Blood Grove

Home > Other > Blood Grove > Page 19
Blood Grove Page 19

by Walter Mosley


  The police arrested him at his home, when his wife was out waitressing at some diner. His bad record combined with no alibi convicted him. He pled guilty for a nine-year sentence bargained down from a probable thirty. I was hired by a Beverly Hills banker named Holloway who had lost a very valuable piece of art in the B and E part of Bo’s conviction. Holloway’s seventeen-year-old night maid, Sorrell Hart, had a shattered cheekbone and soiled virtue, but all Holloway was interested in was his possession: a small iron sculpture of an angry crow attributed to Picasso.

  Holloway had called Saul Lynx to investigate the loss but Saul was on another case and so told him that his partner Easy Rawlins was a better fit.

  Sorrell was living in Gardena with her spinster aunt trying to forget about that night. She wasn’t happy to see me but I had convinced Mr. Holloway to write her a severance check for twenty-five hundred dollars, and she needed, as well as deserved, the money.

  Among other things I found out her attacker, unlike Bo, had a military tattoo and a small mustache. One might wonder why the police hadn’t gathered this data when they first questioned the most innocent victim of the crime. The answer was simple—Sorrell was in the hospital when the investigation started and the detectives in charge had already found out that Bo had a bad temper, one or two violent charges against him, and one conviction for burglary. The police questioned Miss Hart only once, and that was while she was still in the hospital.

  I identified the perpetrator, Martin Verdun, using my detective skills and police connections. Verdun was detained in San Diego. The man who bought the sculpture, Titus Crenshaw, was also a banker. After being granted absolution for accepting stolen property, Titus agreed to return Holloway’s crow, which looked more frightened than angry to me. I went to Commander Suggs and reported the details of the crime just in case somebody wanted to do something about Tierce. Suggs actually shrugged when he told me that Bo would be moldering in a cell built for one and occupied by three for the foreseeable future.

  “Can’t you just tell them that he’s innocent and to let him go?” I asked, feeling very country and simpleminded too.

  “I will,” Melvin told me. “And maybe they’ll get around to it in a year or so. It costs you either money or time to commute a sentence that’s based on a confession.”

  That assessment didn’t sit well with me. I imagined my adopted son, Jesus, being put in jail for something he didn’t do and then left to rot because nobody cared.

  So I went to see Bo in prison. Melvin at least greased those wheels for me. I told the convict that another man had been arrested for the crimes he was blamed for but that the wheels of justice moved slowly for the poor. I suggested maybe that he could get a second mortgage on his house to afford a decent lawyer. He told me that his wife had divorced him three weeks after his sentence and hooked up with one of his friends.

  Luckily for Bo he had a mother who owned her house outright. She sold her one piece of property and turned the money over to a lawyer named Ganns. Ganns did what looked like an afternoon of work and Bo was granted his freedom.

  Bo had been raised hating black people; so had his father and grandfather and the rest of his sod-busting, sharecropping, shit-kicking relatives from eastern Mississippi. The word nigger to him was an endearment. But about ninety-seven seconds after we met, all that racist history fell away. I was from Louisiana, which bordered on Mississippi, and from that day on he called me Cousin Easy.

  I met him at the front gate of Folsom on the day he was released. He was definitely planning to kill his ex-wife and his friend. I offered instead to drive him down to LA. One of Jewelle’s employees in the maid service helped to get him a job at the Marmont.

  So when I got to the front door and was approached by two young white men, at the height of their strength and misplaced arrogance, I was not perturbed.

  “Can I help you?” a tallish, short-haired lad asked.

  “Bo Tierce,” I said.

  “What about him?”

  “He asked me to drop by.”

  “For what?”

  “I don’t know. Why don’t you ask him?”

  “I need a reason to call,” he said.

  His partner, just as white and tall but a little more thoughtful, came up close to us.

