Rose Gold Read online

I walked upstairs and wandered around the rooms.

  Feather’s bed was already made and there was a multicolored throw rug between it and her maple desk. I could see in her neatness my attention to detail.

  Years before, on Saturday mornings, she, Jesus, and I cleaned up the little house we shared. We worked all morning and then had French toast with real Vermont maple syrup for brunch.

  Feather was looking forward to designing our new space. For her it was like an unfinished work of art: a musical composition or sculpture; a big house to make into a home before she moved off to Harvard or Oxford and grew into a stranger that I would love because of this present-day past together.

  The phone interrupted my maudlin thoughts. It rang six times before I made it down to the kitchen. Frenchie joined me there.

  “Hello?”

  “Easy?”

  “Hey, Jewelle, what’s happening, girl?”

  “Nothing, I mean, just the usual. Jackson said that the police came by today and helped you move?”

  I laughed, remembering how Jackson was a master storyteller second only to Mouse.

  “They wanted me to work for them and I said I had to finish moving.”

  “Did Percy Bidwell come along?”

  “Yes he did,” I said.

  “And?”

  “Did you tell him that I would introduce him to Jason Middleton?”

  “I said that he could ask you but it was up to you what you did.”

  Middleton was an influential investment banker from an old California family. That family had a black servant named Mattie. Mattie had a daughter named Loretta. Jason had hired me to prove that Loretta wasn’t in on a burglary at his home. The police thought it was her. Mattie did not, and Jason, in spite of better judgment, had fallen in love with the handsome daughter.

  It all worked out. The police ended up arresting Middleton’s younger son’s college roommate. Mattie, and her daughter, moved to Boston to work for Middleton’s eccentric sister, and I had a favor that I could cash in whenever I wanted.

  “What did Percy say?” Jewelle asked.

  “He practically told me that you expected me to make the introductions.”

  “I didn’t. You know I wouldn’t do that.”

  “I didn’t think so. Do you need me to do anything?”

  “No, Easy, no. I’d just like you to talk to Percy. If you think he’s worthwhile you can introduce him to Middleton if you want.”

  I had once seen a report that the FBI had made available to the public. Due to national safety and other constitutional concerns, over 80 percent of the file had been blacked out. That document was loquacious compared to the editing Jewelle was doing on the explanation of her involvement with Percy Bidwell’s needs.

  “I told the cops that I couldn’t work on their project because of the money I needed over those city infractions,” I said, partly to get out of prickly talk about Bidwell and Middleton.

  “And what did they say?”

  “They gave me six thousand dollars and said that the city would give me more time.”

  “You know, Easy”—Jewelle sounded more like herself on the safer grounds of business—“it was odd about those inspections.”

  “Odd how?”

  “Usually the city sends its inspectors out in force when they want to collect fines and whatnot. You know I manage hundreds of units and you were the only one they targeted.”

  “That is odd.”

  “Yes it is.”

  “Can I do anything else for you, J?” I asked again.

  “Will you let Percy call you if I promise he won’t be rude again?”

  “Sure,” I said instead of the no I felt.

  7

  We got off the phone quickly because Jewelle felt bad asking me for favors. Under different circumstances I would have stayed on the line with her, trying to imagine that my life wasn’t about to spiral out of control.

  Between Frisk and Tout Manning, Battling Bob Mantle and Rosemary Goldsmith, I was about to go way out into the deep end of the pool; far enough to find salt water, jagged stones, and circling sharks that didn’t have a moral compass I could comprehend.

  I was sitting at the rectangular table set in our new octangular dinette. Three walls of that room had big windows in them. It was a house built for light. The table was too small for the space but it’s what we had. I sat there looking at the grain in the cherrywood, trying to find therein a map that led away from the difficulties of my life.

