Charcoal Joe (8 page)

On the way down the stairs I wondered why I had asked for that kiss. I also speculated about Jasmine; why she sealed our meeting with sex. The late sixties was an uninhibited era where people changed apartments and had sex at the drop of a hat. But there was something else going on with Jasmine. She had to connect with me, not because she was after release or a feeling of power, but because she needed me to want to do what I had promised.

And why did I respond? I was almost half a century old. I had known many women. Usually when there's a jealous husband nearby I demurred when being offered sex. Why put my life on the line?

Maybe Jo's tea really had opened a door in my bruised heart.

“What happened up there?” Uriah Hardy put words to my unspoken questions.

He stood at the gate to the street, this time blocking my egress. There was a tremor throbbing at the back of his neck and his left hand was held at hip-level, balled into a fist. This reminded me of Joguye Cham's paralyzed hand, but with the memory came no anguish.

“I'm looking for reasons to get Seymour Brathwaite off the suspect list for murder,” I said. “You know Seymour, don't you?”

“That woman up there is my wife,” he said, telling me that he wasn't concerned with my questions. “We were married at city hall with a witness. I got the government certificate to prove it.”

I noticed that my breathing got deeper. We might as well have been two dogs snarling at the bait of pheromones on the air.

“Seymour Brathwaite,” I said. It was only then that it dawned on me that I should have asked Jasmine for a photograph.

“What about him?” The question wanted to be a curse.

“Do you know him?”

“He used to live in the little side room off the toilet upstairs.”

Upstairs;
that was the word he used to pretend that Jasmine was still his faithful spouse.

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“Not for a long time.”

“Have you spoken to him?”

Uriah resented the question but he said, “I don't know. A couple'a weeks ago I guess. He called looking for Jasmine but she wasn't here.”

“Did he own a gun?”

“This is California, man. One thing you could be sure of is everybody got a car and gun.”

“So he had one?”

“His mother do.”

“You mean Jasmine, his foster mother?”

“Yeah. Right.”

“You have a picture of him?” I asked as politely as possible. I was trying to prove that I was there in the role of PI and had no other interest.

But my attempt was off-target. Uriah glared at the question. It was as if I was trying to condemn him.

“She's my wife,” he said.

“I asked for a picture of Seymour, not your marriage certificate.”

“The foster mother thing was her job. He wasn't none of mines. Why I wanna have his picture?”

I thought of asking for a family photograph or maybe hoofing it back up the stairs to Jasmine's stronghold. But none of that seemed possible. Uriah was not a part of Jasmine's family and he had a car…and a gun.

It was time for me to get into my car and drive off.

“Excuse me,” I said, looking past his shoulder at the gate.

But Mr. Hardy did not budge.

“I don't want you comin' 'round here no more,” he said.

I should have felt threatened. My breathing was that of a worried man but there was cold logic flowing side by side with the hot blood in my veins.

“You realize that the next time Mr. Tyler asks me to come around here I'll have to say, ‘Her husband told me to stay away.' ”

“You think I'm ascared'a Charcoal Joe?”

“Everybody else I talked to seems to be.”

The cuckold gave my words serious consideration. Maybe if other people also were afraid of Joe then he wouldn't be so much of an unmanned coward.

“What she tell you?” Uriah asked, and I felt that the conversation had finally begun.

“That Seymour was her foster son and that Joe hired me because he was a family friend.”

“Friend,” the little man spat. “That's like sayin' a mosquito is your friend. A stroke is your friend.”

“If Tyler's that bad then why did he call me to visit him in jail and ask me to prove Seymour innocent?”

“Her.”

“Jasmine?”

“Listen here, brother,” Uriah cautioned. “Joe ain't nobody's friend. Even if he shake your hand and slip you a ten-dollar bill, it ain't gonna turn out good. If Seymour's in trouble then you could bet it's on Joe. If that bitch upstairs pulls up her dress, he's behind it. If the ground shakes and that house falls off its poles, then that's him too.”

He was saying that if I had sex with his wife while he waited down below that it was Joe doing it. This displacement, I thought, could work for me.

“He hired me to prove Seymour innocent,” I said again. “What could be wrong with that?”

