“Figure to put a letter together for Betty and the rest?” Ingram asked.

  “Good idea,” Horne said, wiping a thin sheet of sweat from his face with a paper napkin.

  Outside, the two said their good-byes and Ingram stood there for a moment, taking a black cigar out of his pocket and biting off the end before lighting it. Off to his left he heard a sound and turned his head. The two women who’d been bowling together were walking around the corner of the building on the coffee shop side. They had their arms around each other and it was obvious that they hadn’t noticed Ingram some yards away. The two paused by the side of a two-toned Rambler. One put her arms around the other’s neck and they kissed passionately. Ingram turned away and was glad he didn’t have to disturb them by walking past, as his car was parked on Crenshaw. He puffed away cheerily as he drove off, imaging what the two women would be doing later. Ingram toyed with the idea of tackling writing a paperback with the title Bowling Alley Lesbians. Hell, it might be a runaway hit.

  Driving and smoking, the window on the driver’s side cracked to let out the fumes, he wondered if Anita had paperbacks of those type of women with women novels among her collection. He hadn’t noticed any but it wasn’t as if he’d memorized the titles, though their lurid covers always made an impression. Ingram would damn sure remember a steamy primary-colors-illustrated romp with a shapely woman undressing another shapely woman.

  Also, Anita traded books with her friend Judy Berkson. A side notion occurred to him; he hadn’t seen Berkson in the company of a man when she’d been over to their house, and she was a frequent visitor. Had they talked about anyone she might be seeing? He couldn’t remember. Berkson wasn’t a bad-looking chick, and what if, he lustfully speculated, she was secretly a model for women loving women covers?

  Distracted, Ingram had to hastily apply the brakes so as not to plow through a red light. Maybe he should pull over to a gas station and splash some cold water on his face in their bathroom. The light turned green, and Ingram accelerated, managing to tuck his voyeuristic longings away, at least enough to safely navigate the city streets. When he got home, he didn’t share his lascivious imaginings with Anita Claire. She was sitting on the ell of the couch, her legs tucked under her, sipping coffee and reading a book.

  “Hey, sweetie,” she said, not looking around when he came through the front door.

  “Hey yourself.” He was behind her, looking down at the book, scanning the words for a moment. “You’re really getting into this.” It was another book on philosophy.

  “Could be it’s just a fad.” She looked up at him and reaching up, put a hand around his neck to pull his face closer. They kissed.

  “I’m going to have something a little stronger.”

  “Make me one too,” she said, stretching.

  At the rollaway bar he poured vodka and tonic into two slim cylindrical glasses. Above this on the wall was a poster mounted on stiff backing. It was a close-up photo of hands holding a sax, the long fingers working the keys. While the musician’s face was intentionally out of focus in the background, Ingram knew it was Coleman Hawkins. Superimposed over part of the image were the words, “Jazz speaks for life. The Blues tell the story of life’s difficulties . . .” The quote and the shot were from last year’s Berlin Jazz Festival. The words were from the speech Martin Luther King had given at the event.

  He left the glasses on the cart and in the kitchen removed one of the two aluminum ice trays from the freezer and released the frozen cubes. He put some of these in a small bowl and returned the tray to the freezer. As he set the divider in the sink, another fantasy whirled to life in his head.

  Playboy Ingram was dressed in a silk smoking jacket and had a pipe sticking out of the side of his mouth. Not that beat up thing Wes Crossman smoked, but a sleek model as befitting a with-it bachelor like him. In the next room not only did his lady love hunger for his presence, but the two other women from the bowling alley were there as well. They wanted to experiment with the both of them all night long. This lustful male indulgence of course called for the three women to be dressed in short robes and lingerie. He laughed out loud, shaking his head back to reality.

  “What’s so funny?” Claire asked from the other room.

  “I realize I’m living the Dapper life. Two-gun private eye by day, lady’s man by night.”

  “Yeah, you are.”

