Six Easy Pieces (8 page)

“Then you told her to leave him and come to you,” I said. “Then somebody stabbed her in the heart.”

The minister winced. “I been workin’ hard for more’n eighteen years, Brother Rawlins. Eighteen years on the front lines against Satan and his crew. I work every day, all day. I’ve pulled men out of the bottle and the needle out of young women’s arms. I teach black chirren to love themselves and I give old women a place to feel like they make a difference. I work hard and I get tired sometimes.”

“Was Etheline a rest stop?” I asked.

“I loved her.” His voice lost its power. I almost believed him. “She was like a gift from God. At first it was just a physical thing. She had learned how to make men melt and holler. Some days she would come up into my rooms and I’d tell her to leave. But she would push my protests aside and grab hold of my spirit. She would stay with me deep into the night, listenin’ to all the weak things that I could never say to anyone in the congregation. I had to be strong for them, but with her I could let down. I could be that country boy.”

“Are you married, Reverend Winters?”

“Yes, son. Yes I am.”

“So all that love was secret and stolen,” I said. “Dangerous for a man in your position.”

“What you gettin’ at?”

“Did she take a snapshot of you, Reverend? Did she have a picture of the two’a you together?”

“What if she did?”

“Well,” I said. “Some might say that a picture like that would be like Joshua at Jericho: It could bring down these walls.”

“And you think I would hurt that girl from fear of somebody findin’ out about us?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time somethin’ like that happened. Did you write to her?”

He didn’t answer the question, but his face admitted the indiscretion.

“It’s like I said in the beginning, Reverend Winters. I didn’t know the girl. She’s not my concern. But I need to see that photograph. And I will have it. So if you know where I should look, it might be very helpful to your cause.”

The minister took a seat then. He looked down at his old comfortable shoes for succor, but even they couldn’t help him.

“You’re wrong in this, Mr. Rawlins. I had nothing to do with that girl’s death. I loved her. And even though she broke it off with me, I would have never hurt her. Never.”

“She broke up with you too?”

He nodded and held his head the same way Cedric had done.

“When?” I asked.

“On Sunday, right after service. She left me a note, said that she would only bring me grief, that she had to make a new life where no one knew her and no one could hurt the ones she loved.”

The minister lowered his head and grieved. I stayed quiet for a minute or two.

“Did she have any friends other than Cedric?” I asked.

“My secretary,” Winters whispered. “Lena McCoy. Lena helped Etheline to get on her feet when she came to us. She got her a job at Douglas where her husband works.”

“If you tell me how to get in touch with her, maybe I can figure this stuff out without causing you grief.”

“You okay, Reverend Winters?” Bumpy asked. He and the fat man had come to investigate their pastor’s obvious dismay.

“Okay, Reggie,” Winters said. He stood up to meet his followers. “Mr. Rawlins is gonna need Lena’s phone number. Call her up and tell her to help him all she can.”

Bumpy didn’t like it, but he was a soldier in the army of the Lord. The commander and chief had spoken, so all he could do was heed and obey.

ON MY DRIVE HOME I wondered at the sequence of recent events. Etheline broke up with Reverend Winters the same Sunday that she heard from me. If she had read my note first, then it could have been the reason she was getting ready to leave. She wrote to Winters, she called me—maybe she got in touch with somebody else. And if my note was the reason she was burning her bridges, then it could have also been the cause of her death.

That is, if the minister was telling the truth. There was no way for me to know what Medgar Winters really felt or knew. The only thing that I was sure of was that if I had caused that girl’s death, I would make sure that the killer didn’t have a happy ending either.

JESUS HAD MADE DINNER and eaten with Feather by the time I’d gotten home. He made hamburger patties with tomato soup and baked potatoes. She was asleep and he was in the backyard, under electric light, working on his small boat.

Moths of all shapes and sizes flitted around in the halo of light. Jesus was working a plane across a plank of wood that he intended for one of the benches of his boat. I came up to him, took the other plank, and began work on it. After forty-five minutes we’d finished leveling the seats. Then we stained and sealed them. No more than a dozen words passed between us in two and a half hours. We had the kind of kinship that didn’t need many words.

