Blood Grove

by Walter Mosley

Corrine’s words were harsh, but it was obvious how hurt she was. I figured that’s why she was so willing to invite me in; she needed an adult to complain to.

  “Damn,” I said. Though the story was common enough it felt daunting to know how much trouble you could get into while trying to do what you felt was right.

  Corrine heard the meaning behind my one-word exhortation.

  “It’s all like TV at first,” she said to an unspecified audience. “There you are still in high school an’ just about everything he do drive you crazy. From the money in his pocket to him kissin’ you with his teeth, from all night long to knowin’ you ain’t never had real love in your life before. An’ if anybody come up on you he got his gun and his switchblade, his troops too. Make you feel like a goddamned queen.

  “Then you marry him an’ find out that he been doin’ that stuff with about a dozen other girls; that he got three kids and he’s still married to some woman down in Mississippi. One day you wake up and you want to change the channel.”

  “Why not leave him?” I asked, even though I knew the answer.

  “Why? We know all the same people. Where I’m’a go nobody know me and Dennis too?”

  “You afraid of him?”

  “Not like you might think. Whenever I see him I’m that fifteen-year-old girl. I remember them kisses like they was yesterday. I need to take my babies and go somewhere where he cain’t talk to me no more.”

  It was a little too much truth for the young mother. She put her chin down and turned her head away, trying to hold back despair.

  “What you say about Ketch?” she asked a far wall.

  “Somebody stabbed him in the chest and he died. And here this happens about the same time Alonzo got killed.”

  “Alonzo?” That turned her attention back to me. “He’s dead too?”

  “Shot in his own cot.”

  “An’ so why you here?”

  “I’m Lily Dasher’s cousin. She told me to come here to warn Dennis.”

  “An’ how do you know Dennis?”

  “Just from around. When I went to the hospital, Tremolo, that’s Ketch’s brother, Tremolo told me that Ketch told him that Alonzo was shot and killed. Lily said to tell Dennis because she knew the three of them ran together. She also told me that he had a wife and children and they should know if there was danger out here.”

  “An’ what the fuck I’m supposed to do about it?” she challenged.

  That was my entrée; time for me to shine—darkly.

  “I had heard around that Dennis and them had a big score not that long ago,” I said. “They say that the money got hid. That sounds like a payday for somebody willin’ to take some risks.”

  “And that somebody is you?”

  “I could tussle when I need to.”

  Corrine looked at me with new eyes; eyes she might have used on Dennis when she was in high school.

  “What you askin’ me, Mr. Fredericks?”

  “I wanted to talk to Dennis,” I said. “First to warn him if he didn’t already know about his friends, and then . . . well, maybe to see if he needed any help he was willin’ to pay for.”

  “I already told you he cain’t even pay a lawyer.”

  “Oh yeah. And I heard you too.”

  “So that’s all?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, maybe if you could give me some information about your husband and, and his friends, then I could give you money to get far enough away so that Dennis won’t find you to talk to.”

  “You think I’m’a turn on Dennis fo’ the little change you got in your pocket?”

  “More’n twenty-fi’e hunnert dollars.”

  “You lyin’,” she said speculatively.

  “Swear to God.”

  “Niggahs been sayin’ shit like that to me ever since I was thirteen.”

  I took the envelope that Mr. Jericho’s man Orrin Cause had given me and put it down between us on the end table.

  “Two thousand six hundred and sixty-some dollars,” I said.

  Faster than either of us could move, Theodore ran up and grabbed the envelope. But before he could make good his escape Corrine yanked him by the arm, hard.

  The boy hollered in pain. His sister ran up and wrapped her arms around her mother’s offending wrist.

  “Don’t you ever come up and take my property!” Corrine yelled, shaking the little cowboy and his wailing sister. “You keep your goddamn hands to yourself!”

  With that Corrine dropped Theodore on his butt and plucked the fallen envelope from the floor.

  Holding each other, the children ran crying from the room.

  Their mother looked at me and asked, “Can I count it?”

  “Be my guest.”

  Two times she shuffled through the twenties, tens, and ones. When she was satisfied I held out my hand. She hesitated but then passed the bills over. I put them back in the letter casing.

  “What you wanna know?” she asked.

  “Did your husband and Alonzo work together at some kinda job?”

  “Yeah. Construction. I think the company was called Pitbull an’ it was out in the Valley somewhere.”

  “How long ago did they quit that?”

  “’Bout three months past. Dennis said that he hurt his shoulder liftin’ sumpin’ too heavy but there was blood on the bandages. When he took ’em off it looked like somebody had grazed him with a bullet.”

  “You know anything else about the place he worked?”

  “Him and Alonzo had been hangin’ out with this white boy worked there. They came by here a time or two. He had this black girlfriend one time and then a white one.”

  “What was his name?”

  “Um, uh, oh yeah, it was Kurt. No, no. Kirk, Kirkla, somethin’ like that.”

  “What kinda stuff they talk about?” I asked.

  “Nuthin’. Just man talk. Sports and how much they hated their jobs. That was the first time I evah heard a white boy complain about work. I guess we ain’t all that different.”

