“I have a … a cousin named Ginger. We were close when we were kids.”
“Where is she?”
“Sacramento.”
“You should call her.”
Sue stood up with sudden resolve and moved toward the black wall phone next to the counter.
“Not from here,” I said, touching her arm.
She skittered away from my hand and asked, “Why not?”
“Because there’s a dead man in this house and the police might check out who was called over the last few days.”
Sue stared at me, looking for some kind of duplicity in my words. When she couldn’t find any she wilted back into the chair and sighed in desolation.
“It’s okay, girl,” I said. “You’re going to go upstairs and take a shower; then we’re gonna go down to the train station, call Ginger, and buy you a ticket to as close to her as you can get.”
While the girl was upstairs in the bathroom I went out the back door, across a neglected concrete patio strewn with leaves and streaked with dried mud, over a patch of shaggy grasses, and into the garage. I’d retrieved the car keys from the dead man’s pockets, but the doors were unlocked. He drove a late-model forest green Cadillac convertible.
There was no suitcase in the car, but there was a straw bag set on a raw pine shelf at the back of the garage. Her white plastic purse was on top of it. I smiled at the trusting nature of careless youth. It occurred to me that if anyone ever treated Feather like Maurice had done to Sue, I would kill him without even a moment’s consideration.
The purse supported Sue’s story. Her last name was Hellinger and she lived until recently on North Post Road in Flagstaff, Arizona. I carried the small valise and purse back to the kitchen. Sue had half a pack of Winston cigarettes in her cheap purse. I was on my third one when she came downstairs from her ablutions.
Her hair was combed and the smell was gone. The odd thing was that cleaning herself up allowed me to see how plain her face was. Suffering, I concluded, sometimes accents and beautifies its victim.
The girl took the bag into the bathroom and changed. While she was in there I found a straw hat in Maurice’s bedroom closet. This I put on with the brim tipped over my face. Then I led the girl out to my borrowed Barracuda and drove within the speed limit while my heart was racing far up ahead.
“He was gonna make me into a whore, wasn’t he?” Sue Hellinger said when we were half the way downtown.
“That’s what it sounds like,” I said. “But it’s kind of crazy. I mean, why not find somebody who wants to do the work?”
My mind was all over the place. Between my official death and Evander, Jackson Blue’s comparatively simple problem, and the immensity of Sue’s suffering, I felt like a flea trying to wrangle an elephant.
“He would come and sit on the trunk sometimes and talk to me,” Sue said. When I had no comment she went on. “He sounded calm but it was crazy. He said it made him feel good when he was asleep at night to know that he had a girl locked in a box downstairs.”
She said many other things after that. None of which I wish to repeat or remember.
It took two hours to contact Sue’s cousin. She lived in a rented house with three other girls. After many tries we got Ginger’s work number and finally reached her after her lunch break. With coaching from me Sue explained that she got into trouble without giving any specifics. Ginger was a true friend and told her to come right up; a train would get in by midnight. We bought the ticket and waited near the track door.
“Should I tell Ginger what happened?” she asked.
“You’ll have a whole lifetime to ponder that question.”
“I mean,” she said, “you don’t want me to tell about you, right?”
“What’s my name?” I asked her.
“Um … I don’t know.”
“See? You could tell her all about what you know about me and the killer, because you don’t know a thing. And there’s no reason to go to the police, because Maurice is already dead.”
This assessment, for some reason, brought tears to the teenager’s eyes.
“Don’t worry, girl,” I said with my hands down by my sides. “You’re gonna live through this. You’re gonna be okay.”
By then it was time for her to board her train. I hailed a redcap. He was an older Negro with kind eyes and a slight limp. I tipped him five dollars and told him to help her all the way to a seat.
I had already given Sue the money from Maurice’s wallet. She smiled for me and turned to follow the redcap. As I watched them walk away I had the sudden impression that I was a dead man saying good-bye to a ghost.
38
By the time I got back to the illegal hotel I was flagging—not exhausted or shattered, as I had been before my last bouts of sleep, just very, very tired.
Unit J was empty, and so I told myself that I had to go out and find Evander. Nan Mann would have seen him leave. Luce might even have noted the direction. It was early afternoon. I laid my head down on the unmade bed, in the little cell that passed for a room, taking a few minutes to close my eyes before going out looking for my troubled ward.
When I woke up, maybe four hours later, Evander was perched on a chair at the side of the bed. Our positions brought back my first memories after the accident. I was once again an invalid, and Evander flipped back and forth between being Mouse and Lynne Hua sitting vigil over me.
Inhalation promoted me from invalid to merely exhausted.
The young man that Mouse called Little Green was deep in thought. His fists were under his chin, he was leaning forward like Rodin’s Thinker, and his eyes were cast down but looking inward.
“Evander.”
“You awake?” he asked, not looking up.
The mechanics of raising my torso from a prone to a seated posture seemed infinitely complex. But I managed it, making the grunting sounds that old people do when they have to bend down—or crank themselves back up again.
