Only the Wicked Read online

  Dellums started moving the box off the shelf and Carson came over to help him. They got it out and the carpenter put it on the dining room table. Among the items in the box were two photo albums containing old newspaper clippings and original shots.

  There was one sepia-toned picture with a ruffled edge that got their attention. In it stood a man in a Homestead Grays’ uniform and cap, dark piping running down his half-sleeves, a bat cocked back waiting for the pitch, the muscles rigid on his exposed forearm. He had one of his feet slightly off the ground, as his body leaned back just so.

  It was evident from the picture the stadium was small since large poplar trees could be seen behind the stands. The audience behind the ballplayer had their mouths closed, quiet with anticipation. They, like the batter, were black.

  “That’s Marshall in ’forty-six,” Dellums said, tapping the image.

  Monk catalogued the blurry features in the photo and tried to reconcile them with the old man who used to hover near broadcast baseball games like he was waiting for winning lottery numbers to be announced.

  “Goddamn if that ain’t something,” Carson admired.

  “He played for the Birmingham Black Barons and the Cuban X Giants, too,” Dellums recounted. “But he always said of the three teams he played for, he liked being on the Grays the best.”

  They leafed through the rest of the photo album, attempting to outguess each other as to which black baseball player they were viewing.

  “Sam Bankhead, player manager until the Grays went bust in nineteen-fifty, I think,” Dellums recited, as they came upon a particular photo.

  “That’s Cool Papa Bell,” Carson said with conviction, jabbing his finger on a brittle newspaper clip.

  “I can read too, Abe,” Monk chortled. There was another newspaper clipping about the Kansas City Monarchs and the piece included a photo of Bell, complete with identifying caption, showing some rookies how to steal a base.

  The three remained hunched over the album until they got to the end. The trio had been lost in the faces, and the suggested stories, of men whose lives of triumph and sacrifice and disappointment were overwhelming.

  Carson opened the second album.

  “We better get back to work,” Monk reminded the two.

  “There’ll be time to look through this stuff later.”

  “Okay,” Carson replied reluctantly. He stacked the second album on the first and lovingly put the two in the center of the table.

  “Look at this,” Dellums said, pulling out a framed photograph of more baseball players. The group was posed in the outfield of a large stadium. Their uniforms were crisp and each had a large five-pointed star over the left breasts of their long-sleeved shirts. The words TOWNE AVENUE were reversed out in the center of the stars.

  “The Towne Avenue All-Stars at Wrigley Field,” Dellums provided.

  Marshall Spears was easily identifiable in a hound’s-tooth suit, standing to one side of a group of younger men. The cut of the suit and flare of his hat set the era of the photograph as somewhere in the late ’fifties. Next to Spears was another black man in a zigzag-patterned sport coat and open collar. On the opposite end of where the team either stood or crouched, were two more men in suits. One white, the other black.

  “Did he ever tell you who these other men in the suits were?” Monk pointed at the All-Stars photo while addressing Dellums.

  At some point Dellums had put his glasses on and he shifted the heavy frame on his face as he answered. “The man standing next to Marshall was Harvey Lyle, a numbers man.”

  “Yeah?” Carson exclaimed.

  “Oh certainly. Fellas who operated on the tougher side of life were quite prevalent in Negro sports. Who else had the cash?” Dellums pushed his glasses on the bridge of his nose with an index finger. “If I’m not mistaken, I seem to remember one of his girlfriends was conking his hair one time, and deliberately poured the chemicals into his eyes. Half-blind, he stumbled out into the middle of Hoover waving his switchblade, trying to kill her. She then ran him down in his own powder-blue-and-white Mercury Montclair. That girl didn’t stop driving until she got back to Galveston.”

  “So he was the team’s backer?” Monk asked, attempting to get Dellums back on track.

