Bad Boy Brawly Brown (20 page)

to till the soil in the garden.

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“I’ll do that the day you take over an algebra class,” I’d reply.

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That man hated me more than Ace hated him.

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“Where’ve you been?” the principal asked.

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“Sick.” I didn’t cough but I brought my fingers to my lips as if I 30 S

might.

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“That’s unacceptable.”

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“I’ll send my intestines to you next time they feel like keepin’ me 1

in the toilet,” I said.

2

“In management class,” Principal Newgate said, “the first thing 3

you learn is that an employee who takes his sick days at the begin-4

ning or the end of the week is abusing his privilege. That’s what you 5

call a malingerer.”

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“Oh?” I said. “And how many Mondays and Fridays have I taken 7

off in the past year?”

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“I’m only concerned with yesterday.”

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“So is it going to be a rule that nobody can get sick on Mondays 10

and Fridays?”

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“Of course not.”

12

“Well then, how about making it a rule that you can’t take off 13

any more Mondays and Fridays than you can the other days?”

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“That’s more what I meant,” the principal said, at sea in my 15

friendly banter.

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“I’ll make sure I tell my staff.”

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“No one likes a wiseass, Rawlins.”

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“Especially when the wiseass gets so mad at his supervisor curs-19

ing at him that he makes a formal complaint.”

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“I was looking around the shop building with Mr. Muldoon,”

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Newgate said, changing the subject. “I had him prepare the metal 22

shop for a thorough cleaning.”

23

“I know,” I said. “I told him to put the furniture back into the 24

classroom so Mr. Sutton can teach his class.”

25

“I ordered them to remove the furniture.” Newgate reminded 26

me of a Captain Dougherty, who had sent four squads of soldiers 27

into a firefight outside of Anzio, one per hour. Every member of 28

every squad was slaughtered while we made no progress against the 29

enemy. We knew that the good captain had been part of a wager be-S 30

tween English and American officers about who would enter the city R 31

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first. He started sending them at eight a.m. By ten to twelve he was 2

hit with shrapnel from a Yankee grenade that went off by mistake.

3

“Lucky for you that I’m the officer in charge,” I said. “Because 4

Sutton was in Korea and he wouldn’t like to see his classroom turned 5

all inside out like that.”

6

“I’m in charge of the whole school,” Newgate said.

7

“Look it up in your handbook, Hiram,” I said. “Supervising cus-8

todian makes the final decisions about plant procedure. You can 9

complain about it, but it will be at maintenance headquarters, not 10

with the administration.”

11

Newgate had big veins in his neck, thick and cordlike. They 12

stood out when he got really angry. That morning they even hinted 13

red.

14

Watching him get so irritated gave me a moment of peace. I for-15

got about Brawly and Conrad, about bushwhackers and the secret 16

arm of the L.A.P.D. Black men in America have always worked for 17

white taskmasters. It had only been in the past few years that I could 18

talk back without fear of losing my job, or maybe even a tooth or two.

19

Some men I’d known had died challenging their superiors. So 20

Newgate’s aggravation was a kind of balm. It soothed my symptoms, 21

but the disease was still there.

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/ “HELLO, MRS. PLATES,”
I said later that morning.

1

Jorge Peña, Garland Burns, Troy Sanders, and

2

Willard Clark had already come in, had coffee, and gone out again.

3

“You’re a few minutes late, aren’t you?” I chided her but I didn’t 4

really care.

5

Helen Plates was a natural blond Negro, also from the Midwest.

6

She had a complaint for everything from politics to drinking water, 7

from poor blacks to rich whites. She could never get in to work right 8

on time but she was my hardest worker, next to Garland, and Helen 9

never minded if I asked her to do a little overtime. I think she liked 10

to stay late because her husband was an invalid and she worked 11

harder for him than she ever did at Truth.

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“I’m sorry, Mr. Rawlins,” she said. “You know I had to make sure 13

Edgar took his pills before I left. His cousin, Opal, is fine to sit S 14

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around and feed him soup, but she don’t know how to dole out them 2

pills. You know, he has to take his blue pill every three hours, his 3

pink pills two at a time every five, there’s the square white ones that 4

he takes every hour, and the round white ones that he takes three 5

times a day. The first time I left Edgar with Opal she just gave him 6

all of ’em at once at ten-thirty. I called Dr. Harrell and he made us 7

pump out his stomach at the emergency ward in the hospital.”

8

“But if you can’t trust Opal, then what are you going to do for the 9

rest of the day?” I asked her.

10

“I have to call every time he needs to take a pill.”

11

My next question should have been,
Well, if all you have to do is
12

call, then why did you have to stay late this morning?
But instead I 13

asked, “Do you have Mercury’s address?”

14

Mrs. Plates’s friendly patter petered out then. She sat back in her 15

chair and turned her face away from me, as if maybe I was naked and 16

should be ashamed of myself.

17

“That’s a personal thing, Mr. Rawlins. I don’t know if Mercury 18

wants me to be handin’ out his numbers like that.”

19

“He didn’t seem to mind you tellin’ me that he was in trouble 20

over that burglary he committed when it helped him out,” I said.

