White Butterfly

by Mosley, Walter

  “I guess you don’t wanna work wit’ me, right?”

  “I want you out of this thing completely. All the way out!”

  I hung up the phone again. Then I left it off the hook until about eleven, when we went to bed.

  I GOT UP at one to change the bandage. It was too tight, but I didn’t want Regina to feel that I didn’t appreciate her work.

  I bathed the cut in witch hazel and wrapped it loosely with gauze and tape. I was just finishing up when the telephone rang.

  It only rang once.

  Regina was waiting for me in the hall.

  “One’a your girlfriends,” she informed me.

  I followed her back into the bedroom and picked the receiver up off my pillow.

  “Hello?”

  “Thank God it’s you, Easy. They got Raymond in jail.”

  “Who is this?” I asked for the third time.

  “Minnie Fry.”

  That was Raymond “Mouse” Alexander’s most-the-time girlfriend.

  “Okay, Minnie. Now calm down. Who got Mouse?”

  “The po-lice do!”

  “Is he dead?”

  “They holdin’ him. He want me to call you first off.”

  “Down here at the Seventy-seventh?”

  “Um-huh. You gotta go down there right now.”

  “It’s almost two… ”

  “You gotta go right now, Easy! That’s what Raymond said.”

  Mouse had faced loaded guns for me more than once. He had been my friend since we were young men, and even though Raymond was always close to mayhem, I knew he was the closest to family that I had outside of my wife and kids.

  “All right,” I sighed. “I’ll go down there.”

  “You gonna go right now?” Minnie asked.

  “I said all right, didn’t I?”

  “Okay. But you gotta go now.”

  We went back and forth like that three or four times before I could get her off the phone.

  I got my clothes from the closet.

  “My dressing wasn’t good enough for you?” Regina asked as I put on my pants.

  “A little tight is all. I just changed it.”

  “Where you goin’ now?”

  “Down to the police station.”

  “You gonna get drunk and fuck that girl down there?”

  “That was Minnie Fry on the phone, babe. That’s Mouse’s girl. She said that Mouse was in jail.”

  “What’s that got to do with you?”

  “He’s my friend, Regina. An’ I could get him out.”

  “You cain’t wait till mornin’?”

  “He wouldn’t wait for me.”

  Regina sucked her tooth and went back to bed. I leaned over her, to kiss her before I left, but she wasn’t interested.

  — 18 —

  THE NIGHT SERGEANT didn’t believe that I worked for Quinten Naylor. But he didn’t mind making an early-morning call to his superior officer either. So I waited while he tried to get through.

  It was a quiet night at the station.

  An old man nodded in and out of sleep on the long wooden bench where we both sat. He was a white wino, not uncommon in our neighborhood. His coat had once been brown but now it was worn to gray at places. He smelled of sweat and that made me like him. Across from us sat a middle-aged black woman. She was weeping into a blue handkerchief. Her cheeks and nose were bright black plums. I never knew why either one of them was there. I’ve spent my whole life passing by little tragedies like that and ignoring them.

  “Mr. Rawlins,” the desk sergeant called.

  “Yeah?”

  “Lieutenant Naylor said to let you see the man. Just fill this out and I’ll get somebody to bring you back.” He held out a clipboard with a mimeographed sheet of paper on it.

  I put down my name and address and relationship with the incarcerated. I put down my social security number and my telephone number and the reason for my visit. I signed at the bottom and returned the clipboard to the sergeant.

  He didn’t even read it, just folded the page into quarters and pushed it down a slot behind him. Then he picked up the phone and pushed a button on the desk.

  “Come on out here, Rivers,” was all he said into the receiver.

  A moment later a small white man in a short-sleeved khaki police shirt came out of a door behind the sergeant’s desk. The man had a gaunt and pitted face. He was probably in his mid-thirties but he could have been sixty with a ravaged face like that.

  “This the guy?”

  The sergeant nodded.

  “Come on,” the ravaged man said. “I’m in a goddamned rush.”

