Six Easy Pieces (29 page)

“Sure,” the copper-haired fifty year old said. “I’ve spent more on girls give me less in a week than she did in one night. That girl was sex-crazy. When’s the last time you had a twenty year old beggin’ you for sex?”

“Seventeen,” I said.

“What?”

“Seventeen years old.”

“I didn’t know that.” Bob Henry sat up in his swivel chair. “Any judge in the world look at her and he’d know that she looks twenty.”

“She looks dead.”

“What?” It was the same question but it took on a whole new tone.

“Murdered. Three days ago. In an alley off of Central.”

It’s a strange thing seeing a white man go white.

“Who is she to you?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“She’s a complex girl. I didn’t know about her until after she was dead but even still she’s full’a surprises. Did she start paying you five dollars a week?”

“Yeah. How did you know?”

“Jackie was a very organized young lady. It seems that she paid all of her gentleman friends five dollars a week for a long-term loan.”

“What did you say your name was?”

“Easy.”

“And what do you have to do with this?”

“I’m looking into it—for the family.”

“Isn’t this a police job?”

“You’d think so, but I haven’t seen one cop looking into it and I bet you haven’t either. Look, you didn’t even know the girl was dead.”

The red-headed man took in my claim with a certain amount of bewilderment.

“What are you saying?” he asked.

“Do you know who might have killed her?”

“No.”

“No enemies? No jilted lovers?”

“Jackie had a lot of boyfriends,” Bob said. “Sure she did. She never hid that. No. Nobody had any reason to kill her.”

TED DURGEN’S HARDWARE STORE was closed by the time I got there. I could wait a day to talk to him. I drove down to a Thrifty’s Drug Store on 54th Street and made a call from a phone booth near the ice cream counter.

“Hello,” Bonnie said in a musical voice.

“Hey, honey,” I said.

“Where are you, Easy? You said that you were just going to get a pair of shoes.”

There was a time, when we first got together, that neither one of us would have asked that question. But another man had crossed her path, and though she swore that her love for him was that of a friend, we still asked questions where once there would have been only trust.

“Theodore said if I did something for him that he’d let me have the shoes for free.”

“What did he want you to do?”

“Ain’t nuthin’, honey,” I said. “Nuthin’ at all. How’s the kids?”

“Jesus is sewing his sail and Feather is helping him. Really she’s just drinking chocolate milk and talking.”

“I got to go out to the Palisades to see this friend of Theodore’s,” I said. “I’ll be back before ten.”

“Raymond called. He said if you needed him to call at this number.”

I wrote down the number and we hung up.

THE PHONE BOOK TOLD ME that Rita Longtree lived on Defiance Avenue. It was an orange stucco building in the middle of the block. Her door was nestled in a third-floor nook that had a small palm growing in a terra cotta pot right outside.

She was surprised to see me standing there. The orange had been wiped from her lips. Her eyes seemed different.

“Yeah?” It was the same word she used when we first met, only this time the edge was gone.

She’d been crying but that’s not what was different. I realized that she was wearing false eyelashes before.

“Rita, I need to talk to you about Jackie.”

“I don’t know her.”

“Yes you do, and if you don’t want me to say that to the cops you’ll let me in and answer my questions.”

As a rule I don’t threaten black folk with the law. That’s because most of the time I’m trying to help someone black. The police are hardly ever in the position to make a Negro’s life easier. They’re there to keep us from making trouble. But I needed to know what Rita’s connection with the dead girl was and the law opened almost any door in the ghetto.

She let me in and showed me to a chair.

The chair was blue and the couch gray; there were lavender walls and a red-and-brown carpet. It was a poor working girl’s apartment, clean and ill-fitted.

She was wearing cranberry slacks and a white T-shirt.

She looked good. Even the sorrow made her attractive.

“What you wanna know?”

“You got a picture of Jackie?”

From a table behind the couch she took a small frame that had an oval aperture. The photograph was of a lovely, smiling young woman, a little heavy but worth every pound.

“She was beautiful,” Rita said.

“You knew her pretty well?” I asked.

