Jaunice Flagg lived in a third-floor apartment on Grosvenor Street in Inglewood. She was Benita’s mother. Her husband, a man named Clifford Brown, had left her for the pleasures of the street when Benita was just four. Jaunice and I didn’t have much in common, except for the fact that Jesus’s seven-year-old daughter was our granddaughter.
I climbed the external stairs to the third-floor landing, finding her front door open, revealing a latched screen.
“Anybody home?” I called into the shadowy living room.
Toward the far end of the room, in a backlit doorway, I could see the small and round shadow of a woman.
“It’s me, Jaunice, Easy Rawlins.”
“It is?”
“In the flesh. I’m lookin’ for Jesus.”
“Oh Lord.”
Coming to a decision, Jaunice moved quickly across the room, barely lifting her feet. The fabric of her silken house moccasins slid across the pine floor, sounding most like a copperhead moving in rectilinear locomotive gyration through dry grass. She unlatched the screen door, ushered me in, and then closed both screen and front door behind me.
“Have a seat, Mr. Rawlins,” she said, while turning on two lampshade lights on either side of a long green couch. I sat on the right side of the sofa while she alighted on a padded wooden chair that looked like it belonged to a nonexistent dining room set.
Jaunice was sitting but she wasn’t still. One of her slippered feet was toe-tapping and she was wringing her hands.
“That son of yours is in deep trouble,” she said.
“What kinda trouble?”
“I don’t know what it is, I just know that it is.”
“Okay. All right. Who told you that he was, um, in this trouble?”
“Police.”
“What kinda police?”
“The kinda cops that wears suits instead’a uniforms.”
“Did they show you their badges?”
“Yes, sir, they sure did.”
“What did the badges say?”
“I didn’t read ’em,” she said angrily. “They was badges and they was real. That’s all I had to know.”
“They came here lookin’ for Jesus?”
“They was after Benita too. Here she just a girl, a young mother, and they after her for what your boy done done. They come here three times. Three times. An’... an’... an’ ev’ry time they come they got more threats.”
“What kind of threats?”
“They said I could go to prison along with them. They aksed how I couldn’t know what my own daughter was doin’. They aksed was I stupid or what. I told ’em. I told ’em that they was hardly evah here. I told ’em that I never see them anyplace except when they come to visit or leave little Essie with me.”
“What were these policemen’s names?” I asked.
“They must’a said but I don’t remember. All I remember is those badges and threats.”
“What was it they said Jesus was doin’?”
“They didn’t.” Jaunice had light gray eyes with whites that had the scars of a long life of seeing too much. “I don’t know what they want ’em for.”
“When was the last time you saw your daughter and Jesus?”
“Two days ago.”
“Their boat’s not down at the dock. Did they tell you where they were going?”
“Yeah,” Jaunice said, almost sick with fear.
“Where?”
“They didn’t give a address or nuthin’. They just said that they was goin’ to stay wit’ somebody name of Mama Jo.”
I decided not to go looking for my son and his little family until after the sun went down. The day hadn’t turned out the way I wanted, so I went to a little coffee shop near La Brea and Olympic and ordered a chili size and fries.
While my meal was being prepared, I went to the pay phone up near the cashier’s desk. I called Niska to find out if Santangelo had checked in. He had not. I called Melvin Suggs to see if he had any more information about my son, but he was out or busy. Accepting these failures, I went back to my vinyl booth, devoured the meal, then ordered a cup of black coffee.
Sitting there, I let my mind roam over all the various aspects of the past couple of days. Niska was going out on her first case, while Jackson Blue lived like a spoiled prince in the uppermost reaches of P9’s castle. There was Amethystine Stoller, who might very well be the death of me, but still, that would have been an improvement on the stagnation and gloom that had become my daily meat.
Something about my dejected mood for the past two years made me think of the funky and unkempt Santangelo Burris. The memory of his destitute state brought back the opposite — that ring he wore. That ring. It meant something, something that I just couldn’t get a hold on.
Back at the diner’s pay phone I called my house.
She answered after the eighth ring: “Hello, Easy?”
“Hey. I thought you’d gone.”
“I was outside with Prince Valiant. He’s very strong.”
“That’s his job.”
“How are ya, honey?”
“I wanted to talk to you about something.”
“What’s that?” she asked in a tone that said she was going to be serious.
I told her about Santangelo’s topaz ring.
“Huh,” she pondered. “You think it was a college ring?”
“I’d be surprised if he made it through high school. And rings like that usually have some kinda writing on them. This just had that torch or whatever. Like the symbol was all that was needed.”
“So then,” Amethystine said, “probably not a sports thing either. How about a club or brotherhood?”
“That’s it!” I exclaimed. “The BFNE. It’s their symbol. The eternal torch that lights up the longest night.”
“What’s that?” Amethystine asked.
“Excuse me, sir,” a different woman said.
It was the waitress who had served me.
“Yes, ma’am,” I replied to the redheaded server.
“What?” Amethystine asked.
“Not you, honey. The waitress needs something,” I said to my fate. Then, to the waitress: “What can I do for you?”
“Do you plan to pay for your meal?”
I handed her a ten-dollar bill and said, “Keep the change.”
“But the bill’s only six dollars.”
“Your lucky day,” I said, shrugging nonchalantly.
“Your loss,” she said, and then walked away.
“I’m back,” I said into the receiver.
“The BF what?”
“The Brotherhood of Free Negroes Everywhere. It’s an old private organization, ancient by American standards. It’s said that the brotherhood predates the Civil War.”
“I never heard of ’em,” Amethystine admitted.
“But without you I might not have remembered. Thank you so much, honey,” I said to the woman I really didn’t want to love. “I think this might be the first clue that don’t threaten to hit me upside the head.”
“What time you comin’ back?” Amethystine asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“Because if it’s early enough maybe I could go shopping and you could make us dinner.”
“I’m not sure, but it’s probably gonna be pretty late.”
“Well, if you’re not coming, I might go home.”
“That’s okay. I probably wouldn’t be very good company anyway.”
“All right then,” she said in a soft tone. “Be careful.”
“I will,” I said, probably not knowing it was a lie.
The phone directory told me that there was a Los Angeles chapter of the BFNE on San Pedro down in South Central. When I saw the address, I remembered that it was lodged in the deconsecrated Church of the Savior.