Charcoal Joe (20 page)

I reached the Avett Detainment Facility at 11:13. The same flush-faced and blowsy guard sat sentry.

“Your friend's already in there,” he said, waving me on.

Once again the ectomorph guard sat at the small table on the other side of the locked doors. As before, he ignored me until I knocked, and once again he advanced on the door angrily.

But this time he recognized me and said, “Your friend's down in Stieglitz's office.”

Fearless was facing the handsome assistant and she was taking him in. That day Fearless was wearing a dark red suit that was a cut above his sodbuster ensembles but still not equal to my dark green outfit. Dorothy looked up at me and smiled. That was a gift, considering she had Fearless to grin at.

“Mr. Rawlins,” she said, rising from the chair.

“Easy,” Fearless said.

“Administrator Bell has given me permission to allow you to see Mr. Tyler at any time during visiting hours,” she said.

“Fearless,” I said. “Give us a minute here.”

My friend and temporary employee stepped from the broom closet of an office out into the spacious hall.

“You don't call Mr. Bell ‘warden,' ” I said.

She smiled and touched my right forearm.

“What did you want?” she asked.

“I know this isn't the time or place but could I have a phone number for you?”

“Avett's listed,” she said with a challenging smile on her lips.

“Not here.”

“I live in Santa Monica. That number's in the book too. All you have to do is remember how to spell my name.”

We were met in the hall by a tall brown man in the uniform that all Avett guards wore.

“This is Frederick Smith-Hall,” Dorothy Stieglitz said. “He'll see you to the visitors' hut.”

“Where's Tom Willow?” I asked.

Fred Hall's chest and biceps bulged under the gold and brown costume. I thought that he must have been a football player wherever he went to high school—two or three years before. His frown wondered how I knew a guard at Avett by name but he said, “He didn't come in today. They called me to take his shift.”

The accent in his voice had some high notes in it, like people I'd known from St. Louis.

Fred led us down the dank halls and through the metal doors, past the midget guard Maxie, and out into the huge exercise park.

“Do I know you?” Fred asked when we were away from walls, corners, and doors.

“I don't know your face,” I said.

“I graduated the LAPD police academy two months ago. They put a freeze on hiring but I start in January.”

“Hard job,” I said.

“You say your name is Easy?”

“Yeah.”

“I heard about you. You friends with the motherfucker Mouse, right?”

“Raymond and I came up together in South Texas,” I said.

“And now you comin' in to see Charcoal Joe,” he said, more as a pronouncement than an inquiry.

I didn't say anything and Fearless gave the linebacker a glance that should have scared him.

“I'm just sayin',” Fred continued, “that you a crook too, huh?”

I stopped walking and turned to face my inquisitor.

“You got the job and the uniform, man,” I said. “You got some knowledge and opinions too. That's cool. But believe me, brother, when you start passin' judgment on your own people because'a somethin' you heard, you might as well be stabbin' your own self in the back. Because believe me these white people here will not save you if anything goes wrong. And whether you from Bogalusa or East St. Louis, you better fuckin' believe that somethin' will go wrong.”

Maybe it was my tone or just the content of the mini-lecture that put a question into the young man's face. He sniffed at the air and went on walking, taking us ultimately to bungalow 11.

This was a smaller building with just enough room for Rufus's entourage, Fearless, and me.

Again CJ was seated with the accountant-looking brown man on his left and Ox Mason to his right.

“Can you give us some privacy, Mr. Hall?” Joe asked Fred.

An attitude of rebuttal dominated the guard's face but still he exited, closing the door behind him with some force.

“Fearless,” Ox said.

“Mr. Mason.”

“You're Fearless Jones?” Rufus asked.

“Yes, sir.”

The little kingpin stood up from his chair and held out a hand.

As they shook, Joe said, “It's an honor.”

“Thank you,” Fearless replied. He would not lie about being honored by the gangster.

“CJ,” I said. “I know this might be crossin' some kinda line but could we speak in private?”

The prodigy/tyrant smirked and then smiled.

