A Whodunit With Eyes on the Mystery Prize

To be sure, nothing as tedious or wincingly cliche as a felt fedora or an oversized spy glass was to be found at this elegant cloak-and-dagger scene.

These 300 sleuths, quite to the contrary, were turned out Saturday night in floor-sweeping furs and feathers; wrapped like packages in splendorous mud-cloth shawls or kufi hats shot through with glistening thread--copper, bronze and silver. So it made nothing but perfect sense that when the evening’s first “body” hit the floor, one woman, peering over the lip of her chardonnay, stepped back in a motion suggesting one thing--and one thing only: “Just don’t mash the dress!”

“The Fourth Annual Evening of Mystery,” at the California African American Museum in Exposition Park, is a gala, interactive affair, where nothing is what it seems. The evening’s conceit: The Nightjohn Awards ceremony recognizing publishing’s “best and worst.” The top prize is to kill for--the Creaking Door, for the best in the mystery genre. The winner also walks off with a three-picture film deal with the Oscar Micheaux studios.

But not before some blood spills. It’s classic mystery-dinner theater in which the drama unfolds in whispers, and random gunshots ring out all around. But it also pulls together all manner of black professionals and students (this year from the 32nd Street/USC Performing Arts Magnet School and Southwest College) for an evening of fun with a purpose: a program to encourage literacy. It is a mock-awards ceremony that takes its name from the Gary Paulsen novel “Nightjohn,” about a slave who dares to teach others to read in the pre-Civil War South, despite grievous consequences.

Co-sponsored by Black Entertainment Television, Citibank, the Los Angeles Dodgers and KJLH-FM (102.3), the event also honors noted African American mystery writers Gar Anthony Haywood (“All the Lucky Ones Are Dead”), Gary Phillips (“Only the Wicked”) and Penny Mickelbury (“A Step Between: A Carole Ann Gibson Mystery”), as well as Attica Locke, a Sundance Fellow and budding screenwriter. All of them participate in the evening’s drama.

“I had to beg to get a ticket,” testifies guest Yvette Coleman, shrugging out of her coat, then settling into her chair. Over the salad course of baby greens with walnuts, blue cheese, sliced pears and apples, she scans the printed instructions handed out at the door. Among them: “Keep your eyes open to strange behavior” and “Don’t be afraid to question anybody you think might be involved or acting suspicious. Trust no one.”

“Now, I wish I’d been paying attention!” says Coleman. “There was this couple behind me, while I was in the line for a drink, arguing. She told him he was drinking too much! . . . There was noooo way I was turning around and getting in the middle of that. Uh-uh.”

A jazz quartet--vamping--warms the concrete cool of the museum’s cavernous foyer. Beneath gilt-framed paintings by Palmer C. Hayden, a cluster of tables draped in black linen are set for dinner. Out of the floral centerpieces--red roses and Casablanca lilies--also bloom the names of famous black writers--Langston Hughes and Alain Locke; Paul Laurence Dunbar and Toni Morrison.

It’s an evening of homage on many levels.

For Haywood, who is a screenwriter as well as a novelist, this night has particular resonance. His father, Jack Haywood, was a co-architect of the building. “All this? It’s an ego boost of sorts,” says Haywood, scanning the crowd, “Being a mid-list writer, you’re haunted by this sense that you might not get there. But you come here, and you find out people have read the books. Have opinions. Here you’re treated like royalty.”

The merging of disciplines--or more specifically--making written art visual, says Mickelbury, has a far-reaching effect. “It’s important for us that it is an art museum that is acknowledging the work we do as mystery writers. It’s important to the culture. I don’t know a single artist who doesn’t rely on this cross-pollination . . . on various art forms for sustenance.”

Phillips, high-ball glass of melted ice in hand, is just taking in the ambience, shaking hands, shouting greetings in his booming basso. Involved with the event, like Haywood, since year one, he’s proud to see how far not just the program, but the genre itself--has grown. That and black writers’ increasing participation in shaping it, broadening the definition of just who is a sleuth--from cleaning ladies to philosophers--and finding a different kind of crime--including social injustice and racism.

“With mysteries and crime fiction . . . better than other literature . . . you can get into people’s different lives. The different places they are in their lives . . . better than other literature,” says Phillips.

“There just aren’t the same expectations,” agrees Mickelbury. “So it continues to validate that we--as black people--are not monolithic.”

Simply put, the messiest of life circumstances know no boundaries of race. So, boiled down, you can, as it were, get right up in their business, as Keith Hurlic, will attest. He’s been eavesdropping on yet another argument brewing between husband and wife--or is it agent and praying-to-be starlet? (It’s difficult to keep it straight, truth be told, when you can’t flip back to the previous chapter.) When one couple heats up to near-shrieking close by, Hurlic lets loose with the now-infamous Springer chant--”Jer-ry, Jer-ry, Jer-ry.”

Orbiting a universe adjacent to the actors, novelist Bebe Moore Campbell, in elegant plum coat, hair tucked into a simple chignon, and artist Betye Saar, her Colette-esque wedge of curls tinted lilac, move about the room--not just sniffing out clues but reconnecting with old friends, and tracing the mystery of where their lives have taken them.

That’s what Jamesina Henderson, the museum’s executive director, is most proud of: the connection or reconnections that are made beneath this roof, across town, across years, across disciplines. With the Clippers game in progress just a few miles down the freeway at Staples Center, and visions of the next day’s Super Bowl dancing in many a head, Henderson, in a velvet gown, is more than pleased at the sold-out turnout. She’s amazed. She’s been hoppingtable-to-table glowing brighter than her necklace jewels.

“I mean, we had to turn people away. I think it says an awful lot about the museum’s rebirth in the community.” Meanwhile, as the many assembled were drawing a bead on the killer, getting down to business, scratching frantically on the complimentary note pads, the suit-and-tie combo eases into a sauntering version of the Quincy Jones’ “Killer Joe.”

“That young girl with her back out, fussing . . . “ says Yvonne Noble, seated at the Lorraine Hansberry table. She gives a quick glance over her shoulder, then leans away from the Chester B. Himes table to confide to her teammate, Ericka Herod. “She was walking around with that [book] agent.”

“I don’t know, I think maybe the wife did it,” Herod suggests, laying out the plan.

Some, like actress Marguerite Ray, don’t find themselves pulled into the “Who shot John?” drama of the story line; she is, instead, bemused by the spectacle unfolding around her. “Hah!” she puffs, right eyebrow raised quizzically. “They’re really taking all of this quite seriously.”