Rose Gold Read online

  “Benita still wants to go back to school?” I asked of his common-law wife and mother of his child.

  “She says that if she’s a registered nurse we could make enough that we could buy our own place.”

  “What school?”

  “SMCC has most of the courses she needs. She just has to bring in enough to help pay for Essie and the rent.”

  Essie, my de facto granddaughter, was still a baby.

  “I think I can give you enough to pay for the first year,” I said. “After that … we’ll see.”

  Jesus wasn’t a big talker. He smiled and nodded. We’d be on the same page ten years after my death.

  “Hey, Jackson,” I said to one of my oldest friends in the master bedroom on the second floor.

  He was sitting on a padded walnut chair, sifting through a box of books.

  “You read all’a these, Ease?”

  “Most of ’em. Why?”

  “No reason,” the little black man said. He sat up and crossed his legs.

  Jackson was wearing stained canvas painter’s pants. His white T-shirt was torn in three places and even though it was a size small, it hung loose from his shoulders. He was the right-hand man of the CEO of the largest French insurance company in the world, but he was still a child of poverty, afraid of his own shadow.

  “What’s with this guy Percy?” I asked.

  That shadow passed over Jackson’s face. “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “He seems to feel like he deserves special attention.”

  “Jewelle send him,” Jackson said, avoiding my gaze. “He graduated from UCLA in business or somethin’. He’s working in her office, lookin’ for somethin’ better.”

  “Does she expect me to help him?”

  “If she did she’d tell you so.” Jackson stood up and walked past me out the door.

  I followed him into the hall and watched as he jounced down the stairs. I had seen Jackson through many phases. He had been a thief and a coward, a con man and a liar, but I had never known him to be rude through any of that.

  I might have questioned him further but LaMarque was coming up the stairs as my old friend descended.

  “I’m gonna leave, Mr. Rawlins,” the young man said.

  Reaching for my wallet, I asked, “How long your father said he’d be gone?”

  “Three weeks.”

  “He still call in?”

  “Every two or three days he call Mama and me.”

  I handed him four five-dollar bills.

  “Tell Etta to say hey to him for me.”

  “Okay, Mr. Rawlins, I will.”

  By four that afternoon all of my helpers had gone. Jesus drove the truck back to Primo’s garage in East L.A. Jackson, Percy, and LaMarque took off in separate cars and Feather was behind a closed door putting her room in order.

  Frenchie, the little yellow dog, was in there with her. We had left him in the car while moving. But as soon as we were done Feather brought him in and let him sniff around the new premises. When he got a whiff of me he looked up with a quizzical expression on his canine face. He was remembering, I believed, the days when he hated me. But that was over now and so he yipped a greeting and went on with his nasal investigations.

  The upstairs of my new home was made up of a round hall and three bedrooms: two large and one small. Feather had apportioned me the largest of the boudoirs while she claimed the smallest. The middle chamber was to be used as a library and study room.

  I told Feather that I didn’t mind taking the small room but she said, “The parent should have the biggest room and, anyway, Bonnie might move in to live with us again one day and then it would be a bedroom for two.”

  Bonnie Shay had been my girlfriend for much of Feather’s life. For a while there we had broken up and then I almost died. Now we were trying to find our way back together again. I couldn’t seem to get my emotions straight around Bonnie. I didn’t love anyone else. I didn’t want anyone else. But when we were together I felt like a citizen of a defeated nation with no right to hold my head up.

  I went downstairs to the huge living room. A latticed picture window took up most of the front wall and looked out onto Point View. The living room of our Genesee home was one-sixth the size and so there wasn’t nearly enough furniture to fill it. I sat on our toy sofa and wondered if there was really money on the way from Roger Frisk.

  No more than ten seconds later there came the chime of a three-toned doorbell that I’d never heard before.

  5

  She was tall for her age, Asian (probably Japanese, I thought), with tawny skin and a mouth that spent more time laughing than eating. She was skinny as only a child can be and her black hair hung down past her shoulders.

