I blamed my slip on the whiskey and I swore silently never to take another drink.
“Mr. Rawlins?”
“Yeah?”
“You were saying?”
“Oh, yeah. Yeah. I go in to work one day and Idabell comes crying to me that her husband wants to kill her dog. The next thing I know her brother-in-law is dead—right there on the school grounds—and her husband gets shot at their house. She disappears, and then when she calls me she says that she’s runnin’ away.”
“I read about Roman in the paper. And the police came here to question me about Idabell and Holland. They should probably have this letter?” She looked to see how I’d take that question.
It wouldn’t have looked good for me if she went to the police and told them that I’d seen Idabell in the last couple of days. A cold chill ran up under my scalp. It hurt where I’d been sapped.
“What’s it say?” I asked innocently.
She handed it over to me and I pretended to read.
“What’s all’a this mean?”
“Why do you want to know, Mr. Rawlins? This doesn’t have anything to do with you. All you have to do is go home.” She was harsh but it didn’t bother me. I was a fool.
“I got a history with the cops, Miss Shay,” Whiskey said. “They don’t like me and they know that I was talkin’ to Idabell the day she left. I didn’t tell’em ’bout her dog ’cause she’d lied about the dog at school, she said that he was in an accident and that’s why she left that day. Now if I do say they’ll lean pretty hard.”
“If you didn’t do anything there’s nothing to worry about.”
I knew right then that she wasn’t a fully American Negro. A black man or woman in America, with American parents, knew that innocence was a term for white people. We were born in sin.
“I like my job, Miss Shay. I got a pension and a ladder to climb. They will fire me if the cops do something like cart me off to jail.”
Bonnie Shay gave me a long look. I liked it. I hadn’t lied to her, except about Idabell and that damned dog. But that was just a lie of necessity. I was sure that she wouldn’t hold that against me.
“Roman,” she said. “Her brother-in-law. He stole something from me. I told Ida about it. I guess she just felt bad about it.”
“What did he take?”
“What?”
“What did he take from you?”
“Oh. Well, yes. A ring.”
“It sure don’t sound like that,” I said.
“It doesn’t?” she dared me. “What does it sound like then?”
I decided to go out on a limb. “It sounds like Roman was smuggling heroin from France into L.A. and using you to do it. It sounds like Holland was in on it with him. It sounds like Idabell took the heroin from Holland and killed him for playing her like a fool. It sounds like you’re into it up to your neck and you’d be lucky not only to keep your job but to stay outta jail.”
The hardness in her face was something to behold. I had delivered a devastating stroke and she weathered it.
“What do you want, Mr. Rawlins?”
“All I want is enough to give to the cops if they decide they want me. I wanna know who killed the twins and why they did. I wanna know why Idabell ran.”
“I don’t know any of it. Nothing.”
It had to be the whiskey. Had to be. There I was talking about murder with someone who was obviously involved, and all I could think about was how much I liked it that I could tell when she was lying. I was feeling an intimacy with her. I would have liked to get to know her as well as I understood her.
She felt it too, I could tell. It was like we were looking over a field and catching each other’s eye; our animal sides slowly overpowering our minds.
Who knows what might have happened if there hadn’t come that knock on the door?
It was three hard raps and then silence. Bonnie was about to say something but I put up one finger for her silence.
Ten seconds passed.
Three more raps. This time harder.
I stood up and went to the kitchen.
The raps turned into blows. “Bonnie Shay!” Rupert sounded as if he were in the room with us.
I put my fingers to my lips to keep Bonnie quiet and lifted an iron pan from the stove. Bonnie’s eyes showed fear but she trusted me—at least more than she trusted the man banging on her door.
The door was hollow. I was surprised that Rupert hadn’t broken through it with his knocks.
“Open up!” Rupert called.
I sidled up to the door and readied myself for the wrestler.
He probably used his shoulder to batter the door. On his first blow he cracked it down the middle, almost going through.
Bonnie let out a small screech.
“Who’s out there?” someone shouted from down the hall.
“Hey, man,” Rupert said. “Mind your own … Hey! Hey watch it!”
“Clear outta here or I shoot, bastid!”
“Hey, watch it!” Rupert shouted. His voice was already down the hall.
“I’m callin’ the police!” our savior yelled. “I’m callin’ ’em.”
Then there was a brief stretch of silence.
The next knock on the door was mild.
“Miss Shay? Miss Shay, you okay in there?”
“Yes, Mr. Gillian.” Bonnie went to the door and opened it.
He was an older man, smallish. But he made up for his size with the three-and-a-half-foot shotgun levered in the crook of his arm. He was black, yellow actually, with weblike soft white hair. His orange flannel robe was open at the throat. You could see the skin of his throat sagging, as if it knew that it was time to abandon the bones.
He had one foot in the room, the other one in the hall.
His eyes were on me as he asked Bonnie, “You want me to call the cops?”
“No, Mr. Gillian. Thank you for scaring him away. I don’t think that he’s going to come back.”
“You know, you should watch the company you keep,” he said, still looking at me.
