Charcoal Joe (6 page)

The administrator's office was opulent compared to those of his receptionist and assistant. It was a large room with a dark blue carpet and lavender-colored walls from which hung various diplomas, photographs, and one painting. The painting was a portrait of Administrator Bell in the same dress uniform he was wearing that day.

He settled behind a broad mahogany desk gesturing at three yellow padded chairs that were set out as if for visiting dignitaries.

“What can we do for you at our little prison?” he asked when we were both seated.

The most dangerous people in the world were men like Desmond Bell. They became SS officers and postmasters; church deacons and cops. In their minds there was always a marching band playing the tune that they stepped to.

He was an administrator of a detainment center but called himself the warden of a prison. He was supposed to wear a suit, not a uniform. But I wasn't there to treat the incurable ills of megalomania.

“I was sent to meet with Rufus Tyler,” I said.

“Ms. Stieglitz says that paperwork is most likely lost.”

“I don't know anything about that.”

“What is your business with Inmate Tyler?”

“His lawyer needs me to ask him a series of questions and he's too busy to conduct the deposition himself.”

“What questions?”

“Sorry,” I said, “but that's client-attorney privilege.”

“I don't understand,” Administrator Bell said. His skin color tended, ever so slightly, toward yellow and I believed that his head was bald under that hat. “Mr. Tyler pled guilty in court and has already served more than half of an eighty-seven-day sentence. I haven't heard that he's contesting the decision.”

“Another case completely,” I said, believing that brief was better with Administrator Bell.

His eyes were deep blue and his lips both small and protruding, like a cartoonist's rendering of a personified baby duck.

Pursing those lips further he said, “Is there anything that I should know?”

“I don't get you,” I said, affecting an innocent stare.

“Does this visit have anything to do with Avett?”

“Not in the least,” I assured him. “Mr. Tyler was married at one time and the ex-wife has taken him to court. That's all.”

“And are you a lawyer?”

“No. I'm just a man with a high school diploma and a list of questions.”

Bell tapped the long, manicured nails of his pudgy fingers on the desktop.

I was thinking that the whole encounter so far was like a comic interpretation of Franz Kafka, one of Jackson Blue's favorite writers.

Bell pressed a button on a console to the left of his emerald green blotter.

“Stoltzman,” he said.

“Yes, Warden Bell,” a disembodied voice said.

“Have Willow come to my office.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Miss Stieglitz said that she spoke to the lawyer in question,” Bell then said to me.

“Yes she did.”

“She's got quite a body, don't you think?”

“She never stood up,” I said.

“That's a shame. You know sometimes she wears those Jayne Mansfield sweaters and soft fabric bras. On cold mornings you can see her nipples from down the hall.”

I liked nipples. I liked Miss Stieglitz. Desmond Bell, on the other hand, would be detestable in any color, nationality, or era.

“Willow's here, sir,” Stoltzman said over the intercom.

“Send him in.”

The door came open and I turned in my yellow chair.

The guard that entered was an affable-looking young white man. He wore the same uniform as the other guards but it had a civilian look on him. Locks of his longish blond hair came out from under the cap at the forehead and over his left ear. He was smiling and moved with almost feline grace. The top button of his tan shirt was undone and the golden trousers seemed to be of a better cut than those of his counterparts. I wondered if he'd had them tailored.

“Tom Willow,” Administrator Bell said. “Mr. Rawlins.”

I stood to shake the young man's hand.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hello.”

“Mr. Rawlins has an appointment with Inmate Tyler,” Bell said. “The paperwork has been lost but I've assured myself that he's okay.”

“You want me to take him back?”

“Yes,” the pompous bureaucrat allowed. “But because we don't have the proper forms I want you to stay with him during the interview.”

“Yes, sir.”

We walked past Dorothy Stieglitz's closed door all the way back to the entrance of the administrator's building. But instead of turning right we went left down twenty-two granite steps to a very institutional-looking metal door that was painted light green.

Guard Tom Willow had a complex-looking key for the lock.

We went down a long hall to another metal door, used another key on it, and then walked down an even longer hall to yet another portal.

Willow's pockets were filled with keys.

The air in the halls was dank and close.

“This is more like it,” I said as Tom looked around for the proper key.

“Say what?” he uttered.

“This jail,” I said. “Up until now it looked more like a high school campus.”

“Avett's one of a kind,” he agreed and then jammed a key into the door.

We entered a room that had metal walls, floor, and ceiling—all painted a hideous orange. At the far end from the door we'd come through there was a counter behind which another gold-and-tan-clad guard stood.

“Hey, Maxie,” Tom Willow said as we approached the counter. “This is Mr. Rawlins. Bell wants me to take him to Joe.”

Maxie was short. Only his head and shoulders made it above the counter's edge. You got the feeling that he was trying to stand tall. His straining stature reminded me of tall women who slouched in an attempt to disguise their height.

“He's in bungalow eight,” Maxie said in a surprisingly deep voice.

The short guard hit some kind of device under the counter and a set of double doors to our left opened onto a sunlit and grassy field.

“Come on,” Tom Willow said to me.