  “Mr. Rawlins?” the girl said. Her bright green one-piece dress barely made it down to the middle of her bandy thighs.

  “Yes?”

  “I saw you moving in but my father said to leave you alone until you were through working.”

  “Um,” I said. “So how can I help you?”

  “Is Feather home?” She looked worried, like a tourist trying to find a toilet in a country where she didn’t speak the language.

  “Yeah,” I said, moving to the side. “Second floor, it’s the first door on your right.”

  The frown transformed into a grin and she ran up the stairs with an awkward, fetching gait.

  I heard knocking and then the girls screaming at the top of their lungs. For all of Feather’s maturity, she was just another kid among her school friends.

  I could hear their feet clomping around through the ceiling as Feather showed her guest the features of her new room.

  Walking back to the couch, I was accompanied by small echoes of my own footsteps in the mostly empty space. Behind me came the scratchy clicking of the little yellow dog’s claws. He had come downstairs to avoid those banging feet and loud squeals.

  “Come on and sit with me, dog,” I said.

  I sat and he leaped up next to me. We perched there side by side while Feather and her friend laughed and screeched overhead.

  “This is my friend Peggy Nishio,” Feather said half an hour or so later. “We took algebra together in summer school but I didn’t know she lived right across the street. They just moved there a month ago. Can I go over to her house for dinner?”

  “Is it okay with your mother?” I asked Peggy.

  She frowned and nodded.

  “Okay,” I said, and the girls ran for the front door and out.

  Frenchie stood up, alert at the sudden departure. I scratched behind his ears and he settled down again.

  I wanted to walk around the house making a mental list of what I had to do and buy for the place. But Roger Frisk’s visit kept interrupting. Ever since the accident I’d had a declining interest in being a private detective. But what else could I do? I was a black man with a sixth-grade education. I could read as well as many college graduates and I knew math from working on building projects. I had no degree, however, no certification. On paper I was qualified to wash dishes or sweep floors, not nearly enough to afford Feather’s Ivy Prep tuition.

  I thought of old Marley in A Christmas Carol. He dragged the chains of his mortal life behind him like some slave that had escaped with the manacles still attached to his wrists and ankles. I was free but every step was a challenge. I was my own man; but that man owed his soul to the company store.

  When the doorbell chimed this time it was like an old friend.

  The man standing there on the front porch was a dandy with some heft to him. He had the mannerisms of a small man, delicate and precise, but he was beefy. While he had the poise of a fop, his flinty eyes and hard jawline spoke of trench warfare replete with mud, blood, and shit.

  “Mr. Rawlins?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Tout Manning.” I was happy that he didn’t offer to shake hands. “Roger Frisk sent me.”

  “Well,” I said reluctantly, “come on in, I guess.”

&nbs
p; I led the big man into the living room and offered him the couch. I took the upholstered maroon chair that was designed to look like a plush seashell throne.

  “Just moved in?” he asked. Tout Manning’s suit was somewhere between gold and green in color. It had stingy lapels and only two buttons. Despite the color it was a professional-looking ensemble—almost a uniform.

  “Today.”

  “That’s something. Sorry to have to bother you in the middle of all that.”

  “How did you find me?”

  “Frisk.”

  “How did he find me?”

  “Sent the Three Stooges around your old neighborhood asking about where you might be.”

  I had told a woman, Grace Matthews, who lived across the street from my Genesee home, that I was going to move closer to Feather’s school.

  “That’s a whole lotta legwork just to find me.”

  “You’re an important man, Mr. Rawlins, Ezekiel.”

  We went silent for a few moments. That’s when Frenchie began to bark at Tout. It was as vicious a complaint as a three-pound dog could make. Tout turned his head to contemplate my intelligent pet, and then the man bared his own teeth and growled.

  Frenchie yelped and ran from the room.

