looked at her and nodded, waiting for her to continue.
“I’m looking for someone who would have been a kid in the fifties or sixties, a boy who probably used to go to my grandfather’s store.”
“Yes,” Lanier replied, “Curtis Martindale.” He hadn’t said the name out loud in years, although he’d thought it, dreamed it, watched it weave and twist and circle around him.
Jackie leaned forward. “Do you know him?”
“Used to. His daddy was my mama’s brother. Me and Curtis and his little brother Cory, we used to hang out all the time. Cory was my age and Curtis was older.”
“Oh, great.” This was easier than she’d expected. “Well, I think my grandfather knew him. He mentioned him in some papers my aunt found after he died.”
“That makes sense. He practically lived at your grandfather’s store, and he worked there for a couple of years. A lot of the older boys hung out there.” He remembered a group of them sitting on milk crates out front. He in overalls, Curtis in his work pants and apron. James—Jimmy—wriggled in between Curtis and another boy, sweater warm and scratchy against his cheek. Anything to be next to his cousin. They were listening to the radio that Mr. Sakai had set up by the door. The Dodgers versus the Yankees, in the ’63 World Series. Mr. Sakai handing out ice-cold sodas, beaming, as the Dodgers swept the Yankees in four.
“So why you looking for him?” asked Lanier.
“Actually,” Jackie began, then stopped abruptly. She couldn’t think of a convenient lie, and she didn’t want to mention the money. But a partial truth was probably safe. “My grandfather left him something in his will.”
Lanier raised his eyebrows. “Must have been a pretty old will.”
“Yeah, it was. So do you know where Curtis is?”
Lanier looked at her, nostrils flaring. “He’s dead.”
“What?”
“He died in the uprising. The Watts uprising—’65.”
Jackie wiped her hands on her pants and said, “Shit.” She was a bit annoyed at Lanier for making her drive all the way down there; he could have just told her over the phone and spared her the trip. But she was relieved, too—if Curtis Martindale was dead, then her duty had been fulfilled, her task completed. Lois could keep the money and buy a house. When she glanced up, though, she found Lanier looking at her curiously. She’d almost forgotten he was there—she was thinking about getting home and calling Laura—but now he seemed more troubled and interested than he’d been since she had come.
“You don’t know about this, do you?” he asked.
She gave him a look. “About the Watts riots? Of course I do. Marcus Frye. Four days of rioting. McCone Commission report.”
“No,” he said, ignoring her tone. “You don’t know about your grandfather’s store.”
Something in his voice made her pay attention. “Well, I know that it didn’t get burned.”
“No, it didn’t get burned, or looted either. But the day after the uprising ended, four black boys were found dead in the store’s freezer. And my cousin Curtis Martindale was one of them.”
“What?”
“There was a walk-in freezer in the back, where your grandfather kept meat and ice. Someone locked them all in there during the uprising. They would have frozen to death in a couple of hours.”
Jackie opened her mouth and closed it again. She couldn’t place this information in the same universe with what she’d known about her grandfather. “How?” she finally managed. “Why? I mean, I’ve never heard…”
Lanier nodded. “It was never reported in the mainstream press, since so many other things were going on. Not that anyone would have given a shit about a bunch of dead niggers. But I’m surprised that your family…”
Jackie shook her head. She didn’t have the energy to explain about how her family didn’t talk. None of them, including her grandfather. No words laced together into a chain of intertwined stories that connected her to anyone’s past. More than gaps in the narrative; there was no narrative. Whole years, like the years of World War II, dropped cleanly from their collective history.
“People thought it was a cop,” Lanier continued. “A white cop, Nick Lawson. He had a history of beating up black kids. Anyway, a while later, some other boys in the neighborhood took it upon themselves to shoot him. They didn’t kill him, but it got him off the street. I heard he stayed with the police, on a desk job, but no charges were brought against him. No one ever did shit.”
Lanier remembered those first few weeks, after. The weariness and sorrow among the people he knew as they tried to piece together their broken neighborhood. The tanks rolling down Crenshaw, through the tense, watchful silence. And Curtis wasn’t there to help him through it. Jimmy hadn’t understood why his cousin was gone. Knew he was dead, but still expected to see him taking the front stairs of the Lanier house, two at a time, and hear him yelling through the broken screen. When it finally dawned on Jimmy that he wouldn’t see Curtis again, or feel his wiry arm around his shoulders and sharp knuckles rubbing his skull, he dove into a thick depression he wasn’t sure that he’d ever come out of. It hurt worse than when his father left, because Curtis was dead, not just AWOL, and Jimmy was old enough now to feel it. With an eight-year-old’s impotent rage he wanted to kill the man responsible, but instead he took it out on everyone else. Most of all himself. Banging his head rhythmically, obsessively, against his bedroom wall, punishing himself for being alive and for not helping Curtis, until his mother couldn’t leave him alone. Cutting his arm with razor blades, steak knives, scissors, pens, so he would feel the pain there and not inside him.
“But you’re sure it was him,” Jackie said.
“I’m sure.” Lanier looked down, then looked up again. Uneasiness flickered through his eyes. “There were some people— not a lot, but a few—who believed that your grandfather did it.”
Jackie started to stand, and then sat down again. “Jesus Christ.”
Lanier put up his broad, squarish hands. “I know he didn’t,” he said. “Most people didn’t even know the kids were murdered in the store. And even the ones who did, just about all of them blamed Nick Lawson. But there were some, you know, who never liked that your grandfather had a business here. Crenshaw was mixed back then, much more than it is today, but there were a few people—white and black—who still hated the Japanese. So even though just about everyone knew he wasn’t involved, your family still took some flak.”
“Which explains,” Jackie said, more to herself than Lanier, “why they shut down the store and got out of here so fast.”
Lanier nodded. He remembered the “Closed” sign hanging in the window of the empty store for months, the Sakais vanishing like apparitions before the smoke had even cleared.
She looked up at him. “Why are you telling me all this?”
“So you won’t waste your time looking for Curtis. And so you’ll know.” And because I need to share this with someone, he thought, hand over half the burden. He leaned across
