eyes.
“It has to do with this photograph,” I said, handing Angel over into his bone-colored grasp.
“I don’t understand?” he said, looking at the picture and registering something.
“He will,” I assured the salesman.
The first man, whose nameplate read roger, moved to negotiate between the desks, making his way toward the back of the aisle. The man behind him sat tall and thin, swathed in brown. He smiled and nodded.
“Nice day,” he said.
One of the things I love about America is that if you are a potential customer almost everyone is nice to you. They might hate your guts and wish you dead, but face-to-face they smile and nod and talk about the weather in a neighborly cadence.
Roger had made his pitch to Tommy and was returning without the photo. He nodded at me and smiled as he approached and then said, “He has a few minutes before his next meeting.
He’ll see you now.”
I careered around Roger’s desk and the next and then set my pace for the well-dressed man at the back of the room.
He stood up to a good five eleven and put out a hand that had a double fold of fine white cotton and cuff links at the 108
FEAR OF THE DARK
wrist. Tommy Hoag was light skinned and auburn eyed at a time when freedom for black people depended on how closely we could approximate being white. His Caucasian-like features had served him well. His expression told you that he knew it and that he knew that you knew it too.
“Mr. Hoag?” I asked.
“Pleased to meet you, Mister . . . ?”
“Minton,” I said. “Paris Minton.”
“Have a seat, Mr. Minton.”
I sat, looking around.
On the wall behind his desk hung a framed parchment claiming that Thomas Benton Hoag had earned a bachelor of arts degree from Howard University.
The chair was walnut and the desk was walnut veneer. The black carpet would wear down in six months and the walls might as well have been paper. But Schuyler’s was an institution in Watts.
“Damn,” I said.
“Do I know you, Mr. Minton?”
“No. You might know my cousin, though. Ulysses S. Grant the Fourth.”
His eyes registered yes.
“No,” he said, shaking his head to prove it.
“Useless, that’s what most of us call him, is Angel there’s boyfriend.” I pointed at the photo on his desk.
“She’s a pretty girl,” he said noncommittally.
“She’s more than that, I hear.”
“What can I do for you, Mr. Minton?”
“Can you explain the theory of evolution?” I asked.
“Say what?” he asked. I could almost hear the
109
Walter Mosley
“You got a college degree, brother. You know that’s more rare for a black man than someone actually born in L.A.”
Tommy smiled. He liked a quick wit.
“I could explain, but that would take too long,” he said.
“You’d have to do some background reading, the original texts, you know.”
“I done read
I said. “I understand the position, but what I always wonder about is what I call the horizon point of the phenomenon.”
I was actually reciting arguments that Ashe had made to me back when she thought I was some kind of genius simply because I owned a bookstore.
Tommy didn’t know what the hell I was talking about, and so before he could embarrass himself I added, “You know, Darwin says that a species evolves. But a species ain’t one thing, it’s millions, maybe more. So outta all the people in the world, are we all at the same place on the evolutionary ladder?
Is there just one ladder or a thousand of ’em? Some people smarter than others, some stronger. You got a genius like George Washington Carver and a beast like Adolf Hitler. How are they related? Are they at the same place?”
