“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
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.”