“They were camped outside of BobbiAnne’s apartment?” I asked.
“Apparently,” Lakeland said. “When they saw Bodan and Montes go in, they hoped they could get them on something and break up their organization. But the real question is, what were you doing there?”
“I found out that BobbiAnne was Brawly’s friend from back in high school in Riverside, so I went there with Xavier and Tina to talk to her.”
“About what?” Lakeland asked. Both he and Knorr leaned forward, almost imperceptibly, to hear clearly how I lied.
“They were scared,” I said.
“Scared of what?” Knorr asked.
“Whoever killed Strong. Tina had been moving from place to place, and Xavier was sitting behind his door with a pistol in his hand.”
“So what’s that got to do with BobbiAnne?” Knorr asked.
“I told them that Brawly’s father, Aldridge Brown, had also been murdered and that I thought that his death had something to do with Strong’s and that BobbiAnne knew something about it because of her connection to Brawly.”
“What’s she got to do with Strong’s death?” Lakeland asked.
“Hell if I know,” I said. “Like I told you half a dozen times already, the only thing I’m interested in is Brawly. Tina and Xavier knew BobbiAnne, so I thought they could get her to get me with Brawly.”
“But what’s that got to do with the shootings?” Knorr asked.
“Ain’t that the question I just answered?”
“So you know nothing about Strong’s death?” Lakeland said. “You just lied to them so that they would take you to Brawly.”
“I lied to ’em,” I said. “But that don’t mean I don’t know nuthin’.”
I waited, wanting them to feel that they were mining information and not being spoon-fed.
“What?” Lakeland asked.
“The same thing you should know if you were listenin’,” I said. “Tina’s scared to death and so is Jasper. They both loved Strong and believe that he was murdered by the government, the police, or by both. They sure didn’t have anything to do with it. All they want is to build schools for black children.”
“Schools where they’d teach children hate,” Knorr said.
Lakeland turned his head to Knorr as if his words were the clarion call. Then he turned back to me.
“That’s all you know?”
“So far.”
“So you walk in here and tell us that you don’t think these people are involved with murder,” Lakeland announced. “Who did kill him?”
“Somebody scared, somebody stupid,” I said. “Somebody that he knew and that he could harm. That’s always the way, now, isn’t it, Colonel?”
The officers of the law were stumped by me speaking their language.
“Are you gonna keep on this?” Lakeland asked me.
“If you mean, am I gonna keep on looking for Brawly and trying to get him back home with his mother — the answer is yes.”
“We got you out of jail,” the colonel said.
“And I told you everything I learned from Xavier and Tina.”
Lakeland lifted up the pistol and bounced his hand. “Was this the only weapon you found in the apartment?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you need to know anything from us?”
“I’d like one more address,” I said.
“What?”
“Where did Strong live while he was down here?” I had heard the address they’d given on the news. It wasn’t the same one I’d gotten from Tina.
“The Colorado Hotel,” Knorr said. “On Cherry. But you don’t have to worry about going over it. We already searched.”
“Does where he live mean something to you?” Lakeland asked.
“No. I mean, I thought I might go by there and ask if Brawly been around. You know that’s my prime target.”
“I thought you were a janitor,” Lakeland said. “But you sound like some kind of detective.”
“Do you know how to sew, Officer?” I asked in response.
“What?”
“I don’t mean darn,” I said. “I mean could you piece together a pattern and stitch the seams of a shirt or a pair of pants?”
“No.”
“Can you bake a cake from scratch or lay a floor in an unfinished room?” I continued. “Or lay bricks or tan leather from a dead animal?”
“What are you getting at?” the colonel commanded.
“I can do all those things,” I said. “I can tell you when a man’s about to go crazy or when a thug’s really a coward or blowhard. I can glance around a room and tell you if you have to worry about gettin’ robbed. All that I get from bein’ poor and black in this country you so proud’a savin’ from the Koreans and Vietnamese. Where I come from they don’t have dark-skinned private detectives. If a man needs a helpin’ hand, he goes to someone who does it on the side. I’m that man, Colonel. That’s why you sent Detective Knorr to my house. That’s why you talk to me when I come by. What I do I do because it’s a part of me. I studied in the streets and back alleys. What I know most cops would give their eyeteeth to understand. So don’t worry about how I got here or how to explain what I do. Just listen to me and you might learn somethin’.” I closed my mouth then, before I said even more about what I’d learned in a world that had already passed those cops by.
They were both staring at me. I realized that any chance I had of them underestimating me had passed by also.
“So who do you think killed Strong?” Lakeland asked.
“I don’t know anything about it, Officer,” I said. “It could have been somebody in the First Men, but not those two kids.”
— 32 —
“Back then our customers were Jewish gangsters and white girls who wanted to be starlets,” Melvin Royale told me. “Now we got a mixed clientele of a lower pedigree.”
Melvin was a Negro, large and verbose, just the way I liked it. He had worked as a bellman at the Colorado Hotel and Residences for twenty-seven years. Twelve of those years he was the head bellman.
I met Melvin after asking at the front desk if there were any jobs open for nighttime porters or bellhops. All hotels need people for the graveyard shift, so the carrottop clerk sent me down into the basement office of Mr. Royale.
The reception area of the hotel was small but elegant in a worn-down-but-comfortable sort of way. There were two potted ferns on either side of the carpeted stairway leading to the rooms. The banister of the staircase was mahogany, with a shiny brass cap at the first step.
But the stairs going down to the basement were moldy and damp. Melvin’s office was barely large enough to hold him and the end table that he proudly called his desk. The chair he had me sit in had its two back legs sticking out of the door.
“You ever work as a bellman before?” Melvin asked me.
“Yes, sir,” I said. “At the DuMont in St. Louis and at the Mark Hopkins in San Francisco.”
“You move around a lot, huh?”
“I come outta Mississippi,” I said. “At first I went up to Chi, but you know that wind was colder than a mothahfuckah up there. St. Louis was better, but they still had snowflakes for three months and I spent half my salary on coal. Now, it never snowed in San Francisco but I was still wearin’ a heavy sweater half the time in August. L.A. got warm weather and you see colored people almost everywhere you go.”
“They might not got a sign keepin’ us out, but you better believe that there’s places you better not be.”
“Oh yeah,” I said. “I know. I ain’t no fool.”
Melvin laughed. We were getting along just fine. Old friends.
“You kinda tall for a bellhop, ain’t you, Leonard?” he asked, using the name I’d given.
“I’ve done my share of hard labor, Mr. Royale,” I replied. “Heavy stones and eighty-pound sacks of cotton. A suitcase or two is more than enough for me.”