Little Scarlet

by Walter Mosley

  “Lonnie Beakman is dead,” an older man said. “Shot him in the back while he was runnin’ down Avalon.”

  That sobered the group.

  A skinny young man wearing overalls and no shirt said, “Lonnie? He was engaged to my cousin a while last year.”

  “How is she takin’ it?” a young woman asked.

  “I’ont know,” the youth replied. “She broke it off with him after she found him down the hall with her sister three weeks ago.”

  No one laughed at the story but that opened up the floor for a new line of talk.

  “Meany got about a thousand pint cans of forty-weight oil,” somebody said. “He sellin ’em for five cents a can.”

  “Motherfucker,” a squat dark man said. “Motherfuckers killed Lonnie B and all Meany thinkin’ about is nickels. It ain’t funny, you know. It ain’t funny at all. Cops come down here and murder us and we track through the blood to make a pocket full’a change.”

  On cue a police cruiser turned the corner.

  As the cops drove past us one lowered his window and said, “No congregating on the street. Move along.”

  Almost as if it were choreographed, every one of the dozen people standing there started moving in a different direction. We each made it about a dozen feet or so, just far enough for the cops to have driven out of sight. Then we drifted back to the corner.

  “Who are you?” the angry man asked me when I sidled up against the lamppost.

  The police had broken the friendly mood, so I was seen for what I was—a stranger and possible threat.

  “Easy Rawlins,” I said.

  “What you doin’ sneakin’ around the sidelines?”

  “Just hangin’ around, brother. I’m lookin’ for somebody and I was waitin’ for a break in the conversation.”

  The man wasn’t really squat, that was an illusion caused by his unusually broad shoulders. He was nearly six feet. Less than two inches shorter than me. Other than his shoulders his most noticeable features were his big hands and yellow teeth, which he showed without smiling—like a feral dog or a wolf.

  “I ain’t never seen you before.”

  I could see that we were going down the road to war and I wondered how to make a truce without fighting first.

  “That’s Easy Rawlins,” a woman in a blue-checkered dress said. She looked like a well-stacked pile of black pears held in place by a farmer’s tablecloth.

  “I never heard’a no Easy Rawlins live around here,” the skinny youth said.

  “That’s Raymond Alexander’s best friend, Newell,” the woman said to the angry, broad-shouldered man. “Him and Ray been friends since Texas. Ain’t that right, mister?”

  I nodded.

  “Yeah,” another woman said. “I seen him wit’ Mouse, down at EttaMae Harris’s place. They was havin’ a barbecue.”

  Newell raised his chin a bit then. Everybody knew about Mouse. He was one of the most dangerous men in L.A. No one but a fool would jump on his friend.

  “Newell? That your name?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m just lookin’ for a guy I heard live around here. A guy name of Bobby Grant.”

  “What you want wit’ Bobby?” Newell asked. He was just as afraid of Raymond as everybody else but Ray wasn’t there and Newell didn’t want to be seen as a coward.

  “A woman I met, a Miss Landry, wanted me to ask him a question.”

  “You know Geneva?” the woman in blue asked.

  “Met her.”

  “How do I know that?” Newell asked angrily. “You could just be a lyin’ motherfucker out here.”

  “Why he wanna lie about Bobby and Geneva, Newell?” the older man asked reasonably. “You know Bobby live two doors away from her niece.”

  “All I know is that the motherfucker could be lyin’,” Newell countered.

  “Why the hell I wanna lie to some fool standin’ on the corner?” I said.

  That was the only choice I had. Either we were going to fight or we weren’t. If we went at it either he was going to win or I was. That was the way it was on the street corners in Watts in 1965—riot or no riot.

  “He live in that gray buildin’ across the street, Mr. Rawlins,” the third woman said quickly, trying to head off the conflict.

  I cut my eye to catch a glance at her. Then I turned my head. The young woman wore a one-piece dress made from a stretchy fabric. It was composed of horizontal yellow and white lines that hugged her figure like a second skin. My heart had been beating fast in preparation for a possible fight with Newell but the anger turned to excitement when I saw her.

