Free Charcoal Joe by Walter Mosley

arrested him, charged him, slammed that iron door, and closed the book.
    “I want you to prove Seymour innocent. I want you to save my good friend’s foster child from the gas chamber or even just one day in prison.”
    “You know this young man?” I asked.
    “I know his former guardian.”
    “Does he work for you?” I pressed.
    “No he does not, nor has he ever. We don’t even know each other all that well. But I know the woman who cared for him and I know he wouldn’t commit no murder.”
    “Maybe not first-degree murder,” I allowed. “But he might have found an open window somewhere and went in lookin’ for loose change and whatever. Two men come in on him and one thing leads to another….”
    “The young man is a doctor of science,” Rufus Tyler the prodigy intoned. “He’s teachin’ at UCLA right this semester while he finishes his postgraduate work. Now how’s a man like that gonna be some kinda niggah like the people you and me consort with?”
    I could think of a dozen ways. The universities in the late sixties were hotbeds of bombers, Liberation bank robbers, and stone-cold killers.
    I didn’t share these opinions with Mouse’s friend.
    “Mouse asked me to come here,” I said. “He put money down on the table and said that he wanted me to take any case you offered. He also told me that I was in your debt over a piece of information you shared with him.”
    Charcoal Joe shrugged and held up the palms of both hands.
    “Information comes to me,” he said. “Knowledge is the only real wealth any man can have; knowledge and the will to power.”
    I wondered if the gambler/killer/artist was referring to the German philosopher or just heard those words and instinctively understood their authority.
    “You tell me what I need to know and I will go out to either prove or disprove Dr. Brathwaite’s innocence,” I said. “I won’t lie or fake evidence but you can be sure that I’ll give it my best.”
    Joe stared at me a moment. I was fully aware that such a look had probably meant the death of some men.
    “Okay,” he said. “Okay. I mean I say it’s all right because I know Seymour is innocent and I believe Raymond when he tells me that you’re the best.
    “There ain’t too much to add. The police know about the murders and you got an in with them I hear. Anything else you need you can get from Jasmine Palmas-Hardy.”
    “Who’s that?”
    “She was Seymour’s foster mother up until he was eleven or twelve.”
    “What’s her number?”
    “She lives behind a house and up a stairway on Hauser.” He gave me an address. “Just go there anytime today and she’ll be waitin’ for ya. Anything she says, treat it like you heard it from me. Anything you need: introductions, information, or cash—you just ask her.”
    Joe opened his eyes wide. This meant that the meeting was over. I realized that he had not introduced me to the medium-sized guy that stood at his side. I didn’t ask because I understood that Rufus Tyler/Charcoal Joe never did, or did not do, anything in error.

12
    At the end of Tucker Street, in a far corner of Compton, there was thick barrier of eucalyptus and avocado trees buttressed and interspersed by thorny bushes that might have been colloquially called barbed wire scrubs. Through this jungle there was a path that was barely passable. You were bound to get scratched and there were moments when a man of my height couldn’t stand up straight. You definitely needed a long-sleeved jacket, and some boughs were stronger than Ox Mason.
    But if you persevered for just three or four minutes you would reach a yellow door that had cracked veins of green lichen branching out here and there.
    I had never been to that door without it opening before I could knock. I stood there maybe thirty seconds waiting for the yellow portal to swing inward. When it didn’t oblige I rapped with my knuckles and then counted to twelve, breathing in the sharp scent of the leaf-heavy