  The young mother looked up at me—minds thinking things that might as well have been in foreign tongues.

  While Corrine and I stared, the children slinked through the living room to the screen door and out.

  “Is that enough for some’a this money?” she asked.

  Maybe it was. It didn’t really matter because I was just as superstitious as Jericho. His money felt like a curse smoldering in my pocket.

  I stood up and Corrine quickly followed suit.

  I handed the envelope to her. She snatched it and then took out the money to make sure I hadn’t pulled a switch.

  Outside the children were playing with a tomato bug. Penny was brave enough to let the little red-horned caterpillar crawl on her skinny arm.

  I came over and squatted down between them. From my wallet I took a two-dollar bill and handed it to the boy.

  “Sometimes adults lose their temper,” I said. “But they still love you anyway.”

  Then I took two one-dollar bills and handed them to his sister.

  “Whatever he gets, you get,” I said. “Remember that.”

  42

  Another gas station. Another phone booth.

  Melvin Suggs had a secretary named Myra P. Lawless. She was elderly by 1960s standards. Fifty-six years old. Melvin paid Myra top dollar because she knew how to find out anything in one-tenth the time anyone else could. She worked long hours and never complained about men being men. Not that she let anyone walk on her. It was said that one time she slammed a pinching burglar with a folded metal chair.

  Myra tolerated my company because she liked Fearless. Sometimes, when Fearless went with me to see Mel, he would sit in the outer office beside Myra’s desk talking about anything from flower gardens to World War II.

  “Commander Suggs’s line,” she answered.

  “Hey, Myra.”

  “Hello, Mr. Rawlins, how are you?”

  “Fine. How’s Puggs?” Puggs was her dog. Her pet in lieu of a hu
sband.

  “I had to put him on a diet. Doctor said that he needs to lose three pounds.”

  “For a dog his size that translates to about forty-five pounds in man-weight.”

  “That’s exactly what I tried to tell my sister when she said it wasn’t that much.”

  “People don’t even understand their own place in the world,” I said.

  “How can I help you, Mr. Rawlins?”

  I explained about a construction company owned by a man named Pit-something, maybe Pitman, somewhere in the Valley.

  “Let me look into it,” she said. “Are you at a phone where I can reach you?”

  “I’m kinda on the move today.”

  “Well, call back in half an hour and I should have something.”

  The next call was to my home phone.

  “Hello.” Feather was out of breath, the sound of laughter echoing in her voice.

  “Hey, baby.”

  “Daddy!”

  “You sound happy.”

  “Uncle Milo and Dagmar came up to visit. I thought it was okay because you said I couldn’t go down there anymore but you didn’t say we had to stop seeing each other. We’ve been having swimming races and I beat them every time.”

  “They aren’t smoking marijuana there, are they?”

  “Um, uh, no . . . I mean, only up on the roof.”

  I took about ten seconds of silence to show my disapproval and then we started talking again. She went on about her school friends and what they were doing and where they were going for their summer vacations. She said that she’d like to go see Boston and New York and London too. We’d gotten a letter from her adoptive brother, Jesus. He and his little family were doing fine down in La Jolla.

  I closed my eyes for a while there listening to her chatter. I never really understood the word blessing before she and her brother came into my life.

  “Are you coming home tonight, Daddy?”

  “I’m gonna try my best. It’s kind of a complex job.”

  “Uncle Milo and Dagmar are goin’ to a concert in Griffith Park tonight, so could you try to get here before I go to bed?”

  “I’ll try.”

  Myra gave me the address of the Pitman Construction Company on Lankershim Boulevard in the San Fernando Valley.

  “Rinaldo Pitman is listed as the manager but a Leon Starr is the owner through his company Sherman Construction. Pitman has been arrested twice on assault charges but they were both dropped.”

  “Thank you so much, Myra. That was a great help.”

  “You’re very welcome. Say hello to Mr. Jones for me.”

  One more call, to Jewelle Blue, and I was on my way. When it came to commercial construction she knew just about every player in the business. And they were aware of her connections and the amount of money that was there to be made.

  On the drive through Laurel Canyon over to the Valley I was thinking that I was glad not to have seen Dennis Plennery. I’d talked to, dealt with, and encountered enough bad men to last me a month, maybe two. I was looking forward to a simple business where men worked hard and then went home to their families, TV programs, and pets.

  Pitman Construction took up an area of about two and a half city blocks. It housed at least forty trucks, from van-size to sixty-foot tractor trailers that could move many tons of cargo. They also had cranes, bulldozers, cement-mixing trucks, and a dozen or more highly specialized vehicles that a city like LA needed to grow as fast as seaweed under the South Pacific sun.

  The front gates were open so I cruised down the unpaved dirt path that led to the only office building on the lot. This was a two-story structure that looked like a pair of mismatched train cars stacked one upon the other.

  There were men all over the place, driving and banging, toting and smoking cigarettes.

  A white man with a mostly bald head and broad shoulders emerged from the front doorway of the train-car building. He was on the short side but built like a fireplug. Even the way he walked seemed to seethe with anger.

