White Butterfly

by Mosley, Walter

  “They give me five thousand dollars,” he said.

  “So?”

  “I ain’t got it, Mr. Rawlins. I spent it. I thought you was gonna go ’long with’em.”

  His breathing was getting worse.

  “That ain’t my problem, William.”

  “But I took it on your behalf. I took it for our company.”

  “Shit,” was all I had to say.

  I left him gagging and coughing in his swivel chair.

  The house looked almost the same. The Caddies were still in the driveway but the bicycles were gone. I didn’t get a chance to use the buzzer—they had the door open before I was halfway up the walk.

  They both came out to meet me. Mr. Garnett shook my hand. He even smiled.

  “I’m sorry about the other day, Rawlins. But when I came home Sarah couldn’t even talk. Milo was sitting holding her hand and crying.”

  “Then I guess it’s me who should be sorry.” I looked at her when I said that.

  “Coffee, Mr. Rawlins?” Mrs. Garnett asked.

  “Sure, sure,” I said.

  We sat in the living room again. The couple sat side by side holding hands on the couch. I tried to remember the last time I had been with Regina like that.

  “Would you prefer cream?” Mrs. Garnett asked.

  “Naw.” I looked at them for a few moments more. The man was big and powerful but he was uncertain. He stared at the floor while he patted his wife’s hand. She was strength on the verge of collapse. Her brown hair was fading into gray. Her steely blue eyes were in mine, but somewhere else at the same time.

  “Can you help us?” she asked.

  “Let’s see what you got.”

  The husband had the certificate in an official-looking envelope. It had a cellophane window that revealed a black page that had been scrawled over by a harried hand.

  Feather Starr was born on August 12. There was no father mentioned. Back in those days they included race on birth certificates. It was a little box labeled “Race.” In Feather’s little box there was written a small “w.”

  “Looks right,” I said. “But I thought the paper said that Robin, or Cyndi or whatever you call her, was in Europe until about then?”

  “She’d left home about six months ago,” Vernor said. “We didn’t want to admit it. We were ashamed.”

  “Did you go to the police?” I asked.

  “She was twenty-one, Mr. Rawlins. She told us that she was dropping out of school. The police couldn’t have done a thing. What’s important now is that we have a granddaughter somewhere.” Mr. Garnett had tears in his voice. “It means our baby isn’t completely gone.”

  “Yeah, could be.”

  “What do you mean?” Mrs. Garnett asked. Her tone of voice was telling me that she might not be able to take one more thing. But I still had things to say.

  “Who knows what a girl like this is gonna do with a baby?”

  “Girl like what?” the father said.

  “You’re a prosecutor, man.” I looked him right in the eye. “You know what it’s like. Fo’them girls money is in their titties and in their legs.” I felt myself sneering. Each word hit the man like a haymaker. He winced and cowered in his chair. “A woman up in Hollywood Row be brushin’ out her hair for a man to wanna see. He’s gonna pay fo’that. One way or the other he gonna pay. Either he gonna buy whiskey while she dancin’ on a bar or he gonna hand it over before he walk through the door.”

  As I spoke I moved toward the edge of my seat. Mr. Garnett folded backward—he even let go of his wife’s hand.

  “Why are you doing this?” Mrs. Garnett said. “Why are you torturing him?”

  She caught me up short. I sat back to clear my head.

  “Just tryin’ t’make my point, that’s all.”

  “What point?”

  “Girls like the ones live down on the Row live by their bodies. Each piece got its purpose and each piece got its price.”

  She didn’t know what I was talking about, but I was pretty sure that her husband did.

  “Baby is just another piece,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Baby got a price tag too. Baby got a big price tag if you know the right market.”

  “Are you saying that Robin might have sold her baby?” Mr. Garnett’s tone was threatening to break out into fists.

  “I seen a man pay a woman five dollars so he could put his head on her shoulder.”

  Garnett leaped to his feet. I didn’t flinch though. I didn’t flinch because I had a loaded .25 in my pocket.