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“Shhh, baby. Mercury ain’t like that no more. He’s workin’ con-22

struction in Compton and you don’t know who might be at the door 23

listenin’.”

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“Write down his address, will you, Mrs. Plates?”

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“Why?” I could see in her face that she didn’t want me to tell her 26

the truth.

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“I’m doin’ some work for John — you know, the man Mercury 28

and Chapman work for. He needs me to locate one of his employees, 29

and I was thinkin’ that Merc might know a thing or two.”

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“Is John’s employee in trouble?”

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“You don’t even know his name, Helen. Why worry about him?

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Mercury isn’t in trouble, either — that’s all you need to know.”

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I
SPENT THE MORNING
wandering around the grounds, check-5

ing out pink slips that various teachers and administrators had left 6

reporting problems with the plant. There was paint peeling off the 7

ceiling of the girls’ shower room and a faulty light in the teachers’

8

lounge. Nothing serious. Nothing I couldn’t handle with my eyes 9

closed. I was having a good time.

10

At noon I went to the main building and took out the dirty and 11

creased white card that Detective Knorr had given me. All it had was 12

a telephone number with an Axminister exchange.

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I dialed the number.

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“D Squad,” a woman’s voice said.

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“Detective Knorr, please,” I said in a stern, barely civil, white 16

man’s tone.

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“He’s not in right now,” the woman said. “May I take a message?”

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“This is Grimes,” I said. “I have a special expenses check for the 19

detective that’s come back three times. Can you give me the right ad-20

dress?”

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“What address are you using?”

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I gave her the address of the Seventy-seventh Street Precinct.

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“Your records are obviously out of order,” she snapped. My tone 24

had gotten under her skin. She gave me Vincent Knorr’s office ad-25

dress with vindictive pleasure.

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I
LEFT WORK
at one. That was seven hours and I’d worked hard. I 29

wasn’t worried about Newgate getting mad at me. None of my S 30

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custodians — or his teachers, for that matter — would tell him 2

where I was. If he asked for me, the standard reply was “I saw him a 3

few minutes ago. He was headed for the other campus.”

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T
HE ADDRESS
the angry secretary gave brought me to a building on Hope, just down the block from City Hall. Made from stone, 8

the entrance brought me into a building-sized room that had a domed 9

ceiling with a tiny colored-glass opening at the very top. A woman sat 10

at a desk blocking entrée to the large circular room. Her nameplate 11

read miss pfennig.

12

Pfennig’s copper-colored hair came out of a wash basin and she 13

had probably been ugly even when she was a child, which was more 14

than forty years earlier. Her long nose had gone awry, like a sapling 15

grown under heavy shade, wavering this way and that in search for 16

the light. Her eyes were a translucent gray. Her skin was gray also, 17

but lusterless and drab.

18

I came in from the bright sun, so it took a few moments for my 19

vision to adjust to the tomblike interior. Even the skylight couldn’t 20

brighten that dark globular room. With no windows and the roof at 21

least thirty feet away, there was little possibility that it would ever 22

muster any more than a dusklike gloom.

23

“What do you want?” Pfennig asked.

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I ignored her rudeness, looking at the doorways along the edges 25

of the perfectly circular room. The floor might have been fifty feet in 26

diameter. I found myself amazed at the profound waste of space. I 27

thought of Jackson Blue’s lopsided room. At least he used the space 28

he had for books and studying, for thinking, no matter how mis-29

guided. It struck me that Jackson might not have been so wrong-30 S

headed as I thought. After all, here I was in the medieval bastion of 31 R

the special police squad assigned to hounding and destroying a black
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political group. How could someone justify being a law-abiding citi-1

zen after seeing something like that?

2

“I came to see Detective Knorr,” I said.

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“Who?”

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“Detective Knorr.”

5

“You must be mistaken,” Miss Pfennig said. “There’s no one here 6

by that name.”

7

“No,” I said. “I’m not mistaken, you are. You’re mistaking me for 8

a black radical come here to blow up this building because of the 9

conspiracy within these walls. You’re mistaking me for an angry 10

black militant tired of the lies and attempts to make your claims of 11

our inferiority seem true.”

12

I smiled, and fear blossomed in the ugly woman’s face.

13

A man appeared from the shadows. He was tall and chiseled, 14

blond on white wearing a tan suit and black shoes. An undercover 15

cop if I had ever seen one.

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“Is there a problem, Miss Pfennig?”

17

“This man was threatening to blow up the building,” she said.

18

“No,” I said again. “I said that you thought I was, when really I 19

just wanted to speak to Detective Knorr.”

20

“What do you want with Vincent?” The light-haired detective 21

would never be a success in his job.

22

I handed over the card that Vincent Knorr had given me.

23

“He wanted me to drop by if I had any information.”

24

The chiseled cop studied the card, turning it over two or three 25

times. He was looking for a trick.

26

“There’s no name on this card,” he said at last.

27

“No. I guess you guys got some kinda secret goin’ on around 28

here. Vincent thought that I was the right kind of rat for your pur-29