  First he took me down a long gray-plaster hall. We came to a white wooden door that the policeman had a key for. Just beyond that door was another one, an iron door with evil-looking bolts all around it. He had a key for this door too. Then we were in another hall made of steel-grated floors, walls, and ceilings.

  We came to a big room made all out of metal and glass. There was a table in the middle of the floor with a chair on either side. The table and chairs were all bolted to the floor.

  I heard the gruff voice of one man talking and the pathetic sobs of another man.

  “Sit down. Wait here,” the little policeman said. Then he went through a door on the other side.

  “I ain’t tellin’ you again!” It was the gruff voice.

  In answer a man moaned. Then there was a loud crash and more crying. I heard the voice again but I couldn’t make out what was being said.

  The noise was coming from behind an iron door to my right.

  The door behind me opened and Mouse, manacled hand and foot, shuffled in, followed by the warder.

  It made me sick at heart to see Raymond like that. He was the only black man I’d ever known who had never been chained, in his mind, by the white man. Mouse was brash and wild and free. He might have been insane, but any Negro who dared to believe in his own freedom in America had to be mad. The sight of his incarceration made me shudder inside.

  Rivers pushed Mouse toward the chair. Once Raymond was seated the policeman padlocked his chains through two metal loops in the floor. Then he went to sit on a stool in the corner, giving us as little privacy as he could.

  I could still hear the arguing, moaning, and fighting from behind the iron door, but the guard and Mouse seemed unconcerned.

  “You got a piece, Easy?” he whispered.

  “What?”

  “You got a gun?”

  “No, no. I ain’t comin’ in no jail with a gun.”

  “I need to get out of here,” Mouse said slowly. “They want to change my address to Folsom Prison an’ that ain’t gonna happen.”

  “Why they got you in here, Raymond?”

  “They wanna frame me on them killin’s. They need somebody t’hang.”

  “Why you?”

  “I don’t know, man. They say I knowed a couple’a them girls. Maybe I did, you know I always be after that stuff. But that don’t mean I kilt no girls.”

  “So you didn’t do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “What they said, man. Kill them girls.”

  “What? You think I’m crazy?”

  Yes, I thought. Crazy and a killer in everything he did. He was a slight man, not over five-seven, with gold-edged teeth and a pencil-thin mustache. The police hadn’t issued him jail clothes. He was decked out in green suede shoes, drab green pants, and a loose bright pink shirt that flopped around his wrists because they had taken his cufflinks.

  He’d murdered his stepfather for a wedding dowry. He would have lied to God with his final breath.

  “I just wanna know why they pulled you in here,” I said. “That’s all.”

  “Please, no,” came a cry from behind the iron door.

  I looked around at the guard but he was reading a paperback western.

  “It don’t matter why I’m here, Easy,” Mouse said. “What matters is that you get me out.”

  Every now and then there was a
dull thud against the iron door.

  “Gimme a few hours,” I said.

  When the little guard led me back out of that hell I could have almost kissed the floor.

  I WAS READING the morning paper at the sergeant’s desk when Quinten Naylor arrived. It was seven-sixteen in the morning.

  He motioned me to follow him and we both walked back to his office.

  We sat with our coffee and cigarettes. Quinten nodded and asked, “What can I do for you?”

  “Why you got Mouse down here, man?”

  “Mr. Alexander is suspected of having information about a homicide.” His face was wooden.

  “You ain’t got a damn thing on him.”

  “Do you know who did the killings?”

  “What about that bearded guy I told you ’bout? He coulda done it.”

  “No corroboration. The owners of Aretha’s denied the story.”

  “What about Gregory Jewel?”

  “He says that he never saw the man that hit him.”

  “And you believe that?”

  “Do you have something for me, Rawlins? Because if you don’t I have business to take care of.” He motioned his head toward the door, then he picked up a pencil and started writing on a white legal pad.

  “What about Mouse?”

  “He stays in jail until we have something better.”

  “On what charges?”