  “Get out of my house!” he yelled. “Get out!”

  I stood as tall as I could but Vernor still had an inch or two on me.

  “All right,” I said. “But this is just why I talked like that.”

  Mrs. Garnett stood and asked, “What do you mean?”

  “This thing with yo’ girl is ugly and you might not really wanna get into it. You might find out all kindsa things. You might find a dead baby someplace. You might find a pimp done sold your baby girl to some sex fiend in Las Vegas. You open up this can’a worms and you could find out anything. And if you cain’t take it then better find out right now.”

  I felt for them. At least I knew that Regina would take care of my baby. They had one dead child and another one who could be dead or worse.

  “You don’t have to worry about me, Rawlins,” Mr. Garnett said. “I can take whatever I have to.”

  I believed him. Garnett was large and kind of rugged-looking. His eyes weren’t strong but they didn’t seem to have much fear either. Like a doctor’s eyes when he sees a man dying; just another day.

  We were all standing and I didn’t want to sit down again. I was afraid to death of sitting down again. I felt that the sadness of that woman would drown me if I stayed any longer.

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “I’ll find the baby if she’s there to be found.”

  “How much?” Mr. Garnett asked.

  “I’ll take five hundred dollars plus my expense on the day I deliver the baby to you.”

  Mrs. Garnett saw me to the door. She put her hand on my forearm and looked into my eyes. Her eyes were blue-gray. They shifted back and forth between colors even while I stared into them.

  “When should we get in touch with you?” she asked.

  “Wait for me. When I know somethin’ you’ll know it too.”

  “You’re my hope, Mr. Rawlins. I didn’t think I could go on until Vernor found out about the baby. If I could just have her.”

  There was gratitude in her eyes. Gratitude and maybe the desire to go with me.

  “I’ll call,” I said and walked on down the path.

  — 33 —

  THE TOOTHLESS LAUNDRESS at Lin Chow remembered me right away. She smiled and pulled out a bundle wrapped in brown paper and tied by white string. I paid her a dollar seventy-five and she showed me her gums.

  The dirge was plaintive and high, then guttural, an almost human groan. I listened while I went up the stairs and down the hall.

  Lips was seated at his table, his chest was bare and his feet were too. He played his horn in a way that would teach any man to love jazz.

  The music washed over me like the air at the end of the first battle after D-Day. There were no more bullets or shards of metal flying through the air. The dead lay around in pieces and whole but I couldn’t really mourn for them because I was alive. It was pure luck that I wasn’t stretched out. I lived a little longer so that I could hurt a little more.

  It was a sweet pain.

  I sat at the window and listened to him play for a long time. I watched the cars and pedestrians wander while Lips made sense of their lives.

  A nice-looking young woman was walking across the street being followed by a pear-shaped man. He was talking loudly and gesturing with his hands. After half a block she stopped and then she smiled. He smiled too. They walked side by side after that. I wondered if they had ever met. Then I wondered if they’d get married.

&n
bsp; “What you need now?” Lips asked. I hadn’t even realized that he had stopped playing.

  “Did you know about her baby?”

  “Who baby?”

  “Cyndi’s.” I turned to meet his glassy stare.

  “That’s why she was gone,” he said finally.

  “You didn’t know?”

  “Naw. Not me, man. People go in an’ outta here all the time. You know they mo’ likely be dead then pregnant.”

  “Anybody else know her good enough that she might tell them?”

  “Sylvia.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “I already told you ’bout her. ’Nother white girl. Actress too. Sylvia Bride’s what they calls her. I don’t know where she is now, though.”

  “That all?”

  “Boy live across the hall from her. Prancer.”

  “Little guy with a mustache?”

  “Uh-huh, they was good friends.”

  I left twenty dollars on the table and made a note about it in this tiny spiral notepad I’d bought.

  * * *

  THE DOOR WAS UNADORNED. I knocked for a long time before I heard any sound whatever from inside.

