There was a whole persuasive speech squashed down into that solitary sentence—and no room for argument. In my business I traded in favors. If I wanted her to talk to Mouse I’d have to find a missing child.
“Do you know Fred’s family?” I asked Alana.
“Not too much,” the sad woman said. “Fred was estranged from his people.”
“Because of you?”
The arc of her nod was maybe a quarter inch.
“Have you asked them about Alton?”
“I spoke to his mother,” Etta said, “Mathilda. She says they don’t have him, that she don’t have no idea who coulda took him.”
“You believe her?”
“I don’t know. She sounded upset.”
“Did she ask you about the police?”
“No.”
“You have a picture of your son, Mrs. Post?”
From a scuffed, blue vinyl purse Alana produced a felt-lined yellow wallet. From this she took a small Kodak snapshot of a smiling caramel-colored boy wearing a cowboy hat and a light blue T-shirt.
“Alton,” she said as she handed the picture across my desk.
“Handsome young man.”
“I loved his father, Mr. Rawlins.” It was then that I discerned the twang of the South in her words. “I’m from Tennessee. My people would take us in but they don’t understand Alton. They’d treat him like he was different, you know?”
I could see the sleepless nights in the dark circles under her eyes.
I stood up and said, “Why don’t you lie down on the sofa a minute, Mrs. Post. Lie down and close your eyes. Etta can tell me what I need to know.”
Maybe it was because it was a mature black man who reminded her of her dead husband that Alana relented and allowed me to lead her over to the couch. She lay down and I believe she was asleep before her head touched the cushion.
“That’s a woman do anything for her man,” Etta said. “She’s a man’s woman.”
“You close with the family?” I asked.
“Raymond liked Fred. They used to gamble together from time to time.”
“What was Fred’s life like before Alana?”
“He lived with his mother after his first wife died. That’s Mathilda, the mother. His first wife was named Nora. Mathilda didn’t mind too much about Alana but her older sister Mona, who brought the family out here, was sad to see Fred go—especially with a white woman.”
“You think she has the boy?”
“The woman they described at the kindergarten didn’t look like her,” Etta said. “I send Peter over to Mathilda’s house with some flowers. I told him to pretend that he was deliverin’ to somebody else. He did but he didn’t see any children or children’s things in the house.”
“Peter still at your place?”
“That poor white boy ain’t got no place to go, Easy. And he gives me a lotta help when Raymond’s outta town.”
“Fred have any other family?”
“Lots of brothers, sisters, cousins, grandchildren, and great-grandbabies, and then there’s Mona Martin. Mona raised Fred’s mother and all her brothers and sisters. She’s the head of the clan.”
“Anything else you could tell me?” I asked.
“No,” she said, shaking her head and sneering at her ignorance. “Just that Alton’s gone and my heart goes out to his mama.”
In the country we traded favors for survival. When we moved up north we packed our country customs in with the pots and old photographs.
“I don’t know when I’ll be home, Etta, but I’m sure to be there after midnight.”
“I’ll tell Raymond,” she said. Then she looked at her sleeping friend. “You know, I hate to wake her up. She haven’t slept two hours since her boy been gone.”
“You can stay here,” I said. “Just lock up when you go.”
“Thanks, baby. You be careful now.”
13
I was walking down the western staircase of my building as a man was walking up. It was Percy Bidwell. At that moment he looked up, saw me, and reminded himself to smile.
“Mr. Rawlins.”
We stopped there in the stairwell upon reaching a common stair.
He was wearing dark brown pants and a light brown shirt with buff-colored pointy-toed shoes. His processed curls were a little tighter and he smelled of cologne, just that much too sweet. There was a heart-shaped curve to his pursed lips.
I fought down the urge to slap him.
“Percy. I thought Jewelle said that you were going to call.”
“She told me that I should come by and apologize in person.”
“You’re lucky you found me,” I said, pointlessly. “I’m hardly ever even here.”
“I dropped by your house first. Nobody was there and Jewelle had given me this address.”
“I’m pretty busy, Percy. What do you need?”
“I already told you that.”
The Goldsmith case along with Alana Atman’s missing boy had cut my temper pretty short. I was about to go on my way, leaving the young man to consider his lack of proper civility.
“Look, Mr. Rawlins,” he said before I could put my thoughts into action. “I’m sorry, okay? It’s just that I’m kinda desperate. You know I got a business degree from UCLA, graduated magna cum laude. I been workin’ for Jewelle at the real estate office but I’m educated for a job in high finance. You know most’a these investment firms won’t even give me an interview. Jewelle told me that you could help set up a meeting with Mr. Middleton and maybe even ask him to consider me for a job. All I need is for him to take a look at me. My grades speak for themselves.”
“So what?”
Percy could have had many responses to my two-word offensive. He might have been confused or hurt, maybe stunned. But the only emotion I saw in his eyes was indignation. How dare I, a dark-skinned, middle-aged black man, hardly removed from being a sharecropper, dismiss a young Negro who was educated at university and, with just a little help, was about to conquer the world?
“Wh-what?” he stammered.
“You studied business, right?”