  “Listen, man,” I said. “Call Bo on the phone and say that Mr. Rawlins is here like he asked.”

  “I don’t have to do anything you say,” he replied petulantly.

  He was acting as if I was oppressing him by asking him to do his job. On top of that he was asserting his God-given entitlement as a white man to banish my rights. These responses called up a feeling in me that I can only describe as revolutionary. I don’t know what might have happened if the other doorman hadn’t put a hand on his friend’s shoulder and whispered something. The angry doorman moved aside, allowing his partner to step up.

  “What’s your name again, sir?” the new inquisitor asked.

  “Ezekiel Porterhouse Rawlins.”

  I sat at the far end of the bar that was removed by the waiters’ space from the nearest next barstool. Bo had served me a club soda and a small bowl of soy-glazed rice crackers. I watched him talking to and serving the six other customers he had. In between conversations he prepared drinks for the waitstaff to serve.

  Tierce was an inch or so under six feet and reminiscent of a bleached lion. With dirty blond hair that washed against his forehead and ears, he looked dangerous and a little wild. He was perfect for that hotel and time. Anything a guest might want, from a marijuana cigarette to company for the night, he would do his best to procure. After all, he had sworn to buy his mother a new house.

  After a round of drinks and good cheer Bo made his way to me.

  “You got Mr. Charlie downstairs real hot, Cousin Easy.”

  “You mean the doorman?”

  “Oh yeah. He said that you were rude and threatening.”

  “Threatening? There were two of them.”

  “That’s what I told him,” Bo said, exhibiting a hungry grin. “I said if they couldn’t take care’a one man that maybe they’d like to transfer to maid services.”

  “How’s it going, Bo?”

  “This here’s the best job I ever had, Cousin. Last week a young woman brought me up to her room just so she could sit on my lap.”

  I smiled and nodded.

  “What can I do for you, Cuz?”

  “Donata Delphine.”

  Bo’s murky brown eyes had the look of the swamps where men like him and me came from.

  “You in need of a little company?” he asked.

  “I don’t think I could afford the likes of Donata.”

  “Then what?”

  “I’m on a job.”

  The bartender rubbed his nose, then glanced over at some guy in an overly green suit who was trying to get his attention.

  “She’s a good kid,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to cause her no trouble.”

  There were many things I could have said. But instead I just stared. Bo had the innocence of wild country in his heart. Once he owed you a debt, he would not, could not ever forget it.

  “She worked the bar with three or four other girls for a few months,” he said. “But ain’t none of them been around lately.”

  “You know how to get in touch with any’a them?”

  “Not really.”

  I downed my seltzer and stood up.

  I was about to leave, but then I had an idea.

  “You ever meet another bar girl name of Mona Strael?”

  The ex-con bartender looked at me and smiled.

  35

  The bar had only seven stools but a doorway in the opposite wall led to a little cul-de-sac of a room done all in shades of red. There were seven tables and a velvet padded banquette that ran along the curved sides. Maybe twenty people, not including waitstaff, were in residence drinking and talking. Almost all of them were white. Those who looked up seemed a little surprised that their favorite redneck bartender
was ushering a black man in. That wasn’t the norm but, then again, maybe I was an actor or some kind of soul singer. I could have played baseball for an out-of-town team.

  Bo led me to a small round table at the farthest reach of the red velvet banquette. There sat the only other Negro in the room. She was young, not quite as dark-skinned as I, with a great mane of frizzy hair that had been partially tamed by being tied at the back.

  When we approached she moved her shoulders by way of greeting.

  “Hey, Bo,” she said, but she was looking at me.

  “Mona Strael, meet Cousin Easy.”

  The young woman’s smile broadened and her eyes expressed knowledge, if not understanding.

  “The man that dragged you out of prison and brought you here to us?” she said.

  “He wants to ask you some questions,” Bo said. “I’d appreciate it if you gave him a few minutes.”