  He returned to the living room. He tinkled ice into the glasses and handed one to Claire, who’d put the book aside. As was their custom, he removed his shoes and sat next to her on the couch. They clinked glasses and each sampled their cocktail.

  Setting his glass onto the coffee table, Ingram said, “How was your day, darling?”

  She told him about it, including the encounter with the woman at the park.

  “Maybe she was a beatnik,” he offered.

  “I don’t know, there was something off about her. Too friendly.”

  “Trying to set you up for a bust?” Flashing back to the two in the Holiday Bowl parking lot, he added, “Or trying to pick you up.”

  “Hmmm,” she considered. “Your turn.”

  He told her, and when he’d finished his recap, he stretched. “Feel like eating out tonight?”

  “Where?”

  “Lim Fu’s?”

  “Part of your man-about-town lifestyle, huh?”

  “You damn right.”

  They walked to the restaurant and were able to get a booth. Its dark wood and red velvet wall and sounds of ice tinkling in patron’s cocktail glasses made for a sultry cocoon against the mundane beyond. Having hot tea and their appetizer of fried shrimp, Ingram said, cognizant to maintain a conversational tone, “I’ve been rolling this over, but seems I should take a look inside Tolbert’s house.”

  “You told me Betty doesn’t have a key.”

  “I did say that.” He dipped his shrimp by the tail into some hot mustard.

  From the look on her face, it took her a moment to absorb the import of what he was saying. “Oh, Harry, is the risk worth what you might find . . . if anything, which is more than likely the result.”

  “There’s a reason the cops always search a person’s place. They haven’t in this case, according to Betty.”

  “Doesn’t mean they haven’t and didn’t tell her,” Claire said.

  “Good point. Though why wouldn’t they tell her? Worried he might get in touch with her, and she tells him they did?”

  “Like they want to catch him?” she said.

  “When Ben was killed, I found useful information in his room. And nobody let me into his either.”

  “Find out more about him and Rickler?”

  “Don’t know until, you know.”

  “Harry, this is different. Ben was a jazz musician living among the natives, no better than Johnny Otis as far as the police were concerned. That’s what you gonna tell them when they snatch you off to jail? ’Cause what if the cops are watching his place?”

  “When I was over there, I didn’t spot anybody staking out his pad.”

  “Isn’t that the idea, you don’t stick out?”

  “I think I’m hipper to their ways than the average cat. But this is a chancy move.” Ingram took another swallow of his drink. He said slowly, “What if you were my lookout?”

  She chucked her hand under his chin. “Silly boy, now you’re getting somewhere.”

  “It’d be better if we did it in the day.”

  “Not in the dead of night, with less eyes on us?”

  “If I’m prowling through the house at night, someone might see my flashlight shine from underneath a shade. Also, with the daytime, the better the odds are his neighbors are at work.”

  She considered this for a moment and said, “As robbers say, sounds like you already cased the joint.”

  “I did,” he admitted. “He lives in View Park.”

  She frowned. “From what you said about his forward thinking in his business, funny he would live in an area that fought to keep itself white.”

  “Betty told me he inherited the house from an ailling aunt. He took care of her as her only family out here. She didn’t have any children of her own, so he was the golden-haired child who took her to her doctor’s appointments and what have you. From what she says, he was one of the whites who wouldn’t sign a petition that got passed around to keep a colored doctor and his family out. Apparently he argued with his neighbors for being behind the times. At one point ‘Nigger Lover’ was spray painted on his garage door for his efforts.”

  “A few more of us have moved in there, Harry. I know a family who’s migrated from West Adams. You don’t think one of his resentful neighbors bashed in his head and he’s lying in his house on the shag carpet?”

  He held his hands apart. “Only one way to find out.”

  She said, “Won’t we be noticed?”

  “You’ll be in the car and—”

  “Nix on that,” she interrupted. “I’m in all the way.”

