“Sound like a white man’s name.”
I chuckled. “Yeah, man. Every time I send in a application for’a job, and call about it, they always say on the phone, ‘Yeah, come on in, we got a openin’.’ But just as soon as they see my face the position has been filled.”
“Dig it,” the chef’s helper said.
“But the reason I’m here,” I continued, “is because this woman said that she saw you here an’ I need to get in touch wit’ her.”
“Who is that?” William spoke in short sentences and quick bursts, like a burp gun.
“Idabell Turner,” I said as he inhaled the smoke from his cigarette.
He held the breath a little too long and then, instead of saying anything, he took the pack of Winstons from his pocket and shook it at me.
I took the cigarette.
I took a light.
“What you want Idabell for?” he asked.
“She send a friend’a hers over to drop her dog off with me. He said that she’d come by today to take Pharaoh back but she ain’t showed an’ I already had to clean up shit twice.”
“How you know Ida?”
“Met her. At a party. Her an’ her hus’bun. Brother-in-law too, I guess. Damn! Look like twins t’me.”
I was saying one thing and thinking something similar. Did Bartlett know Roman and Holland? Was he involved in the killings? I wanted to grab the little man by the throat and choke the truth out of him but it wasn’t the right time — not yet. If he was involved and knew who I was, and that I knew him, then he’d run before I could gift wrap him for the cops.
So, for the time being, the only information I could get from him was what he let slip.
“I’ont know where she is, man.” His bullet words were a warning just over my head. “Bitch owe me three hundred dollars for six months. Come by last night to pay me off.”
Our eyes met in the involuntary agreement that we were both liars.
“But if I do hear from her I’ll tell’er you come by,” he lied. “What’s your number?”
“They took out my phone,” I answered. “But do you know her husband? Maybe I could call him.”
“Whose husband?”
“Mrs. Turner’s. Idabell’s.”
“Naw, man. Not me.”
“Where you know her from?”
“Around,” he said easily. “Listen, I got to get back on the job. Maxwell don’t hold much with no coffee breaks.”
I wanted to keep him talking. I wanted to break his face.
Instead I said, “Yeah, man. It’s a bitch.”
“See ya, brother. I’ll tell Ida you lookin’ for her — if I see her.”
23
Down on Pinewood street, somewhere on the road from Watts to Compton, was a small turquoise apartment building. Not many people knew that Jackson Blue lived there.
His door was on the ground floor. I knocked. I rang. I called out. I knocked again. I was so persistent because Jackson had become shy about public appearances ever since the white gangsters of downtown and Hollywood had gotten interested in his gambling operation.
After a long time the window to an apartment on the third floor slid open. Someone was leaning away up there, staring down while remaining hidden in shadow.
“They gone!” a woman’s voice called.
“Doris?”
“Easy? Easy Rawlins, is that you?”
“Yeah.”
“Well come on up here and say hey.” Her words were gay but she didn’t sound that happy.
She opened the door and came outside, looking both ways down the hall as she did. Doris was a deep brown woman with features that were a series of perfect circles; her nose, her nostrils, her eyes, even her mouth. Her hair had been straightened and now stood up, held by stiff hair spray, like a manicured lion’s mane.
Doris pulled her robe close at the chest. She gave me a worried, searching look and then peered down the hall again.
“You alone, Easy?”
“What’s goin’ on, Doris?”
“Jackson gone. They after him, Easy. Them bookie men wanna kill’im. They send some colored mens down here after him.”
“Where is Jackson, Doris?”
She looked up and down the hall again.
“Doris, I ain’t got time for this.”
“I ain’t s’posed to be sayin’ t’nobody.”
“All right.” I could live with that. I turned away.
“He’s at thirteen twenty-seven and three-quarters Morton Street,” she said to my back.
I kept walking.
“Did you hear me?” she asked. “Easy?”
I kept walking.
I walked down the stairs and out to the car. I saw Doris looking from the window above but I didn’t acknowledge her. I was thinking that Jackson’s help might not be worth its price.
Jackson and his evil friend Ortiz had been running a numbers and bookie operation to oppose the established white gangsters. Jackson had developed a tape recorder system that he could attach to the telephone lines. That way nobody could catch him at his phone center because there was no phone center. Jackson made a few connections at the telephone company and crazy Ortiz ran the collections.
They made more money in three years than an honest man could make in a lifetime.
I imagined a school bell ringing and the scuffle of children’s feet down the halls of the administration building. But that was all very far away.
“Who’s there?” Jackson shouted from somewhere in the room beyond the door. I figured that he was to the right, behind a corner no doubt.
“It’s Easy, Jackson. Lemme in.”
“Easy?”
“Yes, Jackson. Easy.”
The door swung open quickly. Jackson was behind it. All he let me see was his frantically beckoning hand.
“Com’on, com’on, com’on, come on, come on!”
It was dark in the small room.
Jackson Blue, the smartest man I ever knew, was also one of the most untrustworthy. He was wearing black slacks and a long-sleeved black turtleneck shirt. They were both tight-fitting and so displayed his skinny frame.
It was hard to distinguish Jackson’s skin from his clothing. He held his shoulders high and his head down as if he were continually ducking from a blow.
There was a rounded couch covered by a shaggy rug and a dark wood rocking chair in that room. To the right was a door half open on a kitchen.
The only light in the room was from a streetlamp outside that shone brightly on the drawn shade.
“Can we turn on a light, Jackson?” I asked.
“No no, brother, no light.”
“You standin’ over there in the kitchen when you hollered at me?” I asked.
Jackson looked from the kitchen to the front door. I didn’t have to tell him how easy it would have been to shoot him through the wall.
“What you want, Easy? You here about who after me?”
“No. Who is it?”
“It’s not just one. Gangsters done put a bounty out on my head. Whole bunch’a soul brothers out to make a grand on my hide.”
When he swallowed it was like his whole body was the throat.
“What about Ortiz?” I asked. “He think he could take anybody.”
When Jackson sat down on the shag-covered couch a dusty odor rose in the room.
“What’s wrong, Jackson?” I asked. It struck me then that I was unarmed. I had gone unarmed in the streets of L.A. for over two years but this was the first time that it made me feel light.
“It’s all fucked up, man. All fucked up.”
“You mean the money on your head?”
I wasn’t being truthful with Jackson. I knew about his problems. That’s why I had sought him out. I’d heard from Mouse that Ortiz had been arrested; I figured that would have put Jackson in a vulnerable position.
“That, yeah. But it ain’t just him. It’s just bad luck.” Jackson shook his head and stared at the floor. “Bad luck.”