“Uh-huh. We were friends.”

“Did you know her before she got to know Mr. Munson?”

“No. She met Matt at a hamburger stand down Hoover. At first he’d bring her over to the office after I went home but after a while they got sloppy and I’d catch ’em. After that she’d call sometimes when he was out with a client and we talked. She was a really good person.” Sorrow constricted the last few words.

“Did she love your boss?” I asked.

Rita smiled through the tears.

“Jackie just liked men,” she said. “I mean they had to be older and they couldn’t be black but after that she wasn’t too picky. She didn’t mind if they was fat or bald or plain.”

“How about rich?” I asked.

“No. I mean she had her investment plan but you didn’t have to be rich to belong to that.”

“That was to buy her house?”

“Uh-huh. She fount this house for only twelve thousand dollars in Compton. Then she would ask her boyfriends to put up the money, like an interest-free loan. She had started payin’ it back. She called it her rent.”

“And where’d she get that?”

“She was a good girl,” Rita said. “She was only seventeen you know. And her mama could hardly make enough to pay the rent. And Jackie really liked the men she was with. So what if a couple’a them gave her money?”

It was a discussion held between women that I had been overhearing since I was a child. Poor young women with no money, and no hope for a job, taking a handout now and then from a “friend.” Maybe he was called “uncle” or a family friend. He was older and lonely and willing to let her go out dancing when she wanted to. The money was always in an envelope and never in the bedroom. Sometimes there wasn’t even sex at all, just a series of well-dressed dates and maybe a kiss or two at the end of the evening.

“Why not black men?” I asked.

“She hated her father,” Rita said. “He used to beat her mother and brother. She said that most’a the white men she was with were gentle.”

“What about Musa Tanous?”

“She loved him for real. She’d call me after they were together and tell me about his stories about castles in Jordan and Lebanon. His family used to own a castle that was a thousand years old.”

“When’s the last time she called you?”

“The morning she was killed.” Her throat tightened again.

“What time?”

“About eight. We planned to meet at Brenda’s Sunshine Diner on Eighty-second at eight-thirty but she never got there.”

“Where’d she call from?”

“The motel.”

“You sure?”

Rita nodded.

“Can I use your phone?”

“Is it long distance?”

“Station to station but I’ll give you two dollars for it.”

“You better. It’s ’cause of you I lost my job.”

“What do you mean?”

“Matt really didn’t know that Jackie was dead. When he asked me if I knew and I said yeah he fired me.”

“Oh.”

“YES?” Musa Tanous said into my ear.

“It’s Easy Rawlins,” I said.

“I’ve been waiting for you, Mr. Rawlins.”

“Where were you from eight to nine on the day Jackie was killed, Mr. Tanous?”

“Picking up floor wax from a distributor on Alameda. S&J Distributions.”

“You were in the place at eight?”

“Yes. Mr. Hind and I were having coffee. He’s an old friend.”

“What time did you leave Mr. Hind?”

“Quarter to ten. Why?”

“What time did they find Jackie?”

“Nine-fifteen,” he said, and then he choked. “She had been stabbed and beaten. She wasn’t dead until they got her to the hospital.”

Nothing I could say seemed important but still I went on, “If that’s true then I can prove that you didn’t do it.”

“Do you know who did?”

“I didn’t sign up for that. But once the cops clear you then they’ll probably find the man who did it. It’s somebody she knows. It always is.”

“So what do we do now?”

“Give me the name of your lawyer. I’ll tell him what I found out.”

Musa gave me a name, William Berg, and the number to call.

I told Rita that the lawyer would probably call but that it wouldn’t be any trouble.

It was time for me to leave but I hesitated.

“He really fired you because of Jackie?” I asked.

“Yeah. I asked him for my last paycheck but he said that I didn’t even deserve that. I can take him to court but my landlord’ll have me on the street before he’ll pay me.”

“Can you do accounting work?”

“I learned a lot from Mr. Munson. I could do simple stuff. Preparin’ and like that.”

“I can probably get you a job. I know a guy runs a place that does unofficial accounting work. Over on Pico.”