“I know you a detective and all,” Uriah said. “Your ID card said WRENS-L company. I aksed information for the company numbah. I talked with a white guy called Lynx. I know you all sure and confident and think you know how things work but believe me, man, you don't.”

“How do things work?” I asked. I really wanted to know.

The angry husband suddenly looked frightened. His fist released and I realized that the wrinkles across his forehead were from rage and not age. In a twinkling, the expression on the grumpy old man's face transformed into that of an innocent who harbored a child in his heart.

Uriah licked his lips instead of answering my question.

“Really, brother,” I said. “I don't need to be in no deep shit here. I thought I was just tryin' to get an innocent man free.”

“Innocent,” Uriah said. “You can't even just be in a room with Joe and be innocent.”

The anger was coming back.

“Uriah!” Jasmine yelled from the platform above.

Again we both looked up.

“What?” he said in a voice that wanted to be in charge.

“Stand out the way and let Mr. Rawlins get on with his business!”

Uriah uttered a foul word under his breath.

“Fuck you!” he yelled. “Fuck you all!”

He turned abruptly and rushed into the orange and blue house.

I looked up at Jasmine and she down on me. The sex we had had been no more than the complex handshake of a not-so-secret society.

I nodded and went out through the gate.

On my way to the car I wondered if the husband at the bottom of the stairs would get his gun; if he would shoot himself, Jasmine, me, or any possible combination of the three.

If Mama Jo had a phone I would have called her and asked about the tea she gave me. Failing that, I decided to go get a haircut.

On Pico Boulevard, three blocks west of La Brea, on the south side of the street there stood a small barbershop that looked like a big incinerator. The ash gray bunker-shaped building had inset windows that were long and thin. The door had a curved metal handle instead of a knob, making it looked more like a hatch than a portal.

During business hours the front door was always unlocked. At the close of every day Angelo Broadman, the proprietor and head barber, snapped six heavy padlocks into their hinges and went home secure that nobody would break in.

“Hey, Easy,” the New Orleanian greeted, rising from the lead barber chair. He wore the standard barber's uniform—a white smock with black trousers and sensible, rubber-soled black shoes.

There were six barbers lined in a row along the eastern wall of the small, sweet cologne–smelling room; five men and one woman. Angelo was the only barber without a customer in his chair.

After thirty years shearing heads Angelo had saved enough to buy a shop, and so now he only worked on his regulars and friends.

Half a dozen men waited along the west wall, sitting in chairs made of green leather cushions with chromium arms and legs.

“Mr. Broadman,” I said, shaking his hand.

Angelo was a short, green-eyed Negro with skin lighter than many white people I've known. His limp hair didn't need to be straightened and his handsome features were closer to Clark Gable than Bill Robinson. As a matter of fact, the only reason we knew Angelo was one of us was that he claimed this ancestry, and in America, who would lie about that?

“Hey, Easy,” Lena Arthur, mistress of the number-two chair, said.

Lena had brassy skin with freckles and gold edging on her front teeth. She smiled and winked. Both she and Angelo had passed fifty but they didn't look old.

“Have a seat, Mr. Rawlins,” Angelo said.

As I obeyed he took a folded white apron with almost imperceptible blue lines and spread it out over me.

“I was next!”

The speaker was of medium height with dark brown skin and a big belly, dressed in the milk chocolate–colored uniform of a national parcel-delivery service. Though the same in name, the colors of his skin and livery clashed. He had gotten to his feet.

Angelo was tying the apron at the back of my neck.

“You better sit down, brother,” the barber rumbled. “Sit down or get out.”

“I been sittin' here for forty-five minutes,” the delivery man complained.

“You didn't make no appointment,” Lena said in a voice that would have harmonized well with a trio of trumpets.

“That's okay, baby,” Angelo said to his stylist neighbor. “This man knows that I got a straight razor and a bad temper. He knows that barbers used to be doctors and dentists too, and so we accustomed to the sight'a blood.”

The would-be customer's face had generous features. His lips were thick and malleable, so it was easy to see the fearful reaction to the barber's threat. But even though he was somewhat afraid, he didn't want to back down—at least not immediately.

“I'm just sayin' that I been waitin' and this niggah here just waltz in and you sit him right down.”

“Niggah? You want me to take this sheet off, Easy?” the barber asked me, “or you gonna kick his ass with it on?”

