Angelo’s was the place for Italian cuisine in Los Angeles at that time. The pasta was cooked al dente and the sauces had the full body provided by garlic, red wine, and extra-virgin olive oil. His wife, Angela, baked the bread every morning.
I found Jackson and Jean-Paul sitting with a square-shouldered, square-faced man wearing Brooks Brothers gray. When I entered the semisecluded booth at the back of the restaurant, the stranger rose first.
His glasses frames were rose-gold in color, and his blue-gray eyes reminded me of Clive Chester’s—wary of the new. Once again I was an unknown quantity in a previously known universe.
“Monsieur Merkan,” Jean-Paul said, also rising. “This is the man I was telling you about.”
“Easy Rawlins,” I said, extending a hand.
“You’re the one making these accusations?” he said, not taking the proffered hand.
“I’m the one setting up the proof,” I corrected. “Jackson here is the one who made the allegation.”
The flesh around Merkan’s left eye quivered.
“Shall we ’ave a seat?” Jean-Paul suggested.
“I want to tell you right off that I don’t believe a word of this,” Merkan said as soon as we were settled. “John Portia and Theodore Huggins have been with my company for nearly twenty years. Johnny’s engaged to my niece.”
Angelo came to our table at that moment.
I stood to hug the Italian-born restaurateur. He was a roly-poly man with coarse mustache hairs, an antifascist who had a great love of his native land. Bonnie and I had met him one evening on a date at his place. I started talking about my experiences in Italy during the war and won his favor.
“What do you wish for dinner?”
“Just keep it comin’,” I said.
He nodded and said to my guests, “You are all welcome here.”
He went away, and a slender young short-haired waiter came to serve us red wine.
When the waiter had gone I said to Merkan, “If you don’t believe it then why did you come?”
“Are you questioning me?” Merkan asked.
“Are you calling Jackson a liar?”
My insolence enraged the captain of industry, but I didn’t mind; I had learned in the war, by bitter experience, that all of us, in spite of any constitution or theory of government, were equal, and equally vulnerable to one another.
“What right does either one of you have to impugn the integrity of senior officers of one of the largest companies in America?” he stated.
“Jean-Paul,” I said.
“Yes, Easy?”
“Maybe we should call the police in on this. I know a cop would probably come out. Mr. Merkan can go home to his bags of money and wait for the news of his officers’ arrest.”
“Henri?” Jean-Paul said to Merkan.
“What?” Merkan snapped.
“It is either you or the police. I believe these men, my men. I want to see what is ’appening.”
Merkan didn’t like Negroes; he most certainly had never been on eye-to-eye terms with one. He probably didn’t like the French either. But there we were.
“Fine,” he said. “But when I prove to you that this little shit here is lying, I expect you to can his ass.”
Jackson held up his wineglass, giving a wordless toast. Jean-Paul smiled broadly.
The hotel suite was well-appointed, composed of colors that were muted and austere, gathering light from the chandelier and lamps and magnifying it with oddly subdued intensity.
Jackson and I were sitting in the living room area. He was sipping cognac while I drank Coke from a six-and-a-half-ounce bottle modeled, it seemed, after the figure of Jayne Mansfield.
“I got three microphones hidden around the room, Easy,” he’d told me before we entered. “JP and Merkan will be able to hear everything in the connecting suite.”
“So what do you think about Cotton Comes to Harlem now, Jackson?” I asked to keep up his courage while not letting anything important come out with the white men listening in.
Merkan had been joined by two white security men outside the restaurant. They wore suits of a slightly inferior cut to their master’s and carried pistols in shoulder holsters.
“I think that Himes is equal to Ellison,” Jackson opined.
“You compare Cotton to Invisible Man?”
“Not just that,” Jackson countered. “Chester got thirteen other books and still countin’. Ellison is good, but you know the word masterpiece comes from paintin’.”
“So?”
“There ain’t nevah been an artist in history evah painted just one paintin’ and had it called a masterpiece. You got to do a lot of work, get experience before you can say somethin’ like that. I like Ralph’s book, but I think it’s Chester get down to where the shit stinks. Ellison made a window that the white man could look inta, but it’s Chester made a door so we had a way out the burnin’ house.”
At that moment I forgot about TexOk and fingerprints, about a boy who wanted to kill the man that had gotten me to save his life. Jackson had the ability to set a fire in my mind. He was forever thinking, and a thinking man is always in trouble—especially if his skin doesn’t fit into the color scheme of the dominant culture.
The bell to the suite chose that moment to ring.
Jackson made to rise but I gestured for him to stay where he was.
I went to the door and opened it.
