watched her at her prayers. They were so fervent, so full of emotion. Yet I wanted to laugh because they wouldn’t do her any good.

Not that I could remember how to laugh.

15

The nuns met for their evening meal. Some would eat with the students, while the others would stay in their own dining hall. Separate. Away. This made them holier, they must have assumed.

The Mother Superior stood at the head of the table. “We must pray for poor Mr. Washington, that he understands his sins and confesses them. Pray for his soul.”

I sat on an empty chair next to a quiet nun. Even in profile she looked like a man. But she wasn’t praying.

Later that night, I whispered to Sister Sixtus and she finally got up from her knees and left her room. I followed her as she passed door after door of each sister’s cell through the dark corridor, until she came to one at the end. She hesitated a long time, just standing in front of the door. I thought I would have to whisper some more to her. But she finally raised a shaky hand, balled it into a fist, and delicately knocked.

“Come in,” said the voice from the other side of the door.

She grasped the doorknob and pushed it open.

“Sister Sixtus, what do you want? It’s late.”

“I... I...”

“Yes? Are you all right?”

I whispered to Sister Sixtus of Hell and the fires of damnation, and she took a step into the room. “I... I... know...”

“You know what?” She was irritated. She was in her starched white nightgown, with a cap on her closely cut hair. I could tell she just wanted to go to bed.

“I... know what you did.”

She tied the strings of her cap under her chin. “This isn’t getting any clearer.”

Sister Sixtus took another step inside. “I know that you killed that girl.”

Sister Conception seemed to freeze. She slowly lowered her hands to her lap before she turned and rose. “That’s a strange thing to say.”

“I saw you. I saw what you did.”

Her eyes narrowed. I’d been trying to whisper to her though she never seemed to hear me. Funny thing.

“You supposedly saw what I did... but you never told anyone.”

“I’m going to tell. But I’d rather you confess it.”

She laughed. “Me? Tell what? Something you dreamed?”

“I didn’t dream it. I saw it. I can give details. Confess it before they convict that poor man.”

“He’s a colored man.”

I didn’t like the way she said that. To us, grown-ups weren’t one thing or another. They were just grown-ups. Mr. Washington was easy to pull a prank on because he never told. But you couldn’t get away with it with the nuns. They were the worst, as far as grown-ups went. You sure wouldn’t tell them your problems.

“He doesn’t deserve to die!”

Sister Conception took a step toward Sister Sixtus, who backed up. “I’m not going to confess. I didn’t do anything. That girl wasn’t Catholic and hadn’t the grace on her. It was better she was gone. Her friends did most of it to her anyway. Her own friends. They’re the ones who killed her. These are the hearts of the little heathens we have in this place. It would be better to tear the whole place down than to have these girls here.”

Sister Sixtus stared at her. I could see it all on her face. She was scared. If she didn’t get out of there, Sister Conception would get her too. Even I could read as much in her eyes. Maybe it was already too late.

Sister Sixtus spun on her heels and ran down the corridor.

I watched Sister Conception stand there in her nightgown, glaring at the open door. She was trembling in her fury, when she had been so passive as she pressed that towel to my face in that dark basement. I was dead anyway. I wasn’t going to survive that fall. She didn’t have to kill me.

She pulled the door closed and stomped to her bed. No kneeling to make her prayers. I watched her douse the light and lie in her bed, her blanket clasped to her chest, her hands like claws. She was fuming. I didn’t remember what anger was like. So I watched her to see if I could remember. Steps in the corridor. Lots of them. She hadn’t bothered to lock her door. She was too angry. The steps got closer. What was she going to do?

16

The newspapers covered Sister Conception’s trial. The Sentinel, the colored paper, wondered why Mr. Washington was still in jail. I didn’t return to the courthouse to see Sister Conception. She couldn’t hear me whisper about Hell anyway.

17

It’s quiet in the academy now. Too many families took their children out. Sister Conception was going to get her wish. They were going to tear down the school. Cut down the big magnolia trees along the sidewalk out front. It was all going to go. Build something else in its place. Los Angeles was like that. Get rid of the old. Cover it up. Build something on top of it. Until that was old...

As the years tolled on, I lost more and more of my memory, and never remembered why I was there... or even who I was. Or... if I was anyone at all...