Blood Grove

by Walter Mosley

  “Yeah,” Christmas allowed. “And he knows more about the history of warfare than my grandfather Moses Black did.”

  “Did you go to Jean-Pierre with Jackson’s record?”

  “It’s my duty to report to the boss.”

  “What did the big man say?”

  “He said that all a soldier was responsible for was to do his job. I could never be friends with Blue but I can’t fault him either. Given his limitations he has been an extraordinary asset.”

  A few minutes after he said these words I pulled up to the curb in front of Craig’s blowsy apartment building.

  There were no tenants on the broad porch. The front door wasn’t locked. Along the hallways and staircases children and mothers laughed, shouted, and yawped. I smelled hamburgers frying and spaghetti sauces simmering along with sweet concoctions and bread baking. There were all types of music from Dean Martin to Bob Dylan playing on phonographs. Many doors were open but Christmas and I had little interest in the lives therein.

  We reached Craig’s door in the big vacant space and stopped. Colonel Black made a hand gesture telling me that it was my choice. So I knocked and waited, then knocked again.

  “Should we look for the super?” my by-the-book friend asked.

  I tried the doorknob. It didn’t surprise me that it wasn’t locked.

  The black dog, Sammy, leaped at me, battering my knees with his paws and licking at my hands. Sixteen paces in we found Craig. He’d been shot at least five times. Once in the right eye and the rest in his chest. He hadn’t bled as much as Alonzo because death came quickly. He was lying on his side on a short sofa. I thought that he’d probably been moved because his back pocket was turned out, likely to get at his wallet.

  Sammy started whimpering. I suppose the fact that his master didn’t engage us proved to the creature that he was abandoned once again.

  I lifted Sammy in my arms while Christmas swiveled his head, studying the room, exercising his expert scouting skills.

  “What you need, Easy?”

  “Not this,” I said.

  23

  I don’t remember what, if anything else, Christmas and I said. Craig Kilian was dead; had been that way for a while. There was a white phone on a tall side table against the far wall. I dialed Anatole McCourt’s number and he answered. Within fifteen minutes the same number of men were swarming throughout the four-room apartment.

  There was a Detective Nelson who wore a cinnamon-and-black checkered jacket, pale green trousers, and rose-colored sunglasses. He had a partner who I think was a sergeant but I don’t recall the name. He wore a sports jacket that was light blue. Ten of the rest were in uniform and there were a couple of paramedics too, all of them male and some shade of so-called white.

  Before Anatole arrived the gendarmes’ attitudes were unpleasant.

  “What were you doing in this neighborhood?” Nelson asked me.

  “Waiting for you.”

  “Don’t get smart with me.”

  “Detective, we’re the ones that called Lieutenant McCourt.”

  “And how would you know to call him?”

  “I’m a PI. I work for the LAPD now and again.”

  Sergeant Whatshisname was interrogating Christmas. I didn’t hear what he asked, but my friend never uttered more than a short burst of three or four words to answer.

  After another quarter hour Craig was moved from the sofa to a gurney. They laid him out all stiff and dead. One of the paramedics whispered something in Nelson’s ear, causing the lead officer to look closely at the corpse and then at me.

  Sammy the dog had curled up behind my ankles. He didn’t like all the commotion.

  “You say you were here to make some kind of report?” Nelson asked me.

  “Mr. Kilian hired me to find a woman that he only knew as Dee Dee,” I lied, for the third time. “I came here to tell him that he was wasting his money.”

  “Have you ever been here before?” There was a gleam of anticipation in the detective’s eye.

  “A couple of days ago.”

  Gleam came to grin.

  Nelson turned to a uniform and said, “Put some cuffs on this man.”

  Dutifully the twenty-something officer pulled the cuffs from a holster on his belt. The young cop was my height and build.

  He looked me in the eye and said, “Turn around.”

  “Who’s in charge here?” a beautiful baritone brogue inquired.

  Anatole McCourt was at least a head taller than any other man in ninety-nine percent of the rooms he entered. His skin was almost true white and his red hair was brighter and healthier than a human’s hair should be. His suit was the color green that an artist would assign to a primordial forest. The emerald of his eyes belonged to the deity whose duty it was to oversee that domain.

  “Lieutenant,” Detective Nelson said as the uniform grabbed my right biceps and tried to twirl me around.

  “What are you doing?” Anatole asked my would-be jailer.

  The unnamed officer released me.

  “I’m arresting him,” Nelson replied.

  “Arresting him? This is the man who called in the death.”

  “But he was here two days ago. The medic says that’s probably how long the victim’s been dead.”

  “And that makes enough sense for you to arrest the man?” Anatole asked. “Did the attendant give you an exact time of death?”

  Nelson had no reply. Most likely he had never been questioned about the arrest of a black man. He could have murdered him was excuse enough to put me in jail for months, if not ever.

  “What were you doing here?” Anatole asked me point-blank.

  “Mr. Kilian had hired me to find a woman named Dee Dee. He had a description and a place, the Dragon’s Eye. I looked but didn’t find anything. After that I followed up on some leads of my own but they didn’t work out. I came here to tell him that.”