  “Along with that man.” Dellums pointed at the white man on the other end. “That’s Ardmore Antony. He had a club on Towne Avenue called The Nile. I think it stopped operating sometime around ’sixty-nine or ’seventy. But in its day, that was one of the spots, I’ll tell you. I was in there one night and Dorothy Dandridge came in. Now you got all them young things these days shaking their rump and what-not on them videos, but Dorothy was class, man. She was one beautiful woman, in here,” he put a hand to his chest. “But what white movie boss was going to let a black woman, who should have been as famous as Elizabeth Taylor or Jean Harlow, get the kind of roles she deserved?” He touched his frames again, holding his head at an angle.

  Carson’s eyes twinkled at Monk as the two listened to the old man go on about the actress whose life had imploded. Dandridge was a woman driven by talent and ambition, only to be stymied in her career by the racism at work in Hollywood’s apothecaries of fantasy. Color, it seemed, was just too real for the studios to deal with.

  Monk also removed from the box an award in a matte black frame, a crack in the glass like an electric pulse running diagonally in one corner. “Look at this.” He showed the award to Carson.

  “‘From the United Alliance of Churches for his steadfast dedication to civil rights and the betterment of mankind in Coahoma and Bolivar Counties. We humbly bestow on Marshall Adam Spears this award of recognition.’ Mound Bayou, Mississippi, nineteen sixty-seven. Signed Reverend Amzie R. Teasdale.” Carson read the award again silently.

  “He didn’t go on about it all that much,” Dellums began, “but Marshall did his share of strugglin’ for colored folks where it mattered most, down south.”

  Monk asked, “Was he from Clarksdale?”

  “Your mother’s people are from there, aren’t they?” Carson finished.

  “Yeah.”

  “No, he wasn’t born there,” Dellums answered. “I believe he was originally from Chicago. But he got a job when he was just a teenager working on the railroad. Gandy-dancing, you fellas know what that is?”

  “Laying tracks,” Carson contributed.

  “Uh-huh, putting down the line in a road gang. You got one who calls the time, the rhythm boss, so to speak. He calls and taps out the beat the men using the hammers and spikes do their work to. From them cities like Chicago and Detroit, all through there, the south, on past Ohio, Arizona, that was working, man.”

  “What’d you do for a living, Mr. Dellums?”

  “I worked for Pacific Motor Trucking for thirty-six years.” He took a seat at the table, resting one of his elbows on its Pledge-scented surface.

  “They used to be out there off Mission Road, the trucking arm of the old Southern Pacific Company,” Monk recalled.

  “Back when SP was the biggest landowner in California,” Dellums contributed. “I was a refrigeration mechanic on the yard. It wasn’t building bridges, but what with the union wages, I bought my house”—he pointed toward the north wall—“and put two kids through college. That kind of work ain’t around no more.”

  “Brother, you ain’t never lied,” Carson agreed. “Make a man want to holler it’s so tough sometimes.”

  As the two talked, Monk pulled a thick file folder from the box. It was as if he were on an anthropological quest, and each item in the simple cardboard container revealed more and more of Marshall Spears’ layered, rich history. Monk felt cheated that Spears had been so circumspect he’d never regaled the barber shop customers with what he’d gone through.

  Conversely, Willie Brant could go on for hours about some insignificant aspect of his life, and too often embellish the tale as he did so. Yet here was an individual who had vibrant anecdotes and insights, but was content to let them dwell in his mind
. Or more likely, spend a quiet evening with Dellums and maybe a couple of older gents talking away the hours.

  Who was he to say? How one man chose to relive the past was no one’s concern but his. In an age of 25-year-old pop stars writing their autobiographies about how much money they’ve made because they’re so gifted and how and where they’ve banged their groupies, there was an honorable genuineness to Marshall Spears’ humility.

  “What is this?” Carson spread his crooked fingers on several sheets of paper Monk had taken out of the file.

  “Stuff on Damon Creel. His trial and”—he lifted several sheets—“and his political battles. I think he was convicted of murder that some say the crackers down there framed him for.”

  “Who was this guy?” Carson sat down.

  “He was a well-known activist on the scene in the late sixties and early ’seventies.” Monk paced and held onto the file, drawing up memory from the well. “He’d been in ’Nam, from out here, I think, originally.”

  “You mean LA.?” Carson asked.