“Yes.” He actually sneered. “My degree covers accounting, economics, and investment finance.”
“What does a business education tell you about a man giving away his property?”
“I don’t understand what you’re saying,” he said in such a way as to make it sound like You’re not making any sense.
“Let’s say a man owns a house up the street from here but he lives in another house—owns that one too. Now somebody comes up to this man and says, ‘Look here, brother, I got this new wife and a three-month-old child. I know you got a empty house up the street. Why don’t you let us have that so we’ll have a place to live too?’ ”
“I’m not askin’ you to give me a house, man,” Percy said, reverting into the defiant tone of our common upbringing.
“No? So Jason Middleton isn’t worth nuthin’ to you?”
“He is to me but what kinda job could he give you?”
“Just the fact that you ask me that question tells me that you not ready to meet Middleton. Just the fact that you don’t see that if somethin’ is valuable to you then that thing has worth everywhere tells me that you wouldn’t know what to do with the introduction if I made it.”
“You want me to pay you?” Percy asked, twisting his lips at the sour notion.
“I’ll tell you what, Percy, you think about what I said, maybe talk it over with Jewelle, and then get back to me.” I took a step down.
“Just spell it out,” he said.
“Look,” I said. “I’m not your mother, your father, your friend, boss, or professor. I don’t owe you an answer or even one minute of my time. And if you don’t know how to spell, that’s not my problem.”
I rushed down the stairs and onto Central before Percy could formulate any kind of reply.
Once on the street I realized that I was still moving headlong into my work instead of with forethought and gui
le.
I needed a phone book but I didn’t want to run into Percy again or to wake up Alana, for that matter. I turned south on Central, walked at double-speed two and half blocks to 79th, and turned left. There, in front of Jolly’s Liquor Store, I entered a phone booth that had survived from a previous era.
The white pages told me that Mona Martin lived on South Denker. By the address I knew that her place was somewhere around 103rd. So I walked back up to 77th, got into my new-used Dodge, and left Etta, Alana, and Percy to do whatever they did when I wasn’t around.
It was a small house built in the French Colonial style. The porch was a series of planks lifted up from the grassy lot and going around the entire house. The sloping roof raised high above the home, and the walls, which according to custom should have been white, were instead painted gray with red trim. A weather-worn picket fence surrounded the place. A flimsy chest-high barrier like that would supply little or no protection. The only thing it would have been good for would be to keep a small dog from running out into the street. But there was no dog.
There was a For Rent sign nailed to one of the four front posts that pretended to hold up the eaves of the roof.
I sat there, parked across the street in my Dodge, thinking not about Mona Martin and Alton or Percy Bidwell and his inexplicable hold over Jewelle, but instead concentrating on Rosemary Goldsmith and how I could get out of any serious involvement with her and Uhuru-Bob Mantle.
I lived in L.A. and worked there as a kind of specialized investigator. I wouldn’t make it very long if the police turned against me. I could certainly fail at making any progress in the case, but after taking money I’d have to do at least enough to make a convincing report. I was thinking of how I might get away with doing the least amount of work when I saw the rooster.
It was brown with orange and royal blue wattles and a bright red comb. The king fowl was strutting up and down the sidewalk in front of the Post house like Napoleon surveying the ocean surrounding his exile. The arrogance of that land-bound bird made me smile, putting my useless fears somewhere in the backseat of the musty car.
A detective’s main job is sitting quietly and waiting. But that wait is not passive. The real detective is always aware and on guard, thinking about what it is he must do. I sat there trying to imagine how Melvin Suggs could help me while I helped him; how I could pretend to find a missing heiress and at the same time keep the windows from getting shot out from my new car.
I sat there only for three hours and forty-seven minutes; not long at all for a man of my profession to wait. The entire time that rooster marched in front of the picket fence, stopping now and then to peck at it. I figured that the bird sensed some kind of seed in the lawn beyond and was looking for a way in.
I was just wondering if I should go knock on the door when a young woman and a small boy and girl walked up to the useless gate.
The bird was startled by the approach and started squawking and flapping at the children.
“Get the hell outta here!” the young woman shouted and she kicked the rooster up in the air and over the fence.
Once on the other side the bird forgot his quarrel and started pecking frantically at the lawn.
The woman was wearing tight aqua-colored pants and a blue and red striped shirt, also pretty tight. She had a nice figure and dark skin.
She knocked on the door, maybe heard a question, and shouted, “Angela!”
The door came open and the young woman ushered the two obedient youngsters in.
I waited another thirteen minutes, got out and crossed the street, opened the gate, and went right up to the door. The rooster eyed me but was too greedy to stop his feasting. There was a button for the doorbell but I knocked instead.
Two minutes passed before I heard footsteps. Ten seconds more and a woman’s voice said, “Who’s there?”
“Ron Welch,” I said with improvised roosterlike conviction.
“What do you want?”
“I’m here about the For Rent sign you got on the beam.”
Mona Martin’s wariness was on a ten-second timer. After the appropriate span she opened the door and looked out at me with the guarded instincts of a prey animal. It struck me that this would be a good time to practice my rusty detective skills.
