Don’t look too close, a voice said in my head. I shuddered and blinked and turned away from Bonnie Shay.
“What’s wrong, Easy?” she asked.
“Nuthin’,” I said.
“Huh?” Feather said, voicing the question for everyone in the room.
“Nuthin’,” I said again. “Here, let me throw some dinner together.”
“That’s okay, Easy,” Bonnie said. “You just sit with the kids.”
BONNIE HAD BEEN preparing dinner while the kids ate cookies. We had thin string beans made with slivered almonds sautéed in butter and drop biscuits that were very short. The main course was omelets made with fine herbs and white cheese. Feather made herself a can of tomato soup too.
After dinner Jesus went to bed while the rest of us watched TV; Rawhide, half of The Jimmy Dean Show, and then Hazel. Feather loved Hazel but she fell asleep before Jimmy Dean.
Then Bonnie cleaned up in the kitchen and I bundled Feather off to bed. When I came back Bonnie was sitting on the sofa looking sad. Pharaoh was nuzzling her thigh with the side of his snout.
Maybe that dog and I hated each other because we were so much alike.
“Hi,” I said.
Bonnie looked up at me and smiled. She extended her hand to draw me down next to her.
“You have a beautiful family, Mr. Rawlins.”
“They look even better wit’ you.”
That’s where the conversation stopped. We sat there listening to Pharaoh move his nose on her leg. I felt so comfortable right then that I had the urge to pet the dog.
“I’ve got to get my clothes, Easy,” Bonnie said. “Do you think it’s safe?”
“That depends,” I said.
“Depends on what?”
“On how deep you’ve gotten yourself into this mess.” I believe that Bonnie would have talked to me before then—if she could have gotten the words up to her mouth. She needed to be primed.
“What did Idabell do with those croquet sticks when she got off your plane, Bonnie?”
“Roman was waiting for her. He was in his red Mustang convertible out front. I remember Ida was all slumped over because she was so embarrassed. But Roman waved just like he was happy to see me.”
“Did she leave with Roman?”
“No. She threw the sticks in the backseat and then I waited with her until a taxi came. They won’t take nonemployees on the Air France shuttle bus.”
“But I don’t understand,” I said. “She told you that it was Holland who took the dog.”
“Yes.”
“Then why wouldn’t Holland …”
“They were always competing,” Bonnie said. “One was always trying to outdo the other one. Holland used to come up to see me when Roman was out of town. He wanted to kiss me but it was just because I was with Roman.”
“You kissed him?” I asked, but she didn’t answer.
I wanted to kiss her.
She wanted to kiss me.
But there had been too much kissing lately and none of it had come to any good. That voice in my head, a voice that I rarely heard, was trying to protect me from any more pain.
I must’ve been looking pretty hard at Bonnie. She bowed a little and said, “I’ll sleep on the couch, Easy.”
I didn’t argue.
She leaned over and kissed me on the lips, lingering for a moment. She moved away and then back to kiss me again. I touched her hair.
I felt very close to her at that moment; and then the doubt flooded back in.
“What are you doing here, Bonnie?”
“What do you mean?” she asked softly.
“I mean, why would you trust me? Why would you come to my house here when you don’t know a thing about me?”
“But I do know about you. I knew who you were when you came to my apartment the first time.”
“How?” I asked, but I already knew the answer.
“Idabell told me. She called after she ran from the school. She told me what happened between you in the classroom and she said that you took Pharaoh. So when you came over asking about her I knew that you could be trusted.”
“How’s that?”
“Because you were trying to protect her.”
I leaned over, not necessarily for another kiss, but she moved away.
“We have time,” she whispered.
“You take the bed,” I answered. “I got some stuff to think about out here.”
She rose and went back to my room.
THE PHONE RANG an hour later. When I put the receiver to my ear the first thing I heard was a blaring horn. Then:
“Easy!”
“Yeah?”
“It’s me, Jackson!”
“I can hear ya, Jackson. I know who you are.”