  Naylor put down his pencil and looked at me. “No charge. He stays here two more days, then he gets transferred to the Hollywood station. After that we send him downtown. We could keep him tied up for months and even the commissioner wouldn’t be able to find him.”

  “You proud’a that?”

  “Are you going to find our killer?”

  “I thought Voss wanted me out.”

  “He’s not the only one involved. Violette wants you in. He’s willing to kill your friend to make sure of it.”

  “Let Mouse out,” I said.

  “No can do.”

  “Let’im out an’ we’ll find this killer together. I’ma need a helper if this thing gets full-time with me.”

  “He’s a prime suspect, Easy. He’s been everywhere those girls were. Even your Cyndi Starr.”

  “I don’t think he did it.”

  “How would you know?”

  “Raymond wouldn’t kill those girls like that. But if you leave him in jail people gonna die for sure. Anyway, he told me he didn’t have nuthin’ t’do with it. He ain’t got no reason t’lie t’me. Gimme a week with Raymond and we’ll turn up what you need.”

  Quinten shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “Call Violette. Ask him,” I said. “I’ll be out at the bench when you get an answer.”

  I waited an hour and fifteen minutes for Naylor to come out. He had Mouse with him. Mouse was fastening his cufflinks and smiling at me. It was a killer’s smile that reminded all the ladies of a sweet loving child.

  — 19 —

  MOUSE WAS LIVING with Minnie Fry at that time. They had a one-room cottage on Vernon.

  She was sleeping in the Murphy bed when we got there.

  “Hey, Minnie! Yo’ boy is home,” Mouse called as we came crashing into the room.

  The only thing I could see of Minnie was her head. The rest of her was just a lump under a thick pink quilt. But when Mouse announced himself she yelled (I swear), “Oh boy!” and threw the bedding aside. All she wore was a tiny pair of pink panties but she didn’t mind my eyes. She ran up to Mouse and hugged him to her large bosom as if he were the Lord called up from the dead.

  “Baby!” she cried. She kissed him and hugged him some more. “Baby!”

  Minnie was a head taller and fifty pounds heavier than Mouse. She swung him from side to side until he stopped holding on to her and started trying to push away.

  “Stop it, Minnie. Stop it fo’ you send me to the hospital.”

  She just kept crooning and swaying. I don’t think anybody ever missed me as much as that woman missed him. I was away from home for years in World War II and nobody waited at the shore to hold me like that.

  “Put me down, girl,” Mouse pleaded. I could see that he was smiling, though. “Go get decent fo’ you shame ole Easy here.”

  Minnie didn’t mind showing off her generous black figure as long as we didn’t mention it, but when he said that she folded her arms around her chest and ducked a little as she scooped some clothes from a chair. She held these in front of her and tiptoed into the bathroom.

  Mouse smiled after her. “She sumpin’, huh, Easy?”

  Minnie was out of the bathroom in two minutes. She wore a plain blue dress that she’d probably sewn from a pattern in home economics when she was still in high school. You could see the uneven seams along the blue straps that covered her shoulder. The dress was a little snug, because she’d gained a few pounds in the two years since she’d gotten her diploma.

  “Place is a pigsty,” Mouse said, curling his lip with distaste. “I only been in jail one day. How could you do all this?”

  Minnie just wilted.

  Mouse held out his hands in a helpless gesture. “What’s that you say?”

  “I didn’t say nuthin’, baby.”

  “Then what do you have to say? I mean, I come home to a hog barn an’ you just gonna wave yo’ titties in Easy’s face?”

  I felt for Minnie’s shame but there was nothing I could do to help her. What Mouse wanted to say was that we were going to have to talk business so we were going out again. But he couldn’t say something straightforward like that, so he criticized her cleaning in order that he could excuse himself while she got the house together.

  “Now we gonna start over,” Mouse said. “I’ma go with Easy now an’ get some breakfast… ”

  “I’ll cook for ya, baby,” Minnie interrupted.

  “Uh-uh, no. We gonna go down to the Pie Pan an’ get us some food, and when we get back the house and you is gonna be just fine. Ain’t that right?”

