As he grew older Primo studied philosophy by considering all of the things he knew in Spanish, English, and life. His thoughts were always powerful because the pictures he used to describe them stayed with you over time.
I managed a chuckle and clapped his back. He was still a strong man.
Big black Panamanian Flower came out of the front door. She gave me her wide grin and a big kiss.
“Easy,” she said loudly. “You don’t come out here enough.”
“Working, you know,” my mouth said. But Flower could hear my heart. Her welcoming smile turned sad. She kissed me again and then cupped the back of my neck with her big hand.
“You take care of him now,” she said to her husband.
“Window on my passenger’s side is busted out, Primo,” I said, looking after Flower as she went back into the house. Two little brown kids came running from around the screen door. They had dark and almond-shaped faces and slanting eyes, from the oldest American stock, like Jesus. They were stalking up to us with silly grins on perfectly balanced feet.
“Oh,” Primo said. “You have a accident?”
“Somebody shot my girlfriend through the window while I was droppin’ somethin’ off down the street. She’s dead.” I said it all at once; partly just to say it, to know that it was true, and partly because I didn’t want to get Primo mixed up in anything that he didn’t know about from the beginning.
“What?” he asked.
“I’m just tryin’ t’stay outta trouble, man.”
Primo nodded his head and said, “So clean it up and put in a new window, huh?”
“If you wouldn’t mind. I’ll pay ya for it.”
“You need a car. I got a nice Chevy right out here.”
It was a late model, fierce metallic blue with balloon tires in back.
“Don’t you have somethin’ a li’l quieter?” I asked.
“Sometimes a loud noise is the best way to hide what you don’t want somebody to hear.”
“Do you have another car?” I asked the philosopher again.
“Not that’ll drive.”
“So then this one is just fine. Fine. Fine.”
Primo laughed and I managed to shake my head. The two boys made roaring noises and leapt at us.
“My grandchildren,” Primo told me proudly. “They are jaguars from the deep forest. Killers of great birds.”
THE RAIN HAD STOPPED by the time I made it home. I had just pulled Primo’s souped-up Chevy into the driveway and gotten out to go into my house.
“Mr. Rawlins.” I didn’t need to turn around to know Sergeant Sanchez.
He was getting out of a parked car.
I cursed under my breath for not checking out the street before parking. For some reason I felt safe at my own home—a mistake that a poor man should never make.
“Sergeant.” I smiled, trying to read in his bearing whether or not he knew about Idabell Turner’s demise.
I was pretty sure that he didn’t intend to arrest me. He’d come alone, and policemen never arrest a man single-handed if they can help it.
“You’re not at work today,” he said as he approached.
I remained silent.
“Do you have some time for a few questions?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said. “Whatever you wanna know.”
“Can we go in your house?”
Remembering Pharaoh moping around the front door I said, “House is a mess, officer, we better stay out here.”
“Oh.” His eyes were looking for an opening through my defense. “That’s a wild car you got there.”
“It takes me from place to place. That’s all you could ask for.”
“Is it yours?” he asked.
“No.”
“Where’s your car?”
“I lent it to my friend Guillermo to ride out to Las Vegas. My car’s better than his and he wanted to trade just for his vacation.”
“Where does this Guillermo live?”
“Out past Compton.”
Sanchez winced, just a hair. It was intuition about my car. He could smell something about it. But he didn’t want to push me, and that was a surprise.
Cops didn’t mind pushing around men like me. That kind of pushing was part of their job. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t a white man. Cops is a race all its own. Its members have their own language and their own creed.
I realized then that Sanchez was on the trail of something bigger than me, and bigger than the death of mulatto twins. Something that Idabell Turner had brought to America in a box.
“The man we found at your school was Roman Gasteau,” Sanchez said. “Idabell Turner is his sister-in-law.”
Is.
“His twin brother Holland,” Sanchez continued, “was found dead at his own house night before last and now Mrs. Turner is missing.”
“That’s a lotta happenin’,” I said to Sanchez. “Damn.”
“You don’t know anything about this, Rawlins?”
“Idabell is a kinda friend’a mines, sergeant, but I never had her confidence. I didn’t know her husband or her brother-in-law.”
“She never said anything to you about what her brother-in-law did for a living?” Sanchez was almost human in his need for an answer.
“No sir,” I said. The regret in my lying mouth was real.
“You busy right now?” he asked me. It was a simple question that one friend might ask another on a street corner in May. Maybe he’d met a woman who wanted a date for her girlfriend.
“Well, I got some work to do around the house.”
“This wouldn’t take long. Why don’t you come on up to the Hollywood station with me?” He didn’t sound urgent. “I think you could help.”
“Well …”
“Drive your own car. You’re not under arrest or anything. You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”
“What’s this all about?”
“Nothing. Just a few questions about Idabell Turner. Captain Fogherty asked me if I’d ask you to drop by. It’s not far, you know. Just up here in Hollywood.”
“Okay,” I said. “If it’ll be short.”
“You can follow me.”
“Uh-huh.”
