He raised his head and nodded at Sanchez to continue.
“This is Mr. Rawlins,” the sergeant said. “He works out at the school where the victim’s wife teaches.”
“Terrible, isn’t it, Mr. Rawlins?” Fogherty said to me.
“Sure is,” I said with as much feeling as I could muster.
“We see it every day, you know,” he added, nodding wise. “Household spat that gets out of hand is most of it. Good friends that drink too much, maybe with the other friend’s wife, and then, bang—somebody’s dead.” When he smiled I realized that my trip through the bowels of the jailhouse had been calculated to break me down.
“You wanted something from me, captain?”
“Did you know Holland Gasteau?”
“No, sir. Idabell and I are just work friends.”
“Do you know where she could be?”
“No, sir. I don’t.” I was as sincere as a man can get. But that didn’t mean a thing to them.
An honest cop, when asked by a judge, “Did the sun set in the west that day, officer?” will answer, “I believe so, your honor,” and leave the truth for the court to decide.
Fogherty smiled.
A uniformed police officer stuck his head into the room.
“Four-A is ready, sir,” the officer said.
“You get all five?” Fogherty asked.
“No, sir. All we could manage was the four.”
“Damn,” Fogherty hissed.
It was the same word that was at the back of my mouth.
“You know, you could do me a favor, Rawlins.” If you were to believe the wonder on the captain’s face it was the first time he thought of what he was about to ask me.
“What?”
“We’re having a lineup. It’s nothing. But the guy is colored, see, and we’d like to have a good mix up there—you know, to make it fair.”
“What’s it for?” I asked.
“Murder,” said Fogherty.
Sanchez was looking at my eyes.
THEY HAD PUT UP a plasterboard wall to divide a small basement room. I was ushered into one side by Fogherty and Sanchez. There were three uniformed white cops and six black men, all of them dressed casually, except for the manacles that two of them wore.
Fogherty had the prisoners released from their chains. The real wall had evenly spaced vertical black lines drawn along it forming man-sized rectangles that had numbers across the top: 1—2—3—4—5—6. We were all told to stand up against the wall and under a number.
“What the fuck you got me here for?” one of the prisoners complained. “I told ya I been sick. I ain’t done a damn thing.”
“You want to go back down the hall?” a policeman asked in way of reply.
I noticed then that both of the men who had been manacled were bruised around their faces.
From the central vantage point of number three I looked up and down the row. No two of us bore the slightest resemblance. The shortest was five foot six while the tallest was a full three inches taller than I am, a shade over six feet. There was yellow, gray, brown, and black skin. Our faces spoke of the variety of peoples of Africa and of the white masters who raped those ancestors. The tallest man weighed maybe one eighty—so did the shortest.
It was a setup, but I still had some points on my side. We were still a row of Negroes—and white folks, on the whole, could barely tell us apart.
That old white lady hadn’t gotten a clear look at me leaving Idabell’s. I’d hidden my face upon leaving the house, distracted her with my keys, changed my height.
I was innocent.
“Face forward, number three.”
A panel of six large floodlights flared from the ceiling; they were hot on my skin.
“What’re you lookin’ up for, boy?” The cop was young; his accent at home in the northeast somewhere. The derogatory words sounded odd on his tongue but the meaning was clear.
I was back, suddenly, in the Deep South. All feeling drained out of my body and my face went lax. My eyes felt nothing, my mouth had no words or expression. I was empty of all past doings. I had no future. I stood up straight and presented my face toward the wall, but still, it wasn’t me standing there. Easy had gone undercover and there was no bringing him out.
There were peepholes drilled into the wall opposite us. I noticed them without seeming to see. My mind was back on a hot swampland road, back in the days when I could have disappeared, in half a moment’s notice, from any job or town or girlfriend. Back to a time when the rear door was the only door—and it was never locked.
A number was asked to step forward and then another. When my turn came I stood out under the hot lights and stared right into them.
In the beginning … The words came into my mind and I was my own master.
The floodlights cut off, leaving just the overheads. Suddenly it was darker and cool.
“You can go out now,” the eastern bigot said.
I followed the line into the adjoining room. The prisoners were clapped back into chains and led off to their cages. The other men just left.
I made to leave too.
“Rawlins.” It was Fogherty.
He and Sanchez approached me with serious faces.
I realized, with a scared shock, that I had forgotten my lawyer’s phone number.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Fogherty asked. He was no longer friendly or sad.
“Home.”
“Our witness thought that he recognized you, Rawlins.”
I knew when he said it that the lineup had failed; that Fogherty and Sanchez were trying to scare me, or to see how hard it was to shake my tree.
I knew that I shouldn’t show too much fear or they’d think I was guilty. The best thing for an Honest John to do would be to stutter out a “Wha?” That way I could seem the innocent kind of scared.
“The hell you say,” I said instead. “I didn’t do anything for anybody to see.”
“Maybe they saw you afterwards,” Fogherty speculated.
“Bullshit,” I said. “I wasn’t anywhere but work or home. If somebody saw me in one’a those places I’d be glad to confess to workin’ or feedin’ my kids.”