I kept my hands down at my side. I didn’t want to scare Mr. Gillian into shooting me.
“Thank you again, Mr. Gillian,” she said.
Bonnie moved to push the door closed.
“You can come on down with me and Cheryl if you want, Miss Shay,” he said.
I liked him. He was worried that I was a threat and that she was scared to run from me.
But Mr. Gillian didn’t like me.
“Why’ont you come on with me, Bonnie?” he said.
He leaned forward to cut off my approach to her, balancing the gun so that he could swing it up into action with speed. The only problem he had was the length of the barrel. If he wasn’t used to wielding it it might take a second too long.
Gillian knew what I was thinking. He gave me a little smile that dared, “Go on, boy. Try it.”
He said, “Come on, Bonnie. Let’s go.”
Bonnie saw what was happening. She held the broken door by the knob and looked at me. Who was I? At least she knew Mr. Gillian. Mr. Gillian and Cheryl were safe.
They were safe but what did they know about the man pounding at the door?
“It’s okay, Mr. Gillian. Mr. Rawlins was helping me.”
“You sure?” There was disappointment in his voice.
“I’ll come down and talk to you and Cheryl later on,” she said while pushing the cracked door to usher him out.
“Okay now,” he said as the door was closing. “But I’ll be keepin’ a ear peeled.”
The moment the door was closed Bonnie gasped and brought her left hand to her breast. I moved to help but she held up the other hand to ward me off. Then she shook her whole body, head and all, making a noise with her flapping cheeks like you do when you’re very cold. The shiver subsided slowly until only her head and neck quivered slightly—her eyes shut tight. Then she took a deep breath and opened her eyes to look at me.
“Do you know who that man was?” she asked
.
CHAPTER 29
RUPERT WORKS FOR TWO WHITE MEN,” I was saying at the Dunkin’ Donuts franchise down near La Cienega and Pico. Bonnie had taken her coffee with two creams and two sugars. “Philly Stetz and a guy named Beam.”
We had gone down to the back of the building and out through the laundry window. I didn’t know if Rupert was outside, if he was armed, or if Li’l Joe was with him. But even if he was alone and unarmed, I doubted my ability to stop him from taking Bonnie.
We tripped and stumbled through a cluttered cement deck that offered the building’s trash cans to the alley. A German shepherd growled and barked once but he backed down when I took a metal lid from the nearest can. Dogs had become my least favorite creatures over the past few days.
We caught a bus to a cab stand on Jefferson. From there we took a taxi to the doughnut shop. I was in no rush to take this woman into my home. I mean, I liked her but I loved those kids.
“You know either one of them?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“Well, what do you know?”
“I don’t know much, Mr. Rawlins. For instance, I don’t know if I can trust you.”
“Hey.” I held up my hands. “You sure in hell cain’t trust Rupert.”
For some reason that made her laugh. She brought her hand to her lips in an attempt to suppress the giggles.
“What’s so funny?”
She tried to talk but the laugh wouldn’t let her.
Bonnie put her fingers at the back of my hand to steady herself.
“You looked pretty funny there,” she said.
“Where?”
“At my place. Your face got all cockeyed and you were holding that pan like it was a fly …” She couldn’t manage to finish for laughing. “A flyswatter.”
I laughed then. I was thinking that Rupert did resemble a fly. A big ugly fly who had had his wings clipped.
“You were so scared.” She laughed some more. “Kinda cute though.”
“More than cute,” I said in a somber tone. “If you would of opened that door you’d be dead right now.”
“You don’t know that,” she said defiantly.
“They killed Idabell, Bonnie.”
She shook her head the smallest little bit and winced.
“I was comin’ to leave you that note and she stayed down in the car. It was raining and she didn’t want to get wet but I think that she was also afraid to see you after what her people did. While I was up at your door somebody shot her in the head.”
“The police didn’t say that.”
“Uh-uh. The cops you talked to don’t know yet. The Santa Monica police found her but she didn’t have no ID.”
“Why? Why would they do that?”
“Because somebody was waitin’ for you. Because they saw me drive up an’ leave her in the car. Because she had something they wanted.”
“What could she have that would get her killed?”
“A child’s croquet set.”
I might as well have slapped her. Whatever words or arguments or points she had to make died in her throat. Her mouth hung open, silent.
“Come on,” I said. “I’ll take you over to my house. It’s not too far.”
THE STEWARDESS had on flat shoes and so the walk wasn’t too bad. It was about seven. A strong wind was blowing and light filled the weak blue sky. Cars moved with purpose on the broad boulevard.
Feather was in the front room laughing with Pharaoh. She stopped dead when she saw that a woman had come into the house. Feather didn’t have much experience with women in our house. Jesus brushed her hair and saw that she got dressed. I cooked the meals and wiped her nose. I answered her questions about right and wrong, good and bad.
She went from seven years old to three in a twinkling. With two fingers in her mouth and one up her nose she stared at Bonnie as if she had never seen a woman before.
Pharaoh was growling at me. Of course.
“Feather, this is Miss Shay,” I said.
Feather stared.