  He opened the door wearing crosshatched boxer shorts and brown slippers. His slick hair was tousled and his eyes were bloodshot. He looked at me for a long time trying to think who I might be.

  “Yeah?” he said, giving up at last.

  “You Prancer?”

  “Who’re you?”

  “Can I come in?”

  He stood there for a few seconds and then backed up, letting me in the room.

  I don’t know what I was expecting but the room surprised me. It was very neat, with conservative furnishings, except for the bed. The bed had a wooden headboard painted blue with the figures of little cherubs at the top corners. There was also a sofa and chair set before a coffee table. The coffee table had magazines of various kinds, mainly movie magazines, spread across it.

  The only adornment on the wall was a movie poster of James Dean looking tortured and vulnerable.

  I sat in the chair and Prancer stood there before me rubbing his eyes. He had the body of a teenaged boy but he must have been in his late twenties, maybe even thirty.

  “Do I know you?” he asked.

  “I was in Cyndi’s room the other day. You wanted me to leave.”

  “You the cop,” he said, suddenly awake and none too pleased.

  “Just a man,” I said as cool as I could manage. “Lookin’ fo’ somethin’.”

  “Lookin’ fo’ what?”

  “They say Cyndi had a baby.”

  “Who says?”

  “You told her father that.”

  Prancer didn’t say anything. He just stared at me with his right hand cupped under where his left breast would have been if he were a woman.

  “They went to the hospital where you sent them. They found out that Cyndi Starr delivered.”

  He grinned defiantly and rocked back and forth. “I ain’t lied t’them.”

  “You know where the child is?”

  He shook his head like he was shaking water from his hair.

  “You know anything could help me find her?”

  “How come?”

  “Grandparents want the child. It’s all they got left.”

  For a moment Prancer’s oblivious child’s face showed feeling. “She had a girl?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “Listen, man,” he said. His face was empty again. “I feel for them, mother and child, but you know I got the rent t’pay. If I got sumpin’ t’get you in here wit’ me then you know they gotta have some money somewheres.”

  “I got thirty dollars in my pocket, boy. That’s it. Can we deal?”

  Prancer actually licked his lips when I laid out the six five-dollar bills in his hand.

  “Where?”

  “You know Bull Horker?”

  It was a question, not an address, but that was all I needed. Much more, actually. Maybe too much.

  — 34 —

  BULL HORKER OWNED a ribs-and-chicken joint on the southern outskirts of downtown. It was just an old bungalow that he and his brother owned. They set it on a vacant lot that they leased from a friend who was in jail for manslaughter.

  Bull was a massive man. He resembled the sculptures of Balzac done by Rodin. His corpulence was indicative of strength of limb and of spirit. His large gut was a clenched fist. His beefy jowls looked as if they could gnash through pipe.

  His skin was mottled like some fine Asian woodwork. It was pulled back tight across his wide, hippopotamus-like face.

  “Sylvia who?” he said, cocking his head at such a severe angle that his left ear was almost parallel to the floor.

  We were sitting at the back of the dive. The cook, an old ex-convict called Bailey, was frying short ribs and flour behind the counter.

  Bull had migrated to Chicago from Mississippi but wound up in L.A. because of his intense dislike of the cold. He did favors for people; so did I. But Mr. Horker’s favors always had a price attached up front. Sometimes it was cash; sometimes it was something more dear.

  He had plenty of business because he’d do anything, from finding a cut-rate engagement ring to killing your worst enemy.

  “Sylvia Bride,” I said. “That’s probably her working name. She does exotic dancing.”

  “Nope,” he smiled. He looked around the room cautiously and then pulled a fifth of some kind of pink liquor from under his chair. “Drink?”

  I shook my head no.

  “Mind if I try?”

  “You sure you don’t know her?” I asked again.

  “Sure as this here booze.” He slugged back a healthy shot. Suddenly there was a powerful odor of apricots.

  “The police been lookin’ for her in the worst way.”