“Germaine,” he said. “Why don't you and Ox take Fearless here over to the pool room? I heard tell he beat Fast Eddie Fontanot one time.”

“You sure, boss?” the accountant asked.

“Go on.”

Alone in the bungalow, I had time to look around the room. The table and chairs were the same make as in public schools I used to work at as a custodian for the Los Angeles Unified School District. There was a window that had a shade pulled down with the window open. The breeze wafted in and the green-leaf branch of some bush moved in and out also.

Joe took a charcoal branch from a small box and began jabbing at a tan sheet of newsprint paper.

“What have you got for me, Mr. Rawlins?”

“Not much. The cops know that Seymour didn't kill Boughman but they're willing to let him be prosecuted anyway because they need to close the case. I know that you own the house where the murder occurred, that Jasmine Palmas was somehow involved in whatever was going on there, and if I'm not mistaken Seymour is your son and Jasmine his real mother. The way I see it, Boughman and Eugene Stapleton were involved in a negotiation to launder mob money but separately they planned to rob each other. Tony Gambol was moving the money and a woman named Avery was translating the cash into diamonds. I know that Avery was caught up in this business somehow and that Jasmine had to know something about it too.

“What I do not know is if you hired me to clear Seymour or to somehow reclaim the money that I'm told was stolen. Word on the street is that you're planning to leave the country, and I have it from pretty reliable sources that Jasmine has the same plans.”

Joe was looking at me pretty hard toward the end of my report. Then he held up the newsprint to show a deft impression of me talking. His interpretation of my face giving the report was new to me but I believed that he got it right.

“Raymond was right about you,” he said. “Nobody ever guessed about Seymour before.”

“Why the name Brathwaite?”

“He was supposed to be adopted and I had a cousin named Saline Brathwaite who had a son that she lost to crib death.”

“Celine? The French name?”

“No. Her mother, my father's sister, was not an educated woman. A doctor once had her using a saline solution for an eye infection and she just liked the word.

“You're right about me and Jasmine too; I mean, we had made a plan to leave. That's changed now. I mean I'll still leave if I have to get Seymour out of harm's way. But I'd rather he get exonerated and live his life as a scientist and a teacher. I'm proud of him.”

“What's different now that's going to make you stay?”

“I thought my business could function with me out the pocket, but just me being in here for ninety days and it all goes to shit.”

“It would have been nice to know some of this before you sent me out blind and with a target on my back.”

“I guess I didn't see how all this other stuff concerned you. Raymond told me that you were connected to the cops, that you could work to help Seymour through them.”

“But you could see my problem, right, CJ?” I said. “You call me in here to try and get the cops to back off from your son. But you don't tell me he's your son or that the house where the murder occurred is a place owned by you and used for underworld meetings. You don't warn me that the murdered man is a known gangster or that other bad men are looking for anyone looking into Boughman's death. You didn't say that the man found dead with him was a hit man.

“I had to move my daughter out of our house; our house that was broken into by thugs. I was kidnapped and had a man hold a gun to my head. The only reason I'm alive is dumb luck. I know you're a tough man and a dangerous man but I do not like getting played.”

I stopped there. I wasn't really angry. I had known when Mouse came to the office that the road would be winding, rutted, and most likely, as Willomena Avery had said, a dead end.

“I understand, Mr. Rawlins,” Joe said. “But you got to believe me when I tell you that I didn't think that you'd get caught up in Boughman's business. I thought you'd just use your influence with the cops. I
was
planning to leave the country but I got my own money. I don't have to steal from the Mafia to buy my way out.

“And on top of all that,” he said, “even if I was gonna double-cross somebody it sure and hell wouldn't be you. You one'a the most dangerous men in Southern California.”

“Me?”

“You,” he said with conviction. “You got Saul Lynx and Whisper Natly in the office with you. Raymond Alexander willing to kill for you and you don't even know it. There's Melvin Suggs, special assistant to Chief Reddin, and then there's Fearless Jones, Christmas Black, that insurance millionaire got the whole French Foreign Legion at his beck and call. And if that wasn't bad enough I hear one'a your friends is that crazy Indian, Redbird. I had a business associate once sent five men after that red man—they never even found one finger. So, Easy, I want you to know that I would not set you up because I know what's what.

