Black Betty (17 page)

“Okay. All right. I’ll give ya that. You got three days. You understand me?”

I had phone directories for Los Angeles going back for eight years in my garage. Felix Landry wasn’t in any of them. I called Miss Eto down at the library to search the directories of other counties. She looked, but Mr. Landry, if that was his name, was unlisted.

ORTIZ, STILL SHIRTLESS and in the same pair of trousers, opened Jackson Blue’s door and glowered at me. As a boy I would have gotten my face slapped for looking like that. No adult would take that kind of sass—not even from a stray.

“Jackson here?” I asked.

“What you want?”

“Nuthin’ from you, brother. I just need Jackson a minute.”

There was going to be violence between the two of us one day.

Sometimes you just know somebody, like they’ve been in your business for a whole lifetime. I knew Ortiz and the dark anger inside him. He lived in a haze of rage; probably couldn’t even make love because he was so mad. That anger was a deep hole of despair that he lived in. I’d lived next to that hole since I was a boy. The recognition between us was like electricity. If he had been a woman we’d have ended up on the floor next to the bed. And if we ever had to spend five minutes alone one or both of us would end up dead.

“Easy?” Jackson was fully dressed. He had on a black-and-yellow plaid suit with a green felt hat. The brim of the hat was too wide for Jackson’s spare face.

“You got a minute, Jackson?”

“Sure, Easy. Come on in.”

I made a point not to touch Ortiz as I went past.

“I knew you was comin’ back, Ease.”

“Yeah? How’d you know that?”

Jackson hunched his shoulders and smiled with mock reserve—the closest he would ever come to innocence.

“I don’t know, man. Maybe ’cause I got the best li’l money-maker”—he tapped the telephone box that sat on the couch next to him—“that you or anybody you know’s ever seen, right here.”

I could smell Ortiz’s sour breath from somewhere behind me.

“Naw, man. I mean, it
is
a good scam, but them gangsters too much for me.”

“So then what you want?”

“I wanna find Terry T. The boxer.”

“Try Herford’s.”

“I need a house address.”

Jackson knew where Terry lived, I could tell by the cagey way he looked at me. But he wasn’t going to tell me—not straight out anyway. If he had information that I wanted then I had to buy it.

“I’m ’bout t’go out an’ make a run,” he said. “You got a car here?”

“I thought you had a red Caddy?”

“I do, but this’ll kill two birds with one stone. You got your car?”

“Uh-huh. But listen, Jackson, I’m in a hurry.”

“Won’t take long. I just got a few tickets to punch.”

“All right. But just a few stops.”

“Yeah.” Jackson smiled and cocked his floppy brim. “Yeah. A couple or so.”

“When you comin’ back?” Ortiz sounded like a taciturn spouse. “You know we gotta do that thing.”

“I be back, boy. Don’t worry. Easy gonna cut my time in half.”

WE WERE A BLOCK AWAY before I asked, “What’s with that guy? It’s like he wants to get killed.”

“Ortiz is tough. So if you think you tough then he wants to set you straight.”

“That ain’t nuthin’ but trouble, Jackson. Boy like that bound to come to harm.”

“Yeah. But you know I could use his kinda trouble. Ortiz on’y know how to rumble and here I cain’t even make a pigeon take off.”

I had to laugh at that. I imagined little Jackson running after a pigeon and all it does is flutter and run.

We stopped at Ernest’s barber shop, which had moved to Santa Barbara Boulevard. Ernest still ran a crap game in the back and played opera on the radio all day. He was an institution in the community. After that we went to a used-furniture store called Nate’s.

Before we got to Juniper Funeral Home I asked, “So? Where do I find Terry?”

“Way I hears it,” Jackson said, “Terry been outta town a whole lot lately. He even let go of his place down on Eighty-six.”

“Outta town where?”

“Out in the desert. You know all’a L.A. is just a big desert.”

“What desert?”

“I don’t know, man. Desert.”

“I saw’im down at Herford’s gym a couple’a days ago. He got to be up here sometimes.”

“Huh.” Jackson scratched his high black cheekbone and peered out of the window. “It’s right up here.”

“What is?”

“Juniper’s.”