“Where’d you go?” I asked.
“Tulip Café,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“It’s a soul food place. Miss Mann told me that I could get somethin’ to eat there.”
“Good?”
“I called my mama.” Full stop.
“Yeah?”
“I told her what Mr. Alexander told me to.” Stop.
“And?”
“I told her that Mr. Alexander told me that he knew who my father was, and that if she didn’t tell me, then he would.” Stop.
Evander’s halting story didn’t bother me, because I knew his lineage had nothing to do with me and my problems.
“She said,” Evander continued unexpectedly, “that Mr. Alexander should know who my father was. He should know because my father was a man named Frank Green and Mr. Alexander murdered him.”
It was nineteen years before that a white gangster named DeWitt Albright hired me to find a white woman who preferred the company of black men—Daphne Monet. But Daphne only looked white, and used her looks to pass as something she was not in the American notion of race. She was a Negro woman but her skin was white. Her half brother, Frank Green, however, was the color of a starless night. Frank was a gangster too, and he was bound and determined to kill me for even thinking about his sister.
Frank was hunting me but Mouse found him first. And even though Raymond did the deed, I was the reason he killed Little Green’s father.
“Did you know my father?” Evander asked from a far-removed place in time.
“Back in those days L.A. was a much smaller place,” I said. “There were two million fewer people in Southern California. I knew almost every black face back then. And if I didn’t know ’em I knew somebody who did.”
“Did you know Frank Green?”
“Not personally, but I knew who he was.”
“Did Mr. Alexander kill him?” Evander sat up straight to ask this question.
“Your father,” I said, “if Frank Green really was your father, was a killer, a
terror with knife or gun. I know of six people he slaughtered. Not murdered, not killed, but butchered like beef cows. Ray’s a bad man too. If they crossed each other one or both were destined to die. On that side of the tracks killing was just another part of life.”
“If it’s true then I have to kill him,” Evander said to his hands.
“Maybe,” I agreed. “Maybe he did and maybe you do. But let’s follow it down first. Did your mother actually see Ray kill Frank?”
“I don’t know,” the young man said.
“First you got to make sure you know what you’re saying is true, because you only have two and a half possibilities if it is. The most likely outcome is that you try and kill Ray, but he gets you first. After that there’s the slim chance that you kill him and then one of his friends’ll hunt you down and kill you, that is unless you get arrested and the judge sends you to the gas chamber.”
Evander, Little Green, was concentrating on my words. I thought my logic was getting through to him when he asked, “Did you go to college, Mr. Rawlins?”
“No. But I been to school.”
“I was gonna go to college.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because Mama needed help and I was just … I don’t know … I just wasn’t ready to take myself seriously like that.”
I lifted up on my left side and pulled the car keys out of my pocket.
“I got a bottle of Mama Jo’s medicine in my trunk,” I said. “Car’s parked right out on the street. Go get it for me, will you, son?”
Evander went and I wondered if I was the reason that the lost boy wasn’t ready to live his life. Could I have saved his father? Should I have died so that the next generation would live? I thought about how Mouse had taken care of the boy and his family for nearly two decades after killing Frank Green. Mouse and I had been friends since our teen years, and I was still finding new sides to him.
When Evander returned I gulped down the sweet and foul brew, and then lay back to consider what to do about so many different and conflicting troubles.
“I found Maurice,” I said some while later. I had a multitiered plan in place. I might not have been able to articulate every step, but you don’t have to be able to forge a pistol in order to shoot a man dead.
“Did he know what happened?” Little Green asked.
“I’m sure he did, but he didn’t tell me, because he was dead.”
“Dead? How?”
“Somebody shot him in the shoulder, but he survived that. Then somebody tortured, beat, and then shot him in the head trying to get to you.”
“Me? What for?”
“That money, of course.”
“Where is the money?”
“In a safe place.”
“I been thinkin’ ’bout it, Mr. Rawlins. That’s my money and I want it.”
“We don’t know whose money it is,” I said. “One thing for sure: There’s blood on it. If you take one you got to take the other. But in the meanwhile we can’t put it under the bed or in the trunk of my car. The money is safe and it will stay that way until we figure out who killed Maurice and dissuade them from doing the same thing to you and yours.”
Evander frowned again. He was worried about his mother and sisters. That was good. I wanted to keep him focused on right now so I could work some magic around later on.
39
“Where we going to, Mr. Rawlins?” Evander asked as we drove away from Alcott Court. The mostly cleaned burlap sacks and sheets were in my trunk, destined to be burned in the days that followed.
“To drop by a friend’s office,” I said, “Jewelle MacDonald.”
“How come?”
“I own some apartment buildings around the city. Her office is the managing agency. If any unit is free she can set you up in one to wait until I figure out how to make sure those men will leave you alone.”
“How you gonna do that?”
“Maybe a little conversation,” I speculated. “You might have to return some or all of that money.”
