I stood there in the open doorway thinking that I might be in over my head and deciding that I should put in a screen door so that my new house could catch the breeze without inviting in a battalion of flies.
Maybe my life needed a screen door.
The little yellow dog clicked his claws on the tiled floor of the entranceway, pacing and whining about too much change too quickly. I picked him up and he stopped his complaint. Together we went back into the sun-flooded living room. I sat on the sofa and the dog curled into a ball on my lap.
There was a young woman out there named Rosemary Goldsmith, the daughter of a weapons manufacturer. Along with Rosemary was a black ex-boxer named Mantle.…
I’d seen Battling Bob Mantle maybe five years before. He was fighting a welterweight contender named Juan Díaz. Mantle had been outclassed from the first minute of the first round but he kept on coming. He threw fists and elbows, and shoulders in the clinches, at Díaz. For ten full rounds Mantle flailed at the Mexican hopeful. Díaz won nine rounds on the judges’ cards, and that was still a favor to Mantle. I thought at the time that Battling Bob fought like a man who believed he was a boxer but was not. His resolve was so strong, however, that it took all of Díaz’s will and great skill to defeat him.
The little yellow dog was asleep. I placed him gently on the cushion next to me and walked to the long, well-appointed kitchen, where Jackson Blue had connected my phone.
The heavy black phone was set on two phone books on the white and red tiled kitchen counter.
Benoit’s Gym was listed in the Yellow Pages.
The phone rang eight times before someone answered.
“Benoit’s.”
“Yeah,” I said tentatively. “Is this Benoit’s Gym?”
“Ain’t that what I just said?”
“Uh-uh, I mean, yes. I’m calling for, um, let me see, I’m calling for a Bob, Robert Mantle.”
“You takin’ his boxin’ class?” the man’s voice asked. He was black, probably from the eastern South—Charleston would have been my bet.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes I am.”
“He’s not here.”
“I wanted to, um, to take his class. You know, I want to get in shape and I always liked boxing. My cousin Shawn takes karate but I don’t like all that kicking.”
“Bobby’s beginner class is at ten in the morning Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. If it’s your first day you need to have real boxer’s trunks, not no swimmin’ suit, and regulation eight-ounce gloves. If you don’t have the right trunks and gloves Bobby won’t let you take class, he won’t even let you watch.”
“Okay,” I said in a gentle voice that wasn’t mine.
“It costs eight dollars a class up front. You could come tomorrow. You don’t have to have all that stuff because Bobby’s away and Tommy’s teachin’ his class. Tommy lets you wear sweatpants or swimmin’ trunks. He don’t care what you look like, only how you fight.”
“That’s too bad. I heard that Mantle was a good teacher.”
“I don’t know where you heard that,” the voice told me. “Tommy Latour could fight rings around Bobby. That’s how they met—when Tommy was kickin’ Bobby’s ass in a ring in Las Vegas.”
“That’s Hardcase Tommy Latour?” I asked, maybe a little out of character.
“I gotta go, man. Be here before ten with eight dollars and Hardcase will teach you how to spar.”
“Thank you.”
The gym worker hung up without telling me good-bye. I wasn’t bothered, however.
Outside the big kitchen window grew a spindly, fourteen-foot pomegranate tree. That and the master bedroom’s bathroom’s huge bathtub were two of three major factors in me buying that house. I loved having real fruit growing in my yard. There was a lemon tree out back.
I was a country boy at my core. If I didn’t think the neighbors would go crazy I would have dug up the front lawn and put in a vegetable garden. I might have built a chicken coop in the backyard and replaced my fire-engine red speedster with a donkey or mule.
I knew that I wanted off the Goldsmith case, because of my daydreams. I always had rural thoughts when I wanted to get away from troubles. Black Southerners didn’t leave the farm for the lure of the big city; we left because of grinding poverty and the oppression of racism that was so pervasive it was like the heavy atmosphere of a much larger planet.
I had taken one step into the conundrum of the missing rich girl. If it was any other job I could have still backed out. But Tout Manning was right. I couldn’t say no to the mayor’s minions. They might have been his creatures, they might have been indentured while I was a free man—but they were like hunting hounds, and I was either going to point out the prey or fall victim to their snapping jaws.
I couldn’t quit the job but I could pretend that I wasn’t on it, at least for one night.
I walked upstairs and wandered around the rooms.
Feather’s bed was already made and there was a multicolored throw rug between it and her maple desk. I could see in her neatness my attention to detail.
Years before, on Saturday mornings, she, Jesus, and I cleaned up the little house we shared. We worked all morning and then had French toast with real Vermont maple syrup for brunch.
Feather was looking forward to designing our new space. For her it was like an unfinished work of art: a musical composition or sculpture; a big house to make into a home before she moved off to Harvard or Oxford and grew into a stranger that I would love because of this present-day past together.
The phone interrupted my maudlin thoughts. It rang six times before I made it down to the kitchen. Frenchie joined me there.
“Hello?”
“Easy?”
“Hey, Jewelle, what’s happening, girl?”
“Nothing, I mean, just the usual. Jackson said that the police came by today and helped you move?”
I laughed, remembering how Jackson was a master storyteller second only to Mouse.
“They wanted me to work for them and I said I had to finish moving.”
“Did Percy Bidwell come along?”
“Yes he did,” I said.
“And?”
“Did you tell him that I would introduce him to Jason Middleton?”
“I said that he could ask you but it was up to you what you did.”
Middleton was an influential investment banker from an old California family. That family had a black servant named Mattie. Mattie had a daughter named Loretta. Jason had hired me to prove that Loretta wasn’t in on a burglary at his home. The police thought it was her. Mattie did not, and Jason, in spite of better judgment, had fallen in love with the handsome daughter.
It all worked out. The police ended up arresting Middleton’s younger son’s college roommate. Mattie, and her daughter, moved to Boston to work for Middleton’s eccentric sister, and I had a favor that I could cash in whenever I wanted.
“What did Percy say?” Jewelle asked.
“He practically told me that you expected me to make the introductions.”
“I didn’t. You know I wouldn’t do that.”
“I didn’t think so. Do you need me to do anything?”
“No, Easy, no. I’d just like you to talk to Percy. If you think he’s worthwhile you can introduce him to Middleton if you want.”
I had once seen a report that the FBI had made available to the public. Due to national safety and other constitutional concerns, over 80 percent of the file had been blacked out. That document was loquacious compared to the editing Jewelle was doing on the explanation of her involvement with Percy Bidwell’s needs.
“I told the cops that I couldn’t work on their project because of the money I needed over those city infractions,” I said, partly to get out of prickly talk about Bidwell and Middleton.
“And what did they say?”
“They gave me six thousand dollars and said that the city would give me more time.”
“You know, Easy”—Jewelle sounded more like herself on the safer grounds of business—“it was odd about those inspections.”
“Odd how?”
“Usually the city sends its inspectors out in force when they want to collect fines and whatnot. You know I manage hundreds of units and you were the only one they targeted.”
“That is odd.”
“Yes it is.”
“Can I do anything else for you, J?” I asked again.
“Will you let Percy call you if I promise he won’t be rude again?”
“Sure,” I said instead of the no I felt.