That made it easier for the angry customer. Two against one meant that he could back down with no shame.

“Fuck this shit!” he yelled. He walked to the hatch and out into the street.

Lena laughed and went back to her head of hair.

Looking after the retreating delivery man, I thought of Uriah and all the black men and women I knew who woke up angry and went to bed in the same state of mind. Life was like a bruise for us back then, and today too. We examine every action for potential threats, insults, and cheats. And if you look hard enough you will find what you're looking for—whether it's there or not.

“What you need, Easy?” Angelo asked.

“Just a razor line.”

“You got it.”

The barber lowered the back of the chair and raised the whole seat until I was almost prone, with my head at his diaphragm.

I liked the nameless barbershop because it was old-fashioned. They used real barber's chairs and straight razors sharpened on leather strops attached to each station. There was always good company and often a crap game going in a corner. At the barbershop people read the newspapers and discussed racism and politics. The stylists wrapped hot towels around your face and you could close your eyes and relax for that precious few minutes that might be the difference between harsh words and hard blows.

“You want a little color up top, Easy?” Angelo asked while I was drowsing.

“Color?”

“You got a few gray hairs, baby….Don't want the girls thinkin' you a old man.”

“What I need is more'a them suckers,” I said, in full barbershop mode.

“More? Why?”

“Gray hair is the smart man's bait.”

“Bait for what?”

“Female company.”

“How you figure?”

I opened my eyes and saw that Lena was glancing at us, listening in.

“When a man looks at a woman, what's he thinkin' about?” I asked Angelo.

“Her butt,” he said. “Maybe her face.”

“Now what's the woman thinkin' about, lookin' back at him?”

“Hearth and home,” he chanted. “Hearth and home.”

“That's right. A man is thinkin' about right now tonight, but the woman got her eye on the future. She might like that man. Hell, she might lust after him, but at the same time she could tell you what kinda drapes she wants in the house you haven't even thought about yet. She can tell you what kinda silverware you will eat with at two thousand Sunday suppers.”

“What's that got to do with a few gray hairs?” Angelo wanted to know.

“Girl see one or two and she thinks maybe the man done aged enough to calm down, make somethin' outta himself. She willin' to let him look so maybe she could see what his prospects are like. That way a man like me might get a great night or a lifetime of pot roasts, fat babies, and halfhearted regrets.”

“Halfhearted regrets!” Lena shouted like a parishioner agreeing with the preacher's words. “That's why Easy Rawlins is a detective. That man knows some shit!”

She laughed so hard that she had to hold the razor away from her client's face.

“Damn!” Lena cried.

Angelo used his razor to even the line around my short hair and then to shave the stubble from my chin. We talked about the Dodgers and the Lakers, the state of Watts and Vietnam. His wife's mother had come up from Louisiana to live with them.

“Wife in the bedroom,” he said, “and her mama's in the kitchen. All I got to do is bring home the mortgage payments and my life is perfect.”

I liked the community of black barbershops. I liked Angelo and the tough love of his establishment. But I was there for another reason altogether.

Barbers were like telephone poles carrying the intelligence of a whole community at their stations. Los Angeles was once small enough that most black people knew one another, but the population was too large for that by the late sixties. The major players, however, were known in pool halls, barrooms, and barbershops.

And Angelo Broadman knew just about all the names.

When he was almost finished with my face I asked, “What you been hearin' 'bout Charcoal Joe?”

Angelo stood up straight and looked at me with his glassy green eyes. He pondered a moment, wiped the blade with a towel, and then pursed his lips. He leaned closer than he had to to shave my right jawline.

“They sayin' that he wants to move out the country,” he whispered.

“Where?”

“Canada,” Angelo speculated, “maybe Paris. You know he once played a trumpet and cello duet with Louis Armstrong over there.”

“He's that good?”

“He's that good.”

“His people know he's leavin'?”

“If I do then they do.”

The barber wiped my face with a hot towel and then raised the back of my chair while lowering the seat. He pulled the apron off and snapped it to discard whatever hair might be there.

“How much I owe you?”

“That story about the gray,” he said. “That'll keep Lena happy for weeks.”

“Thanks, man.”

“And, Easy?”

“Yeah.”

“Walk softly wherever it is you goin'. You know Charcoal Joe is a tombstone just waitin' for a name.”