Gray Dawn, page 24
“Hey,” I said from the open window of my car.
“Hi, Easy,” she said. When we were with Jesus, she almost always called me Mr. Rawlins. I never really understood why she used my nickname only when we were alone.
“Hey, Benita. So, you the welcome wagon, huh?”
“Essie and Juice is sleep, so I came out in case I had the answers you needed.”
“Come on and sit next to me, then,” I said.
She went to the passenger’s side and got in.
“You and Jesus are about to be free from the BNDD men.”
“How? I mean, I’d like to know, but, um, can we drive around a little bit first? You know I been cooped up in that tin house for days.”
Driving north on Central with Benita sitting next to me, I was reminded how beautiful my son’s wife was. Older than Jesus in years but younger in maturity, she’d once been Mouse’s side-girl, until she started demanding that he leave his wife, EttaMae.
“It feels good to have a breeze,” she said, her face leaning into the open window.
I told her about the BNDD agents’ movements.
“Yeah,” she said, staring up above my head as if there was a TV screen up there showing her memories. “They was drivin’ a brown wood-paneled truck, and they stopped at a diner for a long time after they got to Bellflower.”
“Then what?”
“Finally, they got back in the truck and went to that warehouse. It looked like it was shut down, but they honked once and the gate to the driveway opened up and they went in.”
“What time was all that?”
“It was late. The warehouse was all closed up, like I said.”
“What happened after they went into the warehouse?”
“I don’t know. I was sittin’ across the street in our car and the police drove by. That didn’t bother me, but then they passed by two more times. You know, my mama told me that the police was after us and I didn’t wanna have to talk to them, so I got outta there and drove back out to Compton.”
That was all I needed. But Benita was having such a nice time that I dropped by Basil’s Coffee Shop on Central Ave. There she ordered an ice cream sundae, and hamburgers for Essie and Juice. While she ate the ice cream I called Mel.
“What you got, Easy?”
“Sounds like your boys gonna make a deal with the dope at Warehouse Eighty-Six tonight. Sounds like a pass-off but I don’t know to who. But from what I hear they do the deal late at night.”
“Thanks. I’ll get on it.”
“There’s one other thing.”
“What’s that?”
“You should probably leave the local cops out the loop.”
“Oh. Okay. You wanna be there for the bust?”
“Oh yeah. Motherfuckers wanna mess wit’ my boy, I’d love to see them brought down.”
He gave me directions.
“Everything okay, Easy?” Benita asked while loving her ice cream and freedom.
“Good. How you doin’, girl?”
“Okay.”
“Mama Jo’s cabin drivin’ you crazy?”
“It’s all right, I guess. I know we gotta do this because’a what I did.”
“What’d you do?”
“I kept tellin’ Juice how easy it would be to move all that dope. I didn’t even think we could get in trouble. He shoulda taken Essie and left my butt right then.”
“That’s not my boy,” I said.
“No, it ain’t.”
“But don’t worry. After tonight you two can buy a new boat and go anywhere you want.”
Across the street from Warehouse 86 sat an office building that was four stories high. The FBI, an organization that had been directed by Richard Milhous Nixon to disgrace and, ultimately, dismiss the BNDD, was running the operation. They had requisitioned the top floor and from there they, along with Melvin and a bald man in a bright yellow suit, were directing more than twenty plainclothes agents and officers, secreted on the street below.
At the entrance of the building, where Melvin had directed me to go, I was met by two white men wearing similar black suits. The only difference between the two, that I could discern, was that one of them wore sunglasses.
“Not tonight, brother,” one of the twins said.
“No? I thought the FBI was advertisin’ for new agents out here tonight.”
The men glanced at each other and then, in unison, grabbed me by an arm apiece, dragged me down a hall, and then clapped my wrists together in federal irons.
Then one of the FBI men said into his walkie-talkie, “Sanders here. We have a colored man down here talking about the FBI.”
“Hold on,” someone said on the air.
A minute passed and then the same man asked, “What’s his name?”
I spoke up then. “Easy Rawlins.”
“He’s okay. Bring him up.”
After the coordinated operation was over, Melvin told me that the FBI guy running the show was named Clegg, Summerton Clegg. His suit was also black and his eyes a startling cornflower blue. When I was brought before him by Sunglasses, he looked at me and asked, “This him?”
Melvin stepped up then and said, “He’s the one.”
“Go back to your post,” Clegg said to Sunglasses. Then he turned away to watch the street below through a pair of high-powered binoculars.
“Easy,” Melvin greeted.
“Hey, Mel. Damn, man, this here is almost like real police work.”
He gave me a wry grin and we shook hands.
“Banks and Simmons got here around an hour ago. They’re in there with a few of the warehouse men. No idea what they’re doin’.”
“So, what do you figure?” I asked. “They gonna use the warehouse to send the dope to other places?”
“No. They bring it and sell it, that’s what we think.”
“What if you’re wrong? What if they come outta there with nuthin’?”
“The dope’ll still be somewhere in there.”
“So, you got ’em either way.”
“Yep,” Mel agreed. “Warehouse been closed for an hour now. But the three guys you told us about, the ones that work there, their cars are still parked out back.”