  When he heard about my money problems Jackson had offered me a job at Proxy Nine. The French insurance giant had promoted his career; he thought that it could do the same for me. I would have been the American security chief with a high-five-figure salary and hours that fit my sleeping habits. It was better money than I made as a PI. I would have been treated with respect and there was little chance that I would ever be in physical danger.

  I should have taken that job but it would have meant that I would no longer be among my people—the transplanted black folk that had moved from the South looking for dignity. Jean-Paul Villard, the president of P9, was a good man, a French freedom fighter in the war against the Nazis. I liked him but I wasn’t looking for a boss.…

  “Daddy?” Feather had come in while I retraced my hapless journey through an unpredictable life that was, once again, on an unerring course.

  “Hey, honey, what you have for dinner?”

  “Spaghetti and meatballs with green salad and chocolate-chip ice milk for dessert,” she said. “It was good.”

  “What’s your friend’s name again?”

  “Peggy.”

  “She seems nice.”

  “What’s wrong, Daddy?” Feather sat in the chair opposite me. “Are you mad that I left you instead of staying to help?”

  “No,” I said. “No. This is your new home. You need friends on the block.”

  “You wanna watch some TV with me?”

  “Sure.”

  I got the little portable Zenith from a box in the upstairs library and set it on a wooden chair in the echoey living room. I made popcorn sprinkled with sugar and drenched with salty butter. Feather and I ate the snack while watching Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea starring Richard Basehart and David Hedison on channel 7. After that she watched The F.B.I. with Efrem Zimbalist Jr. while I read the newspaper. When that show was over, Feather was asleep and so I carried her up to bed. She was too old for me to undress her, so I just took off her tennis shoes and threw a blanket over her.

  Then I went downstairs to watch the Smothers Brothers on channel 2. I liked their antiwar, liberal sentiments. There was a new America coming; a nation where people like Roger Frisk and Sam Yorty wouldn’t be making the rules—at least that seemed like a possibility at the time.

  I was in my old car flying off the side of a cliff over the broad Pacific. It was night but the lunar light was almost as strong as a sun. My car was hurtling down and yet the fall was taking forever. The reflection of the moonlight traveled like lightning across the rippling surface of the ocean, which was coming toward me like some kind of superior life-form that fed off the souls of men.

  I was terrified of death and bored with the fall.

  I considered lighting a cigarette but somehow this seemed like sacrilege.

  The water was less than a foot away. Between the looming impact, the voracious light, and drowning, my death would be both exquisite and excruciating, absolutely final and oddly dull. I looked out through the shattered windshield determined to experience every moment of my demise. I could see, in minute lunar-lit detail, the corrugated surface of the ocean.…

  In the dream I was completely calm. But when I opened my eyes, terror crept over my heart.

  Feather was saying, “Daddy, I’m making breakfast. You have to get up.”

  I sat up from the sofa gasping, expecting my mouth to be filled with brine.

  “Are you okay?” my daughter asked.

  It’s funny, the things you see when you feel Death’s
hand clutching at your chest.

  I saw the outline of the faux fireplace in the wall and wondered if there was a real hearth hidden behind the plaster facade. Feather, I noticed, was wearing her old jeans with a baby blue T-shirt and red Keds. This was one of her uniforms for whenever she had a physical job to do.

  The sun was at midmorning somewhere outside the big window.

  “I need a cigarette,” I said.

  “I thought you were quitting.”

  “I did. Then I started again.”

  I took three drags off of a king-size Pall Mall in the backyard.

  By the time I got to the table, Feather was serving French toast, maple smoked bacon, and buttered grits that were just the right consistency. There was coffee and a dish of canned Del Monte fruit cocktail flanking the breakfast plate.

  “You got a job I don’t know about?” I asked after tasting the strong French roast.

  “Peggy’s mom and dad run a sewing shop with people from their family downtown. I told her that you showed me how to sew and I did some for her mom. They said I could come down with them and work for two-fifty an hour. Can I?”

  I was already dressed, so we finished breakfast and walked across the street to a moderate-sized ranch-style house.

