“What’s up?” I asked, herding him into the living room.
“That your wife? She’s beautiful.”
“Bonnie Shay. She lives here with us. Now what is it you want, Saul?” It was Saturday and I was tired from a hard couple of months of work—both on and off the job.
My son, Jesus, had dropped out of school but I was still teaching him every evening; making him read to me and then having him explain what he read. My lover, Bonnie, had admitted that she’d gone away to Madagascar with an African prince who was trying to liberate the continent. She said that they slept in separate rooms but still I couldn’t bring myself to kiss her good night.
I had been slipping back into the street in spite of my respectable job as supervising senior head custodian at Sojourner Truth Junior High School. In less than three months I had investigated arson, murder, and a missing person. I had also been party to a killing that the police might have called murder.
But worst of all, I had found out that my best friend in life was definitely dead. Raymond Alexander, Mouse, had died trying to help me. There wasn’t a place in my mind that I could turn to for hope or a laugh.
THE COFFEE WAS ALREADY BREWED. Bonnie brought Saul his cup and I led the way into the backyard carrying a maple chair for him. We sat side by side looking up at the enormous shade tree that dominated half the yard.
“Good coffee.”
“Yeah,” I said. “She can burn.”
Saul gave me a questioning glance and then he smiled. He was a small man who always wore brown. That day it was cotton brown trousers with a brown, blue, and green sweater that had an argyle pattern on the chest. He was also wearing tennis shoes, so I supposed he was on a job.
Saul had a big shapeless nose and a face you would forget two minutes after you saw it. But he had emerald-colored eyes that Hollywood starlets would have paid a hundred thousand dollars to possess.
“I have a cousin-in-law named Ross Henry,” he said.
“Don’t we all.” I was responding to his tone more than his words.
Saul laughed.
“I’ve missed you, Easy.”
“Ross Henry,” I said.
“Yeah.” Saul put his cup and saucer down on the deck and leaned forward, clasping his hands. “Ross is a good kid, man really, he’s thirty-seven. But…he never learned how to make it in the white man’s world.”
I grunted and Saul grinned again. He lived among black people and understood the humor in his words.
“But it’s worse with Ross,” he said. “He had an argument at work with his boss which led to a scuffle. He broke the boss-man’s nose.”
“Then it’s lucky he lives up here,” I said. “’Cause down in Mississippi they just might have strung him to a tree.”
“Not so much Mississippi as it is Louisiana.” Saul shook his head.
“Say what?”
“Eggersly Oliphant,” Saul said. “Known to the world as ‘Gator.’ He owns and operates a six-lift garage down on Lincoln, near the beach.”
“Six lifts.” I was impressed.
“Not only that. He owns a small used-car lot across the street and a motel two blocks down. Oliphant is president of the Santa Monica Board of Commerce and a power broker in local politics. A northern Dixiecrat.”
“Ross broke Gator’s nose?” I asked.
“No. Gator’s tough. Very much so. It’s his cousin, a runty little man named Tilly. Tilly called Ross a name that white men shouldn’t use on black people and then he picked up a ten-pound monkey wrench. Ross figured that he had a reason and that the difference in size was made up for by the steel.”
“I’d have to agree with the brother on that,” I said.
“Maybe I would too,” Saul agreed. “But Ross went overboard. He kicked Tilly when he was down and made him lie there while he bad-talked him.”
“So now Ross is in trouble with Tilly or with Gator?”
“Gator. Well, really it’s with the SMPD.”
“For assault?”
Saul shook his head. “Robbery.”
“He robbed him?”
“No. They fired Ross on the spot. That night the garage safe, where they kept the proceeds from all of Oliphant’s businesses, was robbed.”
“And Ross did it?” I asked.
“Gator says so but Ross denies it.”
“But Eggersly is an important man and so the police arrested your wife’s cousin for the job.” It wasn’t hard to figure out.
Saul nodded. “It was definitely an inside job. That’s why Ross could even be arrested. Whoever it was knew exactly where the safe was and what tools they needed to crack it open.”
“What did they use?”
“An acetylene torch from the car lot.”
“And Ross worked there?” I asked.
“He worked all over,” Saul explained. “Ross is a natural mechanic. They used him wherever they had a need. He could fix the ventilation system at the motel and crack open an automatic transmission for the garage.”
“So the cops have it that he broke into the car lot, stole the torch, toted it over to the garage, and then burned the lock off the safe?”
“Actually,” Saul corrected, “it was an old safe. All the guy had to do was burn off the hinges.”
“How much?”
“Between cash receipts, checks, and past due bills, they reported forty-nine thousand and some change.”
“And all the cops got on Ross is that he broke a man’s nose and then they fired him?” I said. “I doubt if they could convict a man on that kinda evidence.”
“Well…” Saul looked down at his coffee cup, hesitating, “it’s not that simple.”
“Oh no?”
“No. You see, when Ross was younger he was arrested for assault and robbery. They even convicted him but all he did was six months.”
“Why?”
“It was a dispute he had with a bartender on Central. He had fixed up a TV on a platform so they could play the baseball games at the bar. Ross told the bartender, a man named Grey, that he’d do it for thirty-five dollars, which was his rent at that time. Grey said okay, but when it came time to pay up he said that he had agreed on twenty-five…”
There was real feeling in Lynx’s words. I could see that he and Mr. Henry were close.
“Ross fought with Grey, knocked him out and took his thirty-five from the till.”
“And they arraigned him for felony assault and robbery but then argued it down because of extenuating circumstances,” I said, finishing the all-too-common tale.
“There was a woman in the bar, the waitress. She heard the deal and the judge was feeling merciful that day,” Saul said, wrapping up the story.
“So? What he needs is a lawyer. What do you want with me?”
“We got him representation,” Saul said. “But she’s gonna need some help if we want to prove he’s innocent. The problem is if Ross didn’t do it, then somebody else had to.”
“What else they have on him?”
“He was the only one to use the torch. And he was the only one who had access to all the keys except for Gator and his cousin.”
“Why didn’t they take his keys when they fired him?”
“He’d left them at home that morning because it wasn’t his day to lock up.”
“It sure is a mess,” I said. “But what could I do about it that you can’t?”
“That’s just it, Easy. I made the mistake of going over there when Ross got in trouble. I went up against Oliphant and he called me a kike. I didn’t do anything, but let’s just say that there’s no love lost between us.”
“And so you want me to what?”
“He likes people from down around where he comes from,” Saul explained. “Southerners, especially from Louisiana. They got a machinist opening now that Ross is gone…”
“I got a job, man,” I complained.
“Yeah, I know. For a favor, Easy.”
It never hurt to have a white man owe you a favor, that’s what I believed. And Saul was a good guy. Even the fact that he was there giving a bad-tempered black man the benefit of the doubt made me want to help him.