At that moment Pharaoh started barking. He yipped and whined and barked again. Maybe he wanted to tell Sanchez the truth.
The sergeant heard the dog. He even looked at the house but there wasn’t enough there for him to grab on to and so he turned around and went back to his car.
CHAPTER 20
I KNEW A SHORTER ROUTE to the Hollywood station but I trailed behind Sanchez’s unmarked car anyway. I wanted to know what he was thinking. I didn’t have faith that anyone would care for me. The only chance I had, I believed, was to make sure that nobody could bring me down.
Sanchez parked at a blue curb painted with big white letters that read FOR OFFICIAL POLICE BUSINESS ONLY! When I passed by he tooted his horn and pointed that I should park in front of him. I made a U-turn and nosed up in front of his black Chevrolet. He was waiting for me with a blue-and-red cardboard sign that had a long code number printed on it.
“Here, put this on your dashboard,” he said. “They’ll leave it alone then.”
The number reminded me of an arrest ID. When I put it down I was hoping that I wouldn’t meet its brother inside.
We went in through the large garage doors; a black man and a brown one strolling through a cavern full of white cops.
“Can I do something for you?” the first cop we ran into asked.
“Sergeant Sanchez,” my escort replied. He had his ID out and ready.
“Okay,” the towheaded cop said suspiciously. “Where you going?”
“Captain Fogherty wants to see us,” Sanchez said without a trace of anger in his voice.
“Where’s your badge?” the patrolman then asked me. He knew from the way I was dressed I didn’t have one but he just couldn’t let us go. I noticed that policemen were standing around their cars, and up on a high cu
rb, looking at us.
“It’s at the cleaners,” I said. “Gettin’ a touch-up and a shine.”
“What?” The cop made a motion with his shoulder. He wanted to do something but hadn’t decided on what—yet.
My heart started moving blood at a fast pace. I gritted my teeth and watched the white man’s light brown eyes.
Sanchez stepped between us.
“Mr. Rawlins isn’t a police officer,” he said. “He’s here to advise the captain on the Gasteau killing.”
The policeman’s smile reminded me of Pharaoh. “That’s what happens when we let your kind up here,” he said.
I could think of five answers; only two of them involved words.
“Can we go on, Officer …” Sanchez looked closely at the flat badge under the officer’s shield. “Peters?”
Patrolman Peters stepped sideways and we went through the pair of swinging double doors behind him. The doors opened into a long, light-lime-colored hall. It was lit by bright lights in semiopaque glass bowls that were screwed into the ceiling.
We walked the length of the hall and then turned left down another, even longer hall. There were no doors along the way, just the tunnel.
A large roach scuttled down the corridor past us. He was scared, it seemed, and was hell-bent to get away from the direction we were headed.
“How long have you been sergeant?” I asked Sanchez.
I figured that I wasn’t a prisoner, or a criminal, and so I could speak freely.
But Sanchez didn’t see it that way. Either that or he was deaf.
Or maybe he was concentrating. The tunnels under the jail crisscrossed often, going off at various angles.
We turned and then turned again.
Each corridor was less green and more yellow. At the end of the final passage was a large iron door with a small portal fitted with extra-thick, bulletproof glass.
Through the glass we could see another door, this one like a cell door, formed from bars. On the other side of the bars was another, older police officer. When Sanchez tapped his badge on the glass the guardian looked up slowly. Sanchez showed his ID at the window. The older man got up, rummaged around a large metal key loop. There were only four keys but he had to try every one to open the barred door. He walked across the metal chamber, to the door that we stood behind, and peered at us.
He made a movement with his hand saying that he wanted to see Sanchez’s ID again. He looked at the picture for a long time and then started fumbling with the keys again.
After four attempts I heard the key slip into a lock and turn, but the door didn’t come open. The elder cop went back across the chamber. It wasn’t until he was safely locked away that he reached under his desk and pulled on something. A loud click went off in the door we were standing before and Sanchez pushed it open.
We entered the ironclad chamber.
“Shut it behind you,” the guard/cop said.
Sanchez obliged.
“What do you want?” the guard then asked.
“I’m taking Mr. Rawlins here to see Captain Fogherty.”
The cop looked hard at me. “He under arrest?”
“No.”
“Why’d you come this way?”
“This is the way the captain said to come.”
Another long look.
“Okay,” he said, and he fumbled with the keys.
Beyond him was another metal door that had to be unlocked. And beyond that was the dim-lit room of cages. Twelve boxes of crosshatched bars with a man, or two, in every cell. When we came into the room I could see, through the grated floor, another twelve cells below. The steel latticed ceiling revealed an upper cellblock. They all wore drab green pants that had the word PRISONER stenciled on them in dark red dye, and matching T-shirts. Each man stared silently, wondering if our presence there had to do with their case. They stared from their cots, or standing at the crosshatched bars, or squatting down on the steel toilet seat. They had nothing to hide, nothing to say.
Just thirty or so men living in cages underground. Like livestock waiting for some further shame to be laid on them. Like sharecroppers or slaves living in shanty shacks on the edge of a plantation.