  Her eyes watched mine and she flashed an appreciative smile.

  “On the fourth floor,” she said.

  “You live there too?” I asked. I didn’t mean to. I had no intention of following her to her door. But the question popped out of my mouth of its own accord.

  “No,” she said. “I live next door in the blue buildin’.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Juanda with ‘j-u’ instead of a ‘w.’”

  “That’s a nice name.”

  “Watch it now!” the older man cried.

  I could see Newell moving from the corner of my eye. He might have blindsided me if it weren’t for the warning and the readiness of my blood.

  I took a step backward, causing the broad-shouldered Newell to miss and step out of balance. Then I stepped forward with a nearly perfect uppercut to his midsection. I followed that up with three more blows, not to inflict added pain but to make sure Newell was put out of the fight.

  He went down and two of his friends rushed to his side. My unexpected blows knocked the wind out of him and it was time for me to go.

  In my youth that would have been the moment for me to say something insulting about Newell’s manhood but I was past that kind of behavior. I just turned and walked across the street, hoping that I could finish my business with Bobby Grant before Newell asked for a rematch.

  I turned when I got to the opposite curb to make sure that no one was coming after me. Everyone had their attention on their fallen friend. Everyone except Juanda. Her eyes were on me.

  10

  Robert Grant didn’t get any checks in the mail. No one in the five-floor gray building did. The mailbox was two wooden crates, each of which once contained six one-gallon bottles of milk. The crates were hung side by side on the wall with names and apartment numbers scrawled over each square in red ink.

  Bobby’s number was 4-D.

  With all the strength tapped in my blood I ran up the three flights without breathing hard.

  The stairs and wall, floors, and ceiling had once been painted white but most of that had worn away years before. Now the color was pitted, dirty pine.

  “Who is it?” a man called when I knocked.

  “Easy Rawlins.”

  The apartment doors on either side of his came open. An old man stuck his head out of one side and a child peered from the shadows of the other. Both of them looked frightened.

  I could imagine how they felt with buildings going up in flames around them and wild, angry voices shouting up and down the street. People were being shot dead in front of their homes and the law was helpless to keep the violence in check. Old people and children, working men and women, and any other peaceful soul had to hunker down in their living rooms and hope that the fires wouldn’t spread to their walls.

  “What?”

  The door had come open on a sand-colored man with hair that wasn’t much darker. He was slight but tall, young but already he had the slouching shoulders of someone who has been defeated by life.

  Maybe he read the judgment in my expression because he stood a little straighter and cocked his head with bravado.

  “Who are you?”

  “Easy Rawlins,” I said. “I’m here about Geneva Landry. The police got her and I’d like to help out if I could.”

  “The police got Miss Landry? What for?”

  “I don’t know for
sure,” I said. “But I bet it’s got something to do with Nola Payne.”

  All Bobby had on was a pair of briefs. His sallow chest and knobby knees meant that any lover he had would have to be there because of the inner man—or a twenty-dollar bill.

  “Nola’s Geneva’s niece. What do the cops think an auntie gonna do to her own blood?” he asked.

  “I don’t know what it is exactly,” I said. “But from the sounds of it Nola’s missing and the cops think that Miss Landry had somethin’ to do with it. She don’t know neither, so I told her that I’d come down and ask around.”

  “So what you want with me?”

  “Can I come in?” I asked. “I mean, we don’t really need everybody in the buildin’ to know this stuff.”

  Grant studied me for a moment. He slouched down again and the sour taste came back into his mouth.

  “Yeah. Okay,” he said. “I guess.”

  I followed him into the one-room apartment. There was no real home furniture in evidence. The only thing his three chairs had in common was that they were all made from wood. The bed was a mattress on box springs on the floor and his curtain was a sheet that should have been shredded for rags.