“I only wanted for you to help Seymour and I'm sorry if it got complicated. But don't for one minute think that I don't know what you can do.”

“Did you know what Boughman was up to?”

“I knew Peter,” Joe said. “I knew what he did and we've done business before but I didn't have anything to do with what went on there that night. Seymour didn't either.”

“And you didn't know why Boughman was there?”

“I wasn't the one let him use the house.”

“Do you think it was Jasmine?”

“She could have. Maybe she wanted to make some'a her own money. But I doubt it.”

“What about Uriah?”

“Uriah's a rat-bastard, he sure is. But I don't see a little coward like him killin' a man like Boughman. That's much more something like Stapleton would do. Maybe Uriah told somebody that he saw you up with Jasmine. Maybe that.”

“Yeah,” I said, thinking about Gregory Chalmers and his friends. “What else don't I know, Mr. Tyler?”

Sitting down behind the school table, Charcoal Joe once again laced his fingers, making that equilateral triangle with his elbows. His eyes were pointed in my direction but he was looking inward, thinking about many things and wondering which of these he could share with me.

“I'm not an evil man, Mr. Rawlins,” he said. “I just don't care. In my entire life I have only loved my mother, Jasmine, and Seymour. You know there ain't a man my color like me on this whole damn continent. And so when I do something I have to be absolutely sure that I know every side and every angle. But when Seymour got arrested all my careful planning went out the window.”

I looked at the swaying shade and the leafy branch that peeked under it now and then.

“A white woman came to Seymour with a little red diary written in Yiddish,” I said. “She told him to give it to Jasmine. He called his mother but she wasn't there. He called Uriah but he said that she was gone. So he went down to the Malibu house where Boughman was killed.”

“Who killed him?”

“I'm working on that but let me ask you something else.”

“What's that?”

“How is it people are using your house for their clandestine business and you don't know about it?”

“They all knew about the house, everyone you mentioned: Jasmine, Boughman, Gambol, Stapleton, and Willomena. Hell, even Uriah had been out there fixing the plumbing. Anybody could have used the place.”

“Seymour tells me that Jasmine has gone missing.”

“Not missing. I had my people take her somewhere safe.”

“Is there a way I can talk to her if I need to?” At that moment I remembered that I'd had sex with Charcoal Joe's woman.

“You don't need to talk to her. She doesn't know anything about what happened.”

Hearing the protectiveness in the gangster's tone, and understanding that he could turn on me at any moment, I decided to change tracks.

“You gotta mailman in here?” I asked.

“A what?”

“Somebody that delivers your messages to the outside world.”

“Yeah.”

“Can you tell me his name?”

Light dawned in the onetime mortician's eyes. His lips twisted at the memory of a sour taste.

“Tom Willow,” he said. “The guard that showed you in here the first time.”

“I hear that he didn't come to work today.”

I cut Fearless loose and headed out on my own again.

One thing about being a detective is that your actions often seem repetitive and even arbitrary; like a little black ant zigzagging her way across the floor, seemingly aimless, maybe even lost.

My problem was that Charcoal Joe was so convincing. I believed him, and one thing that detectives and lawyers have in common is that they can never afford to believe anyone. So I decided to double back on my tracks and go to Jasmine's house even though Joe had assured me that she wasn't there.

On the way I began to experience a feeling in my chest. It was both electric and respiratory. The feeling pulsed outward through my limbs and contorted my face in the rearview mirror.

This emotion-based palsy made me shudder and flinch.

I pulled to the curb near Fairfax on Pico and took in a deep breath. Sitting in the driver's seat, quiet and alone, I began to understand the physical symptoms I was exhibiting.

I was, for the first time in a very long time, excited—like a child on the verge of a great adventure. Maybe it had something to do with Mama Jo's tea, but I was pretty sure that those chemicals had already worked their way through my system. I was set against a whole cadre of bad men, and maybe a woman or two. I liked that, because danger forces you to appreciate life; to understand its frailty, transience, and its incalculable value. But beyond drugs and danger, the thrill in my body was a delayed reaction to the separation between me and Bonnie Shay.