“Hi, Feather,” Bonnie said. “Are you playing with Pharaoh?” She bent down to scratch the dog behind his ears. He loved that, but not enough to stop eyeing me.
“His name is Frenchie,” Feather said, sticking out her stomach and rocking on the balls of her feet.
“Frenchie. That’s a nice name. Did you give him that name?”
“Uh-huh. I did because Daddy said that he was a French dog, um, Carolina.”
“I like Frenchie much better.”
Feather took her wet hand from her face and put her arms around Bonnie’s neck. Bonnie stood up with my girl in her arms.
She looked good like that.
“Will you be my mommy sometimes?” Feather asked.
“Hi, Dad.” Jesus came in from the back hall.
“This is my son, Jesus. Jesus, this is Miss Shay.”
“Hi,” Bonnie said. She stuck out her hand as far as she could while holding Feather. All three of them laughed at how silly it looked.
It was a regular family scene. All we had to do was to clean up a few murders and a matter of international dope smuggling, then we could move next door to Donna Reed.
Jesus and I made breakfast. That was his Bisquick phase. We turned out pancakes and sausages while Feather sat on Bonnie’s lap and Pharaoh took turns barking with them and snarling at me.
IT WAS ALL OVER by eight-fifteen. Jesus took Feather off to school after which he was going to practice for track.
The smile faded from Bonnie’s face as the two children left.
“They’re beautiful,” she said sadly.
“I think so.”
There was an awkward moment then. We didn’t know each other, there were no common friends or interests we had—at least none that we knew about. The only thing we could do was talk about murder and neither one of us had the heart for any more talk like that.
“Where you from?” I asked.
“Originally?”
“Uh-huh.”
There was a tiny spot on her dress, over her left breast. It was probably a food stain. Something that she saw but then said to herself, “It’s just a little spot.”
Her beauty couldn’t be dampened by a blemish or a wrinkle.
“I was born in Guiana,” she said. “French Guiana’s what they call it. But I was raised in New Jersey. That’s why I can work for Air France. I’m fluent in French and American English.”
“Yeah. You’re the first black stewardess I ever heard of.”
“There’s lots of black people doing things outside of America.”
“You spend mosta your time outside America?”
“We do lots of flights to Africa. Algeria, the Sudan.”
“How come you live here then?” I asked.
It was an innocent question but I struck a nerve there.
We were still standing at the front door so I said, “Here, have a seat.” Bonnie sat on the couch. The brown one that I bought after I bled all over the old sofa.
“You want some coffee?” I asked.
“Would you?”
When I returned from the kitchen she’d calmed down a little. She tasted the brew and smiled when she saw that I put in the right amounts of sugar and milk.
“I came here because of Roman Gasteau.” She said it all at once, in a hard voice. “I met him in Paris. I mean, I was introduced to him by Idabell. He was her brother-in-law. He was from Philadelphia but spent a lot of time in New York. Paris was my home base but I flew into New York twice a week. Ida told him where I stayed and he looked me up.”
“So how’d you wind up here?”
“I liked Roman. He was fun and he made me miss living in the States. He’d spent a little while with me in Paris but then he was offered a job in Los Angeles. A blackjack dealer’s job in Gardena.” She looked at me as if to say, So. “Idabell was here. It’s not too hard to change your route if you have seniority. All I had to do was wait a few months for a slot to open up.”
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br /> “So you came to L.A. on a lark?” I was unconvinced.
“It wasn’t like that. Not really. Roman and I had gotten close. He wanted me to come to L.A. I thought it was because he was too jealous to leave me in Paris. I was flattered. I didn’t know that he was using me to make visits to Paris to set up some deal.
“Roman was wonderful to be around. He was playful and smart—he was a great dancer. And he believed that people should be responsible to their community. There’s an elderly couple who live in his apartment building, the Blanders. He used to do their shopping and once or twice he even paid their rent.
“From everything I knew about him he seemed perfect. So of course I wanted to come out here, to be with him and live near Idabell.”
“And then he made you his mule,” I said.
“He said that he was importing French toys that he sold on the side. He wanted me to bring them in now and then so that the tariffs wouldn’t cut into his profit. It was only toys. A set of Italian boccie balls, a dollhouse.”
“An’ you didn’t know?”
“Not until I forgot once. I left this set of wooden carpet balls on the plane. I forgot. When I got home and Romny came over he went crazy. I told him that I’d go back in the morning, that the ground crew had probably put the package in my basket. It had my name on it.
“He struck me. He knocked me down. I was afraid that he was going to kick me when he pulled me up by the hair and told me that he’d kill me if I didn’t go down with him right then to get it. He dragged me down there at three in the morning. I told him that that would be suspicious but he didn’t care. I had to sign all kinds of forms and I think the customs agent was suspicious but he knew me and let it go…. Roman took the balls to his car and left me to take a bus home.”
Bonnie trembled with the memories. I didn’t doubt a word that she said.
“What happened then?” I asked.
“I broke off with him. I put in for a transfer back to Europe but I’m still waiting for an open slot.”
A Little Yellow Dog Page 22