“I’m in trouble, man.”
“What kinda trouble? Are you at the motel?”
“Naw, I’m outside’a this pool hall down in Venice.”
“Pool hall?”
“I didn’t hear from you, man. I was goin’ crazy in that room. I didn’t even have no book or nuthin’.”
“So why’nt you go to a bookstore?”
“Shit, man. You know,” Jackson said. “I wanted a drink and some music, that’s all.”
“Somebody see you?”
“Yeah. Guy named Paul Dunne. He’s a pool hustler down on Jefferson. I never knew he made out this far west.”
“Paul gonna turn you over?”
“They got money on my head, Easy. Anybody turn me over for cash.”
“Get back to the motel, Jackson,” I said. “An’ keep your nose inside too. I’ll be there tomorrow at the latest. Okay?”
“Okay, man. Okay.” He sounded scared. I liked that, because the only time Jackson ever did what he was told was when he was scared.
AFTER I GOT OFF THE PHONE with Jackson I went back to thinking. Thinking about Idabell making love to me on that early-morning desk; about Roman lying dead in the garden while we did; about the dog and the croquet set; about Holland laid up dead; and then about Idabell dead in my car.
It all came down to Bonnie Shay. The killer waiting in front of her house and then even coming back. Yes, coming back. I was sure that it had been Rupert who killed Ida. And he was coming back for Bonnie.
I didn’t want to think about how good Bonnie was because thinking about her sooner or later would lead me back to thinking about her role in Idabell’s plight.
“BONNIE.” I shook her bare shoulder. “Bonnie.”
There was a peaceful look on her waking face. A trusting, good-morning kind of look.
“What time is it?” she asked.
“What you do with the heroin?” I asked.
“Huh?”
“Come on now, Bonnie. Tell me.”
She sat straight up. “What are you trying to say?”
“The only reason Beam would send his killer after you is because you stole from him. And the only thing you could have stolen is the heroin.”
For the first time I noticed that she was bare-chested. There was a small blemish over her left breast about the size and temper of an inflamed pimple. She saw my eyes and pulled the sheet to cover up.
“I … I threw it away,” she said.
“Come on now, Bonnie. You could do better than that.”
“I’m not lying, Mr. Rawlins,” she said with dignity that was barely forced.
“Naw.”
“Yes. I threw it away. Ida had unscrewed the mallets and balls and taken out the heroin.”
“How’d she know about the heroin? You said you didn’t know when Roman was movin’ it. Why’d him or Holland even take a chance on tellin’ her?”
Bonnie’s face relaxed and she sighed. I could tell that all the lying had gone out of her.
“Roman didn’t want her to know,” she said. “But Holland did. He gave her a sachet of potpourri and an empty can of baby powder. He wanted her to open up the hammers and balls and put the heroin in the can. He gave her the glue and said that she could
refill the balls with flour and then seal them.”
“So if Holland was supposed to get the drugs, how’d you end up with ’em?”
“He never got them.”
“How’s that?”
“Ida put flour and the potpourri in the empty can. She had the heroin in a hot-water bottle in my travel bag.”
“A hot-water bottle?”
“I didn’t know about it until the plane was almost landing, Easy. That’s the truth. She’d done everything on her own. She was keeping the drugs as insurance that Pharaoh would be safe.”
“She put her life on the line, and yours, for a dog?”
“That was her heart.”
I could have cried. Pharaoh definitely had to leave from my house.
“And so you threw it away?”
“It was an evil thing and I wouldn’t trade my life for my soul.”
I was trying to understand; trying to believe. But I couldn’t.
“Where’d you throw it?”
“In the trash,” she said as if I were some kind of simpleton.
“You mean in one of those cans behind your building?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“The morning after we got back from France. Right after Idabell called and said that she had Pharaoh.”
“And when’s garbage pickup?”
The question startled her. “Oh. I … Today, I mean … tomorrow … this morning coming up.”