“But I need that money for my mama.”
“What you and your mother need is for you not to get killed.”
“It’s gonna be my own apartment?” he asked, his mind as flighty and intense as the hummingbirds Feather’s dog, Frenchie, chased around the backyard.
“For a few days.”
“Will it have a telephone?”
I laughed at that. “We’ll see. But at any rate, I’ll give you a few dollars for food and phone calls in case you need to talk to some girl.”
“It ain’t like that, Mr. Rawlins.”
“As you get older, Evander, you come to learn that it’s always like that—if you’re nine or ninety.”
At that time Jewelle’s rental management operation was on Avalon. Evander and I walked into the storefront office: two men traveling under a whole sky of troubled clouds. A wide counter formed a small foyerlike area as you entered the long room. This counter blocked entrance into the greater part of the office, where there were six desks set up for agents who helped people find places to live.
A young colored woman with curly blond hair and thick red lips stood pouting behind the counter. Two men and one woman were working at three of the desks.
I remember that there was a burly-looking fly hovering near the wall to my right. It was humming peacefully, almost as if it was flying in its sleep.
“May I help you?” the receptionist asked, insincerely, I thought.
“Easy Rawlins,” I said.
“Nobody here with that name.”
“That’s my name. You manage my properties.”
“Say what?” She was amber-skinned and quite pretty. But the sneer on her face told of an unattractive life that she’d survived, just barely.
“Can I speak to the office manager?” I asked.
“Easy, you said?”
“Yes.”
We watched her turn from the blockade and wander to the very back of the room, where a slim, dark-skinned man sat behind a blond desk. He wore a black suit, white shirt, and powder blue tie. He was prim and also discontent, the male counterpart to the receptionist’s scornful visage.
He asked the young woman to repeat my request and then, with great reluctance, he stood and walked to the front. The young woman followed him.
“Yes?” he said. “Can I help you?” He was in his forties, but the weight of those years had yet to settle on him.
“Easy Rawlins.”
“Do you have proof?” He accented the question by shifting his left shoulder and holding out his left palm.
The Gator’s Blood told me to sock him, but I reached for my wallet instead.
He studied the driver’s license like it was a ten-page rental agreement and then handed it back.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“I need to put up my friend Evander here in an apartment for a few days, maybe a week,” I said.
“And?” the prissy real estate agent asked.
“I’d like you to make that happen.”
“Sorry,” he said.
“About what?”
“I’m busy. You can’t expect to walk in here and have us do something just like that. We represent over eighteen hundred units.”
“And twenty-seven of them are mine.”
He answered that statement with a twist of his lips. This reminded me of the gestural disdain cultivated by churchgoers I’d known.
“May I speak to Miss MacDonald, please?” I asked.
“I don’t know where she is.”
“I do,” I said. “May I use a phone?”
Our eyes met and he gleaned something from the tone in my voice. He wasn’t sure what that something was, but it leavened his demeanor from scorn to suspicion.
Reaching under the counter, he came out with a big black telephone that was probably older than the disdainful receptionist.
“I’ll have to dial,” he said. “We don’t allow toll calls.”
“Sure,” I agre
ed. “Tell the switchboard operator that it’s Easy Rawlins for Jewelle MacDonald. She’ll transfer the call to Jewelle wherever she is. You can talk to her yourself.”
I recited the number and he dialed with equal parts precision and wariness.
We waited while a phone in some other part of town rang.
“Yes,” the thus far nameless office manager said. “I’d like to speak to Jewelle MacDonald. What? … Oh, it’s for …” He looked at me.
“Easy Rawlins,” I said.
“Easy Rawlins,” he repeated. “Yes, yes, I’ll hold.”
The man looked at me with different eyes. I was a sudden surprise in a landscape he felt that he knew inside and out.
After a few moments he said, “Yes, yes, Miss MacDonald? This is Clive Chester at the Avalon office. No, no, he’s here. I was just dialing for him. Sure, right away.”
He handed me the phone like a baton at an intermediary leg of the relay race.
“Jewelle?”
“Easy,” she said with great relief in her mature voice. I always thought of Jewelle as a child. It was a constant surprise when I was reminded that she had turned into a powerful businesswoman. “Jackson told me that you had come out of that coma. He said some crazy stuff about voodoo, but I told him he was nuts. I’m so happy to hear your voice.”
“How you doin’, girl?”
“Great. Business is good and I’m building a little empire around me and Blue. Are you okay?”
“You know me, got to keep on movin’.”
“What do you need to help you on your way?”
“Can you direct Mr. Chester here to find and open a unit in one of my places or elsewhere and to install my friend Evander in it today?”
“Of course,” she said. “Is that all?”
“Yeah.”
“Did Clive give you a problem?”
“In his defense I must tell you that me and the boy look like we just got back from trench warfare.”
“Okay, Easy.” She giggled, sounding once more like the child I’d once known. “Give Mr. Chester the phone and I will make it happen.”
Little Green Page 19