  “Who’s going to keep lookout?”

  A small smile on her face, she said, “Judy can.”

  “She works during the day. What makes you think she’ll go along with this?” Berkson had a job in a tile factory in Huntington Park.

  “I know her. She’s a solid sender, as they used to say. I also know she’s got plenty of sick days piled up thanks to her union contract.”

  Ingram folded his arms, considering the offer. “Okay, but she’s gotta be cool.”

  “The coolest. That girl has done some shit.”

  Lesbian cover model came to mind as well as the inescapable conclusion that some of the stuff Berkson had been up to must have included Anita. Vodka tonic at his mouth, he remarked, “Gotta admit her being white is less likely to call attention. I mean, in the right light them hillbillies in the hills might think you was one of them, but you know.”

  “Smart ass.”

  “You think she could do this on Thursday? Say at ten in the morning? I’ve got a few things I need to buy tomorrow, including gloves we best be wearing.”

  “I’ll call her right now.” She got up and went to the pay phone in an alcove on the way to the bathrooms. Claire pushed in the door and sat inside, closing it again so as not to be overheard by a passerby. She dialed her friend and after pleasantries asked her bluntly, “Judy, you up for a little crime?”

  She listened to her answer, grinning broadly. “Yeah, me and the old man are gonna be in on this,” she joyously told her. “Like Bonnie and Clyde.” Another pause as Berkson replied and then Claire answered, “Who you tellin’?” She guffawed loudly and after saying good-bye, returned to the booth. Their main courses had been served.

  Ingram was eating and making a list of items. A melancholy descended.

  “What?” she said, noticing.

  “The stuff we’ll need,” he began, “I’d have gone over to Shop Rite to get the items.”

  “You and Shoals haven’t spoken to one another since then.”

  “Nope.” He resumed making his list and forking in a heaping of chicken chow mein.

  “Judy’ll be at the house nine-thirty bright and early on D-Day, sarge. Are we going to use disguises?”

  “Sounds like a good idea,” he said. “What are you thinking?”

  “We’re going to have tools with us, right?”

  “And we don’t try and hide that.”

  “Exactly.”

  “We’ll need to get some different license plates. I’ll steal them before light on Thursday.”

  Claire cocked her head at him and said, “You have a devious mind, Mr. Ingram.” She winked at him across the table and ate with pleasure.

  Ingram gave her a wary look. Was she enjoying the idea of committing burglary too damn much he wondered, leaving the rest of his chow mein untouched.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The morning they broke into the missing Moses Tolbert’s home, they took two vehicles to the address in the low hills of View Park—less than six miles from their house. The place was up a winding street ending in a cul-de-sac. Ingram and Claire arrived in a pick-up truck borrowed through Edwards. Ingram parked it in the driveway. Berkson arrived in a convertible two-tone DeSoto, the top up, and parked two houses away, her car pointed toward the only way on or off the street. In a scarf and sunglasses, she sat behind the steering wheel, pretending to be regarding a street map she’d unfolded.

  Tolbert’s house was a one-story stucco home with a front bay window partially obscured by an impressive grouping of poinsettias. Compared to some of his neighbors, whose homes were Spanish Colonial Revival, a few spanning two lots with balconies on the second-stories and pools out back, his was humble but well-cared for. The paint still had its luster and there were no cracks in the outer walls. Apparently the gardener had still been caring for the lawn.

  “This way,” Ingram said, gently guiding Anita by the elbow toward the garage.

  The couple were dressed in work clothes, worn khakis and light blue cotton shirts, Ingram carrying a toolbox. Claire wore a floppy hat on her head, her hair bunched up inside of it. She hadn’t put on earrings. But even in these loose unflattering clothes, Ingram was certain even a casual observer could see she was a woman. The house was on a slant and constructed in such a way that the living room was over the two-car garage which was accessible by a driveway. There was a padlock securing this. He asked Claire to stand so as to partially block him from view while he used a pair of bolt cutters to sever the padlock’s loop. He put the ruined lock in the toolbox and swung the garage door upward.

