White Butterfly

by Mosley, Walter

  “But then this Robin Garnett is dead just a couple days after you find Bonita Edwards.”

  “Yes, you’re right about that,” Naylor said in his prim Philadelphia accent. “Not only that. She was white, she was a college student, and she didn’t live anywhere near this neighborhood; no one seems to know what she was doing down here. That’s one of the reasons the brass is so upset. They think some crazy Negro is going to go on a rampage killing white women.”

  “Yeah.” I smiled. “But I don’t think you got it all. You see, this li’l darlin’ got kilt wasn’t all so pure as some might wanna think.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  I threw down one of Cyndi’s stripper photographs.

  Naylor studied it for a minute.

  “Why didn’t anybody show me this?”

  “Nobody knew, man. That picture in the Times an’ Examiner didn’t look nuthin’ like this stripper. An’ mosta the people knew her prob’ly don’t buy the mo’nin’ news no way. An’ even if they did, why they wanna come down here when you prob’ly th’ow them in jail fo’bad thoughts?”

  “Where’d you get this?” Maybe he was going to throw me in the slam.

  “At her pad, man. You know the Hollywood Row, right?”

  “How’d you know where to go, Easy?”

  “Listen.” I held up my palm for him to admire. “I got my secrets. That’s why you need me.”

  Quinten looked at me hard for a minute.

  Finally he said, “All right. I’ll go look into it. Makes it a little neater for us. I don’t know what the man’s going to think, though. You know they get real upset when these white women cross the line.”

  “Why don’t we drive on down to where that girl’s parents are at? You know, just for some questions. We could bring that picture down there an’ see what they got to say.” I didn’t mention the box of belongings I had out in the car.

  “Why?”

  “It just don’t smell right, Quinten. Why she get killed two days after the other one when they gettin’ murdered ev’ry two weeks or more ’fore that? How come this is a white one an’ all the rest’a them is black? An’ how come they kill this coed an’ they killin’ B-girls all before this?”

  “You got the proof here that she was one of those kind of women.”

  He held up the photograph to prove his point.

  “Yeah,” I said. “But maybe that’s not the girl he killed.”

  “What?” Quinten slammed the picture down on his desk.

  “I mean, it’s the same body, the same life, but it was Robin Garnett got killed, not Cyndi Starr. I mean, they found her all dressed up like a coed, right? If it was the coed who was killed and not the stripper, then maybe there was some other reason fo’the murder, right?”

  “Maybe the killer knew her. Maybe he knew about her double life.” Quinten didn’t want any complications.

  “Yeah, I guess. He knew Juliette LeRoi, all right.”

  “What’s that?”

  I told him about the fight at Aretha’s and Gregory Jewel. Also about how Bonita Edwards didn’t know the other girls.

  “You got all this and you’re just coming in here now?”

  “Hey, man, calm down. I’m here. Pass what I told you to your partner an’ then let’s you an’ me go over to see the Garnetts.”

  “I don’t think so. I appreciate you wanting to help, but police work should be kept in the house. They have enough trouble with a Negro cop. What are they going to think about you?”

  I didn’t like the way he said that. “What do you think about me, Quinten?”

  A sneer flashed across Quinten’s face. He sat forward placing his big fists on the desk. “I think you’re rotten, Mr. Rawlins. You and your friend Raymond Alexander. Both of you belong in the penitentiary. But nobody wants to make that a priority. Everybody’s always got something better. Maybe you’ll help us catch this guy, probably you will. But whoever he is, he’s just crazy. He can’t help it. But you could. You’re a criminal, Ezekiel Rawlins. I might have to work with you, I do have to. But just because you have to wipe your ass doesn’t mean that you have to love shit.”

  Maybe if I hadn’t been drinking it wouldn’t have hurt. I don’t know. But everybody was on me. Regina and Gabby Lee and Quinten Naylor. I felt like I needed a drink. I did need a drink.

  THE LOS ANGELES PHONE BOOK was my best friend in those days. I went north to Pico Boulevard and then west until I hit Hauser. The Garnetts were five blocks farther north from there.