There was evil in that room, and on that plantation too. Because, as I knew too well, if you’re punished long enough you become guilty of all charges brought against you.
“Mistah.”
It was a hoarse whisper. The man who called was black. He was half crouching, half lying at the grid cell door. The white of his left eye was full of bright blood. His nose was so swollen that he was gasping open-mouthed. There was blood coming from his mouth and you could see that he was missing teeth. I couldn’t tell if he had lost them in the fight or at some earlier time.
“Mistah.”
I slowed.
It was hard to tell through the bruises and the blood but I didn’t think that the man had reached twenty-five. Hefty but not loose, he’d taken off his shirt to mop the blood and sweat from his face.
Behind him, at the back of the cell, was another young man. This one, also black, was long and lean with his legs stretched out and crossed on the cot where he reclined. He was in repose with open eyes and the satisfied smugness of a bully in his face.
“Help me, mistah,” the beaten man begged. “Tell’em t’lemme outta here.”
“Come on, Rawlins,” Sanchez said at my back.
“What’s that?” the lanky bully said.
The beaten man cringed at the crackling sound of his tormentor’s voice.
The bully sat up. He had the name Jones stitched over the left breast of his prison shirt but I doubted that that was his name.
“Get back over here, Felix,” Jones said. And then, “I’ma count to three. One …”
Felix looked up at me.
“… two …”
Felix flinched and went, on his knees, to Jones’s feet. Jones looked across the cell, through the grating, and smiled at me. He was also missing a few teeth.
Jones stepped out of his shoes.
“Get the fuck up in yo’ motherfuckin’ bed an’ spit-shine my goddam motherfuckin’ shoes,” he said. When Felix didn’t move fast enough Jones bent down and socked him on the ear.
“Don’t hit me again!” Felix shouted.
“Then get up in that bed an’ shine’em. An’ you better not get no blood on the motherfuckers.” To make the job harder Jones punched Felix in the nose, bringing blood and tears.
Jones had his back to us.
He talked to Felix but the words were meant for me.
“You think that man gonna help you? That what you think, Felix? Well, just as soon as they gone I’ma whip yo’ ass good. I’ma give you such a ass-kickin’ you gonna wish you had kep’it quiet. An’ that man bettah hope I never catch his punk ass out in the street. He bettah hope not.”
“Come on, Rawlins,” Sanchez said. “We’ll report it to the guard.”
THROUGH THE NEXT CELL DOOR portal we saw two guards. They stood behind yet another barred doorway. They flipped a switch and we came through the first door.
Both men were beefy and balding. One squinted while the other had rosy cheeks. They took Sanchez’s badge through the bars and set it down on a table behind them.
Neither one had said a word.
“Well?” Sanchez asked.
The one on the left squinted at his partner’s bright cheeks.
I was thinking about Felix, wondering if his shouts could be heard through steel.
“What are you trying to pull, son?” Squinty asked back.
There was a steel door behind me, a steel door in front of me, and for some reason I couldn’t catch a deep breath.
“You better get back to your cells, boys, until we can check this out,” said the red-cheeked man. “Pop the locks of seventeen and twenty-four, Ron.”
A spasm went up my spine but Sanchez held still. He stared at the men. Ron finally blinked and reached for the keys. He got them as far as the lock and then stopped.
“You sure you belong here, Pancho?” he asked.
His partner snickered and then they both laughed.
Ron unlocked the door and swung it open. My breath was waiting for me across the threshold.
Applecheeks was clapping Sanchez on the back.
“Just a joke, amigo,” he was saying.
“There’s a fight going on in one of the cells back there,” Sanchez replied. “One of them is getting beaten up pretty bad.”
“Oh,” the cop said. “Two niggers?”
“I think somebody could get hurt,” Sanchez said with emphasis.
The policeman turned to his partner and asked, “What time is it, Bob?”
Bob had to hold his wristwatch at arm’s length to read the dial. “Three-fifteen.”
“Oh. I’ll tell you what, amigo,” the cop called Ron said to Sanchez. “It’s only half an hour until the next shift comes in. If we have to charge somebody it’ll take an hour at least. But we’ll tell the next shift when they get here.”
There was nothing left to say and so we left Felix to his fate.
We went down another long hall that actually went from one building to another. The next building was the old police station. The halls became more slender with woodwork around the doors. We took a staircase up two flights and then down another hall. In this passage sunlight shone in through open doors and illuminated the frosted windows of closed ones. At the far end was our destination. The brass plate on the door said “Captain Josiah Fogherty.”
“Come in.”
It was a small room, barely large enough for the junk-piled desk and folding chairs propped up next to the door. Not a captain’s office at all.
Fogherty had a full mane of silver hair and drooping eyelids that were sad and smiling at the same time. His skin was darkish but not by race, or the sun. He had the look of a duskto dawn drinker; whiskey without a mixer if my imagination was correct. He wore no wedding band and his white shirt was too wrinkled, even for a cop, with one too many stains poking out from underneath his brown jacket. He looked up at us with a smile that could have been a mourner’s valiant attempt to console a bereaved widow.
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