I wanted to ask her how she could share a love with some stranger, but I held it back.
“I’m lookin’ for a boy named Longtree,” I said.
“Pretty boy with a wild white bitch?”
“That’s him.”
“He come in here Sunday night. Said he could play. When I asked him what, he said, ‘guitar, piano, or whatever.’”
“Not too shy, huh?”
“Not a bit. An’ he wasn’t wrong neither. He played the afternoon shift for twenty bucks. I think he might’a got twice that in tips. He didn’t play nuthin’ like bebop but he was good.”
“I need to find him.”
“Just look on the sidewalk and follow the trail’a blood.”
“It’s that bad?”
“That girl’s eyes made contact with every dangerous man in the room. She flirted with one of ’em so much that he told Willis that he wanted to borrow her for the night.”
“Did they fight?” I asked.
“No. I told that big nigga to sit’own ’fore I shot him. They know around here that I don’t play. I told Willis to take his woman outta here and damn if she didn’t give that big man a come-on look while they were goin’ out the door.”
“You think she might’a told him where they were stayin’?”
“I wouldn’t put it past her.”
“What was this guy’s name?”
“Let’s see, um, Art. Yeah, Art, Big Art. Big Art Farman. Yeah, that’s him. He lives down Watts somewhere. Construction worker.”
I found an address in the phone booth of the Grotto. Listening to jazz and worrying about how big Big Art was made Bonnie fade to a small ache in my heart.
* * *
THE MAN WHO CAME to the apartment door was not big at all. As a matter of fact he was rather tiny.
“Art?” I asked.
“No,” he said.
“Does Art Farman live here?”
“Do you know what time it is, man?”
I pulled a wad of cash from my pocket.
“It’s never too late for a hundred bucks,” I said.
The small man had big eyes.
“Wha, what, what do you want?”
“I come to buy somethin’ off’a Art. He know what it is.” I could be vague as long as the money was real.
“I could give it to him when he comes in,” the little man offered.
“You tell him that Lenny Charles got somethin’ for him if he come in in the next two hours.”
“Why just two hours? What if he don’t come in before then?”
“If he don’t then somebody else gonna have to sell me what I need.”
“What’s that?” the little man asked. His coloring was uneven, running from a dark tan to light brown. He had freckles that looked like a rash and had hardly any eyebrow hair at all.
“I need to find a white girl called Sinestra.”
“What for?” The greedy eyes turned suspicious.
“Her daddy asked his maid, my cousin, to ask me to ask her to come back home. He’s willin’ to pay Art a century if he can help me out.”
“What’s your name again?”
“Len,” I lied. “Yours?”
“Norbert.” He was staring at my wad. “What you pay me to find Art?”
“Where is he?”
“No. Uh-uh. I get paid first.”
“How much you want?”
“Fifty?” he squeaked.
“Shit,” I said.
I turned away.
“Hold up. Hold up. What you wanna pay?”
“Thirty.”
“Thirty? That’s all? Thirty for me and a hundred for Art?”
“Art can give me the girl, can you?”
“I can give you Art. And she’s with him. That’s for sure.”
I considered taking out my gun but then thought better of it. Sometimes the threat of death makes small men into heros.
“Forty,” I said.
“You got to bring it higher than that, man. Forty ain’t worth my time.”
“I’ll go find Willis myself then,” I said.
“You mean that skinny little kid?” Norbert laughed. “Art kicked his ass and took his girlfriend from him.”
“He did?”
“Yeah,” Norbert bragged. “Kicked his ass and dragged that white girl away. ’Course she wanted to go.”
“She did?”
“’Course she did. Why she want that skinny guitar man when she could have Big Art in her bed?”
I handed Norbert a twenty dollar bill.
“Where was it that Art did this?”
“Next to that big ’partment buildin’ down on Avalon. Near the Chevron station with the big truck for a sign.”
I handed him another twenty.
“It was the only blue house on the block.”
“How do you know all that?” I asked.
“I drove him over there.”
“Did Sinestra mind Art beating up her boyfriend?”
“Didn’t seem to,” Norbert shrugged.
I handed him another twenty dollar bill.
“Where’s Art now?”
“At Havelock’s Motel on Santa Barbara. That’s where we go when we got a woman, you know, to let the other man get some sleep. I mean we ain’t got but two rooms up in here.”
I handed over another leaf of Sheila Merchant’s money and went away.
ONCE IN MY CAR I had a small dilemma. Should I go after the girl or Willis? It seemed to me that no one really cared about her, except maybe her father. Willis was the one that Etta was worried about. I knew that if I asked her she would have told me to make Willis my priority.
But I was raised better than that. No matter what she had done I couldn’t leave Sinestra Merchant at the mercy of a kidnapper and possible rapist. I couldn’t take Norbert’s word that she maybe wanted some rough action from some big black man in Watts.
HAVELOCK’S WAS A LONG BUNGALOW in the shape of a horseshoe. When I got there it was closing on midnight. A night clerk was in the office, sitting at the front desk with his back to the switchboard. I parked across the street and considered.
