Walter Mosley - Bad Boy Brawly Brown

“What are you talking about?” Isolda said. By then they were just words. She knew she was caught. Now she was just looking for the way out.

“He fell for you and all,” I said. “He was plannin’ to run with you, to get away forever down on the beach. But he didn’t tell you that he was a rat. No. Proud man like old Hank wouldn’t do that.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Rawlins.”

“No. But you got the idea. I can see that in your eyes,” I said. “Strong told you that you were leaving on the boat the day before the job. For all he knew, you didn’t know about the plans he’d made with Brawly and Conrad. He didn’t have to tell you that he was a stool pigeon the whole time. He didn’t have to tell you that he set up members of the First Men to hit a payroll, get caught in the act, and so discredit the whole organization.”

My little speech made Isolda restless. I might not have been one hundred percent correct, but I had too much for her to dismiss me. She clasped her hands and turned her head from side to side. Then suddenly she hit a serious calm.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“I got the outline,” I said. “What I need from you is to fill it in with names and addresses.”

“And what do I get out of it?”

“First of all, I don’t call up Hank’s police masters and tell them that you’re in on the plan. Second, I don’t call John and tell him that you tried to frame Brawly for killing his father.”

“I’m not afraid of that,” she lied. “I’m innocent.”

“No,” I said. “You haven’t been innocent since you were a school-girl. What you think is that you can run away. But that’s wrong. If you don’t tell me what I wanna know, I’ma hit you upside your head, tie you up like a hog, and drive you down to police headquarters in the trunk’a my car.”

I wasn’t lying and Isolda knew it. I didn’t want to have to get so violent, but then again, this was the only chance I had to find out what was going on.

I must have impressed Isolda because she said, “And if you hear what you want, you gonna leave me be?”

“Let’s hear what you got to say,” I said.

Watching her was the most astonishing thing. The beauty just drained right out of her face. It was like a facade, a mask. Suddenly she was hard and angry — close to downright ugly.

“You were right about me an’ Hank,” she said. “The minute I saw him I knew that he was the man for me. He had that voice and knew how to dress. You know most’a the Negroes ’round here are country boys with holes in their jeans and shit on their shoes. They like it like that.”

“But not Henry,” I prodded.

“Brawly brought him by—”

“So you and Brawly still talked?”

“Of course we did. I was close as a mother to that boy. He’d get jealous when I had a man around. That’s why him and Aldridge fought—”

“So that did happen?”

“Yeah,” Isolda said. “Only it was just a push-fight. They were gettin’ close again already. It was just the whiskey that made them mad.”

“So what happened with Henry?”

“He said that he was tired of tryin’ to fight for equal rights, that he’d been active in politics all these years and nuthin’ was changin’, not really. He said that he was gonna make a big deal and then go to a country where black men knew how to be bankers and presidents. He said he wanted me to be with him.”

“He didn’t tell you that his money was really comin’ from the cops?”

“He didn’t say nuthin’ but that he was gonna make a deal. But now that you say it, it makes sense. You’re right, I knew what was happenin’ ’cause Brawly told me about it. Brawly tells me everything.”

“What’s Aldridge got to do with all this?”

“Brawly told him, too,” Isolda whispered. “He knew that it was Aldridge with his uncle in that robbery all them years ago. That’s why him and his daddy fought back then. He was mad at Aldridge ’cause he knew that Alva went crazy ’cause her brother died. For a long time he was mad but then he told Aldridge that he was gonna do the same thing. He was gonna rob a payroll.”

There was a lull in the conversation then. Isolda was getting on thin ice and I was afraid to find out who might fall in with her.

Finally I asked, “So did Brawly do it?”

“No.”

I couldn’t help the smile on my face. Even if Isolda was lying, at least she was protecting Brawly.

“Who did?” I asked.

“Mercury.”

I wasn’t surprised. Mercury had the build for the kind of violence that was visited upon Aldridge.

I wasn’t surprised but I asked, “How the hell did Mercury get in on it?”

“He was hangin’ out with all of us. And one day I found cotton panties with that little bitch Tina Montes’s name written in ’em — in Hank’s bottom drawer.”

“Oh.”

“He didn’t put no ring on my finger, so when he’d tell me he was too busy or he was tired, I’d call Mercury and get him to come by.”

“So you told Mercury about the robbery?”

“Naw. He was already in it. Brawly told Hank about Mercury and he asked him to help us plan it. Then Merc found out that Aldridge was makin’ noise that he wouldn’t let Brawly be part of any robbery. He told me to ask him to my house so they could talk, alone.”

“So you were in on the plan to kill him,” I accused.

“No. I wasn’t even in town. I was in Riverside, like I said. I didn’t know what Merc was gonna do.”

“What you think he was gonna do?”

“Talk,” she complained. “Like he said. But after...after he told me that Aldridge attacked him. It was self-defense.”

“And was Henry Strong self-defense, too?”

“I told Merc that Henry planned to run. I had to. Henry wouldn’t let me in on what they was doin’. He wanted to take me away but he didn’t wanna get married. What would I do if he left me high and dry in Jamaica?”

“So what was I doin’ there?” I asked her.

“Mercury told Henry that you were followin’ Brawly and Conrad. He said that he wanted to beat you up bad enough that you’d lay off until the job was over. Then he told Conrad that Henry and you was gonna throw ’em ovah.”

“So they planned to kill me, too?”

Isolda looked away.

“Where’s Brawly?” I asked, just to see what she would say.

“I don’t know.”

“If you in on the plan, then why wouldn’t you know?”

“They were all shaken up with the bust and you nosin’ around. With all that heat, they went into hiding,” she said. “Mercury said that he was gonna come to me after it was all over. He said that we’d go down to Texas and split his share.”

The fact that she could say those words amazed me. I just stared at her, wondering how she could get so deep into evil and not seem to have any remorse at all.

“What?” she asked. “What?”

“Why did Strong want to get in with Mercury in the first place?” I asked. “I mean, he’s no race man.”

“Henry didn’t talk to me about that. He didn’t even know that I knew anything,” Isolda said. “But Brawly told me that he was interested in the construction business from the beginning. He talked to him about payrolls and the police. And when he heard that Mercury and Chapman specialized in payrolls, Hank said that he wanted to meet them.”

I just shook my head.

“It’s not like you think,” she said. “I’m just tryin’ to make it.”

“By turnin’ Brawly in?”

“I was tryin’ to save him.”

“Save him how? By blamin’ him for murder?”

“I only said that. I knew he had a alibi. He was with me. He the one drove me up to Riverside. All kindsa people saw us. I thought that if I told John and Alva that he might’a killed Aldridge, that they would have taken him away or somethin’. I didn’t want him messed up with Merc an’ them. I knew that it’d be dangerous.”