Mad Anthony was probably dead, probably murdered. I wanted to stay away from Katz and Drummund, the men the murdered man had beaten. I wanted no connection with a murder, and so Mr. Friar, at United Episcopal Charities, became the object of our labors.
The office was in a three-story brick building on Olympic, about a mile west of downtown proper. There was a small park across the street that had on permanent display a cast iron statue of a woman wearing a Spanish veil. She was crying, and her hands were held out about a foot from either side of her face. There was no plaque for explanation, no reason for or account of her pain. The statue made me like the small recreation area. The mystery of the sculpture allowed casual viewers to come up with their own reasons for such powerful emotions.
At the edge of the small patch of green was a bench that gave us a good view of United Episcopal Charities.
“What’s the plan, Paris?” Fearless asked me.
“You still got that chauffeur’s uniform you used to wear?” I replied.
“Uh-huh.”
“You wanna go and get it and put it on?”
“Sure.” He stood up.
“While you at it, you could stop by that Western Union office on Manchester and pick me up a blank form there, maybe three or four.”
“Sure thing, man. What you gonna do?”
“I just wanna sit for a while, Fearless. This next step gonna be a big one, an’ I wanna clear my head. You know?”
My car was parked two blocks down. I walked there with Fearless and got a book out of the trunk before he drove off. Then I went back to my park bench and pretended that I was just an everyday Joe hanging out in the park.
The title of the paperback book was Aelita, written by Alexei Tolstoy and published by Raduga Publishers, Moscow. I had gotten the newly printed copy from a socialist librarian who worked in Santa Monica. He’d told me that this was a translation of a Russian novel by a guy who had been through the early days of the revolution. Most of the books he had written were naturalist novels, but this was science fiction. He thought I’d find it interesting.
I did.
At that time I, and most other Americans, believed that Russia didn’t allow for any kind of independent thinking, that all Russians lived in similar barrack-like rooms and were brainwashed so that they couldn’t really have an imagination. But the first few pages of this book brought this belief into question. There was nothing overtly political about the story. It was more about adventure and love and men seeking their destiny among the stars.
I was amazed that any Russian could have such thoughts.
“You there,” someone said in a loud, unfriendly voice.
It was a policeman hailing me from the passenger’s side of his patrol car.
“Yes, Officer?” I was determined not to stand and walk toward him.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Reading a book,” I replied. I held up the Communist-condoned fiction in case he didn’t believe it.
For a moment the young white patrolman didn’t know what to say. So he leaned over to conspire with his partner. They parked, disembarked, and walked over to flank me and block the sun.
“Stand up,” the officer who had spoken to me before said. His only distinguishing characteristic was a red pus-filled pimple on the left side of his forehead. Other than that his brown-eyed, thin-lipped, brown-haired, frowning visage was something I had seen again and again throughout my life.
His partner was taller and deadly handsome but with nearly the same features. The contrast of like images intrigued me, but this wasn’t my show.
I stood up, holding my book like a talisman.
“What are you doing here?” the handsome man asked me.
“Reading my book,” I said.
“What are you doing reading here?”
“I like the literary quality of the statuary.”
That bought me three seconds of silence.
“Let me see your book,” the handsome speaker said.
I handed it over. He flipped through the pages, looking for contraband, no doubt. If he had read the frontispiece, he might have decided that I was a Communist; he might have arrested me for espionage. But his imagination wasn’t at all intellectual. He was looking for swag, for small packets of heroin. He was looking for the kind of contraband he thought someone like me would be carrying.
“Let’s see your wallet,” he asked when the book search turned up nothing.
I obliged.
After fumbling through my well-ordered documents, he said, “Tell me something, Mr. Minton. Why aren’t you at work?”
“I am,” I said. “My book.”
“Your job is reading?”
“In a way. I own a bookstore on Florence. I’m considering ordering a dozen copies of this book. But since it’s a translation, I’m trying to see if it’s of a quality to justify such an investment.”
Three seconds more.
“Why don’t you go to a park near your store?”
“I like this park,” I replied.
“Turn around and lean against the bench,” was his answer to my flippancy.
He searched me down to the cuffs in my pants.
When I turned around again, he was still looking for a way to invade me.
“How much longer do you plan to be here?” he asked.
“I don’t know, Officer. I’m readin’ a book. Haven’t you ever read a book? It takes time.”
If he were a soldier and I were the enemy, the look in his eyes would have told me that he intended to kill me the next chance he got.
“We’ll be driving by in an hour,” he told me.
“Good,” I said. “I’ll see you then.”
I tried to get back into my book but I couldn’t stop thinking about all the words the police and I had spilled. It was a complex meeting, what with the Communist publication, the racist miscomprehension, and my barely conscious desire to be put back in a cell.
This last detail was very important in light of the other two. I was a black man seeking incarceration because I felt comfortable in that state. If I were a braver individual, I would have become a revolutionary at that very moment. But as it is, I only remember it because of Useless and his determination to share his bad luck with family and friends.
Fearless returned in forty-five minutes or so. He looked very dapper in his charcoal-colored chauffeur’s uniform. I took a blank Western Union form, scribbled down a note, folded it so that it appeared to be sealed, and addressed it. Fearless carried the dispatch to do its work.
He came back out and sat there with me. I was a little worried that the cops might return, but I suppose they had found some real police work to keep them busy.
I tried to explain to Fearless about Communism and the American police state, and about me playing my part in the farce, but he didn’t understand.
“That’s just the way it is, man,” Fearless said. “Cops wanna mess wit’ you, you got to put ’em in their place.”
I looked at my friend, not for the first time thinking that even though we were as close as two men could be, we didn’t live in the same world — not at all.
Chapter 32
Not long after Fearless returned from his mission at United Episcopal Charities, a man came out the double glass doors. The white man had once been young, and hale, and handsome. He had probably been over six feet tall twenty-five years ago. Now he was five ten with silver hair and a gray blue suit that almost made up for the ravages of time.
The man carried a yellow slip of paper in his left hand. He transported this paper across the street, jaywalking toward me and my friend from another world.
I wasn’t worried because I was buoyed with the kind of synthetic confidence that Fearless inspired.