THE NEXT MORNING I made Feather’s lunchbox and drove her to school. She was happy to spend the time with me, and it was joy in my heart to talk to her. She was missing Bonnie, and so was I.

“How come you miss Bonnie, Daddy?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Lots of reasons, I guess. Mostly I just like seeing her in the morning. Why do you miss her?”

“Because,” she said, “because when Bonnie’s home it’s two boys and two girls.”

I CALLED LENA MCCOY from the custodians’ bungalow on the lower campus of Sojourner Truth junior high.

“Hello,” a man’s voice answered.

“Lena McCoy, please,” I said.

“Who is this?”

“Mr. Rawlins.”

“What do you want with my wife, Mr. Rawlins?”

“I had a meeting with Reverend Winters yesterday. I asked him some questions that he couldn’t answer, and he suggested I ask Lena.”

“Do you know what time it is?” Mr. McCoy asked.

“Yes sir, I do,” I said. “Eight o’clock in the morning, workin’ man’s time. Time to get up and out of the bed. Time to go out and earn that daily bread.”

“What questions do you have for my wife?”

“It has to do with church activities, Mr. McCoy. This isn’t any scam. I’m not tryin’ to put somethin’ over on you. I don’t want any money or anything. Just a little information about the church.”

“Why can’t you—”

Mr. McCoy cut off what he was saying and mumbled something to someone in the room with him. At one point he raised his voice, but I couldn’t make out the words. I could hear the phone jostling around, and then a woman came on the line.

“Yes? Who is this?” the woman asked.

“Lena McCoy?”

“Yes?”

“My name is Easy Rawlins. Reverend Winters—”

“Oh, oh yes, Mr. Rawlins. Deacon Latrell told me about you. I’d be happy to talk to you, but I’m late for work as it is. Could you meet me at the church later today?”

“Sure. What time?”

“How about four? That would be good for me. I have to go with the minister to an interfaith dinner at six.”

“Four’ll be fine.”

WHEN I ENTERED the church that afternoon, I ran into a small, elderly man wearing overalls and pushing a broom.

“Afternoon, brother,” the older custodian hailed.

“Afternoon,” I replied. “I’m supposed to be meetin’ a Lena McCoy.”

“You wanna go all the way to the pulpit and turn right. You’ll see a green door, it opens onto a stairwell. Take the stairs two flights up. Go in that do’ and you’ll see a woman.”

“Mrs. McCoy?”

“Naw. That’s Mrs. Daniels. She’ll show you to Lena.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Nuthin’ to it.”

As I walked toward the pulpit, I could hear the swish of the janitor’s broom on the concrete floor. It was a comforting sound, reminding me of my job at Truth. It felt like a long-ago fond memory, even though I had just come from work.

I needed Bonnie even more than I let on.

“MR. RAWLINS?” Mrs. Daniels said, repeating my name. “I don’t have no Rawlins on the minister’s schedule today.”

“I’m here to speak to Mrs. McCoy,” I said.

The church receptionist was round and pleasant-looking, but she didn’t like me much. “Is this church business?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

She stared at me a moment too long.

“Listen, lady. I have important business with your minister’s assistant. If I walk outta here, it will be you who has to answer for it.”

I’d lost another opportunity at making a friend. The receptionist waved her hand toward a door behind her.

I knocked, and woman’s voice said, “Come in.”

I entered, coming upon a medium-sized black woman who was sitting behind an oak desk in the middle of a large, sunny room.

“Mr. Rawlins?”

The room had a plain pine floor with bookcases against the wall behind the desk. There was a baby avocado tree in a terra cotta pot next to one window.

“Mrs. McCoy?”

The woman got from behind the desk and went to a door between the bookcases. She opened this door and turned back to me.

“Come with me, please,” she said.

That half-turn told me a lot about Mrs. McCoy—the woman. She was around thirty-five, but still had the bloom of youth to her face and figure. It was a nice figure, but her deep green dress played it down. The color of the dress also blunted the richness of her dark skin. She wore makeup like an older woman might have, with little color or accentuation. But the sinuous motion of her turn revealed the sensual woman that lived underneath her clamped-down style. She was at home in her body, dancing with just that little turn.