I baked in the car while Jackson went in to collect his money. He used collectors to get the money from all the people who played the horses through his phone scheme. A collector took in money for a couple of days and took a percentage before handing the rest over to Jackson, or Ortiz. Collectors changed every week or so to keep the police off balance. A collector was usually a working man or woman, like Ernest the barber, just somebody trying to supplement their income.

I was sweating and wondering what kind of business Terry could have had with Marlon to keep him out in the desert. Then I heard Jackson’s excited voice coming out of the funeral home.

“I don’t give a fuck what you say, man. I got it writ right chere that you owe me four fifty, not no two seventy-five.” Jackson was backing out of the door. I thought about Lynx’s .38 in my pocket but didn’t reach for it.

Rollo Jones’s big belly was forcing my cowardly little friend backwards.

“You callin’ me a liar? Fuck you! Fuck you!” Rollo accented each curse with a shove from his belly. “You ain’t gonna scare me.”

“Easy!” Jackson squealed.

I got out of the car and stood by the door. Rollo stopped moving forward and looked at me. I held my hands up in a gesture of ignorance. I don’t know what Rollo thought I meant by that but he stopped pushing Jackson, put his hand into his pocket, and came out with a wad of money. He peeled off some bills and exchanged a few quiet words with Jackson.

All this transpired on an empty sidewalk. The only thing that moved was the cars. There wasn’t a pedestrian to be seen.

“ALL RIGHT!” Jackson slapped my shoulder and played bongos on the dashboard as we cruised away from Juniper’s. “All right!”

“What was all that about, man?”

“Two hunnert dollars.”

“That’s how much he owed you?”

“Huh? Naw. That’s how much Ortiz bet I couldn’t collect what he owe us. He said I was pussy an’ that the on’y thing a pussy could get was fucked. Well fuck him. Two hunnert dollars!” Jackson jammed two fingers before my face.

The vent was blowing hot air at me and I was having a tough time breathing. I pulled over to the curb and put my head down on the steering wheel.

“What’s wrong you, Easy?”

“No no no no no, Jackson, what’s wrong with you?”

“Ain’t nuthin’ wrong wit’ me, man.” He couldn’t hide his smirk.

“Did you ever get that degree from UCLA?”

“Shit. Motherfuckers wanted me to study some kinda language. Uh-uh, man. I walk on the ground an’ I talk like my people talk.”

“But you could do somethin’, Jackson. You’re smart.”

“Naw, Easy, I cain’t do nuthin’.”

“Why not? Of course you could.”

“Naw, man. I been a niggah too long.” He said it as if he were proud of the fact.

“You think that Martin Luther King is down south marchin’ an’ takin’ his life in his hands just so you could be gamblin’ and actin’ like a niggah?”

“I ain’t got nuthin’ to do wit’ him, Easy. You know I be livin’ my life the onliest way I can.”

“But Jackson, we can’t be runnin’ in the streets bettin’ on each other’s lives. We got to be men. We got to stand up for ours.”

Jackson pulled off his big hat. Sweat was running down his face. It was one of the few times I ever looked him in the eye that he didn’t smile.

“Terry got a pad on Twenty-second Street. House was abandoned. Terry just moved in. It’s near a Renco station and a sto’ called Happy’s Liquors. It’s a pink house with blue flowers on a fence ain’t got no paint.” He said it all deadpan and then opened the car door.

He walked down the street, away from Juniper’s. When he was half a block away I got the urge to stop him, to try and talk to him some more. I opened the door and got one foot on the curb, but suddenly I was weak, too weak even to call out after Jackson.

I sat there, holding my head and sweating, for long minutes. I couldn’t stand, couldn’t even sit up straight.

Jackson was sore on my mind. Life wasn’t any more than a losing hand to him. And death was just another card to be played. All the money he made with his scams was shit through a goose. If he came to a friend’s funeral he was full of ribald tales about how hard that man’s life had been; then he’d try to
console
the widow or girlfriend left behind. There was never a tear, a regret, a dollar in the bank, a brick laid in a foundation, or a hope that pressed itself into Jackson’s mind.

And if I were to tell him that his bad ways would lead to a bad end he’d just answer, “Ain’t no such’a thing as a good end, brother.”

And if I looked into my own heart I knew that he was right.

I’VE NEVER REALLY been what you would call a friend to the
LAPD
. We were on speaking terms only because they needed my help from time to time. And also because I used to be fool enough to put myself in the way when somebody down in my community was getting the short end of the stick.

