South Central Noir

The shop was closed Sundays, while I swept the back room. Out front Mr. Zimmerman sat at the register, balancing his books. My chores took twenty minutes to finish. The rest of my three-hour shift I relaxed with a 3 Musketeers, reading Krazy Kat.

Last Sunday I heard pounding at the door. Mr. Zimmerman told the customer we was closed. Didn’t stop the banging. When I peeked out the curtain I seen Mr. Zimmerman, mad as hell, grabbing his keys to let the guy in.

It was a colored cop. Big ugly high-yeller bald man with muscles like a boxer. Looked like a Fisk gym coach. Didn’t look like no cop. Wore sneakers. Uniform didn’t fit. It wasn’t no friendly meeting neither. He cussed Mr. Zimmerman. Dragged him to the register. Pinned his neck against the wall with one hand, banged the register open with the other.

Something made me snatch up a Brownie. Poked it through the curtain. Snapped some shots. It was over in a minute. After he stolt Mr. Zimmerman’s money, he stolt a fist of candy too. Then left out laughing.

I ain’t no kind of hero, but soon as that mean ol’ cop went away, I pulled the Brownie ’round my neck and ran out back where I’d parked the Flyer. Raced ’round the block in time to see the cop’s brand-new Plymouth chugging down Central. Most of the shops was closed till after church, but the cop seemed to know which ones had somebody inside working inventory. He went in nine shops. Robbed them all. I was able to sneak up to the window at three of them. Snapped the crook red-handed.

Mr. Zimmerman got the pictures developed two days later. I showed them to my Uncle Balthazar. Officer Kimbrow came down soon as my uncle called him. He flipped through the photos, amazed at each one he studied.

14

From late September when I first arrived in the city, until the beginning of November when I got promoted from factotum to bellhop, finally making some money, I’d growed like a weed. An impossible weed. Once five feet seven on its tippy-toes, now a towering palm tree, six feet five on naked feet. I was growing so quick, I ran through four factotum uniforms before I graduated to bellhop. Puzzling as it sounds, I didn’t notice the changes in my body till Miss Chimes started looking at me different. She started calling me Prometheus ’stead of Wormboy.

15

It got to be a hot December.

Tripple digits since the third. Leftovers from Thanksgiving supper was barely out the icebox when Christmas decorations went up all over Central. Coal-black Santas and chocolate elves and angels was seen on every street from 1st to Slauson.

In the main lobby of the Dunbar, a steady stream of tourists lined up to see the baby Jesus, brown as a nut, lying in a manger, with his colored family and admirers kneeling nearby. A big ol’ tree got shipped down from Sonoma. Miss Chimes and her girls dressed it with blinking lights and sugarcanes.

16

Off 8th and Central was a curious house painted curious colors. Yellow and pink. At first I thought it was a settlement house for orphan girls, ’cause the chairs and davenports on the porch was always filled with poorly dressed young womens, looking lonely, with nothing to do. Then I thought it was a pet store run by ladies and specializing in expensive cats, until Tiger Smalls told me that ain’t what a ‘cat house’ mean. It was a shop all right, Tiger said, where pretty girls was rented out for dates. If they sold anything, he said, it was love.

The girls came onto the porch at sunset.

Didn’t pay no mind to the weather. Fanning theyselves when it was boiling hot; playing cards and reading magazines when it was cool. The broke sign over the porch claimed it was a hotel called the Come On Inn. But that was a sign from the old days, Tiger said. Pink House is what folks calls it now.

Don’t need no sign.

Madam Carmelita Sweet was the lady that ran it. Miss Sweet was old like a grandma, but she wore big hats and high heels, like she was a pretty young girl fixing to go to church. Her lips and cheeks was painted bright red.

I started to notice that mens that shopped there would drive past the inn real slow first, picking out the girl they wanted to date, then hunt for a parking spot out back. Or they’d park way down Central, pretending they was shopping somewheres else. Then sneak back.

The entrance was somewheres in the rear.

Both Miss Chimes and Tiger Smalls warned me to steer clear of Madam Sweet and her girls. And I did too, till one night when I was heading home. Just past 26th I rode over some glass. Blew both tires. Had to walk the Flyer thirty blocks home. Past Pink House.

One of the ladies on the porch called out to me. I’d have stopped for that voice even if it wasn’t calling me. Was like singing. Like Ma calling me, when I was a boy. I looked around. There musta been five girls on the porch. I could only really see one of them, the girl in the middle. She was dressed in yellow, her face ink-black in the shadows of the awning.