“I don’t have to let you out of here, Rawlins,” Fogherty said. “You could be down in that cellblock that you came through.”
I was still defiant but his threat had numbed my tongue.
Fogherty’s smile was demented. “Yeah. Sanchez told me that you saw Felix Wren down in his cell.” Fogherty watched me and nodded, sagelike. “He’s only in on a drunk driving charge but he resisted the arresting officers—bit one of them. Don’t worry about him though, he’ll be okay. We won’t even charge him. Once he gets his last tooth knocked out we’ll send him back home to his mother.”
That was the first moment I felt murder in my fingers. It’s not that I wanted to kill Fogherty particularly. I could have killed anybody.
I turned and went toward a door with a red-and-white EXIT sign above it.
“We know you’re in it, Rawlins,” Fogherty said to my back.
I kept going, following the EXIT signs.
Nobody stopped me or even noticed as I made my way through the station. Somewhere on the lineup I had become invisible again. I’d taken on the shadows that kept me camouflaged, and dangerous.
CHAPTER 21
SANCHEZ AND FOGHERTY showed me bloody Felix, they told me that I could end up like him, but they stopped short of arresting me and throwing me into the cell with Jones.
They wanted something from me, but what was it? There was only small coverage of the murder of the two brothers in the paper; nothing about the circumstances of their deaths. That lack of coverage in itself might have been surprising if it wasn’t for the fact that Roman and Holland were black men and it was early in the sixties.
You had to kill somebody white to get any kind of news splash in the sixties.
Foreign blacks made the news, however. That very day the Congolese had jailed two Russians
for espionage, and five hundred Haitians had been reported dead from flooding. To the white press, and many white Americans, black people were easier to see as exotic foreigners, somebody else’s people. But the lives of black Americans were treated with silence.
I didn’t know when they’d identify Idabell. Los Angeles is a vast complex of unassociated towns and municipalities. The bureaucracies didn’t communicate well and so Idabell’s identity might take a day or two to surface.
The storm dominated the headlines. The Congolese and a political science teacher who claimed that the Russians had framed him for a spy were below that. Idabell’s death was ignored by the radio and TV and newspapers.
Ignored by everyone except me—me and the little yellow dog.
But for a while I put revenge out of my mind. I rolled up my sleeves and started to get ready for dinner with my kids.
I decided to go Mexican because the kids loved it and it was a lot of preparing. I defrosted a large stack of corn tortillas that Flower kept me stocked with. Flower was a Panamanian but she learned Mexican cuisine because that was all that Primo would eat—at home.
I deseeded dried ancho chiles and then pan-roasted them for about fifteen minutes, to get that smoky flavor. After that I softened them with hot water and ran them and the water through the purée cycle of the blender. I filtered out the flecks of skin by passing the liquid through a metal strainer and made a roux, with wheat flour and margarine, to thicken the sauce so that it would stick to the flat tortillas.
I grated my yellow cheddar and Monterey Jack. There was the ground beef and chicken to sauté, separately of course.
When the meat started steaming, Pharaoh slinked into the room. He crouched down and growled while he sniffed. He wanted some food but I’d be damned if I ever fed a mouth that bit me. The food I cook is too good for that.
I love to cook. When I was a boy down in Louisiana, and later on in Texas, I spent many a day with no food and no prospects. So when a piece of meat or some grain passed my way I knew what to do. Preparing a meal for me was like going to church; there was a miracle and a deep satisfaction in my soul.
It wasn’t until I was heating lard in a large iron skillet that I started thinking about my problems again. It hardly seemed real; two dead brothers and a woman too. I couldn’t imagine my simple little working life at Sojourner Truth mixed up with murder and death.
It had to be money. I lit a Camel and watched the steady gas flame under the black pan. It had to be money. That phrase played over about twenty-five times in my mind but it didn’t lead anywhere.
I dipped a stiff tortilla into the hot lard. Instantly it took on the texture of a wet sheet of paper. I immersed the flimsy bread into the sauce and then flattened it out on a plate. I put a line of chicken down the center of that one, rolled it all up, and placed it in its corner of a large ceramic baking dish.
Whoever killed Idabell wanted that croquet set; that child’s toy and revenge.
She and her husband, and his brother, stole it from him. He wanted his property—and the people who stole it. Bonnie had said that she hadn’t seen Idabell in months, but that was a lie. Idabell said that they had gone to Paris together and, to prove it, the killer was waiting for Bonnie to come home. Maybe Bonnie knew more than Idabell thought.
Dear Bonnie,
I just wanted to leave you a note and tell you again that I couldn’t help what I did. If there was any other way I would have come to you first. But I couldn’t have taken that chance.
I know that I can’t make it up to you. All I can say is that I have paid dearly for the wrong they’ve done. I’ve lost my husband, my home, and my job. I’ll probably never see you again and so I’ve also lost the best friend that I ever had.
I hope that you’ll forgive me one day.
Your friend always,
Idabell
Along with the letter I had three scraps of paper from her purse. A laundry receipt, something that looked like a restaurant tab with the amounts in francs, and, finally, there was a handwritten note. The note read “William, Whitehead’s.” There was an address scrawled at the bottom.