  Ms. Strael was a master of body language. She sat back and glanced at the empty chair across from her. Bo slapped my shoulder and I sat down.

  “See you later, Bo,” she said over my shoulder.

  I was looking at this woman, trying to place her alongside other women I’d known and never really understood, women I’d loved and lost and cared for but mostly in the wrong ways. Her one-piece dress was short hemmed and middle blue. Her lashes were naturally long, fingernails lacquered but not colored, and the watch she wore had a cartoon duck on it.

  I must have made a face of some sort because she asked, “What?”

  “Cartoon watches the new style?”

  “My little goddaughter Azalea gave me this. She said that Danny Duck would protect me.”

  “Azalea thinks you need protection?”

  “Her mother does.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Azalea or Athena?”

  I was having a fine time. That’s never a good thing on the job.

  “I’m surprised that Bo told you anything about me,” I said, trying to get back on track.

  “Azalea’s seven,” Mona replied. “Her mother’s twenty-three.”

  I was feeling a bit light-headed. Dean Martin, I realized, was singing on the sound system and the different hues of red that decorated the room seemed to swirl, like confetti caught up in a dust devil. There was something synthetic about me and Mona sitting there in a room of scarlet fabrics and white faces.

  “A white man came in one night with his date,” Mona said. It felt like she was throwing a rope down into that hole I was in. “The room was fully occupied. So he came up to me and asked if I was sitting here. I didn’t answer because he had eyes.

  “He asked me again and I didn’t answer. So then he put a hand on my shoulder. I’m a woman alone and so you know I can protect myself if I have to. But this is a nice place and I didn’t want to strain my welcome with some random white man’s blood.” She stopped there and smiled.

  “So what happened?”

  “His date was his undoing,” Mona Strael said. “She had gone to the bartender to see if there was someplace else they could sit. The white man had just whispered to me, ‘Answer me, bitch,’ and Bo put a hand on his shoulder and leaned in just as close. I don’t know what he said but the white man and his date left.

  “Later on that night Mr. Felton, the bar and restaurant manager, came up to me and apologized. A few days after that Bo told me that he used to look down on black people but then one saved him when he didn’t have to, when everybody but his mother had abandoned him.”

  My dizziness was gone. Mona shifted on the banquette and looked into my eyes.

  “It costs a hundred dollars to sit here with me,” she said. “Five hundred if you need me to get up.”

  “Did Kirkland Larker have that kind of cash?”

  The sinewy suppleness went still in an instant. She sat up a little straighter and her eyes tightened a millimeter or two. The smile faded, but not for long.

  “He’d raise it now and then,” she said, impressing me with her resilience.

  “You seen him lately?”

  Her deepening smile was the rebuttal of the transparent duplicity of my question.

  “No,” she said at last.

  “What about Donata Delphine?”

  “Who?”

  “Roxanna Coors.”

  There was a certain amount of satisfaction I felt cutting through the smug confidence that was Mona Strael. Her smile disappeared behind a look that was both speculative and deadly, causing my mood to shift from momentary pleasure to familiar caution. I felt like a child staring through bamboo bars at a Siberian tiger. I was safe, scared, and sacred inasmuch as I was destined to be sacrificed.

  Strael smiled again, relaxed again.

  “Would you like to come with me, Cousin Easy?”

  “Where to?”

  “The management has a small building behind this property. We can use it from time to time if we don’t abuse the courtesy.”

  “I don’t have the five hundred.”

  “You can owe it to me.”

  “All I need is a couple’a answers,” I said.

  “This is a public place and it sounds like you have private concerns.”

  Concerns.

  “Nothing private,” I assured her. “I just need to get to Roxanna.”

  “And why would you think I’d deign to help you?”

  First undoing, then concerns, and now deign—I had to switch up.

  “What school you go to, Mona?”

  For the first time the bar girl showed actual surprise.

  “You’re good, Cousin Easy. I’m right down the street at UCLA. Prelaw. Now you tell me what this is about.”

