The only big tire on a roof in South Los Angeles at that time was a Goodyear advertisement atop Falcon’s Nest Bakery on Centinela.
The sky was lightening at the edges and traffic was only just picking up. I could feel my teeth and fingertips and not much else.
I wasn’t angry, but if Porky the Pimp had walked by me then, I would have pulled out my licensed .38 and shot him six times. I might have even reloaded and shot him again.
THE BIG BLUE BUILDING across from Falcon’s Nest Bakery was the Pride of Bethlehem Negro People’s Congregational Church. There was a bright red cross on the roof and a yellow double door for the entrance.
These colors seemed hopeful in the dawning light.
I tried for the first time since I was a child to imagine what God was like. I remembered men and women going into apoplectic convulsions in church when the Spirit entered them. That sounded good to me. I’d let the Spirit in if he promised to drive away my pain.
I lit a Camel, thought about the taste of sour mash, tried and failed to push Bonnie out of my mind, and climbed out of the car like Bela Lugosi from his coffin.
THE LONG WHITE BUNGALOWS behind the Pride of Bethlehem were on church property. They looked like the downscale military barracks of an army that had lost the war. There had once been a patch of lawn between the two long buildings, but now there was only hard yellow earth and a few weeds. The white plank walls were dirty and lusterless, and the green tar paper on the roofs had begun to curl as the cheap glue that once held them lost adhesive strength.
The forty-foot-long structures faced each other and were perpendicular to the back of the church.
At the center of each long wall was a plain door. I went up to the door on the right. There were labels on either side that had inked names on them that had faded in the sun.
Shellman was on the left and Purvis on the right.
The opposite door was Black and Alcorn.
I opened this door to the slender entrance chamber.
Alcorn was a regular family. In the dim light of the utility hall, I could see that they had left a broken hobbyhorse, a filthy mop, and three pairs of worn-down shoes outside their door. There was dust and dirt on the black rubber doormat and a child’s jelly fingerprints under the doorknob.
The Black residence was a whole different experience. Christmas had a stiff push broom leaned up against the wall like a soldier standing at attention. There was a mop in a lime green plastic bucket that exuded the odor of harsh cleanliness. The concrete floor before this entrance had been washed, and the white door was newly painted.
I smiled for the first time that morning, thinking about how Christmas and Easter formed the world around them just as surely as the holidays they were named for.
I knocked and waited and then knocked again. You didn’t just walk in unannounced on Christmas Black.
After a few more attempts, I tried the doorknob. It gave easily. The studio apartment was cleaner than a new hospital wing.
There was a tan couch against the center wall across from a long window that looked out on two lonely pines. On the left side of the far end of the room was an army cot and on the right was a child’s bed with pink sheets and covers. Both were immaculately neat. The floor was swept, the dishes washed and stacked away, the small coffee table in front of the couch didn’t have one ring on it from a water glass or a coffee cup.
The trash can was empty — and even washed.
Not a hair was to be seen on the white porcelain sink in the bathroom. There was a tiny bar of pink soap in the shape of a smiling fish in the dish next to the tub. I was wrapping the soap in a few sheets of toilet paper when I had an inspiration.
I went back into the main room and pulled the couch away from the wall. I remembered that when Jesus was a child he often hid his treasures and mistakes behind the couch, figuring that only he was small enough to fit in that crawl space.
There were a few candy wrappers, a headless doll, and a framed photograph back there. It was the picture of a maybe-beautiful white woman wearing a black skirt, a pink sweater, a red scarf that completely covered her head, and dark, dark sunglasses. The woman was leaning against the rail of a good-sized yacht, looking out over the side. The name of the boat was below her: New Pair of Shoes.
The glass had been cracked as if from a fall. Maybe, I thought, Easter had set it up on top of the cushions to study the woman who was a friend of her father’s, a woman who looked like a movie star and had also earned the right to be framed and set up in their home. After a while, Easter began horsing around and the couch came away from the wall, allowing the picture to fall and the glass to break.
All of this was very important to me. Christmas Black was an immaculate and obsessive man. All other things being equal, he would have checked behind the sofa before decamping. This meant that he was in a hurry when he left. That hidden picture told me that the placid and clean apartment had been the scene of fear and maybe even violence.
I removed the picture from its broken frame and put it in my pocket. I put the frame back where I found it and pressed the sofa against the wall in keeping with the order of the Black home.
I looked around again, hoping that there was something else that might help me discover more about Christmas and his sudden disappearance. It was hard to concentrate because there was a sense of delight that kept interfering. I was almost unconsciously overjoyed at being distracted from Bonnie and her upcoming marriage.
Thinking about Christmas demanded that I keep focused, because if he got spooked there was definitely death somewhere in the vicinity.
6
I was sitting on that tan couch, wavering between giddiness and the heavy sense of impending violence, when the door came open. Three uniformed men entered. Soldiers. A captain followed by two MPs. The military policemen wore holsters that carried .45-caliber pistols. They were white and massive. The captain was smaller, black, and, after a moment of surprise, smiling. It wasn’t a friendly smile, but it seemed to be a natural expression for this man.
I thought about grabbing my gun, but I couldn’t find an excuse for such an action. In my heart I was desperate and confused, but it was my mind that I chose to follow.
“Hello,” the black captain said. “Who are you?”
“Is this your house, man?” I asked as I stood up.
The captain’s empty grin grew larger.
“Is it yours?” he asked.
“I’m a private detective,” I said. It always gave me a little thrill to say that; made me feel like I was on a movie set and Humphrey Bogart was about to make an entrance. “I’ve been hired to find a man named Christmas Black.”
I wondered if there were women who were fooled by that officer’s smile. He was dark skinned like me and deadly handsome. But his bright eyes, I was sure, had never seen into another human being’s heart. He hoarded the coldness of a natural predator behind those deep brown eyes.
“And have you found him?”
“Who’s askin’?”
The MPs fanned out on either side of their commanding officer. I wasn’t going to get out of there by force of arms.
“Excuse my rudeness,” the smiling predator said. “Clarence Miles. Captain Clarence Miles.”
“And what are you doing here, Captain?” I asked, wondering what Mouse or Christmas might have done if they were in my situation.
“I asked you a question first,” he said.
“I’m on the job, Captain, and my military years are far behind me. I don’t have to answer to you and I sure don’t have to tell you my client’s business.”
“Once a soldier, always a soldier,” he said, glancing at the man to his right.