“You don’t have no money?”
Jackson studied his hands.
“Jackson?”
“What?”
“How much money you and Ortiz made in this last year?”
“You mean since a year ago exact, or just since January?”
“This year.”
“I’ont know. More’n fifty thousand, that’s sure.”
“Where is it?”
“Gone.”
Gone. The one-word sentence that describes so many people’s lives. Jackson Blue making more money in ten months than most black people see in ten years. Where is it? Gone. Like my mother and the house I was born in. Like my wife and, with her, my first child—lost to me in the hills of Arkansas with a man who had been my friend. Gone.
I wanted to strike Jackson.
Instead I gave him one hundred dollars that I’d lifted from a dead man’s pockets.
“Wait for me here, Jackson. I might have one more thing for you to do.”
“I ain’t got no place to go, Easy.”
And that was just the way I wanted it.
CHAPTER 25
THE CHANTILLY CLUB was half a mile up in the hills behind Hollywood Boulevard. The nightclub was housed in a large mansion once owned by some famous star, I was never quite sure which one. The mansion, constructed from pale stone, contained over eighty rooms and had the look of an English country home for royalty.
Young men in white shirts and black trousers ran around the front gate getting into the cars of partygoers and taking them to the back for parking. The patrons wore gaudy clothes and bright jewelry. It’s amazing how a flashy style can make even diamonds look cheap.
I watched for a while from across the road and down the street. Then I took the winding road up behind the mansion and parked my blue hot rod in a large dirt lot along with a lot of older-model Fords, Pontiacs, and Dodges.
At the edge of the lot was a field. At the end of the field was an iron gate lit by a single flaming torch. It would have seemed magical and exciting if I was out for a good time. But instead it looked like a solitary gate to hell set out to lure unsuspecting men to their dooms.
From the top of a steep stairway I could hear the weak strains of a jazz horn. Three notes and I knew who was playing. Three notes and I remembered the first night I’d heard that tune, the woman I was with, the clothes I was wearing (or wished I was wearing), and the rhythm of my stride. That horn spoke the language of my history; traveled me back to times that I could no longer remember clearly—maybe even times that were older than I; traveling, in my blood, back to some forgotten home.
The stone stairs were slippery and narrow through dense low-hanging foliage. I found myself doing a crouching crab-walk to keep my footing.
The stairway wasn’t straight—it cut and turned, curved and went around things. I descended for almost five minutes before I got to another iron gate.
There I found Rupert.
I knew about Rupert Dodds from Jackson Blue. Rupert had been a wrestler, performing under the name the Black Destroyer, for local TV in Philadelphia before he broke Fabulous Fred Dunster’s neck in a televised wrestling match. Rupert said that the claims that Dunster was making time with his girlfriend were just publicity talk to make it seem like their bout was a blood feud. But he left the East Coast for California and got the job as bouncer for the black part of the Chantilly Club from a fellow Philadelphian, Philly Stetz.
Rupert was taller than me and wider. The muscles on his split-sleeved arms were like half-hard bags of wet cement. His dark face looked as if it had been carved from onyx—with a ball-peen hammer.
“What you want, man?” Rupert’s question said that he didn’t recognize my face.
“Blackman sent me.”
“He did?”
“Yeah.” I tried to sound tough. Why not?
“What he say?”
“He didn’t say nuthin’, man. Now let me in here. I’m s’posed t’say the words an’ then you s’posed t’open the do’.”
Rupert coughed. That was his laugh. He pulled open the gate, scraping it loudly on the stone path.
When I walked in he grabbed my upper arm, squeezing it so hard that I could feel my fingers filling up with blood.
“You doesn’t has to be smart,” he whispered. Then he pushed me down the path toward a large house.
IT WAS JUST A GUESTHOUSE for the main mansion but it was still three stories.