The motel sign said that there was a TV and a phone in each room.
I went to a phone booth and dialed a number that hadn’t changed in sixteen years.
“Hola,” a sleepy Spanish voice said.
“Primo.”
“Oh, hello, Easy. Man, what you doin’ callin’ me at this time’a night?”
“You got a pencil and a clock?”
I gave Primo a number and asked him to call in seven minutes exactly. I told him who to ask for and what to say if he got through. He didn’t ask me any questions, just said “okay” and hung up the phone.
“HI,” I SAID TO THE NIGHT CLERK five minutes later. “Can you help me with a reservation?”
It was a carefully constructed sentence designed to keep him from getting too nervous about a six foot black man coming into his office in the middle of the night. Thieves don’t ask for reservations. They rarely say hello.
“Um,” the white clerk said. He first looked at my hands and then over my shoulder to see if somebody else was coming in behind. “I can’t make reservations. I just rent out rooms for people when they come.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s what I thought. But you know I work at a nightclub down the street here and the only time I can really make it in is after work. Do the daytime people take reservations?”
“I don’t know,” the clerk said, relaxing a bit. “People usually just look at the sign. If there’s vacancy they drive in and if not they drive on.”
He smiled at me and the phone rang. He turned his back and lifted the receiver.
“Havelock’s Motel,” he said in a stronger tone than he’d used with me. “Who? Oh yes. Let me put you through.”
He pushed the plug into a slot labeled “Number Six.” I was smiling honestly when he turned back to me.
“That’s really all I can say,” he said. “Just l
ook for the sign.”
“All right.”
I COUNTED THE DOORS on the north side of the building and then I went around the back, counting windows as I went. Number six’s curtains were open wide. The only light on in the room was coming from a partially closed door, the bathroom I was sure. There were two double beds. One was neat, either stripped or made. The other one had something on it, a pair of shoes tilted at an uncomfortable angle.
The window was unlocked.
Big Art—his driver’s license said Arthur—Farman had been dead for some hours. The cause of death probably being a bullet through the eye. Before he’d been killed he was bound, gagged, and beaten. A pillow on the floor next to him had been used to stifle the shot.
There was no trace of the girl named Sinestra. But that didn’t mean she hadn’t been there at the time of Art’s death.
I climbed out of the window and made it back to my car. The dead man, who I’d never met in life, was the strongest presence in my mind.
IT’S HARD LOOKING FOR a blue house at three in the morning. There’s white, black, and gray, and that’s it. But I saw the big apartment building. It was on a corner with only one house nearby. It helped that the lights were on.
I knocked on the door. Why not? They were just crazy kids. There was no answer so I turned the knob. The house was a mess. Pizza cartons and dirty dishes all over the living room and the kitchen. Half-gone sodas, a nearly full bottle of whiskey, it was the kind of filth that many youths lived in while waiting to grow up.
I couldn’t tell if the rooms had been searched. But there wasn’t any blood around.
I GOT HOME a few minutes before four.
Etta picked up the receiver after the first ring.
“Hello.”
I told her about Big Art and Sinestra’s games.
“Old Willis don’t have to worry about Abel Snow with that girl in his bed,” I said.
“She called her daddy,” Etta said. “She told him where she was and asked him to come and get her.”
“Then she lit out?”
“I don’t know. All I know is what Mrs. Merchant said. She told me that Mr. Merchant sent Abel down to get her.”
“Did he bring her back?”
“No.”
“Damn.”
“Do you think he’s found ’em, Easy?”
“I’m not sure, but I don’t think so. Mr. Snow don’t mind leavin’ blood and guts behind him.”
“Maybe you better leave it alone, Easy.”
“Can’t do that, Etta. I got to see it through now.”
“I don’t want you to get killed, baby,” she said.
“That’s the nicest thing I been told all day.”
I SLEPT ON THE COUCH for the few hours left of the night.
When I opened my eyes she was sitting right in front of me.
“We have to talk,” Bonnie said.
“I got to go.”
“No.”
“Bonnie.”
“His name is Jogaye Cham,” she said. “We, we talked on the plane when everybody else was asleep. He talked about Africa, our home, Easy. Where we came from.”
“I was born in southern Louisiana and I still call myself a Texan ’cause Texas is where I grew into a man.”
“Africa,” she said again. “He was working for democracy. He worked all day and all night. He wanted a country where everyone would be free. A land our people here would be glad to migrate to. A land with black presidents and black professionals of all kinds.”
“Yeah.”
“He worked all the time. Day and night. But one time there was a break in the schedule. We took a flight to a beach town he knew in Madagascar.”
“You could’a come home,” I said even though I didn’t want to say anything.
“No,” she said, and the pain in my chest grew worse. “I needed to be with him, with his dreams.”
“Would you be tellin’ me this if them flowers didn’t come?”
“No. No.” She was crying. I held back from slapping her face. “There was nothing to tell.”
“Five days on a beach with another man and there wasn’t somethin’ to say?”
“We, we had separate rooms.”
“But did you fuck him?”
“Don’t use that kind of language with me.”