  A friendly, somewhat Americanized Japanese woman answered the doorbell. She was wearing a calico dress and smiling. Her skinny daughter was standing against the far wall of the sitting room we entered through. When Feather ran to her they clasped hands and giggled.

  “Mrs. Nishio?” I said, extending a hand.

  She smiled, shook, and almost bowed a little.

  “Aiko,” she said.

  “Easy,” I said.

  “I’m Jun,” a man grunted.

  I looked from the pear-shaped, olive-colored face of the Japanese hausfrau to a doorway that framed a broad and short man wearing a dark work suit that was not designed in the West. The coal gray jacket was long-sleeved and might have been a shirt. He wore a light blue shirt underneath. The loose pants were the same color as the jacket. Only his tennis shoes were from this continent.

  “Pleased to meet you,” I said, reaching out. After our perfunctory handshake I said, “Feather says that you offered to let her go to work with you today.”

  “She’s a good seamstress,” the little powerhouse of a man rumbled. He brought to mind a low mountain that was also a sleeping volcano. I liked him.

  “I wanted to make sure that she wouldn’t be a bother.”

  “She helped with the dishes last night,” Aiko said.

  There was a volume of homespun philosophy under that utterance. Feather understood the difference between frivolity and work. She was welcome because she knew what to do when.

  “When will she be home?” I asked.

  “Twelve forty-five,” Jun Nishio said. “She’s twelve so we will only let her work four hours.”

  “Sounds fine,” I said.

  Aiko smiled and Jun grunted favorably.

  “Have a nice day, honey,” I said to my daughter.

  “Love you, Dad.”

  8

  The bright red 1965 two-door Plymouth Barracuda looked like a crimson canine tongue with a lightning bolt tattooed along its side. The unlikely car lolled in the driveway. I stared at it a moment, thinking for the hundredth time that I should trade it in for a more appropriate conveyance that fit my profession. But I had a soft spot for the modern-day gangster car. My friend Primo gave it to me after the accident. I drove that electrified tongue from the shadows of death back into life.

  I was getting sentimental with age.

  Benoit’s Gym was across the street from the May Company department store on Crenshaw. It was half a block long and deep, a bungalow that would fly apart if a small tornado ever passed through.

  There were no windows but the front door was open.

  It was hot inside even at nine in the morning.

  There were three rings in the center of the single room that the gym encompassed. Leather-helmeted men were battling in each one. The six heavy bags were all occupied, as were the dozen or so speed bags that took up the back wall. There were jump-ropers, shadowboxers, sit-up partners, medicine ball circles, and enough sweat to slake the salty thirst of ten thousand flies.

  Some men were yelling instructions while others grunted either in pain or from the exertion of inflicting damage, and everywhere was the concussive sound of blows being delivered and received.

  This was where aimless young men came to hone their rage to a fine point of violence in an attempt to shed the skin of poverty, hatred, and fear. Poor men of every race had taken this journey. Most of them fell along the wayside, becoming the stepping-stones of the few that conquered.

  In a corner, behind a battered ash desk, sat a man poring over a ledger. I assumed this was the man who took in money and pointed the way and so, inhaling the strong scent of human toil, I walked up to the blunt-faced concierge.

  “This where I check in?”

  His skin was a light molasses-brown, and his eyes had some green to them. It took me a moment to register that he was wearing coppery wire-framed reading glasses. His lumpy, battered face denied everything but the pain it had survived. Sixty or more, that face had seen a hundred thousand punches coming and avoided maybe two.

  “What you doin’ in here, main?” he said. “You ain’t no trainer and you too old to get in the ring.”

  “Charlie Tinford,” I admitted. “I hear Bob Mantle got an exercise class on Mondays.”

  “Buster,” the man said.

  Buster stared at me, wondering about words I had not uttered. Boxers get a sense of people from their bodies and expressions. He was sizing me up.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Why what?” I replied even though I knew what he was getting at.