We came into a room that was even simpler than the assistant’s office. The minister’s office had a plain floor with no bookcases at all. There was a podium holding a large Bible next to the window, and a simple painting of the face of a white Christ hung on the far wall. He didn’t even have a desk, just a table with two chairs pulled up to it. The only means of comfort in the room was a wide-bed couch pressed into the corner.

“This is Reverend Winters’s office,” she said. “No one will bother us in here.”

She took one of the chairs at the table, and I sat in the other.

“What can I do to help you, Mr. Rawlins?”

“Your husband was unhappy to hear me on the phone this morning,” I said. I decided to find out a little bit more about the woman before hearing what she had to say about Etheline.

Lena looked down and then back again. “Foster is old-fashioned,” she said. “He doesn’t like gentlemen unknown to him calling me on the telephone.”

“You’d think Reverend Winters would have known that and had me call you at the office.”

“He has so much on his mind,” Lena said. Her face took on a soft glow when talking about her boss. Even the severe makeup couldn’t hide the feeling she had for him.

“Did he tell you why I was here?”

“Yes. It’s about that poor young girl.”

“Dead girl,” I said.

Tears appeared in the luscious woman’s eyes. She nodded and looked down again. Lena McCoy was so full of love and compassion that any man would be drawn to her. It’s not that she was beautiful, not even pretty, really. But there was something physical there, and caring. If there was music in a room and I saw Lena McCoy, I would have asked her to dance, even though I didn’t like dancing.

“I have some hard questions to ask you about Etheline, Lena. And I want you to answer them.”

She nodded again.

“She was having an affair with your boss, right?”

“Yes.”

“Right here in this room.”

Her assent was a simple movement of her head, like a bird makes when warbling softly.

“What did you think about that?”

“I was happy for him.”

“Happy?”

“Yes. Medgar gives of himself like some kind of saint. He meets fifty people in this room every day. And they’re all askin’ for somethin’. They want money or a soapbox or for him to travel fifty miles to talk to a roomful’a people who don’t even care. They cry on his shoulder. They confess their sins. And he takes it all in, Mr. Rawlins. Twelve hours every day, seven days a week.”

“And Etheline was different?”

“The first day she came here, she brought homemade brownies and a bunch of little white flowers. Medgar had those daisies in a glass of water for two weeks. I finally had to throw them out.”

“Why did she meet the minister?” I asked.

“To apologize. To apologize for her sins. To ask him if she was worthy to be in his congregation.”

“You heard this?”

“Medgar tells me everything.” It was the first hint of pride in Lena’s tone.

“Everything?”

“Yes.”

“He tell you when they became lovers?”

“He didn’t need to, but he did. After the first time I would sneak her in through the side door so that no one else would know.”

“You helped him cheat on his wife?”

“His wife helps herself to everything he has. They been married since before he came to Los Angeles. You know he seems the same, but inside he’s changed. He’s gotten bigger. Mrs. Winters changed on the outside. She wears nice clothes and drives a big car. But on the inside she’s hungry and jealous. She ain’t never so much as brought him a cupcake on his birthday.”

“What happened when Lena broke it off with the reverend?”

“He cried,” she said. “He put his head on my shoulder and cried like a child.”

“Was he angry?”

“He knew that they’d have to stop one day. He knew it was wrong what he did. But you know sometimes a man is weak.”

“Do you know Cedric Boughman?”

“Sure I do. He brought Etheline to Medgar’s attention.”

“Do you think that Cedric might have harmed Etheline?”

“Why would he?”

“Because she left him for your boss.”

“But she left Medgar to go back with Cedric.”

“What?”

“Didn’t the minister tell you?” She was really surprised. “Etheline left him a note Sunday after services. She said that she was going away with Cedric, back up to the Bay Area where she was from.”

“Then why did Winters keep paying Cedric?”

“He did that before Etheline left him, and he would have done it for any of his inner circle. He’s a good man.”

“Are you in love with Reverend Winters?” I asked.