67
(Los Angeles, 4/3/69)
Milt C. had a puppet named Junkie Monkey. He did dreary shtick with him. It regaled the brothers. Sonny and Jomo howled on cue.
The switchboard was flooded. Jomo juggled calls. Jordan High was battling Washington. All-city eager-folks needed kabs.
Junkie Monkey wore a pimp hat and a checkerboard suit. A dope spike dangled from one arm. Milt moved his ape lips.
“Dese LAPD pigs hassle me. I be smack-back on ma fron’ porch, an’ it be a muthafuckin’ humbug roust. Dey say, ‘What you doin’ wid dat hypodermic needle?’ An’ I say, ‘You white muthafuckas got de needle dicks, an’ I gots dat tar paper throbbin’ a hard fuckin’ yard.’ ”
Junior yukked. Jomo plugged calls and yukked. Sonny said, “Junkie Monkey’s a jallhouse sissy and a draft dodger. Muhammad Ali fucked his simian ass.”
Wayne checked his watch. Marsh was due now. He just got a phone-drop message. Another brain click clicked him. More memory loss and tug.
A month ago. The fight with Mary Beth. Reginald, the “Freedom School,” why that soft click?
He was swamped. Drac and the Boys overbooked him. His cutout job added to it. He couldn’t work on the click just yet.
Junkie Monkey said, “The Beatles bop down to da muthafuckin’ ghetto to score some black trim. Dey meets dese two unhealthy-lookin’ sistahs name of Carcinoma an’ Melanoma an’-”
Wayne looked out the window. Marsh walked by outside. Wayne got up and followed him back to the fleet lot. Sixteen Tiger kabs glowed.
Marsh was cool-day sweaty. Wayne gave him his handkerchief.
“Tell me.”
“I was with Jomo two nights ago. He beat up the counterman at a liquor store and 211’d him. I’m fairly sure the man recognized me.”
“Why’d you wait this long to tell me?”
“It’s my tendency. I tend to wait things out.”
“What were you waiting for?”
“Scotty. Every liquor-store proprietor on God’s green earth knows him and owes him.”
Motown blared. Some fool goosed the dispatch-hut hi-fi. Wayne steered Marsh over to the alley fence.
“He hasn’t called Scotty. You’d have heard by now.”
“Yes. That’s what I’m thinking.”
Wayne said, “Give me something.”
Marsh wiped his forehead. “What do you mean?”
“Give me a lead for Dwight. Tell me something to convince him you’re working.”
Marsh sighed. “Liquor-store heists. There’s been a bunch of them.”
Wayne mimicked the sigh. “We’re back to liquor stores?”
“That’s not what I mean. I’m saying I may have something.”
Wayne sighed harder. “Liquor-store jobs in South L.A. with black suspects? Can you give me something more original than that?”
Marsh wiped his forehead. “Jomo’s been talking up this big coin he’s got, but he won’t reveal the source.”
Wayne shook his head. “That’s insufficient. I’ll frost your deal two nights ago, but you’re going to start working harder.”
“Jesus, Wayne.”
Wayne pushed him into the fence. “You’re going with BTA. You’re going to suck up to Leander Jackson and pick a public fight with Jomo. I’m going to the Dominican Republic. We’ll stage it when I get back. You’re going to level Jomo over the liquor-store deal. You’re going to call him a ‘punk-ass, evil, no-account nigger,’ and I’ll be there to watch you do it.”
“Jesus. Just give me-”
A kab pulled in and up. Wayne stepped back and cleared a space.
“You’ll do it. I’ll tell the world that you’re a faggot if you don’t.”
The liquor store was close by. The counterman was bandaged from the eyebrows up. Wayne walked in and bought a bag of potato chips. The man sniffed fuzz.
“LAPD?”
“Ex-LVPD. I retired.”
The man rang the sale. “Why’d you retire?”
“I shot some unarmed black guys and it got out of hand.”