  “Why you wanna take Bobby’s class?”

  “Tryin’ to get back in shape,” I said. “My girlfriend, Gina, been lookin’ at younger men lately. She’s only twenty-seven and still thinks a man is mostly just physique.”

  I shouldn’t have used that last word, it made Buster wince.

  “Physique?”

  “Muscles.”

  He didn’t believe what I was saying but the gym wouldn’t pay its bills by turning money down.

  “Eight dollars,” Buster said.

  I had the wad of ones folded in my pocket. I handed it over and watched him count the bills—twice.

  “Bobby’s gone for a few weeks but Tommy Latour is teachin’ his class,” Buster said after the money was safely in a gray metal box in his bottom drawer.

  “Is this Latour any good?” I said as if I might have to ask for my dollar bills back.

  “You never heard of Hardcase Latour?”

  “Should I?”

  “He fought Carmine Basilio in an exhibition fight. He didn’t win but he didn’t get knocked down neither.”

  Charlie Tinford was placated by this and nodded to say so.

  “That’s Tommy over there with the big dude on the heavy bag,” Buster told me. “You could change anywhere and then ask him where you go.”

  “Don’t you have a dressing room?” Tinford asked.

  “The whole place is a dressin’ room. Your locker is that gym bag in your hand.”

  I was ready, in my gray sweats and navy blue T-shirt, to take my class and covertly interrogate the general populace concerning the whereabouts of Battling Bob Mantle.

  “Mr. Latour?” I said to a gold-colored man who was holding the heavy bag for a dark-skinned heavyweight banger.

  “Yeah?” Latour said, still concentrating on holding the bag steady.

  “Charlie Tinford. I’m gonna take your ten o’clock class.”

  That’s where things began to go wrong, right there at Benoit’s Gym, before any bloodshed, bullets, or treachery. There was something about my tone; I heard it myself. In an instant I knew that I hadn’t taken this job seriously enough.

  Tommy Latour turned his handsome face to regard
me upon hearing the lie crouching down in the tall grass of my words.

  “Hold up, Ebenezer,” he said to the heavyweight. “Go get Rod to spot you.”

  “Yes sir, Mr. Latour,” the young hopeful replied.

  It was questionable whether Tommy even heard his young apprentice. He was staring at me with deep concentration.

  “Tinford?” he asked.

  I should have walked out of there. My best course would have been to go home and pack my belongings, take Feather and move to another state. I knew that but I was stubborn. I was like a man in free fall who still thought he might grab hold of something and save himself.

  “Yes, sir,” I said with a smile. “Charlie Tinford reporting for duty.”

  “You was in the army, Charles?”

  “European theater.”

  “And now you wanna box?” He nodded and smiled like a coyote having laid eyes on an unwitting hare.

  “Noooooo,” I assured him. “I just wanna get in shape is all.”

  “You look pretty fit. How much you weigh? One eighty?”

  “Six pounds more than that.”

  “Why don’t we get in the ring?” he offered. “Class don’t start for an hour and I could see where you fit in.”

  “You fought with Carmine Basilio,” I argued.

  “You got twenty-five pounds on me,” he replied, “and I’ll go easy on you.”

  “How much does Bob Mantle weigh?” I asked; I shouldn’t have but I did.

  Latour grinned at my faux pas, making me wonder about the ESP of high-level sportsmen.

  “You know, I don’t think you belong here, Charlie,” Tommy said. “If I was you I’d leave before somebody kicked my ass.”

  I looked around then. Six or seven hard-looking boxers had stopped their exertions to stare at me. Maybe the name Rod was a code word between Hardcase and the young giant Ebenezer. It didn’t matter. It was time for me to go.

  I picked up the gym bag wondering if I might get hold of my revolver before someone could hit me. I decided against confrontation and strode toward the open door, willing my feet not to run.