  “Nice dog,” my guest said.

  “As I understand it, Rosemary Goldsmith has been missing for quite a while,” I replied.

  “That she has.”

  “So why is it all of a sudden so important that you get me on the search party?”

  Instead of answering, Tout Manning reached into his breast pocket and came out with a thick brown envelope. He leaned over to hand the packet to me.

  Swaying back again, he said, “Sixty one-hundred-dollar bills. That’s what you asked for, right?”

  “Are you a cop?”

  “I work in Mr. Frisk’s office.”

  “What does that mean exactly?”

  “It means that from now on I’m your official contact with Mr. Frisk. There’s a piece of paper with my phone numbers in among the hundreddollar bills. Office, home, and answering service. Call me if you need anything.”

  “I need something now.”

  “What’s that?” Tout asked. He crossed his right leg over his left.

  “Information. Is there a criminal case against Mantle or what?”

  “There might be a criminal aspect to the case,” Manning admitted. “Whether that shadow falls on Bob or not is unclear. All you have to remember is my phone number. No matter what you come across, legal or illegal, you are to call me first. I don’t care if there’s blood on the ground, you call me and leave the regular cops out of it.”

  “What if somebody is dead?”

  “I’m the contact. You’re working directly for the Chief of Police.”

  “What if I don’t like that situation?”

  “What’s not to like? You’re in the inner circle now, Ezekiel. Nobody can lay a hand on you.”

  “Do you think Mantle is holding the girl against her will?”

  “Who knows? You find Mantle for us and we’ll tell you who did what.”

  I didn’t like Tout Manning, my dog didn’t like him.

  “Yes, Mr. Rawlins?” Tout said. “Is there anything else you need to know?”

  “What if I gave you back your money and your phone numbers, Mr. Manning? What if I told you that I don’t want to have anything to do with this mess?”

  “You just moved, Mr. Rawlins. Here you are in your nice new house and everything. You wouldn’t want to have to do that again so soon. But if you don’t do what Chief Parker and Mayor Yorty want, that’ll be the only choice you have—to move and move far. Because you know working stiffs like you and me have to do what we’re told. I mean even your little dog knows that much.”

  Oddly his threats soothed my nerves. I was used to men in authority trying to intimidate me. It almost always meant that they had something to protect.

  “Are there any other crimes or infractions that you want Mantle or Rosemary for?” I asked.

  Manning looked surprised for a moment and then he smiled.

  “There might be a robbery or some mayhem here and there,” he said. “You know the colored brothers are always close to that line. If it’s not them it’s their cousins and if it’s not their cousins it’s their mothers’ other sons.”

  “What I need to know, Tout, is if there’s going to be some armed zealot aiming his gun at the back of my head while I’m knocking on the wrong door.”

  That actually got my police liaison to laugh out loud.

  “No, no, no, Mr. Rawlins. You’re safe. That’s why Mr. Frisk came to you. Nobody is going to look twice at a black man asking about his buddy.” Tout got to his feet. “If you have any more concerns just call me. If you can’t get me directly I check into the answering service every hour or so; if you tell them that it’s an emergency they’ll call me.”

  He walked toward the door and I followed.

  “See you, Ezekiel. Don’t forget—call me and only me if you find anything or need anything.”

  He walked down to the curb and climbed into a cranberry-colored Volkswagen. As he drove off I thought that I would never have imagined a big, dangerous man like that in a tiny tin Bug.

  6

  I stood there in the open doorway thinking that I might be in over my head and deciding that I should put in a screen door so that my new house could catch the breeze without inviting in a battalion of flies.

  Maybe my life needed a screen door.

  The little yellow dog clicked his claws on the tiled floor of the entranceway, pacing and whining about too much change too quickly. I picked him up and he stopped his complaint. Together we went back into the sun-flooded living room. I sat on the sofa and the dog curled into a ball on my lap.