I PUT THE TRAY OF ENCHILADAS in the refrigerator to keep until dinnertime. Then I chopped tomatoes, Bermuda onions, and a little green pepper together with ripe avocado to make a light relish-like salad. I laced it with lime and a touch of cayenne (I couldn’t make it too hot because then Feather wouldn’t be able to eat it).
The rice I baked in a tomato sauce mixed with minced garlic and two hot peppers. I sprinkled in a handful of tiny dried shrimps to give my kids a treat.
THE HOUSE WAS SMELLING pretty good when Jesus and Feather came bursting in the door. Pharaoh went mad whimpering, wagging, and licking all over Feather.
“You better feed that dog,” I told her.
“Can we keep him?”
“No. His mother be back the middle’a next week. She said that she’ll come and get him.” I still planned to take Pharaoh out to Primo.
“Come on,” Feather whispered to the dog.
“What you gonna give him?” I called out into the kitchen. “I don’t want him eating anything that I cooked.”
“I bought him some dog food with the grocery money, Dad,” Jesus said.
“You did, huh?”
Juice nodded and looked at my feet.
“Did you put any’a that money upstairs in your soldier box?”
He shook his head.
“Why the hell you take my money? Why the hell you take it?” It came out of me suddenly. I didn’t want to confront him until I was out of the woods with Sanchez. I didn’t want to get mad for the wrong reasons. But the words leapt out of my mouth like vomit from an unexpected stomach virus that just had to have its way.
“I was savin’ it, Daddy.”
“Savin’? What the hell for? Don’t I give you everything you need?”
Jesus raised his head. “In case we didn’t have no money and you were broke.”
The damage in Juice’s face stood out like an extra nose. The half-remembered nightmares of his infancy as a slave; the insecurity of living with me. All the times I’d come home bruised or bleeding came back to me; them and my deep blue moods he could never understand.
Jesus loved me but he didn’t trust that I could handle the hard world. He was my backup and I didn’t even know it.
He was more of a man than I was.
“Go on,” I said. “Do your homework.”
CHAPTER 22
THE KIDS LOVED IT when I cooked Mexican food. We ate and joked and told stories. Pharaoh even yipped happily from under Feather’s chair.
After dinner I put on a dark blue shirt and a loose brown leisure suit.
“Juice.”
“Yes, Dad?”
“I got to go out for a while. You take care around here until I get back, okay?”
He grinned and nodded, understanding that I trusted him again.
We understood each other. The money in the box upstairs was his domain.
“I might be late but you and Feather get to bed on time.”
Jesus nodded.
Feather said, “Okay.”
I had three stops planned for that night: Whitehead’s, Jackson Blue’s, and the Black Chantilly. The last one promised to be the most fruitful.
Whitehead’s was a black tile building that sat on a high foundation. There were fourteen steps between the slender double doors and the street, but I could still hear the music and noise from outside.
Inside there was a lot of drinking and eating and loud talk from every table. It was like a big party. People were calling across the room between the tables. One waitress got so engrossed with what a portly man was saying to his friends that she sat down and put her elbows on the table.
“Reba,” a man from another table said to the waitress.
“What you wan’?” she answered, clearly bothered about being distracted.
“Where our meat loaf?”
The man’s date, who had bro
wn skin and chalky chiffon-pink lips, looked as if she were going to abandon her man if he didn’t produce some food soon.
“You know where the kitchen is, Hestor. Go an’ get it yourself,” Reba said to her complaining customer.
Pink lips parted indignantly but the young man scooted up behind the counter and grabbed two large platters loaded down with meat loaf, mashed potatoes, and turnip greens.
“Mister?” a woman’s voice asked.
“Yeah?”
The woman standing behind me resembled a bowling ball. She was round and hard and black—not blue-black or brown-black, but black-black. There was no sheen to her eyes and her head was pulled back, making it seem as if she didn’t have a neck.
Her looks would have spelled danger except for her tinkly high voice and sweet smile.
“We ain’t got no free tables, mister,” she sang. “But you could sit at the counter.”
“This a nice place,” I said easily. “You work here?”
Her smile grew large.
“I’m the owner,” she said.
“Really? What’s your name?”
“Arletta.”
“Hi, Arletta,” I said. “Idabell Turner told me that this was a nice place. She asked me to come on down here and shout at William.”
Distaste flicked across Arletta’s lips but the smile returned quickly. “She’s a nice girl but she got to realize that William is workin’ an’ what she want ain’t always the most important thing in the world.”
“Listen, Arletta,” I said, putting my hand on her bare upper arm. “You don’t have to tell me. But you know I need to talk to the man for a minute.”
Arletta was the kind of woman that you wanted to touch. She was older than I, maybe fifty. I wasn’t trying to get over with her by caressing her skin. I wasn’t trying to but I did just the same.
“Well,” she said. “He’s out here in the kitchen.”
Arletta walked through a swinging door into the kitchen. I followed. There we found a large bald man who held a meat cleaver in his left hand. A once-white apron barely covered his large middle. The apron was stained with thick patches of pocked cow’s blood. Behind him hung what was left of a whole side of beef.
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