  “There’s a lot I could say. Robbery, attempted murder, actual murder, kidnapping, and big-time embezzlement. But the only thing you need to hear is that a man named Eddie Brock, also known as Brock Oldstein, has been breathing down my neck to find Donata. I want to get together with her and tell her what I know.”

  “Brock.” The name lodged in her throat like a chicken bone. “And you want to warn Roxie?”

  “I want to talk to her.”

  “And then tell Brock where she’s at?”

  “Not necessarily. But even if I did, that’s better than me tellin’ him that you might know where to find her.”

  I wouldn’t have told Brock her name, but she didn’t need to know that.

  36

  She was staying on Ogden Drive between San Vicente and Olympic Boulevards. A huge oak tree dominated the front of the property. The house itself was small and disheveled like an old dollhouse lost and then forgotten in a dark wood.

  When I knocked on Donata/Roxanna’s door I wondered what to do if she didn’t answer. I could go around back and climb in a window or call Anatole McCourt or have someone else call the cops. If Donata was dead Brock might decide to leave me alone. But I knew that nothing short of homicide would ensure safety from the gangster.

  I’d killed men before . . .

  The door opened while I was having that internal dialogue. She didn’t ask, “Who is it?” Nor did she attach the chain as proof against some big black man she didn’t know. No. The lovely young woman threw the door open wide and said, “Yes?”

  No more than five two, she wore a blue-and-gold satin and silk kimono. Her lustrous hair was light red like some Germans’ and she had blue eyes that were both startled and startling. When she got a good look at me, the slightest of smiles brushed her generous, pinkish lips.

  “Oh,” she said upon taking me in. “Hi.”

  “Miss Coors?”

  A slight tightening of her eyes and tilt of her head seemed to decipher the meaning of me using her real name.

  “How is everybody down at the Dragon’s Eye?” she asked.

  “Montana misses you.”

  “She doesn’t have this address.”

  “The mailbox says Andrews,” I said in partial agreement.

  “My name is nowhere on anything having to do with this house.”


  “I’m a very resourceful man when I have to be.”

  “Good to know, Mister . . . ?”

  “Rawlins.”

  “Would you like to come in, Mr. Rawlins?”

  Ah. The courage of women.

  On the inside the place was very neat and modern. There was a window in the ceiling of the sitting room. This transformed what might have been a dark cove into a bright destination. The chairs and sofa were constructed of whitewashed bamboo frames fitted with thick cushions festooned in floral design. The floor was white pine and the paintings on the walls were real oils depicting nostalgic scenes of the English countryside.

  “Have a seat, Mr. Rawlins.”

  “Easy is what everyone calls me.”

  “Easy,” she said with a smile.

  I took a chair and she chose the sofa.

  “Do you need something to drink?” she asked, pulling her feet up under her butt.

  “Do you?” I replied.

  “That depends on what you have to say.”

  She had a big smile. It would be hard to imagine anything evil coming from her. Luckily for me I had a great imagination.

  “So,” she said to fill in my silence, “how did you find me? And why?”

  “A young vet named Kilian hired me to locate a man, maybe named Alonzo, who he might have killed, and a woman the man had attacked. As far as I can tell—you are that woman but possibly the situation he related was made up.”

  “Craig doesn’t know this address,” she said.

  I was glad that she didn’t try to tell me she knew nothing about Craig or Alonzo or . . .

  “Reynolds Ketch,” I said.

  Donata Delphine’s features darkened.

  I continued, “Ketch figured that you and Alonzo thought he died from the knife wound. So he gave me enough that I found Mona Strael.”

  “What do you want from me, Easy?”

  “Eddie Brock Oldstein believes that you have somewhere north of three hundred thousand dollars belonging to him. After Craig hired me to find you, Brock tried to outbid him.”

  “And did he?” The blue of Donata’s eyes contained the cold heart of glaciers.

 

‹ Prev