  There was a young woman out there named Rosemary Goldsmith, the daughter of a weapons manufacturer. Along with Rosemary was a black ex-boxer named Mantle.…

  I’d seen Battling Bob Mantle maybe five years before. He was fighting a welterweight contender named Juan Díaz. Mantle had been outclassed from the first minute of the first round but he kept on coming. He threw fists and elbows, and shoulders in the clinches, at Díaz. For ten full rounds Mantle flailed at the Mexican hopeful. Díaz won nine rounds on the judges’ cards, and that was still a favor to Mantle. I thought at the time that Battling Bob fought like a man who believed he was a boxer but was not. His resolve was so strong, however, that it took all of Díaz’s will and great skill to defeat him.

  The little yellow dog was asleep. I placed him gently on the cushion next to me and walked to the long, well-appointed kitchen, where Jackson Blue had connected my phone.

  The heavy black phone was set on two phone books on the white and red tiled kitchen counter.

  Benoit’s Gym was listed in the Yellow Pages.

  The phone rang eight times before someone answered.

  “Benoit’s.”

  “Yeah,” I said tentatively. “Is this Benoit’s Gym?”

  “Ain’t that what I just said?”

  “Uh-uh, I mean, yes. I’m calling for, um, let me see, I’m calling for a Bob, Robert Mantle.”

  “You takin’ his boxin’ class?” the man’s voice asked. He was black, probably from the eastern South—Charleston would have been my bet.

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes I am.”

  “He’s not here.”

  “I wanted to, um, to take his class. You know, I want to get in shape and I always liked boxing. My cousin Shawn takes karate but I don’t like all that kicking.”

  “Bobby’s beginner class is at ten in the morning Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. If it’s your first day you need to have real boxer’s trunks, not no swimmin’ suit, and regulation eight-ounce gloves. If you don’t have the right trunks and gloves Bobby won’t let you take class, he won’t even let you watch.”

  “Okay,” I said in a gentle voice that wasn’t mine.

  “It costs eight dollars a class up front. You c
ould come tomorrow. You don’t have to have all that stuff because Bobby’s away and Tommy’s teachin’ his class. Tommy lets you wear sweatpants or swimmin’ trunks. He don’t care what you look like, only how you fight.”

  “That’s too bad. I heard that Mantle was a good teacher.”

  “I don’t know where you heard that,” the voice told me. “Tommy Latour could fight rings around Bobby. That’s how they met—when Tommy was kickin’ Bobby’s ass in a ring in Las Vegas.”

  “That’s Hardcase Tommy Latour?” I asked, maybe a little out of character.

  “I gotta go, man. Be here before ten with eight dollars and Hardcase will teach you how to spar.”

  “Thank you.”

  The gym worker hung up without telling me good-bye. I wasn’t bothered, however.

  Outside the big kitchen window grew a spindly, fourteen-foot pomegranate tree. That and the master bedroom’s bathroom’s huge bathtub were two of three major factors in me buying that house. I loved having real fruit growing in my yard. There was a lemon tree out back.

  I was a country boy at my core. If I didn’t think the neighbors would go crazy I would have dug up the front lawn and put in a vegetable garden. I might have built a chicken coop in the backyard and replaced my fire-engine red speedster with a donkey or mule.

  I knew that I wanted off the Goldsmith case, because of my daydreams. I always had rural thoughts when I wanted to get away from troubles. Black Southerners didn’t leave the farm for the lure of the big city; we left because of grinding poverty and the oppression of racism that was so pervasive it was like the heavy atmosphere of a much larger planet.

  I had taken one step into the conundrum of the missing rich girl. If it was any other job I could have still backed out. But Tout Manning was right. I couldn’t say no to the mayor’s minions. They might have been his creatures, they might have been indentured while I was a free man—but they were like hunting hounds, and I was either going to point out the prey or fall victim to their snapping jaws.

  I couldn’t quit the job but I could pretend that I wasn’t on it, at least for one night.