I was happy walking alone and making my own decisions. I knew a lawyer. She didn’t care for me much but she knew her job better than most. I was free for the first time since I’d met the little yellow dog.
As I walked back down the block to my car I saw a man walking in the opposite direction across the street. He wasn’t wearing a raincoat or even a hat; that’s why, I figured, he was moving so fast through the rain.
Idabell was still resting against the passenger’s window.
“I left it,” I said.
She didn’t answer me. Pharaoh began whimpering. He wasn’t hungry for company but truly sad in his cage.
I remembered the man running down the street.
That was when I knew Idabell was dead.
She’d been shot twice in the temple, right through the window. No pulse, no breath. Her eyes were open. There was very little blood.
I don’t know how long I sat there looking at her. Pharaoh whimpered and I tried to get myself moving. But where was I going to go? I wanted something to happen: Idabell to rise as she had before from her friend’s floor; a shot to punctuate her death; anything but the pelting rain and the dog’s cries.
I drove off in a kind of daze. At first I looked for the man who’d been running. He’d disappeared, though. He might have turned left or right at the corner but I was in no condition, or position, to execute a thorough search.
There were thoughts in my head; things that I had to do. But anything I had to think about fled when I tried to catch it. Fragments of final words and prayers went through. The address of a hospital on Santa Monica Boulevard was there.
She was dead. I knew dead from World War Two. I knew dead. What I should have done was to pull into an alley and throw her into the street. That’s what I needed to do. If I reported the crime the cops would have me up on charges with the first waking judge.
I drove on while Pharaoh sang his dirge.
Finally we came to a small park that was partially secluded by a hedge. I drove up into an alley behind the park and turned to Idabell.
I tried to think of anything she might have carried that pointed to me. In her purse I found my phone number on a piece of paper. I rummaged through the bag and took out all the papers I found and her pocket phone book. Then I looked through her clothes.
The whole time I kept breathing slowly to keep my mind clear. There were no pockets on her, no identifying tags that I could see.
It was almost four. I had to act. I got out of my side and went to open her door. A gentleman, I took her out as gently as I could and lifted her as if we were dancing. She was heavy, not like in room C2.
I walked her to the park bench and laid her out there in the dark and leafy alcove. The rain muffled Pharaoh’s cries.
When I got back into the car I lowered her window so that nobody would see the bullet holes. I didn’t care if the seat got wet. Three blocks away, across the street from the hospital, I called them and reported the body in the park. My voice caught as I repeated the words to the dispatcher. Then I hung up and hurried away.
All the way back down Pico Boulevard, Pharaoh was yowling; Idabell’s death was alive in his senses and my mind.
I stopped at a closed gas station past La Cienega and busted out the passenger’s window. There was a large trash bin, almost filled with refuse, near the toilets. I tore up her driver’s license and Board of Ed ID and sprinkled the confetti around. I rubbed off the purse as well as I could, leaving three hundred and some odd dollars. I figured that even if anyone found the purse they’d think twice before turning it in with no ID and a three-hundred-dollar windfall.
I buried the purse and tattered IDs as far as I could.
It was when I was getting back into the car that I noticed the croquet set was missing from the backseat.
I parked in front of my house and let Pharaoh out of his cage. He sniffed and sniffed at Idabell’s seat, whining and begging to be reunited with her. After a few minutes I picked him up and carried him into the house.
It was the only time we didn’t express hatred or disdain for each other.
That’s because we were both in mourning and on the verge of seeking our own separate brands of revenge.
19
Daddy, Frenchie’s sick.”
She was standing there in her orange dress, the one that had four big white buttons down the front. Bleary light reflected on the mirror of my dresser. That meant it was late in the morning.
“Feather, what are you doing here? Why aren’t you at school?”
“Frenchie’s sick,” she said patiently. “I stayed home to take care of him.”
“Where’s Juice?”
“He gone to school. He said that I was gonna be in trouble.” She looked at me with slightly enlarged eyes. “But I told him that Frenchie was sick an’ he needed me to pat him and take his tempachur.”
I was seeing the woman in the child just beginning to flex her muscles. I was sick at heart but I could still smile at the beauty of Feather and her power to love.
“I’ll take care’a the dog, honey,” I said. “You go put together your lunch and I’ll take you to school.”
Pharaoh was moping by the front door. His tiny rat chin rested on slender yellow paws. He looked up at me and tried to growl but the snarl turned into a whimper and he put his head back down.
I had on my painter’s pants, a cross-hatched-red-and-blue flannel shirt, and thick work shoes. I would be unshaven and unbathed that day. I was coming back to the old ways and feeling mean.
It wasn’t far to Burnside Elementary School.
“What happened to the window, Daddy?”
I walked Feather into school and explained, vaguely, that I’d had to keep her home that morning. Nobody seemed to mind.
I went back home and called Trudy Van Dial at Sojourner Truth. She rang for Garland Burns. When he got on I told him that I was working out of the area office for Mr. Stowe for the day.
“You tell Newgate about it,” I said. “He can call up Stowe if he has any problems with it. And make sure that Archie is getting to his assignments.”
“Sure thing, Mr. Rawlins,” Burns said.
“Anything else, Garland?”
“That policeman, Sergeant Sanchez, talked to me and Mrs. Plates yesterday,” the clean-shaven young Christian Scientist said in his schoolboy way.
“Yeah?”
“What he mostly asked about was you.”
“Really?” I said in my most perplexed tone. “Oh, well. See you tomorrow, Mr. Burns.”
“Okay. Bye now, Mr. Rawlins.”
I drove the long ride out to Watts but I wasn’t going to work that day. I went all the way down to 116th Street and the first home I ever owned.
Primo was sitting on the front porch of my house, protected by the overhang from the light drizzle. When I got out of the car he stood up and waved. He yelled something in Spanish into the front door and then limped his way out toward me.
It was in the past couple of years that Primo developed his limp. I didn’t know what had happened and I never asked.
The fence around the yard had been torn down and there were three cars parked on the lawn. One hulk had the engine next to it while another jalopy was up on boxes instead of wheels. The house could have used a touch-up but I knew that it would have been an insult for me to offer to have it painted so I let it ride.
“Easy,” Primo hailed. “How are you, my friend?”
“Well…”
“You don’t have to say it.” Primo smiled, showing me a pitted silver tooth. “I can see that you’re in bad trouble.”
“How can you see that?”
“Because when you’re okay, or maybe just a little bad, you always got a present for us and the kids. You feel like a guest and the guest always brings a gift so everybody knows how happy he is to come there.” Primo raised his hand like a country teacher. “But when you got a problem bringing a gift is like, like a snake making with pretty eyes.”