  “Uh-huh. But I could get cleaned up real quick, Raymond… ”

  Mouse shook his head and frowned. “I don’t wanna hear it, Minnie. We goin’ now.”

  We did go to the Pie Pan. Mouse had toast, jelly, and hot chocolate. I ordered grits, sausages, and eggs scrambled with cubed potatoes and onions. We didn’t talk at first because Mouse’s hands were shaking. Over the years I had learned that as long as Mouse’s hands were still shaking he could kill over the smallest slight. When he got nervous, violence was his easiest and first outlet. That’s why I didn’t take Minnie’s part in the house. He might have struck her, or me, if he felt that his will was being questioned.

  So we ate and smoked and waited for the jailhouse shakes to subside.

  After the meal was over and we were both drinking tea with lemon I said, “We gotta find the man did them killin’s, Raymond.”

  “All right wit’ me. You know I wanna kill me some mothahfuckah. I don’t take to no cell.”

  “We can’t kill’im, Raymond. I want the law off both of us an’ the only way we could do that is t’give’em somebody t’hang.”

  “I might not have t’kill’im, but you know I might shoot’im a li’l just the same. S’pose he a big boy don’t respect my pistol?”

  I didn’t argue. If Mouse wanted to hurt somebody there was no way to stop him. I had to accept his insane violence if I wanted his help.

  I told him everything that I’d learned. I told him about Aretha’s and the whorehouse. I told him about Gregory Jewel and Cyndi Starr. In forty-five minutes he knew everything I did.

  “What this white girl gotta do with it?”

  “Bad luck, I guess.”

  “Bad luck my ass.”

  “What you mean?”

  “I don’t know, Easy. But we gonna find out. Who we gonna talk to first? You wanna try them boys who beat up on you?”

  “Not right now. They were just hands. Probably come after me ’cause Max thought it would keep me off them. It’s just bad for business have someb
ody ’round talkin’ ’bout killin’.”

  “Gregory Jewel?”

  “Uh-uh. He don’t know nuthin’. No. It’s Charlene Mars and Westley we talk to. Charlene told the cops that she never saw no man go up against Gregory Jewel. I don’t know why, she could just be lyin’ to fuck with ’em, but I think she knows somethin’ too. Otherwise she’d tell’em the little bit she knew.”

  “Sound good to me. You wanna go over there now?”

  “Uh-uh. Tonight, after they close.”

  Mouse’s eyes lit up. “I’ll meet ya out front at two.”

  I nodded and shook his hand. Then I took him over to Minnie’s house so he could spend the afternoon making up to her.

  * * *

  WHEN I GOT HOME there was a note waiting from Jesus’s gym teacher.

  Jesus had gotten into a fight with two boys who were taunting him. When the gym teacher tried to stop them Jesus hit him in the nose.

  “Don’t be too hard on’im, Easy,” Regina said after I’d read the note. “You know children always be ridin’ a child who’s different.”

  “He gotta learn to keep his anger in check,” I answered. I was always happy that Regina cared about Jesus. She just accepted him.

  I might have sounded tough to her but I wasn’t very upset by Jesus’s crime.

  Still, I put on a severe face and went into the boy’s room. But when I saw him, curled up behind his knees on the bed, I knew that he’d already learned more than I could bully him into.

  He shuddered when I sat next to him. I patted his shoulder and smiled as softly as I could.

  “Don’t worry, boy,” I said. “We gonna go straighten this out in the morning.”

  Jesus looked at me with frightened eyes. He nodded as if to say, “Really?”

  “Yeah. I know you a good boy, Jesus. You wouldn’t fight unless you thought you had to. But I want you to promise me that you won’t never fight unless somebody hits you or tries to hit you.”

  His gaze gained confidence. He smiled and nodded.

  “’Cause you know a man can control you if he can drive you to fight over some shit he talks.”

  Jesus nodded again.

  Jesus put his cold hands on my neck and kissed me just off to the left of my nose. When he hugged me I was amazed at how hot his cheek was.