It was a long wait. During that time Clegg did not say one word to me, not one. He only spoke to subordinates, and, I supposed, I was lower than that in his estimation, like that male hyena on an African plain. I didn’t mind. Most of the time I was out there on some private investigation, my ass on the line. Hanging around there on the fourth floor, drinking coffee and talking now and then to Mel, felt good—like I’d been promoted to the position of private detective operations supervisor and no longer had to get my hands dirty.
At a few minutes past eleven, a black Cadillac sedan drove up to the closed entrance, barked out a short honk, and was allowed in. Over the next quarter hour three more cars, all of them dark of color, drove up and were admitted in similar ways.
“When’s your people gonna move?” I asked Mel.
“We figure we let them complete the transactions and then stop ’em a few blocks away.”
At 12:49 a.m., the gate of the warehouse folded upward and one of the dark sedans drove out.
“The first one turned left,” Clegg said loudly into his walkie-talkie. “Give him three blocks and then stop him.”
Three more minutes and three more automobiles.
Clegg raised his voice higher for each one.
Then a few more minutes passed.
Finally, the brown wood-paneled truck drove out and turned right.
“Get him! Get him!” Clegg screamed. “Get that motherfucker!”
The truck was forced to stop short when police and FBI vehicles came out of nowhere to block its way. At least twenty officers from the various agencies jumped out from the cars and doorways, guns in hand.
The brown truck hit the gas and jumped up on the sidewalk, trying to use that way as its escape route. It might have worked if fifteen officers of the law hadn’t opened fire. The wounded truck careered into a furniture store. After maybe half a minute, flames began to lick from under the hood.
The three warehousemen were herded together, their hands over their heads. The furniture store started to burn and so the fire department showed up to add their sirens and bright colors to the already festive tragedy. The bodies of Agents William Banks and Drake Simmons were extracted from the brown truck when the fire was brought under control. Clegg, the FBI bossman, had already descended into the street, situating himself in the middle of the ruckus. That left me, Mel, and the guy in the yellow suit standing at the windows of the fourth-floor vantage point.
“Rawlins?” asked the man I didn’t know.
“Yes?”
He held out a hand and I did too. He had a good grip.
“My name is Steinman, Omar Steinman.”
“You already know my name. You state police or sumpin’?”
“I’m with an international arm of the government,” he said. “Just here to observe.”
“Isn’t this a national thing?”
“It would be. But the fact is, these guys are bringing contraband in from outside the U.S. My interests are more on the structural side of things. You know, how the money moves and who benefits.”
“Wow,” I said. “I understand every word and still I don’t know what you mean.”
The man in the yellow suit moved his shoulder as if he was about to walk away. But then he turned back.
“What do you make out of all this, Rawlins?”
“Pay a man oatmeal wages to cook you a T-bone steak an’ you could bet that a little meat will get shaved off the bone before it makes it to your table.”
“That’s what you think the BNDD men were up to?”
Steinman’s eyes were a strong shade of gray. Looking into those eyes, I was suddenly reminded of Carlos Ortega. He had sat me down to see if I was worth saving from the usual beatings men like me got in the county jail.
I was being tested.
“Not only the BNDD men,” I said.
“You mean the warehouse workers?”
“The person who told me about this warehouse said that while he was sitting out front, the police cruised by at least three times.”
“So?”
“This isn’t a high-crime area,” I said. “No drugs, prostitutes, or gangs. Police got no cause to be here… unless they do.”
Omar Steiman smiled and said, “Unless they do,” and then he walked away.
When he was gone, Mel came up.
“I’m impressed, Easy.”
“With what?”
“A few things. I been wondering how you were gonna get Jesus outta trouble. This sting you put together does it beautifully. But it’s not only that. That guy callin’ himself Omar is CIA. You’re the only one he had words with.”
“I don’t know if that’s good or bad.”
“Me neither.”
After all that was through, I drove to the WRENS-L office on Robertson and stole a nap on my master bedroom office couch.
32.
When I was a soldier—no, it was longer ago than that. When I was a child of nine and then ten, I slept on the back porch of my maternal grandfather’s house in the Fifth Ward. He let me sleep there but I had to scrounge food for myself. I worked when I could and otherwise begged, borrowed, and stole to make the sustenance that a growing boy needs to survive. I didn’t waste a goddamned thing. If I lifted a bunch of carrots off a food cart, you had better believe that I didn’t peel them. I didn’t cut off the green tops. I ate all of what I got, and I would have fought to the death to keep what I had.
That tightfisted habit followed me into World War II. There I’d get myself a half-pound bar of Hershey’s chocolate and carry it around in my backpack. Other soldiers would eat everything they ever had right away, but I’d only stop now and then to break a section off from my Hershey bar and eat it peacefully while bombs went off in the night. And even when I bit into a chunk and realized I’d carried it so long that it had turned to chalk, I didn’t mind. Because, in some crazy way, that loss proved that I could survive.
That ability to put off satisfaction is part of my nature.
And so, when I awoke the morning after the multi-taskforce bust, I decided that it was time to tear open the letter Anger had received.