  He strutted over to where I’d gotten out of my car.

  “Can I help you?” he shouted.

  “Hi,” I said, extending a hand. The angry man waited a moment before deciding to shake. When he did it was with a show of great strength.

  I extricated my hand from the viselike grip, saying, “My name’s Rawlins. I’m a private detective investigating a robbery.”

  “Nobody stole anything around here.”

  “I just have a couple of questions.”

  “Time is money, Rawlings. And you don’t do a thing for me.”

  “Ten minutes at most,” I assured him.

  “I don’t know you,” he said. “And I haven’t had an extra ten minutes since my wife and I made our fourth child.”

  “You had an Alonzo Griggs and Dennis Plennery working for you, right?”

  “I don’t know you,” Pitman said again. “And because of that I’m gonna have to ask you to leave.”

  “Do you know a Leon Starr?” I asked.

  It took Pitman a simmering moment before he said, “Get the hell offa my property!”

  I looked him in the eye, letting him know that he didn’t scare me but maybe he should be scared. Then I went to my car, retraced the route I had taken, finally coming to a 76 gas station across the street. In yet another phone booth I called a number that Jewelle had given me. Then I parked on the street and went to stand out in front of the construction company fence.

  The gate had been shut and locked behind me.

  A guy in jeans and a dark green, uniform-like jacket strolled over to keep me company. He was tall and lean, white with a scowl on his face that spoke, I supposed, to the lack of a mother’s love.

  “You should move on, son,” the white man advised, a hint of the South putting a spin on his words.

  “Did you study history in shit-kicker high school?” I asked him.

  “What the fuck you say to me?”

  “Come on out past the gate and I’ll whisper it in your ear, Huck, honey.”

  “Faggot nigger!” he exclaimed.

  “More than enough to kick your ass, peckerwood.”

  It was at that moment I realized that I was ready to kill Eddie Brock Oldstein. I was almost mad enough to pull out my pistol and make the half guard come out and face me.

  Maybe I would have done it but there came behind me the honk of a car.

  Driving up to the gate was a Cadillac limousine painted in shiny metallic gold.

  While the security guard ran to open up the gate, the back door of the Caddy opened and a small white man leaned out.

  “Are you Easy Rawlins?” he asked.

  “I am.”

  “Get in.”

  The back of the limo was opulent. It had seating for eight or nine men. There was a bar replete with five kinds of whiskey, ice, crystal (not glass) for drinking, and even a telephone.

  “This phone works?” I asked.

  “Yes, it does,” Leon Starr said. “Jewelle Blue called me on it just a little while ago. We do a lotta work together in downtown LA. That’s why I agreed to this. She told me that you were a private investigator. I hope you don’t intend to cause me trouble.”

  “I can honestly say that anything I do will be better for you than if I did nothing.”

  Starr was a little thicker than Mr. Jericho but they seemed to be cut from the same original cloth. He stared at me, still wondering if he was making a mistake bringing me into his business. But Jewelle was a dynamo of construction in Southern California at that time. She could open doors for him that no mayor or governor had access to.

  I rode with Leon Starr to the double-train-car offices of Pitman Construction. We walked into the building unmolested and through the entrance to Rinaldo’s small office.

  When Pitman saw me again, I was sure that he planned to throw a paperweight or something, but . . .

  “Hey, Rinaldo,” Starr said. “This man Rawlins needs some questions answered. I’d appr
eciate it if you gave him a few minutes.”

  “I’m pretty busy right now, Lee,” the angry man said in a forced tone that approximated reasonableness.

  “You’ll have to put everything on hold until Mr. Rawlins has asked his questions and you have answered them.”

  Capitalism is a feral beast but I love her when she works for me.

  “Okay, I guess,” Pitman said.

  I turned to Leon Starr and said, “If you don’t mind I’d like to discuss my business with Mr. Pitman alone.”

  The boss gave me a stately nod and left the little office, closing the door behind him.

  Pitman was no longer angry. His expression can be best described as befuddled.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “I’m the guy who knows the man your boss needs to do business.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Alonzo Griggs and Dennis Plennery,” I said. It was then that I noticed Pitman’s fists—they were flushed sledgehammers.

  A shudder went through the squat man’s shoulders.

  “The, um, the uh, those, those men worked here. I hardly ever saw ’em. You know, just muscle on the job.”

  “You fired them?”

  “No, no. They quit. I mean, really they just stopped coming in.”

  “How long were they here?”

  “I don’t know. Here, lemme get my secretary on the line and you could ask her.” He went as far as getting behind the desk and picking up the receiver.

  “What do you think would happen if I called an LAPD commander to search every property you had for something bigger than a breadbox?”

  “What are you talking about?” he asked.

  Maybe he really didn’t know. But he was afraid of something. He was a cornered creature and I had to be careful that he didn’t go mad.

  “So what was it?” I asked him. “You spent too much money on the girlfriend, lost it in Vegas, or maybe both. You had to sell out to Starr so your kneecaps didn’t get busted. Then Alonzo offered you a big-time payout and all you had to do was turn your back.”

  I knew part of the story from Jewelle. The rest I surmised.