There were five men there to greet me. The man up front and two directly behind him were muscle. I expected that. If Jackson really had shot a cop, which I’m sure Charles Rumor had claimed, Johnny and Theodore would have been fools to come unprotected.
The three white men in cut-rate business suits were probably off-duty cops, or maybe they were ex-cops or underemployed security guards. Their stances indicated that they expected trouble.
I smiled and stepped backward.
“Come in, gentlemen,” I said in greeting.
The two backup guards pressed past me and checked out the rooms. They searched the toilets, bedroom, and utility kitchen—went through all the closets. Nothing. The door to the connecting suite was locked. There was really no reason to be suspicious of that.
Finally the principals came in.
Theodore Huggins was once again wearing the brick red suit and blush pink shirt that Jackson had described. He was tall and blousy. Rumor and Jackson were right: He did look like an animate pile of rubble. Even his grayish complexion reminded me of the mortar used to pave factory walls and chimneys.
Huggins’s hair was close-cropped, black with a few stubbles of white. Johnny Portia had longish, Elvis Presley–like black hair and wore a dark green suit that was tailored to his compact form. He carried a sleek black briefcase with his left hand.
One of the two bodyguards whispered something to the one that lagged behind. This man in turn whispered to Huggins, who replied, “Okay, Turner, have your men wait outside. We’ll only be a few minutes.”
Huggins then turned to me, saying, “You too.”
“Not hardly,” I replied. “Jackson is skittish, and he paid me fifty dollars to sit by his side.”
“That’s right,” Jackson said. “Porterhouse here is the best friend money can buy.”
And so it was the five of us, there to do business in a particularly American fashion.
The layout of the room was a cream blue-footed sofa surrounded by three similarly upholstered chairs. The coffee table was frosted oak with dragon feet for legs. Jackson and Johnny sat side by side on the sofa while us others took the chairs.
Portia put the black briefcase on the table, opened it, and took out a contract sheaf. Underneath this document lay a few bound stacks of money.
“You have to sign each page,” the TexOk officer said. He handed Jackson a fancy-looking pen.
Jackson looked to me and I shrugged.
My mind was already past that room. I was wondering about dead men and their legacies, young men and their desire for fathers and revenge. I wondered what Mouse would do if he was Merkan. That thought made me grin.
“I been thinkin’ about this, Mr. Portia,” Jackson said, as we had planned. “I mean, once I do this I’m out. JP’ll fire me. He might try and put me in jail.”
“I will send you to spend the rest of your life in prison,” Portia promised.
“I know that. But here you want my signature and I don’t even have the gun.”
“I have no reason to burn you unless you betray me,” the VP said.
Betrayal, I repeated silently. It was an odd concept for this criminal.
“But if I got to run I’ll need more money,” Jackson argued.
“Ten thousand is all I’m giving,” Johnny said. He was in charge and reveling in the power.
“How much did you pay the other two?” Jackson asked. “I’m the senior officer.”
“You’re just a monkey dressed up in businessman’s clothes.”
Turner, the gunsel, glanced at me. He was younger but I was larger. Wherever he came from, he had learned that black men don’t appreciate being talked to in that manner.
I looked back with no aggression in my eyes. If I had been Mouse, all three white men would have been in jeopardy by then.
That was when the connecting door came open.
Jean-Paul and Merkan followed their gunmen in. Turner leaped to his feet, but the two security guards already had their weapons out.
“Henry?” Portia said. He was too shocked to stand. “What are you doing here?”
Instead of answering Merkan went to the coffee table and picked up the papers.
“You don’t understand, Henry. This man came to me. It was his idea.”
Merkan looked from Huggins to Portia and back again. He took a deep breath and held it. Then he handed the documents to Jean-Paul, who immediately scanned the papers for the other two signatures.
“Go home, John,” Merkan said. “You too, Theo. Go home. I’ll have your offices packed up and sent to you by the end of the week.”
“Henry,” Johnny Portia said.
“Go.”
“You’re going to be sorry for this, Blue,” Johnny told my friend.
Jackson cowered even though he knew that he was safe.
After our guests were gone, Jackson, JP, and I sat in the sumptuous living room. Jackson’s face was glistening from sweat. It took all of the courage he could muster to face his blackmailers. I realized that over the years he had developed some semblance of personal bravery.
“ ’Ow can we repay you, Easy?” Jean-Paul asked.
“Hold that money and let me sleep in this suite tonight.”
“That is all you want?”
“It’s all I need,” I said.
Jackson and his boss left soon after that. I curled up on the sofa because I didn’t have the strength to make it to the bed.