  “Yeah, Compton or Long Beach.” He placed the file on the table. “He was organizing down south. In fact”—Monk slapped the table for emphasis—“he was running for mayor in Memphis when the murder beef was slapped against him. I believe he was tried for killing two white girls.”

  Carson whistled. “In the south? Back then? I’m surprised he didn’t get the gas chamber.” Carson glanced at the article. “This says he was put away in nineteen seventy-four.”

  “I’m sure he ran for office sometime in ’seventy-one or seventy-two,” Monk said.

  “And he’s been in prison all this time?” Carson pulled out an article from the sheaf on the table stapled together on slick stock.

  “Why did he have this, Mr. Dellums?” Monk asked, pointing at the stapled magazine article.

  “Why don’t you keep this stuff together so we can read it later?” Carson advised.

  “Did Mr. Spears have something to do with Creel?” Monk gathered the materials and put the items back in the file folder.

  “I don’t know. The first I ever seen of that file or heard about this man is you two going on about him right now.”

  “So Mr. Spears didn’t mention Creel?”

  “Not that I recall. That don’t mean he didn’t, it just means you’re dealing with an old man’s recollection.” He snorted through his nose.

  “Maybe Spears worked with Creel,” Carson ventured.

  “It would seem so, Abe. But he’s got items on Creel going back to when he first got out of the service and decided to organize in the south. Then the trial and all these recent articles on him, too.”

  “What exactly was the trial about?” Carson leaned back in his chair.

  “I don’t remember the details. I was still in high school when it originally went down.”

  “Thought you was born with a copy of Das Kapital in your left pocket and TheSoul of Black Folks in your right one,” Carson joked.

  Ignoring the comment, Monk said, “Spears had a lot to tell us.”

  “Everybody’s got stories,” Dellums hinted.

  “Yet he didn’t mention Creel to you,” Monk said to the older man.

  “Everybody’s got their secrets, too,” Dellums observed.

  “I’ll give you that. Do you know what Kennesaw Riles looks like?”

  Dellums cleared his throat. “He’s in that picture you two was looking at. The one with the All-Stars.” The retiree dug the photo out of the stack and pointed to a man standing toward the back of the players. He was above average height and his high cheek-bones accentuated the almond shape of his eyes. His full mustache glistened with wax even in the black-and-white photo; his jaw tapered to a planed-off chin.

  There wasn’t much in the face to tag Riles as in the same lineage as his mother. If he’d passed him on the street, Monk wouldn’t have given the man a second look. “I’m going to hold on to this for awhile, if you don’t mind, Mr. Dellums.”

  “Why you askin’ me?”

  “Who else is there?” Carson said.

  “That girl on the poster,” Dellums mentioned.

  “I’ll take good care of it. I want to show it to someone—”

  “Well, it ain’t for me to say. But you two knew the man, helped him the best you could today. So I guess you’re the responsible kind.”

  Carson winked at Monk. “He is, Mr. Dellums, he is.”

  Another hour of searching turned up more receipts, several trophies, and an extra pair of reading glasses. But no phone book. Monk figured he could always trace the woman through the beer company if that was his only lead. He’d returned the Damon Creel file folder to the Bekins box after first debating with Carson whether he should take it or not. Carson had convinced him if he should find a relative, it was best not to have to explain why most of Spears’ things weren’t where it should be.

  They walked Dellums to his house down the block, and Monk drove Carson back to the barber shop. Brant, as Carson had prophesied to Monk on the way over, had stuck around to see what they’d found.

  “Damn,” the former postman proclaimed. “And you two just left his things there?”

  Monk resisted looking at the silly smile he knew to be on Carson’s face. “What were we supposed to do, Willie, take all the man’s possessions out of his pad like they belonged to us?”

  “Who’s going to take care of his valuable items, Monk? You can’t replace those pictures, you know that. Ain’t nobody there now.”

  “If I find this young woman, Willie, she might not see it that way. It’s better the way we left it alone.”

  “I’m going to drive over to the hospital and see about Spears’ body.” Carson made for the door.