“Did they deserve it?”
Wayne gave him a dollar. “Yes.”
The man gave him change. “Did you feel bad about it?”
“Yes, I did.”
The man smiled. Wayne pointed to his bandage and tossed him a cash roll. Two grand in fifties, rubber band-wrapped.
“Did you call Scotty?”
“I was thinking about it.”
“That Scotty’s a pisser.”
“He’s all of that. These same brothers robbed me on six different occasions, so I called up Scotty, independent. I told him the regular LAPD wasn’t doing their job. Scotty said he’d take care of it, which he did.”
“That must have been some sight.”
“It was. They came in with ski masks and went out under sheets. Scotty shoots double-aught with little spiky things attached. Wasn’t much left of them.”
Wayne ate a potato chip. “You’ve got a certain loyalty to Scotty.”
“Yeah, like I suspect you got for that Marshall Bowen guy.”
Wayne tossed cash roll #2. The man fanned it.
“Bowen must be jungled up with some money guys. ‘High-level informant.’ Does that sound right?”
“Your mortgage is way in arrears. I’m prepared to cover it.”
“My electric bill’s behind, too.”
“Anything else?”
“Yeah, one more thing. I want one of those tiger limousines for my daughter’s sweet sixteen.”
USC was close by. His schedule was tight. Drac had requested a phone chat. Yes, sir. Nuclear fallout will kill you. No, sir-no time soon. Yes, we should ban the Bomb. No, the world powers will not accede on your say-so.
Wayne parked and strolled the campus. The student body was half square kids, half longhairs all aggrieved. Left- and right-wing flyers covered signboards. YAF vs SDS, VIVA vs SNCC. Kids with guitars, kids in letter sweaters, a few black kids in dashikis.
Wayne walked and braced passersby. The “Freedom School”? Beats me. He checked the campus directory. No, no listing.
He kept at it. He pay-phoned Farlan and postponed the Drac chat. He saw some custodians on a smoke break and walked over.
They were black. They sniffed cop. Wayne sniffed ex-con labor. He laid out ten-spots and pitched them, smiling.
“There was something called the ‘Freedom School.’ It was here on campus six or seven years ago.”
Three guys blank-faced it. One guy said, “Defunct, man. Tapped out before the Watts uprising.” One guy said, “There’s some bungalows catty-corner from the rec center. Nobody uses them. Look for this dusty old door with this faded-out poster.”
Wayne said thanks and strolled. The walkways were tree-lined. Clandestine pot fumes swirled here and there. He found the rec center and the bungalows. He saw the postered door.
Fall, ‘64. SAVE THE RUMFORD FAIR-HOUSING ACT! “PROPERTY RIGHTS” MEANS “RACISM”!!!!
The door looked flimsy. Wayne shoulder-popped it easy. He stepped in. A back window provided light. The room was wall-to-wall boxes.
He went through them. They held stacks of flyers and polemics. Huelga!, Hands Off Cuba!, fruit-picker strikes. Support Al Fatah, the PLF, the 6/14 Movement. Remember Leo Frank, Emmett Till and the Scottsboro Boys. Civil-rights rants, black-power screeds. Malcolm X, Franz Fanon, Free the Rosenbergs. Free Algeria! Free Palestine! Down with the evil Goat Trujillo, Uncle Sam’s insect. United Fruit: Do you know what that banana on your plate just cost?
He hit a group photograph. It was dated 9/22/62. It looked like a faculty shot.
Seven men and women outside the bungalow. Three are white, four are black. Two white women off to the side. One woman is tall and red-haired. The other woman is shorter. She’s mid-to-late thiryish. She has dark, gray-streaked hair and black-framed glasses.
Click. Blip. Maybe, probably, not quite.
The click clicked on and clicked off short of Eureka! The blip took a weird form. Sultan Sam’s Sandbox, three months ago. Smoke rings and a back view of streaked hair just like that.