  “The Eye is where you heard about Alonzo Griggs.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is there a connection?”

  “Not that I’m aware of, Lieutenant.”

  Anatole stared sabers at me. He would have never treated me the way Detective Nelson would—but that didn’t mean he didn’t want to.

  Then the cop turned his attention to Christmas Black.

  “What are you doing here, Mr. Black?” the Irishman asked.

  “Mr. Rawlins asked me to come along. He told me that this boy was ex-military. Thought I might be of some help.”

  “Help what?”

  “The private had trauma from the war. Sometimes a superior officer is useful in grounding an unstable soldier’s mind.”

  “Was Mr. Rawlins worried about the boy being injured?” Anatole asked, showing Christmas great deference. This didn’t surprise me; both officers judged men by rank and attitude.

  “No,” Christmas said. “He was not.”

  Detective Nelson was not happy with all the respect and calm language. His idea of an investigation had more to do with conquest than it did with intelligence.

  After this brief interrogation Anatole began looking over the crime scene. He paid special attention to the dollops of blood on the sofa and the floor.

  After that was over he told Nelson to carry on and indicated that he’d walk Christmas and me to the street.

  I picked up Sammy, who squirmed around so that he could lick my face.

  “What are you doing with the dog?” Detective Nelson challenged. I think his manhood needed it.

  “My dog,” I said.

  “You got papers?” the detective asked.

  “Drop it,” Anatole ordered.

  “Second murder in only a few days, Mr. Rawlins,” he said.

  “You know what they say about California, Lieutenant, nothing but bad luck and sunshine.”

  “I don’t expect to hear from you again anytime soon,” the Irish cop warned. Then he walked away.

  When he climbed into a dark sedan halfway down the street I asked Christmas, “
How you know him?”

  “Jean-Pierre has a relationship with the police. He put me in touch with Commander Melvin Suggs and Suggs introduced me to McCourt as a kind of go-to if we needed it.”

  Sammy and I went to Culver City directly after dropping Christmas at his office. Lola was smiling when she opened the door, but the moment she saw us the ex–exotic dancer lost her equilibrium, stumbled backward, and fell on her butt. That was my mistake. I brought Sammy with me because I didn’t want him befouling John’s Pontiac. But I forgot that Lola would have known about the dog. She talked to her son at least every two days.

  Putting Sammy down, I went to Lola and lifted her by the armpits. The bad news she’d been expecting for more than twenty years left her limp as a rag doll. I dragged her to a dinette chair while Sammy barked, happily leaping around our feet.

  Once seated, Craig’s mama stabilized—at least she didn’t slide back down to the floor. I went to the cupboard and pulled out a fifth of gin that I’d seen on my last visit. I poured a stiff shot in a grapefruit-colored plastic tumbler and brought it to the table.

  Not one word had been spoken.

  I sat down facing Lola. Sammy jumped in my lap, dancing for our attention.

  “How?” she asked.

  That one-word question could have been Lola Thigman’s entire character profile. She was a realist. Nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand mothers would have asked, begged for me to tell them if their son was still alive. But Lola knew.

  I had these thoughts while staying silent because I didn’t want to answer the question.

  “Tell me,” Lola demanded after her second swallow of cheap liquor.

  “Somebody shot him.”

  She scrutinized me and then said, “In his apartment?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he shoot back?”

  “It doesn’t look like it. Did he own a weapon?”

  “He brought back a rifle and a pistol from Vietnam. One time, when I had this boyfriend wouldn’t let go, he offered me the pistol—for self-defense.”

  “You still have it?”

  “Never took it,” she said, shaking her head. “There’s not a man alive could reduce me to that kind of fear.”

  “I’m so sorry, Lola.”

  For a dozen beats of a fast jazzman’s drum she was on the edge of tears. Then she took in a deep breath and asked, “Did somebody call the police? Is that how they found him?”

  “I found him. He’d been dead two or three days.”

  “And nobody heard it?”

  “If they did they didn’t call the cops. Maybe, maybe whoever did it used a silencer. You know the more I looked into the case the more it looked like there was mob activity around the edges.”

  There was something going on behind Lola’s dark eyes. Already I’d seen the despair and regret, but now there was a hint of guilt.

  “I don’t have any more money, Easy.”

  “I’m not asking you for it.”

  “Yes,” she said. “But I have something to ask you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “In all the work you’ve done, have you come up with anything that would identify my son’s killers?”

  Sammy had fallen asleep in my lap.

  On September 19, I’d be entering my fiftieth year. Age doesn’t teach much, but the years leave enough breaks and bruises to cause a man to take a moment before leaping. Lola appreciated this fact, silently. She waited for my answer because she’d made more leaps than any Olympic gymnast or common grasshopper.

  “Have you ever heard of a man named Eddie Brock?” I asked.

  “No. Why? Who is he?”

  I reached into a pocket for the photograph that Brock had given me, waited a moment, then pulled it out and laid it on the table.