  They lived in a two-story Spanish-style house that shared a large lawn with a weeping willow and a sloppy-looking St. Bernard on a long chain. The whole yard was surrounded by a low cement fence that had been treated to look like adobe. The roof was made from curved red tiles. Terra-cotta. Probably imported from Mexico or maybe even Italy. Two sharkish-looking Caddies were parked in the driveway. Five boys’ bicycles were parked on the lawn.

  I took the sweater, the yearbook, and the envelope of her working photos and put them in a large brown paper bag. Then I went up to the door and pressed the button. A buzzer went off in the house. That surprised me. I expected bells, Spanish bells to toll or chime, at least to ring. A buzzer was what you heard in a hardware store.

  A boy in his early teens swung the door open wide. He was still young enough to have feminine features and so greatly resembled his dead sister’s photographs. His face darkened for a moment when he saw me. Maybe he was expecting one of his little boyfriends rambling up on a J. C. Higgins.

  “Hi.” He had a beautiful all-American-boy grin.

  “I’m lookin’ fo’your mother or father.” I smiled too.

  “Dad’s out but Mom’s here. I’ll get her.”

  “Mom!” he shouted as soon as he was out of sight.

  He left the door open, either out of trust or ignorance, and I could see clear through the house. The living room was sunken and plush with white furry furniture. The back wall was mostly glass and looked out into the patio, backyard, and swimming pool.

  The white woman, who was scolding the boy as she made her way from the patio, wasn’t much older than I. But she seemed to have weathered many years. Mothers age more quickly than fathers do.

  She was tall for a woman and erect. She wore a midcalf one-piece dress that was green with little horses printed in a spiral line from her neck to the hem. I could tell that the dress was expensive because the pattern wasn’t askew. Somebody paid attention when they sewed it.

  “Yes?” she asked. Her smile was tentative.

  “Mrs. Garnett?”

  “Yes?” Her hand moved toward the doorknob.

  “My name is Easy, Easy Rawlins,” I said.

  “If you’re from one of the papers, I’m sorry but we’re not giving interviews. We… ” She pulled the door close to her side and moved forward.

  “No ma’am, I found some things that belong to you.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Rawlins, but I haven’t lost anything.”

  As she made ready to shut the door I said, “Your daughter’s things, ma’am.”

  “What are you talking about?” Her face and voice would have made a good final Friday scene on As the World Turns.

  “She lived down in my neighborhood. Down on Central Avenue, and she left some clothes an’ pictures down there.”

  “You’re mistaken, sir. My daughter lived right here.”

  “No, ma’am. I mean, maybe she did, but she lived down on Central too. I got her things right here in this bag.”

  When I pulled the blue sweater out of the bag she cried, “Oh my God!” and ran back into the house.

  She yelled, “Milo! Milo!” and then she ran back to the door.

  “Who are you?”

  It hurt to look in her eyes, so I stared at the mint weed that had pressed its way through the cracks at the base of the wall. I didn’t want to be there but I’d be damned if I could question black people and not white ones.

  The boy and a few of his friends ran to her side
. Actually they came up behind her.

  “Mom,” Milo said.

  “Go on back to your room, honey.” She was in control again. She turned and led them away from the door and came back.

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m Easy Rawlins, ma’am, and I’ve been helping the police since your daughter’s death.”

  “You’re a policeman?” She didn’t sound relieved.

  “Not exactly, ma’am. But I’ve been working with them. Some Negro women have also been killed and I know the neighborhood. I just wanted to ask you a couple of questions about these things I found.”

  “Excuse me, Mr. Rawlins,” she said with a perfect facsimile of a smile. “I’ve been upset, you can imagine. Come in and show me what you have.”

  I let her lead me into the sunken living room and took a seat on the furry couch.

  “Can I get you something?” she asked.

  “No. Just lemme show what I got here.” I was less sure of my convictions now that I was in the house with her. She was no longer some white person put out of bounds by a racist world. She’d become a mother who had lost a child and I was on the verge of making that injury worse.