But the truth is that I did know some cops and Miss Cain’s veiled threat made me want to set the groundwork for some kind of defense.

“SEVENTY-SEVENTH Street station,” a woman’s voice said over the phone.

“I’d like to speak to Detective Lewis.”

“Who’s calling?”

“Easy Rawlins.”

“Oh. Um. Just one minute please.”

There was some static and maybe five seconds went by before I heard Lewis’s voice.

“Rawlins? Where are you?” Arno Lewis, the resident Negro detective of the Seventy-seventh Street station, asked.

I knew when he asked that question that I was in deep trouble.

“At a pay phone.” I was casual. “I got some trouble out here and I wanted to ask you somethin’.”

“Why don’t you come on down here and we’ll talk about it.”

“Why don’t we talk on the phone? You know I got business to take care of.”

“I can’t really talk about police business on the phone.”

“Who said anything about police business?”

“Why don’t I drop by your house later on. We could talk after work,” he said, ignoring my question.

“Right, okay. You got my address?” I knew he didn’t. Only my best friends know my address and they wouldn’t ever tell a cop. I wasn’t listed in the phone book and I used my house, the one that Primo lived in down on 116th Street, for legal forms and correspondence. Primo and Flower held my mail.

“No.”

“You mean it ain’t in your records?”

“No. I mean… maybe it is. But why don’t you just give it to me now and I’ll be sure to have it later on.”

I rattled off Clovis’s address. I figured that a half-dozen police officers coming into her house shouting my name might help to keep her off of Mouse and Mofass.

“What time you getting home?” Detective Lewis asked me.

I imagined him; a tall Poindexter-looking kind of guy. He wore thick glasses and had the habit of pressing the bridge of his nose, between his eyes. I was willing to bet that he had his glasses off right then, concentrating every bit of his mind on the time he could get at me.

“’Bout six,” I said. “Gotta make dinner, you know.”

“Well, maybe I could get a bite with you.”

“Yeah,” I said as simply as I could. “Come and get it.”

I WENT OVER to Twenty-second Street. Right down the block from the Renco station and Happy’s Liquors was a small weathered house surrounded by a fallen-down fence that was covered with a weedy vine of hardy blue flowers. The grass was straw and there were no cultivated plants in the yard.

The wind had brought trash from the street to litter the little front porch. Gum wrappers, leaves, gravel, and sand were scattered across the gray floor. There was a barrel there, I suppose to use as a chair, and a stack of small green umbrellas.

I knocked. I always knock. But there wasn’t anybody home.

The door wasn’t locked.

The house was as barren as the yard and porch; rough pine floors that some lazy fool had varnished without sanding; a mismatch assortment of furniture taken from the curb at trash-collecting time. A couch faced the wall and two wooden chairs were turned over. The shades were pulled and it was dark in the house. But it was still hot. Stifling.

Terry was in the kitchen; the whole back of his head shot off. He was wearing the same black jeans and T-shirt he had on when he decked me.

Suddenly I was sorry about the fight we’d had. Maybe if I hadn’t tried to strong-arm him he would have talked to me, and lived.

Terry was on his back with his head sideways. His brain was a halo on the floor. There was dark blood spattered on his shoulders and down his chest. His eyes were wide and his mouth too. He looked as if he’d been trying to suck down one more breath before it was over.

Also on his chest was a string of green rosary beads. They were placed there. I knelt down to get a closer look and saw that they were wet, dappled with water, not blood.

I started to move the second I heard it.
It
was a heavy shuffle of feet. The sound came from behind me, and before I could rise, much less turn around, I felt a sharp pain, very deep in my back. I yelled and swung backwards with my fist. I connected with something hard and fleshy too, but before I could turn around there came a shock that started at the side of my head and ran all the way down to each and every one of my toes. There was a far-off gong and a giant wave crashing down on the shore.

I WAS RUNNING with a mob of black men. In pursuit of us were ravens and dogs followed by rabid white men and white women—the white people were naked and hairless. Horses with razor hooves galloped among them and a searing wind blew. We were all running but every black man trying to get away was also pushing his brothers down. And every man that fell was set upon by dogs with hungry rats dangling down from between their legs.