I loved Bonnie. I was part of her heart the way a dog is a member of the pack. She felt the same way about me. That's why she wanted to carry my baby with her into hiding. That was why I couldn't leave her. But Jackson was right; Bonnie was a permanent landmark and I was a wave on the ocean somewhere—on my way.

Letting her go freed me. The dog of my heart didn't want that freedom but my soul, whatever that is, yearned for it.

I was that tiny ant, mindlessly repeating the mantra of life like Niska Redman chanting silently morning and night, or a wild dog on a vast plain howling at the moon.

Nobody met me at the little gate to the lower home.

I knocked on Uriah's door but he didn't answer.

I climbed the many, many steps to the high house and Jasmine Palmas's door.

It was ajar.

Without considering it, I took out my pistol and girded for armed conflict.

The first body was lying facedown in the middle of the floor of the main room of the aerie. He was wearing the same lavender suit I saw him in when he was still alive.

I knew Tony Gambol was dead by the open wound in the back of his head. Before I did anything else I reached into my left-hand pocket and came out with a black pair of cotton gloves. After pulling these on I decided to have an extra cigarette that day.

I lit up and sat down on the sofa inhaling noxious fumes, studying the prone form of the deceased gangster, and thinking that this was why I had to accept the loss of Bonnie.

She was a queen, not by decree but by nature, trying to save her peoples; and I was a commoner down in the shit.

Gambol's body was stiff when I turned him over. I almost had to lift him off the floor to get him on his back. There was a small pistol in his left hand and more than six thousand dollars in his wallet. The gun had been fired but I doubted that he shot himself from behind.

The back door led to a small outside patio that looked down on the houses for a few blocks over. There was no blood on the wooden platform, no bodies below.

I went through the bathroom door and then the door to Seymour's childhood bedroom. This chamber was dark, but not dark enough to fully envelop Uriah Hardy's corpse.

He was laid up in a far corner of the small room, his eyes open wide, an innocent look frozen on his face. He was wearing a plaid house robe and had worn slippers on his feet. He'd been shot in the chest multiple times and was probably dead before the killer was through shooting.

The only thing he had in his pockets was a keychain. If his body had been found in an alley the police might never have identified him.

For some reason this grim revelation made me smile.

Jasmine's house had nothing else to reveal. There was a good chance that at least three people were in the house at the time of the murders: Uriah, who had been slaughtered by the others, and Tony Gambol, who was killed afterward by someone he trusted enough to turn his back on.

One of Uriah's keys worked on the door of his lowland abode.

He was a rat, as Rufus Tyler had said; more accurately, a pack rat.

There were newspapers stacked everywhere, some that dated back to the forties; and dozens, maybe hundreds, of
Life
and
Look,
magazines that prided themselves on telling stories with photographs. One drawer was filled with at least a thousand keys and another had dozens of discarded sunglasses of every size, shape, and hue. Broken lamps, a burlap potato sack filled with shoes—some of which were made by individual cobblers, like the old people in the deep South used to wear when I was a boy. He must have had three dozen chairs, four sofas, and a bed that might have come down from his grandparents.

I tried to imagine Uriah and the prostitute Augusta in that bed.

Under the bedframe was a box filled with nudist-colony magazines. At the bottom of that stack was a metal lockbox painted enamel red. I broke three of his four hundred or so butter knives before I could pry the box open.

Inside there was maybe twenty-two hundred dollars, expired driver's licenses dating back to 1947, the marriage certificate between him and Jasmine, and a passport for Mr. and Mrs. Leonard Bartel that, if it had ever been used, would have expired twelve years before. There was no picture attached to the document.

When I sat on the bed the springs squealed like an alley full of tomcats yowling after a bitch in heat.

A pictureless passport. The criminal element of black Los Angeles seemed to be leaving in droves. Uriah had secreted his escape document with his precious printed materials. He died over it.

I searched for an hour or two more. There was nothing else of use to me.