Mona was short and wide, my age plus fifteen, and filled with stoppered-up passions. I could see that she liked to laugh and eat and probably to make love if the right man was to show up. But for all her hungers and desires she was a woman who was ready to defend her domain. The flimsy fence was just the warning. I bet that she had a pistol on a table next to the door—within easy reach.
“You want to rent this house?”
“My brother,” I said.
“Then why ain’t he here?”
“He’s in Galveston, ma’am. Him and his wife and their three kids movin’ up at the end of the month and I told him that I’d have a house ready.”
“Mona,” she said, identifying herself as Buster had done at Benoit’s. She realized that she’d been standing in a defensive crouch and relaxed her shoulders a bit. “All you got to do is call the number on the sign. Mr. Harrington’ll be happy to take your application.”
“You see,” I said as if I were pointing out a recurring theme to a longtime confederate, “that’s what I mean. Real estate man needs a application and a deposit. He wants to look at my job history and Social Security number. He wants to call my boss and my old landlord. I don’t need all that mess when you and me can come to an understanding right here.”
“What kinda understands’?” Mona was standing fully erect now. She was taller than I thought.
“How much you pay for this house?” I asked.
“One-eighty a mont’.”
“Is he givin’ you back your deposit?”
“No,” she said petulantly. “He says that I ruined the insides because I painted the walls violet. It ain’t purple or red. I didn’t paint the walls black. It’s just a nice light violet color but Harrington says that they got to paint the walls white again or nobody’s gonna take it. Here I got to get back to Arkansas by the end of the mont’ an’ he holdin’ me up ovah violet walls.”
“You see?” I said. “The way I see it a man like that don’t deserve no consideration. I could give you ninety dollars and you call him and tell him that you decided that you gonna stay. That way I could move my brother an’ his family in an’ by the time Harrington finds out they already be here. He got the deposit and we got a home with no mess, no background check, and no deposit.”
“You say ninety dollahs but my deposit is one-eighty,” Mona complained.
“You won’t get nuthin’ if you just move,” I reasoned. “Arkansas you said?”
“Me an’ my grandniece an’ her kids goin’ back home. It’s too hard makin’ it out here in California. I mean the pay’s good if you can get a job but it’s too damn expensive if you don’t. And wherever you go you got to be workin’ for white peoples. And you know they all just alike—lookin’ down on you and smilin’ at the same time.”
“I tried to tell my brother that.”
“Can’t you make it one-twenty?” Mona Post asked. “You know those violet walls is nice.”
“I could meet you halfway at one-oh-five,” I said with some hesitation.
Mona Post stared into my eyes trying to gauge if she could squeeze five more dollars out of me.
I tried to look resolute.
At that moment we were interrupted by the rumble of little feet and childish laughter. The boy and girl had come into the room from somewhere behind Mona.
“You two be quiet,” the exasperated younger woman was saying as she came in from another room. Noticing my presence, she gave me a sidelong glance. The children were snatching at each other and grinning. I still hadn’t gotten a good look at the boy.
“Okay,” Mona said. “One-oh-five.”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out a wallet.
“Auntie Moan,” the w
oman said, paying no attention to me. “Can I have two dollars to take them to see that cartoon movie?”
“Cain’t you see me talkin’, girl?” Mona Post said.
“Dahlia?” I said to the woman.
“Huh?” she replied.
“Dahlia, right?” I said. “You live over on Santa Barbara with Willie Boy?”
“My name is Angela, honey, and I right down the street on Wilton Court.”
“You’re not Dahlia Brown?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“My name is Cox.”
“Damn,” I said. “And you don’t know no Willie Boy Sutton?”
“No, sir.” She was beginning to like me.
“You got you a double in the world, girl.”
“Mr. Welch,” Mona said.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“One-oh-five.”
“Oh,” I said. “Yeah … I mean no. I can give you twenty dollars right now to show you I mean somethin’ and I’ll bring the rest in three days.”
“That might be too late,” Mona Post warned.
I looked away as if considering her words. But really I wanted to get a better look at the boy. He suddenly turned away from the girl, avoiding her playful pinches. It was Alton.
“You two stop that!” Angela shouted.
“All y’all be quiet!” Mona commanded, and the room went silent.
For a moment I considered just taking the boy. But Mona probably had a pistol near at hand and Angela looked like she could put up a fight.
“Sorry, ma’am,” I said. I spread open the wallet and came out with two tens. “This all I got right now.”
She took the bills and said, “Why I got to wait three days?”
“That’s how long it’ll take for my brother to wire me the rest.” I turned to Angela and said, “That’s a handsome boy you got there.”
“It’s my cousin’s son,” she said, “and my sister’s little girl. I’m not married.”
14
An hour later I was walking into the ultramodern ground floor of the main offices of the French insurance giant Proxy Nine. The setup hadn’t changed since the last time I was there: four or five uniformed guards protecting a group of desks that clustered behind a waist-high, see-through emerald plastic wall where a dozen young white people sat making calls and answering phones, providing direction or turning undesirables away.
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