I looked at my watch. It was still a while until Mouse got off of work. Even if I was late he would wait for me, because I had his car.
I WAS GOING THROUGH the fourteenth trash can and wondering at what a fool I was. If any of the neighbors heard me the cops would come. If Rupert was still waiting out front, which he probably was, I was dead from his hand.
And there I was sifting through soggy newspapers and greasy brown paper bags. One can held a half-eaten ham that was alive again with a thriving colony of leaping maggots. Ants crawled along my ankles. A dog barked out of a corridor that led to the main body of the building.
I was there because I wanted to believe in something—in Bonnie Shay. I wanted her to be what she said she was; a good woman with a strong mind who did what she knew was right. I couldn’t live in the streets, and the workaday world wasn’t enough—not without some kind of faith.
Maybe I was more like Mouse than I thought. Maybe somebody looking at me would have thought that I was insane. Maybe that was what Sanchez thought.
In the fifteenth can there was a bag of greasy bones and coffee grounds. Under that were various newspapers, beer cans, and a broken green glass. Finally there was a large red rubber water bottle. It was heavy, maybe three pounds. The white powder it contained wasn’t flour.
CHAPTER 35
SOJOURNER TRUTH was getting to be like a fond memory, like an old house that I had once lived in but now it was inhabited by strangers. I felt like an intruder even though I used my key.
There was a light on on the top floor of the administration building. Mouse was there with his cloth push broom. He’d sprinkled the hall with oil-treated sawdust and was pushing the greenish shavings in an even back-and-forth pattern, sucking up the dirt out of the corners and cracks of the floor.
“Hey, Raymond.”
He nodded and set his long-handled broom against the wall.
Walking down that long hall toward me, Mouse looked like all the black men I’d known working late hours. His casual gait graceful like that of a woodland beast, each careful step testing the ground.
“Where you got me goin’ t’night, man?” he asked.
“I just need t’talk to some people, Raymond. An’ I don’t wanna go it alone.”
“I don’t got no gun, man.”
“That’s fine by me, brother.”
I helped him to get everything squared away. And then we left.
“I THOUGHT WE WAS GOING someplace in Compton?” Raymond asked when we were almost in Santa Monica.
“Got to get Jackson Blue first.”
“Jackson.” Mouse grinned. He always grinned when it came to Jackson Blue.
I parked in the motel lot and knocked on the door.
“Who is it?” This time he was standing straight back from the door.
“Come on, Jackson, open up.”
We settled his bill with the woman who ran the place and then headed north. Mouse took the backseat and Jackson sat next to me.
“How much you know about a guy named Beam?” I asked Jackson.
“Joey Beam? He’s a bad cat. Really bad.”
“He work for Stetz?”
“Not really. Philly run the place an’ Beam hang out there. They both gamblers mainly. But Philly owns the numbers. At least all the numbers he could get ahold of. Philly’s the top dog. He the one says what’s what. But Beam don’t answer to Philly. He might do a job fo’im but Beam’s his own man.”
“They friends?”
“I’ont know, man. They know each other. But you know those kinda men like each other just as much as their money is green.”
Mouse laughed in the backseat.
“What if I went to Philly an’ told him that I had a friend in trouble with Beam?” I asked. “What if I said that this friend had taken something didn’t belong to him but now he wanted to give it back?”
“Who’s that?”
“We’ll get to that later,” I said. “But this thing I got to give him he’s gonna really want. Then let’s say that you gonna drop the numbers and the bets. Then maybe he could get this price off your head.”
“What’s that?” Mouse asked.
“Somebody put out a price on my head,” Jackson said. “Now all kindsa brothers wanna hunt me down. Could you believe that?”
Mouse didn’t answer.
“What you got for Beam?” Jackson asked me.
“Aitch.”
Jackson’s eyes widened. “How much?”
“Don’t you worry about that, Jackson. That don’t matter to you. All you got to care about is helpin’ me with Stetz.”