  “We have pop and milk and beer,” she recited. It was her regular list for a guest.

  “I’d take a beer.”

  She squared her shoulders and turned for a door near the glass wall.

  “All right,” she said. “I’ll just be a minute.”

  She went quickly through the door.

  I looked at my watch. She was gone for six minutes.

  She came back with a platter on which sat a soda-fountain glass full of amber brew. She smiled and put the platter in front of me.

  “Did you know my daughter?” she asked. She probably wanted to wail.

  “No, ma’am.”

  I emptied the bag on the table before us. She had taken a seat on the couch at an angle so that she faced me. She was a brave woman, I’ll hand her that.

  She picked up the high school yearbook and pressed it between her two hands. She looked for a moment at the letters. I was getting nervous. She got to the envelope of photographs. At first she looked quizzical. Like, “What could Robin have wanted with these?” But then the avalanche fell. She threw the photographs on the floor.

  Her breaths started to come in sharp little gasps. I could almost hear her bird’s heart.

  She swallowed and brought both hands to the back of her neck. Before her lay a patchwork, in photographs, of her daughter’s life. A come-on smile, a bare breast. A sinuous pose that made her mother sit even straighter. The White Butterfly.

  “Why?” Her voice was so full of feeling that it took me a moment to decipher the word.

  “Ma’am?” I said after a while.

  And, after another wait, “Ma’am?”

  “Yes?”

  “Is that Robin?”

  She didn’t deny it.

  “Didn’t the police ask you what she did on the weekends, ma’am? Did you know?”

  “Would you like something to drink, Mr., Mr.… ” She turned her body fully toward me. I was sure that if she’d turned her neck her head would have twisted off and shattered on the floor.

  “Sure,” I said.

  She got up slowly and went back into the kitchen. My beer still sat on the table—untouched.

  After about fifteen minutes I looked in on her. The kitchen was white linoleum and waxed maple. She was sitting at the table with her head cradled in her arms.

  — 16 —

  I HAD TO ASK ABOUT CYNDI. Maybe it made sense that she was killed by this man. Maybe it did.

  But when I left that house I was finished with the case. Quinten and the police had my best shot. The bearded man was a good candidate for the killings. And I had a life to get back to.

  I COULD HEAR MOFASS hacking before I was halfway up the stairs. When I came into the room I found him holding his chest and breathing hard.

  He looked up at me with hangdog, yellowy eyes. His lips formed a crooked grimace. There was a cigar between the fingers of his left hand.

  “Sick,” he whispered.

  Mofass lolled back like a wounded sea lion. The skin around his lips was ashen. He wheezed instead of breathed. His eyes were focused somewhere outside the room.

  I’d seen dead men that looked healthier.

  “We better get you a doctor, man,” I said. I even reached for the phone.

  “What for?”

  He took a shallow breath and opened his eyes wide as saucers. Then he stifled a cough. He revved his lungs for a few moments, then said, “Just gimme a minute. I be okay.”

  “You need a doctor.”

  “I need to pay the rent. That’s what I need.”

  He got up by leaning against the desk and pushing himself up. He stood by holding the chair and then the wall. When he went through the small door that led to his toilet I wondered if he would die in there.

  A tiny black ant was foraging among the crumbs and ashes of Mofass’s desk. I put my finger next to him. He crawled all along the crevices between my fingers. I watched him and marveled that some god watched me like that. I got the urge to crush the insect but just then the toilet flushed and Mofass came banging into the room.

  His face was cleaned up and his eyes were alive again. There was a waver in his walk but he didn’t hold on to anything.

  “We gonna go?” he asked me.

  THE BUILDING WE WENT TO was called the Dorado, deep in Culver City. The walls were yellow plaster edged by weathered timbers. Terra-cotta pots lined the walkway to the front door. Each one overflowed with serpentine vines. The door said “DeCampo Associates.”

  A round-faced Japanese woman sat at a round desk in the middle of a large entrance. She was placid and fat and golden. Her eyes went from Mofass to me.