  “That’s Donata, Donata Delphine,” Lola said. “What about her?”

  “Your son had me looking for the guy he might have killed. He said the name was Alonzo.”

  “Did you find him?”

  “I found a man named Alonzo.”

  “And was he dead?”

  I nodded.

  “So Craig did kill him. Maybe this was revenge.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Why?”

  “Craig said he stabbed somebody. The man I found was shot.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The dead man had a photograph of the woman you call Donata in his wallet. Another guy, Mr. Eddie Brock, gave me this picture today. He wanted to hire me to find her.”

  Lola blinked rapidly three times.

  “Craig liked her,” she began, “but only as a friend. She needed help.”

  “What kind of help?”

  “A boyfriend she had to get away from. Her and him liked rough sex but he had gotten too wild. She’d been to the emergency room twice.”

  “You think she’d ever been out to Blood Grove in Orange County?”

  “Craig took her out there a few times.”

  “He took her?”

  “Yeah. Of course. A long time ago, when Craig was a child, I had this boyfriend whose family once owned the orchard. He’d take us up there for picnics. I didn’t walk around much but Leonard showed Craig all over the place. That boy treated the whole property like it was his.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that before?”

  “I didn’t think it was important.”

  “That’s where Craig said he stabbed the man named Alonzo.”

  “He just told me that he’d gotten into a fight over a woman and that the man was stabbed. He didn’t mention Blood Grove or Donata. I would have said something if I knew.”

  “Do you know how I can get in touch with her?”

  “We weren’t friends or anything. Craig brought her by for dinner one day. I think he thought she’d like me because I did the circuit in my day like she is now.”

  Life is one long side street with about a million crossroads, Sorry used to tell me when I was a boy. Every hour, sometimes every minute, you got to make the choice’a which way to go. Some of them turns don’t matter but don’t let that fool ya. The minute you start to think that one way is just like t’other, that’s when the shit come down.

  The shit was definitely coming down. Somewhere I’d started to believe I could survive any path set before me. But right then Lola was that passway and she represented a journey filled with ruts and vipers and highwaymen too.

  “Is Lola your real name?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “It’s Clementine.”

  “Clemmie, do you want this dog?”

  “I can’t take care of a dog. I know Craig loved that little beast, so me taking him would not be good. He’d escape through a hole in the screen on Tuesday and I wouldn’t remember to realize he was gone until the weekend. Maybe you know somebody with a kid would like it?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Pack up some stuff like you were going away for a week.”

  “Why?”

  “Bad people are after your son, at least they were. They think he possessed something important to them. I have no idea what that something is, do you?”

  “I swear I don’t.”

  “I kept your identity from the police but enough people know who you are and where you live. So the best thing for you is to be somewhere else.”

  “You think that Donata was involved?”

  “I think you should pack a bag.”

  Lola stood up from the chair, causing a squeal on the linoleum. The sound woke Sammy. He jumped down—ready to go with his new family.

  Lola took a step and then stopped.

  “Why did you ask about my real name?”

  “Because if you lied about it I would have left you on your own to sink or swim.”

  She gave me a questioning glance and then walked off toward her bedroom; her crossroad chosen—and mine too.

  24

  There was a hotel called the Pink Palace on the Venice boardwalk back then. It was run by Esther Maron, a woman who
had once been married to a friend of mine who died. The Palace was a more or less safe haven for anyone wanting to drop out of sight.

  “Will this do?” I asked the mother whose grief had finally come to an end. We were standing in the parlor of a fairly large two-room suite. From the third-floor window you could see the rippling Pacific in fading summer light.

  “It’s beautiful here,” she said sadly.

  “You know the drill, right?”

  “Don’t talk to anyone I know. Definitely don’t tell anyone where I am. Just look at the water and wait for you to call or come.”

  “Me or Fearless Jones.”

  I put a hand on her shoulder. This caused her to turn away from the eternal sway of blue.

  “I could have saved Craig if he told me the truth,” I said.

  “I’m not lying to you, Easy. I’m not no fool.”

  “I want you to stay here until I say otherwise,” I told my dead client’s mother.

  “I might decide to go out to the desert,” she said. “Palm Springs. A place called the Summer Sands. If I’m gone from here that’s where I’ll be.”

  “Anybody else know to look for you there?”

  “Only Craig.”

  Feather was asleep on the downstairs divan near the koi pond. She was using an old army blanket that I’d brought home from the European campaign. I sidled up next to the settee wondering if I should let her sleep out the night where she was. But then Sammy jumped up on the blanket and began licking her face mercilessly.

  Feather woke up laughing, pulling the puppy from side to side by his jowls and ears. They were best friends for life just that fast.

  “What’s his name?” Feather asked.

  “Sammy.”

  Suddenly a high-pitched bark shouted out. Sammy stopped romping and jumped down to the floor, where Frenchie sat erect, staring at the interloper. The puppy crouched down in obeisance and another relationship was formed. The pup was already nearly twice the size of the little yellow dog, but Frenchie was the boss.