“Okay,” I said. “All right. Excuse me for upsetting you with my street-nigger talk. Let me put it another way. Did you make love to him?”
The words cut much deeper than any profanity I could have used. I saw in her face the pain that I felt. Deep, grinding pain that only gets worse with time. And though it didn’t make me feel good, it at least seemed to create some kind of balance. At least she wouldn’t leave unscathed.
“No,” she whispered. “No. We didn’t make love. I couldn’t with you back here waiting for me.”
A thousand questions went through my mind. Did you kiss him? Did you hold hands in the sunset? Did you say that you loved him? But I knew I couldn’t ask. Did he touch your breast? Did he breathe in your breath on a blanket near the water? I knew that if I asked one question that they would never stop coming.
I stood up. I was dizzy, light-headed, but didn’t let it show.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“I got a job to do for Etta. A woman already paid me so I got to move it on.”
“What kind of job?”
“Nuthin’ you need to know about. It’s my business.” And with that I showered and shaved, powdered and dressed. I left her in the house with her confessions and her lies.
WITH NO OTHER INFORMATION available to me I went to see Etta at the Merchants’ seaside retreat. She only pulled the door open enough to see me.
“Go away, Easy,” she said.
“Open the door, Etta.”
“Go away.”
“No.”
Maybe I had gained some strength of will working for the city schools. Or maybe Etta was getting worn down between losing her husband and working for the rich. All I knew was that at another time she could have stared me down. Instead the door swung open.
Inside, sitting on the blue couch with golden clamshell feet, was a young black man and young white woman, both of them beautiful. They were holding hands and huddling like frightened children. They were frightened children. If it wasn’t for the broken heart driving me I would have been scared too.
“They came after you called me, Easy,” Etta said.
“Why didn’t you call back?”
“You did what I asked you to already. You found them. That’s all I could ask.”
“I’m Easy,” I said to the couple.
“Willis,” the boy said. He made a waving gesture and I noticed that his hands were bloody and bandaged.
“Sin,” the girl said. There was something crooked about her face but that just stoked the fires of her dangerous beauty.
“What happened to Big Art, Sin?”
Her mouth dropped open while she groped for a lie.
“I already know you called your father,” I said.
“I was just mad at Art,” she said. “He didn’t have to beat up Willis and hurt his hands. I thought my father would come and maybe do something.” Her eyes grew glassy.
“What happened?”
“I told Art that I was going down to the liquor store and then I called Daddy. I told him that I was with a guy but I was scared to leave and he said to wait somewhere near at hand. Then I waited in the coffee shop across the street. When I saw Abel I got scared and went to get Willy. When we came back to get my clothes he was…” She trailed off in the memory of the slaughter.
I turned to Willis and said, “You’d be better off holding a gun to your head.”
“I didn’t mean for him to get killed,” Sinestra said angrily.
“What now?” I asked Etta.
“I’m tryin’ to talk some sense to ’em. I’m tryin’ to tell Sin to go home and Willis to get away before he ends up like that Art fella.”
“And I’m not leavin’ her or L.A.”
“She just had a big man break your fingers and then she went and fucked him.”
“She didn’t know. She was just flirtin’ and it got outta hand. She’s just innocent, that’s all.”
My mouth fell open and I put my hand to cover it.
Etta started laughing. Laughing hard and loud.
“What are you laughing at?” Sinestra asked.
I started laughing too.
“Shut up, shut up,” Sinestra said.
“Yes. Please be quiet,” Abel Snow said from a door in the back.
He had a pistol in his hand.
“There’s a man in a car parked out front, Sinestra,” Snow said. “Go out to him. He’ll take you home.”
Without a word the young white woman went for the door.
Etta looked into my eyes. Her stare was hard and certain.
“Sin,” Willis said.
She hesitated and then went out the door without looking back.
“Well, well, well,” Abel Snow said. “Here we are. Just us four.”
Willis was sitting on the couch. Etta and I were standing on either side of the boy. He turned on the blue sofa to see Snow.
“You gonna kill us?” I asked, my voice soaked with manufactured fear.
“You’re gonna go away,” he said, and smiled.
I took a step to the side, away from Etta.
“You gonna let us go?” Willis asked, playing his part well though I’m sure he didn’t know it.
Snow was amused. He was listening for something.
Etta put her hands down at her side. She raised her face to look at the ceiling and prayed, “Lord, forgive us for what we do.”
At a picnic table Snow’s grin would have been friendly.
I took another step and bumped into the wall.
“Nowhere to run,” Snow apologized. “Take it like a man and it won’t hurt.”
“Please God,” Etta said beseechingly. She bent over slightly.
A car horn honked. That was what Snow was waiting for. He raised his pistol. I closed my eyes, the left one a little harder than the right.
Then I forced my eyes open. Abel Snow brought his left heel off the floor, preparing to pivot after killing me. EttaMae pulled a pistol out of the fold of her dress, aimed it at his head, and sucked in a breath. It was that breath that made Snow turn his head instead of pulling the trigger. Etta’s bullet caught him in the temple. He crumpled to the floor, a sack of stones that had recently been a man.
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