Catlett wondered if the Bear had noticed that.
The Bear, having shown himself once, like reporting in, was around someplace: the Bear in a green and red Hawaiian shirt today with his baby girl.
Ninety-nine percent of the people in L.A. did not know shit about how to dress or seem to care. Nobody wore a necktie. They’d wear a suit and leave the shirt open. Or the thing now, they’d button the shirt collar, wearing it with a suit but no tie, and look like they’d just come off the fucking reservation. Ronnie Wingate, not knowing shit either, said, “Why wear a tie if you don’t have to?” Like not wearing it was getting away with something. He had told Ronnie one time, “I use to dress just like you when I was a child and didn’t know better.” Living in migrant camps, moving from Florida to Texas to Colorado to Michigan, out here to California, the whole family doing stoop labor in hand-me-down clothes.
He said to Ronnie Wingate, “You know what changed my whole life?” Ronnie said what and he told him, “Finding out at age fourteen, not till then, I was part black.”
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Asshole Ronnie saying, “Negro?”
“Black. And if you’re part, man, you’re all.”
Finding it out in a photograph the time he and his mother and three sisters went to visit his grandmother about to die; drove all the way to Benson, Arizona, from Bakersfield and his grandma got out her old pictures in an album to show them. The first ones, her own grandparents in separate brownish photos. An Indian woman in a blanket. (He had been told about having some Warm Springs Apache Indian blood, so this fat woman in the blanket came as no surprise.) It was the next photo that knocked him out. A black guy in the picture, no doubt about it. But not just any black guy. This one had a fucking sword, man, and sergeant stripes on his uniform. He was a U.S. Cavalryman, had served twenty-four years in the Army and fought in the Civil War when he was fifteen years old and was wounded at a place called Honey Springs in Missouri. Across the bottom of the photo it said: Sgt. Bo Catlett of the 10th, Fort Huachuca, Arizona Territory, June 16, 1887. And was signed by a man named C. S. Fly.
He asked could he have the photo and his grandma gave it to him.
“I think it was the sword did it,” Catlett said to Ronnie that time. “I kept thinking about it a year until now I was fifteen. You understand the significance of what I’m saying? I changed my name from Antonio to Bo Catlett, left the camps for good and took off for Detroit to learn how to be black.”
Asshole Ronnie didn’t get it. “Detroit?” Even sucking on his base pipe didn’t get it or ever would, ’cause the man would always be from Santa Barbara and never know shit about Detroit, about Motown, about Marvin Gaye . . .
Catlett spotted the Bear in his Hawaiian shirt, the Bear coming along carrying his three-year-old baby, cute little girl licking an ice-cream cone, dripping it on the Bear’s shirt. The Bear looked this way without making eye contact, turned his head toward the young dude in the wool shirt and back this way again, wiping his little girl’s mouth with a paper napkin, the Bear playing he was big and dumb but a nice daddy.
A voice just then announced the Atlanta flight was on the ground and would be at the gate in a few minutes.
Catlett got his mind ready. He’d been told the mule coming with the product this trip was a Colombian dude he had met one time before by the name of Yayo. Like so many of those people a mean little Colombian dude, but no size on him to speak of, going maybe one-thirty. They saw that movie Scarface and turned into a bunch of Al Pacinos doing Tony Montana. Only they didn’t know how. They maintained a level of boring meanness that was like an act they put on. It made him think of the man sitting at Harry Zimm’s desk, Chili Palmer, in his black jacket zipped up, not looking like any kind of movie producer or sounding like them either, full of shit. Chili Palmer maybe could be a mule, except he was bigger than any Colombian and looked at you different. Didn’t put it on so heavy. Chili Palmer was quiet about it but came right at you, wanting to get it done. Catlett was thinking he could put the Bear in front of Mr. Chili Palmer, see if the man behaved the same way, gave the Bear that look . . .
The Bear and his baby girl were among the people by the gate now. Passengers were coming out of
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the ramp from the plane. The way it was set up, Yayo would have his ticket envelope in his hand, the envelope with a baggage claim check stapled inside. He’d lay the envelope on the trash container right there, not stick it down in, and keep coming. The Bear would step over, pick up the envelope and take off with his little girl to the baggage claim area. There it was happening . . .
And now Yayo was looking straight ahead coming through the people waiting—Catlett seeing them from behind moving aside to give this ignorant bean picker who looked like he’d never been in an airport before the right of way. That’s what he reminded Catlett of, a migrant picker dressed for Saturday night in a clean starched shirt and khakis too big for him. Ignorant man, didn’t know shit. Look at him being cool looking this way, coming over now.
As Yayo reached him Catlett said, “Don’t say nothing to me. Turn around and act like you’re waiting for somebody suppose to meet you.”
“The fock you talking about?” Yayo hitting the word hard, the way Tony Montana did. “They nobody know me here, man. Give me the focking case.”
“Ain’t in the case. Now turn around and be looking,” Catlett said. “You got eyes on you. Man over to your right in the blue wool shirt hanging out . . . The other way, derecho.”
Catlett hunched over to rest his arms on his thighs, the seat of Yayo’s khakis hanging slack before him, Yayo between him and the dude in the wool shirt now.
“That’s a federal officer of some kind, most likely DEA. He moves his leg look for the bulge. You savvy bulge? Something stuck to his ankle, underneath his pants. His backup piece . . . Hey. Try it without looking right at him if you can.”
Come out here you should always take some pills first, keep your blood pressure cool.
“You know he’s there, now forget about him. While you wondering where your relatives are, suppose to meet you, I’m getting up. Gonna leave you and walk over to the cocktail lounge. After I’m gone, you sit down in this same seat I’m in. You feel something under your ass it’s the key to a locker where your money is. But before you go open the locker you look around good now, understand? You don’t want any guys have bulges on their ankles watching you. Take your time, go have a snack first. You know what a snack is?”
Yayo turned his head to one side. “You suppose to give me the focking money yourself.”
Catlett got up, adjusted his dove-gray double-breasted jacket, smoothing the long roll lapel. He said, “Try to be cool, Yahoo,” turning to pick up the ticket envelope and attaché case. “I was to hand you this fulla money we’d be speed-cuffed before we saw it happen. Do it how I told you and have a safe trip home. Or as you all say, vaya con Dios, motherfocker.”
Down in Baggage Claim, Catlett stood away from the Bear and his little girl waiting at one of the carousels, the Bear looking at the numbers on the claim check that told him which bag coming out of the chute would have ten keys of cocaine in it. Seventeen thousand a key this month, a hundred and seventy grand waiting in the locker, the money plus some product they were returning: a whole key stepped on so many times it was baby food. No prob