There were two sheets folded together into a long, ill-formed rectangle.
The first page was a sheet of white paper, on which had been scrawled a note, written in pencil.
Dear Mama
Hanibal told me to get this here legal documint to you He says that it’s real trouble for anybody have it I looked for you but you moved so I’m sendin this to the PO box you got and I am goin to see this negro detective Hanny told me about that might be able to find you I’ll be at my cottage if you need me I hope everything is ok
Santangelo
The second sheet of paper was Shelly Dormer’s deed to the house in Culver City. I tried to read it, but the print was so small I couldn’t make out the words. When I employed my detective’s magnifying glass, I could read the words but could not make out what they meant.
That was okay. Somebody somewhere spoke deedish.
Two hours later I was once again seated in the thirty-first floor office of my old friend Jackson Blue.
We talked for a while about the life he thought he missed.
“She was fine?” he asked about the Knockout, Ida Lorris.
“Yeah,” I admitted. “Even Raymond had heard about her, somewhere.”
“Oh man. All I got is a lawn Jewelle want me to mow. Can you imagine that? Here I make more money than ninety-nine point nine-nine percent’a people an’ she want me to mow a lawn. Horticulture and the PTA, that’s where I get my kicks at. I know, Easy, you prob’ly think I’m some kinda fool, I know. I know what you think.”
“No, you don’t, Blue. I know you not no fool.”
“No?” His face was all snarled up, like he knew that whatever I really thought, it was worse.
“No. Tryin’ t’straighten you out would be like wantin’ Mouse to promise he’d never kill again. Even if he managed not to do it, that shit would eat at him like cancer.
“Shit. The only thing I feel, the only thing I hope, is that you’n Jewelle give up enough for each other that you don’t break each other’s hearts.”
After that candid conversation, I told him what had happened with the drug bust and the various government cops.
“The CIA too?” he exclaimed. “Are you crazy?”
“I’m just tryin’ to do what’s right.”
“Damn, man. Haven’t nobody ever told you that a niggah doin’ the right thing is worse than suicide?”
“What you got for me, Jackson?”
My friend gave up trying to set me straight, sitting back in his chair and cracking a smile. He put both his small feet up on the desk.
“Me and Mister,” he said after his patented pregnant pause, “spent five hours lookin’ through every file, computer record, county record, city record, and then had to ask other people to look in their physical file cabinets, just to get one name.”
I couldn’t rush the man. He’d once told me that his salary, if you worked it out, was more than a hundred dollars an hour. And here, I owed him five hours.
He brought his feet down, sat forward, putting elbows on the desk, and said, “Shelly Dormer’s heir, after James Martin, is Constance Brill, née Dormer. You know, I got a call from Von Crudock just yesterday. He made it clear that me givin’ him a name like that would be worth a hunnert thousand dollars. Can you imagine that? A hunnert thousand dollars to a niggah like me.” His grin would have put the Cheshire cat to shame. “Can you believe that shit? A street niggah like me makin’ a hunnert thousand for just a name and some numbers? You know, in the old days when we was boaf hangin’ by a string, I woulda sold my own mother down the river for a five-dollar bill.”
“Constance Brill,” I said.
“Constance Brill,” he certified. “She got a address on a canal out in Venice. If you had a telescope, you could probably see her out my windah.”
“What you want, Jackson?” I asked. “I mean, if it’s not killin’ somebody, I’ll do whatever.”
“You don’t owe me nuthin’, Easy. Shit. Back in the day you saved my ass more times than I can remember. Yes, you did.”
“I appreciate it, Jackson. I do.”
“Oh yeah,” he said, glossing over my heartfelt gratitude. “I got that other address you wanted too.”
Constance Brill née Dormer.
I drove as far as the entrance to the canal. A hundred feet or so down I came to a barge-like boat tethered to a metal pole on the side of the walkway. It was an old wooden craft with most of the paint worn off. If someone were to cut the hemp tether, that useless tub would have floated a few feet before it sank down into the channel.
I climbed up on the deck and located a door, knocked upon it.
“Excuse me,” someone said.
I turned toward the land. There was a man, a white man, of course, wearing a tight tan T-shirt on his brawny chest. He also wore sailor pants, but I doubted if he was a seaman.
“Yes?” I allowed.
“Can I help you?”
“Do you live on this scow?”
“What did you say to me?” he asked as his mother probably once asked him when he made some wisecrack.
At that moment the door I had knocked on opened inward. There, three steps down, stood a blowsy woman in a red muumuu dress. Her hair was both the texture and color of hay. Her eyes were pale, but I couldn’t discern the exact color.
“Yes?” she said to me.
“Mrs. Brill?”
“Do you need help, Connie?” the man on the shore-street called out.
She glanced at him and then said to me, “Yes, I am.”
“My name is Rawlins. I wanted to talk to you about a cousin of yours, Shelly Dormer.”
“Oh. Oh yes. Shelly. She passed.”
“Connie,” the faux seaman said.
“Go away, Frank,” she exclaimed exasperatedly. “Mr. Johns told us that you are not a security guard here no more.”