  “Afternoon, Mrs. Narotaki,” Mofass said.

  She smiled wider and looked him in the eye.

  “Are they here?” Mofass nodded at the large oak door behind her.

  Mrs. Narotaki said, “Have a seat. I’ll tell them.”

  There were large red velvet chairs near the front door. Mofass and I went to them and sat side by side.

  The small table next to me held a crystal vase that held seven white tulips. The ceiling was high and painted with a counterfeit Renaissance scene. There was a light blue sky complete with cotton-candy clouds and fat-boy angels with fig leaves to keep them modest.

  “I want you to follow the program here, Mo,” I whispered.

  “Don’t worry, Mr. Rawlins, I know what to do. But you got to remember that these here people in business t’make money. They ain’t got no time t’be worried ’bout any li’l ole thang.”

  “Like what?”

  “The Bontemps family.”

  The Bontempses were an elderly couple who lived in one of my apartment buildings. The Magnolia Street Apartments. They were in their eighties and their only son was dead. I let them pay me what they could for the rent and accepted the rest in labor. Of course, there was only so much that they could do in advanced age. Henry watered the lawn and swept the front porch every day. Crystal kept tabs on neighbors who might have wanted to skip the rent by moving out in the middle of the night. She was an insomniac, so every night noise drove her from her bed.

  “I can’t help what I do, Mofass. If I gots to give a man a break, that’s what I do. I done it for you.”

  He swallowed deeply.

  “Anyway, I just want you to tell’em what we agreed on. Okay?”

  “Yes sir.”

  Mofass lost all sense when it came to money. Money was his god and it wasn’t a kindly deity.

  Mrs. Narotaki looked up from her desk and smiled. “You can go in now.”

  The first thing you saw when going through the door was the garden. The ceiling-to-floor windows of the opposite wall looked out on a large garden with an Olympic-size marble pond at its center. Two snowy swans preened at the center of the pond. The glass was tinted, which made the sky seem a dee
per shade of blue. Mature willows trailed their sad leaves across the grounds, and a large white rabbit held one ear aloft as he nibbled in the grass and stared into the window.

  The room was large and sunny. The walls were covered with paintings. The kind of paintings old European lords had made to glorify their possessions. There was a small scene of dead game hung upside down from a peg on a wall. Below the fowl and hares an attentive hunting dog sat. Behind him a rifle leaned against the wall.

  A voluptuous maid carried a jug of milk and smiled from one frame. A white servant stood in a fancy den in another.

  There were stuffed chairs against the wall like the chairs we had outside. But the room was dominated by a long ash table that was surrounded by six wooden chairs. Four of the chairs were already occupied.

  “Mr. Wharton,” one of the men said. He sat nearest the door and rose to shake Mofass’s hand. He was short, simply dressed in a yellow cardigan sweater and dark brown slacks. His shirt was a cotton pullover with three buttons at the throat.

  Mofass grinned and nodded. “Mr. Vie,” he said. “I’d like you to meet Mr. Ezekiel Rawlins. Mr. Rawlins is one of the men who works for me. He also has a small share in that property you’re interested in.”

  Mofass took my elbow and guided it until the little white man and I were shaking hands.

  His eyes were a grayish blue. They told me that he was very happy to meet me and that we should be friends.

  “Very happy to meet you, Mr. Rawlins,” he said.

  I was ushered into a seat between Mr. Vie and Mofass. Over the table Mofass and I were introduced to the other men, who all leaned over to shake our hands.

  There was Fargo Baer, a big man in a proper brown suit. He had red hair everywhere. It was manageable and short on his head but it sprouted like weeds from his ears and throat and even from the backs of his hands.

  Next to Fargo sat Bernard Seavers. Bernard was skinny, shifty-eyed, and bone-colored. His thick black hair made him look as if he were wearing a hat.

  Finally, at the head of the table sat Jack DeCampo. Jack was the leader. His skin was olive-colored and smooth. His eyes were any light color you wanted them to be.