“I ain’t dealin’ wit’ Stetz. Nooo, no. That man wants to see me dead.”
“I’ll be the one to go to’im, Jackson. All I need for you to do is to help me.”
Jackson didn’t reply.
We were headed up Sunset for the hills above West Hollywood. Just before we got to Laurel Canyon we took a left up a smaller road. That wound around until we reached a long dirt driveway that led to a small house on a precipice overlooking L.A.
Jewelle met us at the door.
“Hi, Mr. Rawlins, Mr. Alexander,” she said. She looked at Jackson, waiting for an introduction.
“This is Jackson Blue,” I told her. “He needs a place to stay for a couple’a nights, JJ. I know it might be trouble—”
“That don’t matter,” she said, cutting me off. “We don’t mind helpin’ you, Mr. Rawlins.”
“Thank you,” Jackson said. The spark in Jackson’s eye was starting to worry me when I heard Mofass coming toward the door.
His normal breathing sounded like a severe asthma attack. He struggled up the three stairs to the entrance and then stopped, leaning against the wall like a man who had just raced five miles.
“Mr. Rawlins,” the gravel-toned real estate agent said. “Mr. Alexander.”
He had on the ratty Scotch-plaid housecoat that he almost always wore. Mofass rarely went out. Jewelle took care of the apartments and the real estate business that they’d taken from her aunt. She took care of him too.
“Uncle Willy, you shouldn’t be up here in this breeze,” she said. “Come on, let’s get back down to the couch.”
With that the slender girl tugged and supported the two-hundred and-fifty-pound man. She didn’t ask for any help and didn’t seem to want any. Her labor was a labor of love.
We followed them down the stairs to a large room that was carpeted with thick, real animal-skin rugs. There was a large fireplace roaring and a picture window that had the same view t
hat was behind Lips McGee at the casino.
“This is nice,” Jackson said, falling down into a plush settee. “Real nice. Like a little country house for a Roman senator.”
“The Romans had emperors,” Jewelle corrected.
“Yeah,” Jackson said. “But they had senators too. You know, the Greeks started democracy but the Romans made law. They had elected officials too. Ain’t that right, Easy?”
“Yeah, just like America was. They had senators and they had slaves.”
“Where’d you learn that?” she asked.
“Mr. Rawlins,” Mofass complained, “why you bringin’ these people into my house?”
“It’s just a couple’a days. Jackson and I got some business to handle, and while we do he got to lay low. You know what that’s like, William.”
“Yeah, I guess,” he wheezed.
MOUSE AND I DIDN’T STAY LONG. I sat with Mofass for ten minutes pretending that he ran the business. He barked out some orders to Jewelle and she answered, “Yes, Uncle Willy,” every time. She ran the business better than he ever could, but she loved him and respected him. She would have thrown away all that money and all that land just to be there. Her love was a jagged scar, it hurt me to see it.
CHAPTER 36
WHERE WE GOIN’ NOW?” Mouse wanted to know.
“A place called the Hangar. It’s an after-hours place where all kinds of night-shift workers go after the whistle.”
“Oh, yeah,” Mouse said sadly. “I know that place. I used to go there a while back.”
“Yeah? What’s it like?” I was just making conversation.
Mouse concentrated on my question for quite a while. The way his eyes squinted and how he nodded his head now and then it seemed as if there were a whole dialogue going on in his head.
“I’ont think it’s wrong to kill somebody, Easy,” he said at last. “I mean, that’s what life is all about—killin’, killin’ to survive. You see it in bugs and animals—hell, even plants kill to survive. It couldn’t be a sin because I been hearin’ stories out the Bible my whole life; ev’rybody in there’s killin’ an’ gettin’ killed. An’ you know it ain’t really against the law, ’cause we both know a cop’ll snuff yo’ ass as easy as he could sneeze. Shit. Government kill more people than a murderin’ man could count an’ ain’t nobody takin’ no general to court. Uh-uh. No. It ain’t wrong.”
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