  “I guess it might be up to us to get a funeral together for him.” Little was incising a Z onto the side of a young man’s head. The teenager’s long feet stuck out over the footrest.

  Only the sound of his clippers could be heard as each stood mute for several moments.

  “Well, Monk could find this girl in time,” Brant stammered.

  The idea that he would have to lay out money for somebody other than himself was enough to motivate the talkative, and thrifty, ex-civil servant to scale city hall with fishing line if he thought Spears’ relative could be found.

  Monk said to Carson, “Why don’t we talk on Monday afternoon? I doubt if I’ll have anything on this young woman before then, seeing as how I can’t call the beer company until Monday morning.”

  Brant looked anxious.

  “Then one of you call me,” Little put in. “I feel like I want to do something. He did die in my place, and I was used to him coming around.”

  The kid’s eyes widened at Little’s reflection in the mirror, but he said nothing.

  Monk also made to leave. “I know what you mean, Kelvon.” He tapped him lightly on the back.

  Heading back to his house in Silverlake, Monk occasionally glanced at the aged photo of the Towne Avenue All-Stars lying face up beside him on the bench seat. He’d laid it upside down, and the man Dellums had told him was Riles seemed to be returning the look. His mute form betrayed neither family ties, nor what he knew of the life of Marshall Spears.

  Chapter 3

  “Ivan, would you pass the macaroni and cheese?”

  “Here you go, my dear.” Monk handed the casserole dish to Judge Jill Kodama and continued to savor the piece of smothered steak he was chewing with enthusiasm.

  “Have you tried to get hold of Kennesaw, Ivan?” his sister Odessa asked him. She sat next to her younger boyfriend, Frank Harris. Once again, as she’d done several times since they’d sat down to dinner, she’d cut a piece of his meat and fed him as if his arms were malfunctioning. Then they would both giggle.

  Monk had stopped finding it cute the second time she’d done it. “Nope. I was hoping Mom might be able to help me in that department.”

  Frank Harris made a loud sucking sound as he maneuvered his tongue to retrieve a morsel of meat t
rapped between his gums and the inside of his mouth.

  Nona Monk, nee Riles, concentrated on spearing several green beans onto her plate. She’d set the table with the Lenox china she and Josiah Monk had gotten for wedding presents more than forty years ago, the pattern of wheat in gold leaf around the edges of the plates still bright with promise, belying their age.

  Languidly, she chewed on the vegetables while everyone waited for her reply. “I haven’t made an effort to see Kennesaw in more than twenty years.”

  “But we met him a few times when we were kids, didn’t we?” Odessa asked, rubbing her hand along Harris’ forearm.

  “Oh yes,” her mother answered blandly. “Joe took you two to a few of the games of the All-Stars over at Wrigley Field. I believe Kennesaw was a coach then.” She forked in a mouthful of macaroni.

  Kodama got up from the dining room table. “Anybody want a beer or something?”

  “I’ll take one of those Weinhard darks if there’s any left.” Harris leaned back in his chair, stretching and expanding his well-built chest.

  Kodama went through the swing door. Monk dabbled at the corner of his goatee with a napkin. “Did you ever meet Mr. Spears, Mom?”

  She indicated negative with a shake of her head. “Not that I remember, Ivan. ’Course it was your dad who followed baseball, not me. But you’d think if that man who passed away yesterday had known your father, he would have mentioned it to you.”

  “Maybe he didn’t remember,” Harris contributed. “He probably met a lot of people in his baseball days. Your cousin and him might not have been real tight.” He ate his remaining piece of steak, and crisscrossed the knife and fork on his plate.

  Kodama returned with two beers. She placed one in front of him.

  “Thanks,” Harris said, taking her in as she sat back down.

  Monk tabulated a few remarks, but settled for staying on subject. “Yet Spears also goes back down south after Kennesaw does.”

  Odessa cackled. “Ivan, since we were small you always wanted to fit things together when most times they had nothing to do with each other.”

  “Like the time you took apart your Tonka dumpster truck and tried to attach your rocket, oh what was that show you always watched on the Sheriff John program?”