It was a broad tract with salmon-colored buildings in the distance and fairly high triple-fences beyond them. Here and there inmates, identified by pink jumpsuits marked with random thick black dashes, sat on benches, played softball, or just lounged on the grass reading or napping.

“What kind of jail is this?” I asked aloud.

“Like I said,” Tom Willow answered, “one of a kind. Sometimes the courts have to detain special defendants. The public would be up in arms if they weren't put in jail. So if they have to be locked away they send 'em here to wait until the lawyers and judges find a way to set them free. Or, like with Joe, he has to do a little time and so they let him do it here.”

“Must be a pretty easy job.”

“I hate it,” the guard said with real feeling.

“What's to hate? You're down by the beach and the jail's more like a hotel.”

“It's just California, man. Sun always shinin'. People say shit they don't mean. And everybody's from somewhere else. All I'm doin' is savin' up my money till I can go back to North Carolina and buy me a little commissary store in tobacco country. You know I miss the dogwood trees and words that sound right on people's tongues.”

“So you're going to be a shopkeeper?” I asked.

“Commissary store,” he said as a kind of correction. “I'll be out among the Negro tobacco sharecroppers. I'll do great because I'll give 'em a good rate and they'll be able to pay it off instead of goin' into debt to the plantation owners.”

“That almost sounds political.” We were nearing a large bungalow that had a big black number
8
painted on its door.

The guard stopped and looked at me.

“Don't get me wrong, brother,” he said. “I don't believe in intermarriage or integration or nuthin' like that but black people and whites got equal rights as Americans and everybody should get a equal try. I'll have me a nice white wife and kids but the people I work with will get a fair shake.”

“The plantation owners might not like that,” I suggested.

“Hell, my own daddy won't like it,” Willow agreed. “But you know a man got to stand by his convictions.”

No matter how crazy and contradictory they are,
I thought to myself.

Bungalow 8 was the prison cafeteria. There was no one there eating and it was nearing noon. I figured that Avett Detention Facility had lunch at a decent hour; 1:00 p.m. or maybe even later.

To the right was a long serving station. Behind that cooks and helpers of many races were getting ready for the meal: chopping salads, flipping burgers, moving great kettles of soup and trays of sliced white bread.

To my left, at the far end of a room filled with long lines of pine tables and benches, three men were gathered—two standing and one sitting down.

Tom Willow and I approached the trio walking along an aisle formed by two equal rows of maybe nine sets of tables—the men at the end were all black men in pink jumpsuits. This struck me, I realized, because all of the prisoners I'd seen so far had been white.

“Hello, Mr. Tyler,” Tom said to the seated man when we got within earshot.

“Tom,” said the small dark man. Before him was a
New York Times
folded open to page two.

Taped up on the windows behind the trio were six newsprint drawings. These were charcoal portraits; mainly of white men in different attitudes and poses. One drawing was from memory, I supposed. It was of a naked Negro woman lying back on a dais, running the fingers of her left hand over her sex.

To Charcoal's left stood a light brown man of medium height with distrustful eyes. His pink jumpsuit didn't seem appropriate to his demeanor but that was the one rule that seemed constant at Avett: the color scheme of prisoners and guards. Only the administrator and his assistant broke these imperatives, and they were exceptions anyway, her being a woman and him an autocrat.

On Joe's right, standing at least six foot eight, was Ox Mason. Bison-brown Ox had broad shoulders, a thick frame, and a protruding belly made mainly from muscle, not fat.

“Ox,” I said.

“Easy.”

“You two know each other?” Joe asked in a voice so deep that it was disturbing; like the rumble of a wild animal that was considering a roar.

“We've met,” I said.

“This is Easy Rawlins, Mr. Tyler,” Tom said.

The little man's keen and amicable eyes studied me a moment.

“How do you know Ox?” he asked.

“He was forcing an insurance scheme on some shop owners that needed relief,” I said. “I brokered a deal between him and them.”

“I always meant to thank you for that, Easy,” Ox said in a tone that was anything but grateful.

I shrugged slightly. I had been up against people much larger than I was since the age of eight. Considering my current height and weight, Ox wasn't nearly the largest among them.

“Some other time,” Charcoal Joe ruled. “Today Mr. Rawlins and I have business to transact. Have a seat, Mr. Rawlins.”

I sat down on the bench across from the artist. Tom took up a position behind and to my right.

“This is private,” Joe said to Tom.

“Bell told me I had to stay.”

The little boss kept his eyes on Tom and, after a few moments, the guard moved off toward the kitchen workers. When the kindhearted racist was out of earshot the gaze turned back to me.

Rufus Tyler was somewhere between sixty and seventy, not heavy or thin. I imagined that if he stood up he'd be five and a half feet tall. His danger was primarily an intellectual experience—with the exception of his deep voice. He looked like a schoolteacher in pink overalls but you knew, if you had the brain, that his power was something to reckon with.

“What do people call you?” I asked to break the short silence.

“From saint to shithead, take your pick.”

“I meant Joe or Rufus.”

“CJ'll do just fine.”

“Well, CJ, what am I doing here?”

“How long have you known Mouse?” he asked.

