Walter Mosley - Bad Boy Brawly Brown

A little later on he had received orders to “make contact with friends who could aid in the procurement of revolutionary funds and the maintenance of emergency refuge.”

Brawly came from a very different generation than mine. He was intelligent and ambitious, where I had been crafty and happy if I made it through the day. I never questioned the white man’s authority — that was a given.

But what really separated us was a need for love and his trust in people. He believed that there was a place for him and his in the world. I knew, from reading his words, that the only way to truly save him was to shatter this belief.

In one of the bedrooms there was a canvas cot with sheets and a pillow strewn across it. I imagined Conrad and BobbiAnne slipping away now and then to have sex on that cot. For some reason it reminded me of Isolda and her bedroom pictures. It was in that moment that I realized where those photographs had been taken.

I slipped out of the back door and walked across the street to my car.

Jesus was sitting on the front porch waiting for me when I got home. He’d already set up a place in the living room for me to sit while he stood and read.

“You could sit down, Juice,” I said. “Forty-five minutes is a long time and I want you concentrating on the words, not your feet.”

Jesus grinned. I had missed that grin. It was a brief thing, like sighting a rare scarlet bird in the deep woods. A flit of the wing and it was gone again.

I had gotten a large hardcover copy of Moby-Dick from the Robertson library for our first reading. While Feather and Bonnie puttered and played in the kitchen, Jesus read to me about Ishmael and his ill-fated voyage.

The reading was difficult. For many of the words he had to stop and use the Webster’s Dictionary we kept under the coffee table. But when it was over I was surprised at Jesus’s understanding of the story and its implications. We were twelve pages into his education and already we were a success.

Jackson called a few minutes after dinner. Jesus and Feather were working on the dishes while Bonnie hovered over them, making sure they didn’t miss any spots.

“How’s it goin’, Easy?” he asked. Before I could answer he said, “I been workin’ my butt off earnin’ that two-fifty.”

“All I need to know is about the payroll.”

“Manelli pays his men once a month. It’s always a Saturday payroll,” Jackson said. He paused and then added, “Except for this week.”

“What’s that mean?”

“I went in to the assistant secretary, in the office bungalow, and made friends. She said that she was studyin’ for her bookkeeper’s two-year degree and I showed her how she could make a couple’a shortcuts in a year-end tax application with deductions.”

I wasn’t surprised that Jackson had studied accounting. Since he was both brilliant and a thief, it stood to reason that he’d study stealing from the inside out.

“After I was so helpful,” Jackson continued, “I asked her if I could get a partial paycheck tomorrow because my rent was due and the landlord needed at least a li’l taste. She told me that maybe she could process it for Monday because they had heard that tomorrow’s payday was going to have to be put off until Monday. She asked me not to tell nobody ’cause it was a secret. She was upset because she knew the men needed the money, especially since they had to balance everything on a once-a-month nut. I asked her why the delay, but she didn’t know. I got an idea, though.”

“What?”

“Well, Easy,” he said, “I don’t know what you into, but if the payroll is switched secretly at the last minute, then it’s got to be something big. You know them construction workers like to riot if they don’t get tomorrow’s cash. I think it’s a setup and I think you know why.”

“Thank you, Jackson,” I said. “I’ll bring your money by in a couple’a days.”

“What you into, Easy?” he asked. “You gonna start hittin’ payrolls?”

“Jackson, how could you be so smart and so stupid at the same time?”

I drove past the gang’s hideout later that evening, but it looked empty. I went in through the back porch. Everything but the food containers had been cleared out — even the girly magazines were gone.

But Isolda was at home. She was still in her bathrobe, but her hair was done and she had put on her makeup. I was carrying a small satchel that was open so I could get to my pistol quickly.

“Mr. Rawlins?” she said, looking down at the brown leather bag. “What is it?”

“Can I come in?”

Her pouting lips curled back into a smile, but I felt nothing. Young men respond to women purely by animal instinct. But in maturity our minds are sometimes able to short-circuit those impulses.

We went to her window. Even though the sun was down, there was a bright light shining in from a street sign. She poured me an iced tea, which I put down on the jury-rigged, sheet-covered table.

“I’m surprised you came by again,” she said.

“Why?” I asked. I was surveying the corners of the room. There didn’t seem to be any place where a grown man could hide.

“You were so angry — you know, about me and Brawly.”

“Yeah,” I said, “Brawly. That’s why I’m here.”

“What about him?”

“Where is he?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” she said, revealing from her choice of words that she was a daughter of the South.

“Oh yeah, baby,” I said. “You know damn well where he is, or at least you know who knows. So let’s not fuck around.”

“Mr. Rawlins,” she protested.

“I said, don’t fuck with me, Issy. This is not the time to be coy. This is the time to talk turkey.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m sayin’ that you are the one that holds it all together.”

“Holds what together?”

“You’re the one who knows everybody. Brawly,” I said, holding up one finger, “Mercury—”

“I told you I only met him in passing.”

“— Henry Strong,” I said, putting up the third digit. “And you been with Aldridge on and off for years.”

“Aldridge, yes,” she said. “But I don’t have anything to do with the other men.”

“No,” I said. “You were with Henry Strong. You met him through Brawly and you let him stay over a night or two. But he didn’t know that Brawly told you everything. He didn’t know that Brawly told you that he was planning a robbery just like his old man.”

“You’re crazy,” Isolda said, and then she moved to stand.

“I already knocked out one woman today,” I said. “And I liked her.”

Hearing that, Isolda settled back down.

“Like I said,” I continued, “Brawly told you what he was doin’ and I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts that you found out that Henry was a spy. He was going to run with you on the day before the robbery.”

“That’s crazy talk,” Isolda said. She wouldn’t even look in my direction.

“Your bikini says different.”

She turned to me, the question in her eyes.

“I saw the pictures,” I said. “You in a tan bikini on a bed that I didn’t come across for a few days. It didn’t strike me at first, but then I was in another bedroom and I remembered.”

“What the hell are you saying?”

“Strong took pictures of you in his bedroom,” I said. “I bet you were modeling for him, practicing for how it was gonna be down in the islands.”

“Who told you that?” Issy’s neck twitched.

“The same little bird who told me about Aldridge being Brawly’s uncle’s partner in that robbery.”

“What do you mean that Hank was a spy?” she asked. “You didn’t know?” I asked. And then, “Of course you didn’t. If you did, they’d’ve called off the robbery by now.”