I twisted my face into a wordless apology. “I didn’t wanna disturb ya, but I thought you’d appreciate me coming here over the alternative.”
“What the fuck are you talkin’ about, Negro?” he said. He grabbed the door as if he were about to slam it in my face.
“Fearless Jones,” I said.
For a moment time ceased to pass on Man Dorn’s face.
Then he looked at me, wondering how to avoid the two words he’d just heard.
“What’s Mr. Jones got to do wit’ me?”
“You know that woman I was here wit’ today?” I asked.
“The one that paid Useless’s rent?”
“Yeah?”
“She took me ovah to Mad Anthony’s, and he got kinda riled. . . .”
“That don’t have nuthin’ to do wit’ me,” Man claimed.
“Yeah. I know.” I was feeling sorry for Man. “But then Three Hearts went to Fearless and Fearless broke Tony’s jaw. Then she said that she was here and she thought that you knew more about Angel than you was sayin’ and that maybe he could come on by. I told Fearless that we didn’t need to go through all’a that. I said that I was sure you’d give Three Hearts what she needed.”
“Hold on,” he said, retreating into the blue home.
He left the door open. There was a television on in a room next to the one the door opened onto. Through the second doorway I could see two black women sitting on a couch, illu-minated by the light of the TV. They were peering out at me.
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They looked like dark sisters, maybe a year or two apart. I tried to think of what their relationship to Man might have been but failed.
I did know that neither one of them was his wife.
Man returned with an eight-by-six glossy photograph. It was of a stunningly beautiful woman. She had medium brown skin, straight or straightened hair, eyes filled with knowing surprise, and parted lips that could teach you how to kiss a Greek goddess.
“This Angel?” I asked.
“When she told me that she was a actress,” Man said, “I asked her if she had a publicity picture. You know, a lotta these girls got bikini pictures for their Hollywood agents. It wasn’t that, but she’s pretty, though. Nice girl. She just had bad taste in men.”
“Anything else?”
“Naw, man. That’s it. I told you everything else.”
“How about the car the guy drove her off in?”
“I don’t even know, brother. I didn’t really care.”
“Man?” a woman said. She was standing at the inner door.
She was a shortish woman with big kissy lips and startled eyes.
“Go on back in the TV room, Doretha,” Man said. “We almost through here.”
She backed away fearfully.
“Couple’a my tenants come up to watch TV,” he told me.
“So Fearless don’t have to come by now, right?”
“No, sir, Mr. Dorn.”
97
Th e r e w e r e n ’ t t o o m a n y joints where a woman like Angel would belong. Of course there 16 were all kinds of men who would have wanted to go there with her: garage attendants and gangsters on the Negro side; directors, producers, and other high rollers on the white. But black men couldn’t get into the places she would have wanted to be, and white men couldn’t take her there —
at least not for very long.
In 1956 a sophisticated and beautiful black woman had very few choices unless she wanted to be a good girl and wear mid-calf skirts and milky rimmed glasses. I didn’t expect that Angel was that type of woman. If she was, I wouldn’t find her and I wouldn’t need to.
The only black club that would fit her bill was Apollo’s at the Knickerbocker Hotel off Central down in the forties.
Apollo’s had jazz and fine food for black and white patrons.
That was before the black part of town became off-limits to the casual white devotee.
I pulled up to a liquor store called Kenny’s Keg on Figueroa. I got a pack of Lucky Strikes and a pint of Greeley’s whiskey with a short stack of paper cups and a quart bottle of 98
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seltzer. I put the booze and water in the trunk, lit a cigarette, and then walked across the street to a glass- encased phone booth. I looked up a number by the yellow electric light and dialed.
“Hello?” a frightened elderly voice inquired.