“Since we were children scramblin' 'round the streets of Houston.”

“He says that when it comes to people and problems that you're the smartest man he's ever known.”

“That's kind of how I've made my way,” I admitted. “It started out tradin' favors. Now I'm a licensed private investigator.”

“I don't deal in certificates,” Charcoal Joe said. “Lots of fools got diplomas and degrees on their walls. What I need is a man who could get the job done. Are you that man?”

“I don't know.”

“You don't know?” It sounded like a threat.

“I believe that a man should never make promises before he fully understands what it is he's expected to do.”

“Mouse didn't tell you?” Joe asked, almost innocently.

“He said something about a killing up the coast from here. But you know, people gettin' killed in Vietnam every day. If you were to ask me to prove guilt or innocence in a war I'd have to decline.”

“They gave William Styron the Pulitzer Prize last night,” Joe said as if in direct response.

“I heard that.
Confessions of Nat Turner
getting an award like that is really something.”

“You read
Ten Black Writers Respond 
?”

“You mean
William Styron's Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond 
?” I said.

A wisp of a smile passed over the undertaker's face.

I hadn't actually yet read the powerful critiques of Styron's award-winning book. But Jackson Blue had. He reveled in the scathing black critiques written by everyone from Lerone Bennett Jr. to John Oliver Killens to John A. Williams.

“Saul Lynx and Whisper Natly.”

“Whisper an' me never got along too well,” Joe said, sitting back in his institutional wood chair. “He's smart as you could be but he think he better than most. That's a mistake only fools and brilliant men make.

“Now that Saul Lynx is a mothahfuckah. I still never found out how he traced that kidnapped girl to my ex–business partner. I seriously thought about puttin' him on this job but when I stacked it up it was you had the higher pile.”

“What job are we talking about, CJ? Mouse told me a thing or two but I want to hear it from you.”

Charcoal Joe leaned forward on the finished wood table, lacing his fingers and planting his elbows so as to form a perfect equilateral triangle.

“Life is hard in the big city,” he said. “Poor people don't have no protection, no recourse, and no relief. That's why the young people have started up street gangs. Hell, that's why the Sicilians started the Mafia.” The serious man in the pink overalls sneered and shook his head before continuing. “Most'a your poor people is black and brown. Some poor whites too. But even your better class of white people not immune. Peter Boughman for instance. The police fount him and another man on the floor of a Malibu beach house. Dead as mackerels washed up on the beach outside.

“They arrested a young man who had the misfortune of being found leaning over the bodies. That young black man only wanted to help. He didn't wanna hurt nobody. He had gone to Stanford and UCLA, got himself a PhD in physics before his twenty-second birthday, and still they arrested him, charged him, slammed that iron door, and closed the book.

“I want you to prove Seymour innocent. I want you to save my good friend's foster child from the gas chamber or even just one day in prison.”

“You know this young man?” I asked.

“I know his former guardian.”

“Does he work for you?” I pressed.

“No he does not, nor has he ever. We don't even know each other all that well. But I know the woman who cared for him and I know he wouldn't commit no murder.”

“Maybe not first-degree murder,” I allowed. “But he might have found an open window somewhere and went in lookin' for loose change and whatever. Two men come in on him and one thing leads to another….”

“The young man is a doctor of science,” Rufus Tyler the prodigy intoned. “He's teachin' at UCLA right this semester while he finishes his postgraduate work. Now how's a man like that gonna be some kinda niggah like the people you and me consort with?”

I could think of a dozen ways. The universities in the late sixties were hotbeds of bombers, Liberation bank robbers, and stone-cold killers.

I didn't share these opinions with Mouse's friend.

“Mouse asked me to come here,” I said. “He put money down on the table and said that he wanted me to take any case you offered. He also told me that I was in your debt over a piece of information you shared with him.”

Charcoal Joe shrugged and held up the palms of both hands.

“Information comes to me,” he said. “Knowledge is the only real wealth any man can have; knowledge and the will to power.”

I wondered if the gambler/killer/artist was referring to the German philosopher or just heard those words and instinctively understood their authority.

“You tell me what I need to know and I will go out to either prove or disprove Dr. Brathwaite's innocence,” I said. “I won't lie or fake evidence but you can be sure that I'll give it my best.”

Joe stared at me a moment. I was fully aware that such a look had probably meant the death of some men.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay. I mean I say it's all right because I know Seymour is innocent and I believe Raymond when he tells me that you're the best.

“There ain't too much to add. The police know about the murders and you got an in with them I hear. Anything else you need you can get from Jasmine Palmas-Hardy.”

“Who's that?”

“She was Seymour's foster mother up until he was eleven or twelve.”

“What's her number?”

“She lives behind a house and up a stairway on Hauser.” He gave me an address. “Just go there anytime today and she'll be waitin' for ya. Anything she says, treat it like you heard it from me. Anything you need: introductions, information, or cash—you just ask her.”

Joe opened his eyes wide. This meant that the meeting was over. I realized that he had not introduced me to the medium-sized guy that stood at his side. I didn't ask because I understood that Rufus Tyler/Charcoal Joe never did, or did not do, anything in error.