“What kinda bad luck?”
Jackson had his head down with his hands clasped at the back of his neck. He raised his head without releasing that grip, looked at me for a hard moment, and then sighed.
“Ortiz in jail,” he said.
“What for?”
“Two dudes got it in their heads to hijack our runners. We got hit twice. Lost twenty-six hunnert dollars near ’bout. But they got greedy and went in for number three. One’a my people recognized’em an’ Ortiz went down to a bar where they hung out, down on Slauson. They saw’im comin’ but they decided to fight instead’a runnin’.” Jackson shook his head at their foolishness. “But you know Ortiz got some heavy fists. Heavy.”
“So it was just a fight?” I asked.
“Yeah. Ortiz busted’em up pretty bad but he’s in jail because them white bookies got to the judge. Cops and the prosecutor actin’ like Ortiz is public enemy number one. They wanna have a big trial an’ meanwhile Ortiz up in jail with no bail.”
“And with him in jail your butt’s in a sling,” I declared.
“Yeah, they figgered it was a good time t’pick me off.”
Jackson rubbed his hand over his face and turned in my direction. “Can you help me?” he asked.
Like I said, I knew that Jackson was in trouble. But I had washed my hands of trouble. When I’d heard about Jackson’s dilemma I worried that my buddy might get killed but I didn’t do anything to help him. I didn’t do anything because he had chosen his road and I’d chosen mine. But now I saw where our paths might intersect again. I’d come looking for him knowing that he’d ask for my aid.
“Help you how?”
“I don’t know, Easy. I wish I did.”
“What were you plannin’ to do, Jackson? You just gonna sit here till somebody come in here with guns blastin’?”
“No… I mean, what could I do?”
When it came to Jackson Blue, things never changed.
“I need something from you, Jackson.”
“Anything, brother. ’Cause you know long as I’m helpin’ you I gotta still be breathin’ to do it.”
24
You know a place called the Chantilly Club?” I asked Jackson Blue.
He froze like a wary bug when a man’s shadow passes nearby.
“Why?”
“Why? Because what I need to know got to do with the Chantilly Club. That’s why.”
“What you doin’ here, Easy Rawlins?” Jackson sat up in his chair and tried to look threatening.
“What’s wrong, Jackson? You crazy?”
“You know Philly Stetz?”
“Never heard of ’im.”
Jackson had the face of a scout dog from a wild pack. He was trying to sense my danger to his brood.
“What you wanna know?” he said through nearly closed lips.
“You ever hear of Holland and Roman Gasteau?”
“Mmm-hm. Roman’s a gambler. Holland’s his brother.”
“Roman got himself killed at the school I work at and then Holland wound up dead at his own house. Holland was married to one of the teachers at Sojourner Truth. I hear the brothers hung out at a private Negro club at the back of the Chantilly Club.”
“You sure you don’t know Philly?” Jackson asked again.
“Who’s that?”
“He’s one’a them, one’a the men could be after me. He run the Chantilly.”
“That’s why I come to you, Jackson. I know that you deal with gamblers. I thought you could help me. It’s no surprise that I’d ask you ’bout somebody you know.”
Jackson nodded and rubbed his face again. “How you gonna pay me for this help?” he asked.
“Get you outta this mess you in.”
“How?”
“I got a place for ya,” I said. “And who knows what after that? You get me the right information and maybe I’ll find you an honest job mopping up floors.”
Jackson frowned at the idea and I laughed.
I went out to the car while Jackson gathered his things. By the time he came out to meet me I had the engine going.
“Whose apartment is that, Jackson?”
“It was ours,” he said. “Just a room we kept in case things got rough.”
“I guess they did, huh?”
“Guess so.”
Jackson was better than a library when it came to information about the criminal side of L.A. — both black and white. His head was a vault of who did it, when they did it, and how much they got paid for it. That was the way he stayed out of jail for so long; the cops would arrest him for this or that and then ask him what he knew that would make them agree to let him go. That was also why he found no sympathy from the black hoods from Watts and thereabouts. Very few people liked Jackson Blue.
But he was worth the trouble he might cause. Jackson told me about Philly Stetz, the owner of the Chantilly Club. He had been a sports promoter back east who had come to L.A. in the fifties. He did somebody a big favor in city government and then took over the mansion. Stetz dabbled in gambling, fences, prostitutes, and various other L.A. pastimes. Ice didn’t melt on his tongue and he didn’t know, for a fact, the color of his own blood.
Jackson was afraid to stay down in south L.A. because he thought that he was open to any black man who knew the price that the gangsters had put on his head. He was afraid of Hollywood and downtown because of the gangsters themselves.
So I took him to the Oasis Palms Motel on Lincoln in Santa Monica.
“Anything else to tell me about the Chantilly Club?” I asked.
“Naw. Just say you know Blackman. Tell’em he sent ya an’ that’ll get ya in back.”
“You know anything else ’bout the Gasteaus?”
“No, uh-uh,” he said.
“I’ll come by in a few days wit’ someplace for you to stay till you can try’n get outta this mess,” I said.
“Easy?”
“Yeah?”
“Could you let me have a couple’a dollars? Just till you get back.”
“You don’t have no money?”
Jackson studied his hands.
“Jackson?”
“What?”
“How much money you and Ortiz made in this last year?”
“You mean since a year ago exact, or just since January?”
“This year.”
“I’ont know. More’n fifty thousand, that’s sure.”
“Where is it?”
“Gone.”
Gone. The one-word sentence that describes so many people’s lives. Jackson Blue making more money in ten months than most black people see in ten years. Where is it? Gone. Like my mother and the house I was born in. Like my wife and, with her, my first child — lost to me in the hills of Arkansas with a man who had been my friend. Gone.
I wanted to strike Jackson.
Instead I gave him one hundred dollars that I’d lifted from a dead man’s pockets.
“Wait for me here, Jackson. I might have one more thing for you to do.”
“I ain’t got no place to go, Easy.”
And that was just the way I wanted it.
25
The Chantilly club was half a mile up in the hills behind Hollywood Boulevard. The nightclub was housed in a large mansion once owned by some famous star, I was never quite sure which one. The mansion, constructed from pale stone, contained over eighty rooms and had the look of an English country home for royalty.
Young men in white shirts and black trousers ran around the front gate getting into the cars of partygoers and taking them to the back for parking. The patrons wore gaudy clothes and bright jewelry. It’s amazing how a flashy style can make even diamonds look cheap.
I watched for a while from across the road and down the street. Then I took the winding road up behind the mansion and parked my blue hot rod in a large dirt lot along with a lot of older-model Fords, Pontiacs, and Dodges.