South Central Noir

“I have discovered the Los Angeles Public Library. If I read two books a day, I still couldn’t read all the books by and about Negroes!” Mae sounded like a little kid in her excitement. “And so many of the librarians are colored women... Negro women... Black women, and they help you find books to read! I wish Samuel was here, he would love going to the library. But we didn’t know about libraries, and we didn’t have time for that anyway. And it’s not just one library, Velma, there’s a bunch of ’em and we can go to whatever one we want!”

“But you can’t read all day, every day,” Velma said.

“I think maybe I could. But I don’t have to ’cause I’m learning how to swim. And there’s more than one pool too! Can you swim, Velma?”

Horrified by the thought, Velma said the only thing she did in water was bathe, and she refused to even consider the suggestion that she join Mae for a lesson. “Besides, the water is too deep.”

“Velma, the water is three feet deep at the shallow end of the pool. Only people who know how to swim go to the deep end,” Mae explained, but Velma wasn’t listening and Mae knew when to quit. She watched Bernice work the room — she was a pro, no doubt about it, and the place would be in good hands with Bernice, her sisters, and their daughters in charge. Mae knew she was doing the right thing.

“Miss Mae, Miss Mae, come here quick!” The summons came from the front door and both Mae and Bernice ran toward the trouble.

“Oh dear Lord!” Bernice exclaimed when she saw the beaten and bloody body of Etta James being supported between Eartha Kitt and Dinah Washington.

“Side door,” Mae said.

“I’ll go unlock it,” Bernice said, and ran through the kitchen and up the stairs into the main room, then down the interior stairs to open the door.

“Velma, call Dr. Harris and tell him I said to please come quickly and to use the side door.”

Getting the unconscious Etta up the steep stairs was difficult, but should anyone doubt it, Eartha and Dinah were men despite the gowned and jeweled brilliance of the show they put on every night, in secret now since a recent law had made female-impersonation shows illegal.

Mae hadn’t been in this staircase since the night Samuel was murdered and the memory made her dizzy. “What happened?”

“That cop. The one whose arm she grabbed to keep him from shooting you that time,” Dinah said, and Mae had to hold the edge of the bar to keep her balance. Not someone else hurt protecting her!

“I am so sorry—”

“You got nothin’ to be sorry for, Miss Mae,” Eartha said. “It’s that damn cop. He come runnin’ outta that liquor store up the block and we didn’t see him in time.” She added that his partner never showed up.

“And people were in line? They saw this?”

“Don’t worry ’bout it, Mae,” Bernice said. “I’ll handle things outside.” She headed for the steps, beckoning Eartha to follow, just as Velma hurried up the stairs, followed by the doctor.

The doctor greeted Mae, then went into the bedroom to look at Etta. “Good God! I’m gonna have to remove the clothes, you know that, right?” Dinah nodded. “And I’m gonna need hot water, lots of it, and lots of towels and some clean sheets.” He peered at Dinah. “You can help me, everybody else can leave.”

“Should we stay up here just in case?” Velma asked, and Mae asked if she’d help Dinah do whatever the doctor needed.

Mae was too busy inside her own head. One of the undercover venues for female-impersonator performances was not far away, at 21st and Vernon, and they’d probably gone for dinner before their show. But what was the cop doing there alone? Mae had too many thoughts in her brain.

I jinxed myself. It’s acting like the eighth month of an eight-year after all, was one of them, followed by an old, old thought: What if I hadn’t stolen Dave Hebert’s money? And as happened every time she had that thought, she heard her Grandpa Oliver’s voice: If a frog had a glass ass, it’d break every time he jumped.

Death of a Sideman by Gary Phillips

Exposition Park

The old man wore ratty sneakers, a kaftan with various food and unidentified stains on it, and a fedora at a jaunty angle on his bald head. He also had a snow-white brush mustache. In his head he was John Travolta from that opening scene in Saturday Night Fever gliding with a dancer’s grace along the city sidewalk.

“I’m staying alive, goddamnit,” he said, loudly and proudly. “Staying alive, yeah,” he sang off-key.