  In the corner, away from the window, he had six crates of new dishes, three model-train box sets, and a dozen or more pairs of green work pants.

  He saw me looking and asked, “You wanna buy some dishes?”

  “Not right now.”

  I sat on a whitewashed wooden chair and Bobby followed suit.

  Despite his boy’s body Grant held himself like an old man. Bent over, rubbing his hands together as if he could never get warm.

  “What you got to do with Miss Landry?” he asked.

  “She called me from jail and asked for help.”

  “I never heard’a you before,” he said.

  “I got an office over on Central. I help people out now and then. She told me her problem and I said that I’d ask around. A couple’a people mentioned that you been talking about a white man that got pulled outta his car and got the shit beat outta him. I just wanted to see if you knew who it was.”

  “Who said?” Bobby wanted to know.

  “I didn’t get no names,” I said, using language that made us both feel at home. “I just heard about you and went around tryin’ to look you up.”

  “I’d like to help Geneva out, man, but I don’t know nuthin’.”

  “You know that a white man got pult outta his car and messed,” I suggested.

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Geneva said that Nola said on the phone that she had seen a white man runnin’ around her buildin’.”

  I could see in Bobby Grant’s eyes that I had hold of some facts.

  “I—I don’t know nuthin’ about that,” Bobby said. “All I know is that she was in the buildin’ where he ran to after, um, after they beat on him.”

  “Who was that?”

  “Just some guys. You know it was Friday night and he was drivin’ down around here. They was pullin’ every white person they found outta their cars. Beatin’ ’em an’ shit.”

  “Who was?” I asked again.

  “What’s that got to do with Nola and Geneva?”

  “What kind of car was he drivin’?” I shifted gears easily.

  “Red.”

  “Was it a Ford or a Chevy?”

  “I’ont know, man. It was a car. A nice car. They pult him out and beat on his ass and then somebody drove it off.”

  “Did the white man know Nola?” I asked.

  “Naw, man. That motherfucker was just lost, tryin’ to get his ass back to Hollywood or wherever. Did Geneva say that that white man they beat on went to Nola’s?”

  “Like I said, all she knew was that that white man was runnin’ around Nola’s place. So if you don’t mind I’d like to know if Nola knew the white man you boys beat on.”

  “What you mean by that?” Bobby asked, his face now filled with fear.

  “I see what you got here, man,” I said, pointing at his pitiful pile of loot. “And what you ain’t got. You was out there that night when your boys pulled that white man outta his car. Either that or you were up here twiddlin’ your thumbs figurin’ out what chair to sit in. You were out there. Maybe you didn’t get a lick in. Maybe not. But you saw him and you saw where he went too.”

  It was all guesswork. He was a looter and young. He was black in America, transplanted from the South, and all alone in a room hot enough to brew tea.

  Bobby stared at me with anxious, calculating eyes. He wanted to steer clear of trouble and he was wondering if a lie or the truth would accomplish that end.

  “I don’t know nuthin’ about what happened to Nola,” he said at last. “I haven’t even seen her since before the riotin’ started. All I know is some men pult that white man outta the red car and beat him. He ran away an’ after that I don’t know nuthin’.”

  It could have been true.

  “So you didn’t see Nola since the riots started?” I asked.

  “No sir.”

  “Did anybody around here see her?”

  “Nobody I know.”

  The police had put a muzzle on the murder. It hadn’t happened—yet.

  “I need to know two things, Robert,” I said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Where does Nola live exactly and who stole the white man’s car?”

  “What do I get out of it?”

  “For starters I won’t throw you out the window.”

  “You think I’m scared’a you, old man?” the youth asked me.

  “You should be, son. You should be.”

  Grant had a weak jaw. When his mouth hung open he looked pathetic, though I’m sure he thought he was looking mean.

  When he saw I wasn’t buying it he broke into a half-hearted laugh.

  “I’m just fuckin’ wit’ you, man. Yeah, sure I’ll tell ya. Nola live over on the right over here on the third floor, apartment three. And it was Loverboy stoled that man’s car.”