  The lizard-skinned clown transformed into a bronze warrior before my eyes. His fists clenched and his jaw set. His eyes became so dull that it was hard to distinguish them from the rest of his face.

  “Says which?” he breathed.

  “Cops lookin’ for this girl, this Sylvia.”

  “So?”

  “They gonna go out t’look in my trail if I cain’t locate ’er. We kinda workin’ together on this one.”

  Bull was a big man. I didn’t think I would stand a chance against him without a high-caliber gun. As he looked at me I considered my demise. One eye, his left one, nearly shut while the other one opened wide.

  I girded myself for the stampede.

  Then the right half of his upper lip curled back, revealing an especially feral-looking canine. The rest of his teeth slowly came into view until I saw, with little relief, that Bull was smiling.

  “You comin’ inta my place an’ threatenin’ me, Easy Rawlins?”

  “I ain’t threatenin’ nobody. I ain’t scared’a you neither. I’m lookin’ for this girl and I heard your name. That’s all. The police want her. That ain’t no threat—it’s the truth.”

  Bull poured another shot of schnapps and drank it.

  We had never been at odds before. I wasn’t afraid of him any more than I was afraid of any man. The problem wasn’t men, it was death.

  Death seemed to hound me. He was in Bull Horker’s placid visage; he was on a slab in Oakland. She leaned up against a tree a few blocks from my house.

  “If I tell you I don’t know the girl, then that’s all I gotta say,” Bull said.

  “And if I tell you that somebody got a thousand dollars for something they lost and Sylvia found, then you wouldn’t be able to help me, huh?”

  Bull just stared.

  I wrote my number on the corner of his racing form. Then I walked out of there into the smog and sun of Los Angeles.

  JESUS WAS STILL AT SCHOOL when I got home. He had emptied out all of my liquor bottles. Poured every one down the drain and set them neatly across the windowsill. Even my hundred-dollar bottle of Armagnac.

  I took off my clothes and got into the bed.

  There was
a child crying in my dreams.

  — 35 —

  IN THE MORNING I WOKE to find Jesus asleep at the foot of my bed. He was curled up into a little ball, fully dressed, with his mouth wide open. He was just a little boy and the world around him was whirling like a storm.

  I never knew where Jesus was from. For a long time he lived with my friend Primo down in the barrio. But then Primo left for a while and Jesus came to live with me.

  I was the closest thing to a father he had, and now that Regina was gone I didn’t even come home regularly.

  I got up and threw out the bottles that my son had emptied and made breakfast. We had pancakes and bacon. Jesus ate with silent glee.

  “Don’t worry, boy,” I told him. “We’re gonna get through this one just like we made it all them other times.”

  Jesus nodded solemnly. I tickled his ribs and he fell off the chair to the floor.

  After he was gone to school I called Quinten Naylor.

  “Yes?” he said in my ear.

  “Yeah, man. Are you a cop or what?”

  “Rawlins?”

  “Robin Garnett, Cyndi Starr, or whatever you wanna call’er, had a baby just three months ago. She never went to Europe and she dropped out of UCLA.”

  He was silent for a moment and then he said, “Go on.”

  “Viola Saunders said that J.T. was up there when Robin was killed.”

  “She’s just trying to protect him, that’s all.”

  I told him about Prancer and Sylvia.

  “We got the killer, Easy.”

  “You ain’t got shit. You just wanna shove yo’ head in the dirt and make like it’s gonna go away.”

  Quinten hung up on me and I sat back in my chair.

  I wanted a drink. I thought of Regina and slapped myself hard against the head.

  Then I called up the memory of the day we buried my mother. It was in St. Ives’s graveyard four miles outside of New Iberia, Louisiana. My father wore a black suit and a black tie. He held a spray of honeysuckle in one hand and my hand in the other. My mother’s sister and her children were there. The sky was clear and the air was heavy and hot. The minister said a lot of words and my father held my hand. He never let go.