O’Brien’s was the place that colored train professionals patronized. All porters, waiters, restroom attendants, and redcaps went there when the shift was finished or when a layover began. There were a dozen cots in a back room where, for three bucks, a porter could get a nap before heading off on the next outbound train.
There were no windows in the walls but the roof was one big skylight, and so the room was exceptionally sunny. Hampton used the exhaust fans left over from the bakery to keep the place at a reasonable temperature. And he had a red piano on a wide dais for one jazzman or another to keep the mood cool.
Hampton was the only bartender working at that time of morning. A solitary customer sat at the bar. That patron was dressed in a porter’s uniform, drinking coffee.
“Hampton,” I said as Fearless and I approached.
He winced, straining to find my name, and then said, “Paris, right?”
“Yeah.”
“What you boys drinkin’?”
“That coffee smells good.”
If it had been later Hampton would have told us to go to a diner. But he was just getting warmed up at eight-thirty. We could have ordered ice water and he wouldn’t have cared.
“Regular?” he asked.
Regular in California meant sugar and milk, so I said, “Black.”
“Nuthin’ for me,” Fearless added.
“You’re Fearless Jones, right?” Hampton James asked.
“Yes sir.”
Hampton was a nearly perfect specimen of manhood. He was five eleven with maple-brown skin. He was wide in the shoulder, with only ten pounds more than he needed on his frame. He had a small scar under his left eye and eyebrows that even a vain woman wouldn’t have touched up. His lips were generous and sculpted. And his oiled hair was combed back in perfect waves in the way that Hindu Indians draw hair on their deities.
“I saw you get in a fight one night down on Hooper,” Hampton said to Fearless. “Down at the Dawson’s Market.”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t you remember?” Hampton asked.
“Did I win it?”
“Oh yeah. Yes you did. It was a big dude named Stern but you put him down and they had to carry him off.”
“I don’t remember any fights but the ones I lost,” Fearless said in a rare show of pride.
“How many you remember?”
“None comes to mind.”
Hampton had a sharp laugh, like the chatter of a dozen angry wrens. I laid down two dimes for my twelve-cent coffee. He pocketed them, keeping the change for his tip.
“What you boys want?” Hampton asked. He was looking at me.
“Why you think we want anything other than coffee?” I asked him.
“No Negroes drop in here for coffee, brother. An’ even if they did, it’s cause they work for the trains. Any civilian knows about my door would come at night or on his way to someplace else.”
“We could be on the road somewhere,” I speculated.
Hampton looked at my clothes, which were only made for working, and shook his head.
“Dressed like that,” he said. “And with not even a valise between you. I don’t think so.”
“Yeah,” I admitted. “You right. The reason we’ve come is that Fearless here owes me twenty dollars.”
“So?”
“He don’t have it, but he told me that his friend Kit owed him for a week’s work he did out in Oxnard. Kit was supposed to pay him Wednesday last but he never showed up.”
Hampton’s only imperfect features were his eyes. They weren’t set deep into his head like most people’s. They were right out there competing with his nose for facial real estate. As a result even I could easily read the hesitation when it entered his gaze.
“What’s all that got to do with me?”
“Light-colored man name of Pete,” I said. “You know, he has a hot dog cart downtown. He said that he’d seen Kit in here more than once.”
“Kit who?”
“Mitchell,” Fearless said. “Kit Mitchell. Sometimes they call him Mitch. One’a his front teeth is capped in silver.”
It was always good to ask questions when in the company of Fearless Jones. Women liked answering him because of his raw power and sleek appearance. Men stopped at the power. They didn’t know that a man as dangerous as Fearless would never bully his way through life. All they knew was that if they had that kind of strength and skill they’d never take no for an answer again.
“I don’t know really anything,” Hampton James said. “I mean, Kit ain’t been in here since he started that watermelon business. But I heard from one of the bar girls that he took her up to a room he had at the Bernard Arms over on Fountain.”
“Sounds like a white place,” I said.
“Yeah,” the bar owner said. “That’s why she was talkin’ about it. She said that he went in an’ asked for Hercules and they showed him up to a penthouse apartment that was all nice with a stocked bar and everything.”
“Hercules?”
“That’s what she said.”
The bartender glanced at the porter and moved in that direction. He seemed worried. Looking at him, that all but perfect sampling of humanity sidling away fearfully, gave me my third chill of the day. It was as if he were scuttling away from some danger that was coming up from behind me. The feeling was so strong that I turned around.
There sat Fearless Jones, staring up innocently at the skylight.
6
MY EYES WERE WATERING and I couldn’t stop yawning by the time Fearless and I got to Ambrosia Childress’s house. We went to the front door together because I needed her phone number to stay in touch with my friend.
She answered in a bathrobe that was open just enough to snap me out of my lethargy. She had deep chocolate skin, dark red lips, and bright brown eyes. When she looked at Fearless her lips parted.
“Hi,” she said.
I might just as well have been a tree.
“Hey, Ambrosia. I’m sorry to drop in on you like this but I need a place to stay for a day or two.”
“Okay,” she said. No question why. No coy hesitation. I do believe that her nostrils widened and her chest swelled.
“Thank you, honey,” Fearless said.
He was swallowed up whole by her doorway and I was left at the threshold with a scrap of paper in my hand.
We’d decided that it would be dangerous for Fearless to travel the streets with so many people looking for him. I could make the rounds asking questions while he suffered the four walls of Ambrosia’s protective custody.
“GOOD AFTERNOON. BERNARD ARMS,” a friendly young woman said in my ear.
I was down the street from the residence hotel, closeted in a sidewalk phone booth.
“Brian Letterman,” I said in a tone completely drained of my Louisiana upbringing. “Pasternak Deliveries. With whom am I speaking?”
“Susan Seaborne. Yes, Mr. Letterman. What can I do for you?”
“I got a new guy at the front desk here, Sue. You know how it goes. Some guy in a hundred-dollar suit came in and dropped off a parcel without leaving the proper information. Lenny didn’t know. And now I have a problem.”
“Oh,” Susan Seaborne said. “I see.”
“I’m glad you do, because my boss wants to fire me. Can you believe that? Lenny takes down two lines for an address and Pasternak wants to put it on me.”
“I really don’t see what we have to do with your trouble at work,” the young woman said.
“Oh, yeah. I’m sorry. It’s just that my wife’s pregnant, and if I lose this job —”
“Are you looking for a new job?” the operator asked, trying to urge me toward clarity.
“I got two lines here,” I said. “Actually three words. Hercules and Bernard Arms. That’s all the address that the suit gave Lenny. If I don’t get a proper address my new baby will be suckling cheap wine on Skid Row.”