I gave her Anatole Zane’s name and number. I told her to use my name and he’d probably hire her right off.

I keep a hundred dollar bill in my wallet at all times—in the
secret
fold. I gave it to the young siren.

“What’s this for?” she asked. It was almost an accusation.

“To pay your rent until the next check comes through.”

“Why?”

“How old are you, Rita?”

“Twenty.”

“I’m forty-four. I went in there today and slapped your boss to the ground. That’s why he fired you. At my age a man should take responsibility where he finds it. Take that money and use it. And remember, you didn’t have to do anything for it except be on the right side of life.”

BONNIE AND I MADE LOVE that night. It wasn’t the way we usually came together. Afterward she asked, “What is it, Easy?”

“What?”

“The way you touched me. It was so delicate, as if you thought you might hurt me, as if you didn’t know my body.”

“Do you love me, baby?” I asked her.

“Yes. You know I do.”

“I’m not talkin’ about in a perfect world,” I said. “I’m not askin’ do you love me lyin’ here next to you. I don’t mean do I measure up to other men you’ve known pound for pound. What I’m sayin’ is that I’m just a janitor and a small-time property owner. I’m not ever gonna make a difference in the way you live or in the quality of your life.”

“I don’t understand, Easy.”

“The only doors I can open are back doors,” I said. “The only money I’ll ever have is either small change or money that got blood on it, one way or the other it’s not what a woman like you should expect.”

“Is this about Jogaye again?”

“Not just him. There’s other princes and bankers, generals and entrepreneurs you meet. Some of ’em are black but there’s white ones too. What I’m sayin’ Bonnie is that I can’t do for you. I can only follow and hope you don’t take off so far ahead that I won’t even see your dust. I meet people every day that need my help. Kids at the school, people like Theodore Steinman. But you’re in a whole other class. You in the sky half the time around men and women who wouldn’t give me a second look.”

“Does any of this has to do with what Mr. Steinman asked you to do for him?”

“There was girl a friend of his knew. She was murdered.”

“That’s terrible.”

“It was. I met a friend of hers, another girl who needed help. I gave her a little information and a couple’a dollars. I helped her. I made a difference.”

“And didn’t you save me when I was in trouble?”

“You never needed me,” I said, and I meant it. “You’re every bit as tough as I am and smarter too.”

Bonnie touched my cheek with her fingertips. “My father once told me that a great man walks the back roads. He does what’s right every day and no one knows it but those lucky enough to be loved by him.”

“He did, huh?”

“I love you, Easy Rawlins. No matter what happens with us or with how you feel about me. I have never known a better man than you.”

I CALLED THEODORE the next morning and told him that Raymond would collect one pair of handmade shoes. Then I called Raymond and asked him to go over and talk to Jackie’s mother.

“Explain to her that Musa did not kill Jackie and tell her that the police will be put on the right track. Also tell her that I’ll be sending a gift that Jackie had been saving for her.”

“Okay, Ease,” Mouse said. “But you know you wastin’ all that talent on these poor people. A dollar down here don’t stay long, brother. And you know it’s only a matter’a time for that poor woman lose her stupid son too.”

AFTER WORK I drove out to the Pacific Palisades, to Musa Tanous’s home.

It was a modest house compared to some of the mansions in that neighborhood. I doubted if he had more than five bedrooms on the three floors. Birds of paradise proliferated on either side of his front door.

He seated me in his den. There was the heavy odor of port wine and tobacco in there. He had a chess board set up for play.

“Do you play chess, Mr. Rawlins?”

“No sir. I do not.”

He handed me an envelope. Inside was the key I expected but also a small stack of hundred dollar bills, ten by the feel of them.

“I didn’t ask you for money,” I said.

“The money you saved me in legal expenses alone is worth that,” he said. “And I want you to have it. You proved I didn’t kill Jackie and you never even saw the photograph of her.”

“I saw one at the house of a friend of hers,” I said, but he was already reaching for a something on the bookshelf behind him.

He took down a small picture and handed it to me.

All I saw was the polka dot scarf and the felt green derby with the yellow band and green feathers.