  “Loverboy?”

  “Uh-huh. He famous around here. He steals cars for a livin’. One boy tried to set that white man’s car on fire but Loverboy an’ this other dude pushed him down an’ stoled that mothahfuckah.”

  “You know his real name?” I asked.

  Bobby Grant shook his head.

  I couldn’t think of anything else to ask so I left him with his train sets, work pants, and his stacks of empty dishes.

  11

  When I got back out on the street the crowd on the corner was gone. That was either a good or a bad thing. Maybe Newell went home to lick his wounds or maybe to get his pistol. But either way, there was no turning back for me then. I went to the apartment building where Nola lived. It was next to a small grocery that had been gutted and torched.

  Across the street the Gaynor Furniture store was just a gaping hole flanked by three walls. There was devastation up and down the block and for miles around. For a moment the enormity of what had happened got to me. On TV they had aerial views of this part of the city. It looked like Germany did when we marched in at the end of the war.

  It was like a war, I thought. A war being fought under the skin of America. The soldiers were all unwilling conscripts who had no idea of why they were fighting or what victory might mean.

  NOLA’S DOOR WAS locked but I had a slender metal slat in a comb sleeve in my pocket. That slat could crack most simple locks and latches. I also had a letter in my pocket that would get me out of jail if it came to that.

  The apartment seemed together. There was no overturned furniture or open, tossed drawers. Nola Payne had been a neat woman. Her bed was made and the floors were swept. The dishes were stacked on the kitchen counter because there were no shelves installed. She had a two-burner black wrought-iron stove.

  In her bedroom there was a small photograph in a silver frame set upon a two-drawer cabinet. Nola was in the foreground backed up by a tall brown man with a grin on his lips and
his arms wrapped around her waist.

  In the trash can in the bathroom there were three bloody rags torn from a sheet like the one Bobby used for a curtain.

  I couldn’t find another drop of blood anywhere. Then I remembered that she was shot after being murdered.

  Nola’s window looked down on Grape Street. The youth in the overalls was back on the corner with three or four others. Juanda wasn’t there. I was angry at myself for noticing her absence. I wasn’t looking for a woman to play around with. Bonnie was my woman. We nearly broke up over her African prince but then we’d decided to stay together.

  I intended to honor that decision.

  There was no address book among Nola’s things. That was odd. Such a neat and organized woman would have a place where she kept her phone numbers and addresses. I found her purse. She had a wallet with eight dollars and a silver chain with a broken clasp.

  I searched for an address book for ten minutes. No one, especially a stranger, would have taken it, so I thought that it must be someplace obvious—staring me in the face. Finally I gave up. Maybe Nola was a loner and didn’t have to jot down the few numbers she called regularly.

  As I walked out of Nola’s apartment I was thinking about Juanda’s yellow-and-white dress. It fit her figure perfectly. I speculated that she was in her early twenties and unmarried. Her skin was dark and she had big nostrils. Her face had an animal quality, like a fairy-tale fox.

  I shook my head, dislodging the image. But when I walked into the hallway, there she was.

  “Mr. Rawlins?”

  “Yes, Juanda, what is it?”

  “Um.” She was looking at me with hungry eyes. She expected me to embrace her. I was feeling it too but I didn’t give in.

  “Yeah?”

  “Newell went to get some’a his friends. They drivin’ around now lookin’ for you.”

  “How did you find me?”

  “I went to ask Bobby.”

  “Why didn’t Newell ask him?”

  “’Cause I told him that I’d go over and ask and when I told him Bobby didn’t know he believed me.”

  I couldn’t seem to take a satisfying breath. The clamor of new love was rattling around in my chest in spite of my intentions.

  I knew it was an effect of the riots, that the passion of release had let something go in me. And Juanda was a black woman looking out for me, taking chances for me. She was a poor man’s dream. And I was still, and always would be, a poor man in my heart.