  Ingram flicked on the light switch. As expected, there was no car in here, though there was an ink blot of an oil stain on the dusty concrete indicating where Tolbert’s car would normally be parked. Where a second car might be parked was a woodworking workshop. There was a bandsaw and several pieces of furniture in stages of either being repaired or fashioned from the ground up. Ingram noticed back issues of Look magazine stacked on a work bench.

  “Lower it?” Claire asked, her hand grabbing the small length of rope attached to the garage door handle.

  Ingram nodded in the affirmative. Past a water heater, he stood toward the rear of the garage at a hollow-core door leading into the house. The door was locked but he knocked it loose with a ballpeen-hammer after one blow.

  She came over next to him, indicating the door. “When you checked out the house before, you figured this would be the way in.”

  Ingram put the hammer back in the toolbox. “I looked up the floorplans downtown, too.”

  “Aren’t you the clever lad.” Claire pulled him close and reached a hand down the front of his pants, taking a hold of his stiffening member. “I should give you a reward.”

  “You should, but we better keep our mind on business.”

  “Spoilsport.”

  “One mission at a time, soldier.”

  They kissed and she reluctantly let him go. Ingram took a moment to clear his head, then removed the gloves he’d tucked in his rear pocket. He put them on, as did Claire. They entered the kitchen. The air inside was still, a mustiness to the place from it being closed up going on three weeks. A used dish, saucer, coffee cup and utensils were in the sink. A thin layer of grease had congealed in a skillet on the stove. No trace odors from whatever had been fried could be detected. Somewhere deeper into the house, a clock ticked. Clearly there had been no recent human occupants in here.

  Ingram began looking through the drawers. He found a few coasters with the Emerald Room’s name on it.

  “I’ll check the mail,” Claire said.

  “Okay.”

  The living room was a step-down off a circular foyer. Mail was dropped into a receiving box attached to the wall beside the front door. Claire lifted a latticed metal gate to retrieve some of the mail. The rest had overflowed out of the receptacle and was spread across the pavers. She gathered all of this and went into the living room, sat down and looked through what she had. There was a gas bill and one for the water and power. She set these aside and continued to glance through the letters and so on. Ingram joined her.

  “Find anything personal?” They’d previously discussed looking to find a handwritten letter written to Tolbert maybe from a lady friend or any type of friend who might be a lead to where he was.

  “Doesn’t look like,” she said. “Mostly it’s other business mailers like a new kind of forklift or wholesale prices on florescent bulbs. These must be duplicates of what comes in at Restoration.” She went silent as she continued sifting through her pile, which included Jet magazine.

  “Hold up, check this out.” She held up an invitation-sized envelope addressed in feminine script. It was addressed to Tolbert but no return address. The postmark was August thirteenth, the second day of the riots.

  “We’ve already committed burglary, open it,” Ingram suggested.

  Claire did. Inside was a piece of paper torn from a spiral-bound notepad folded in half. She opened it to reveal a brief handwritten note thanking Tolbert for his donation to the cause. It was signed “Dorrell.”

  “That’s consistent with what we know about him,” she said as she refolded the note and put it back in the envelope. When Ingram didn’t respond, she looked up at him from where she sat in a padded chair. He was looking at a painting over the fireplace.

  “What?”

  He pointed at the modernistic piece. “Pretty sure that’s recently done.”

  “You mean because of that building on fire in it?”

  He stepped over to the painting. “I saw it being painted during the riots.”

  Claire joined him to gaze up at the artwork. It was in oils and contained realistically rendered sections along with fantastical imagery such as the floating eye with its energy crackles that Ingram recognized. There were depictions of people, some it seemed protesting, and among the imagery was a riveting depiction of a policeman siccing a German shepherd on two young Black men, the dog straining its leash as it attacked.