“How long you been here?” I asked Stowe.
“All day.”
“How long you plan to stay?”
“I don’t know.”
“You gonna stay here till your wife leave you?” I asked. “You tryin’ to get rid of her?”
“No.”
“But you gonna spend the night here?”
“I, I… I hadn’t thought.”
There was a phone next to the bed. I dialed the number and Alva answered, “Hello.”
“Hey, Alva.”
“Who’s this?”
“It’s Easy.”
“Okay, Easy,” she said. “I’ll go get him.”
There was a moment’s hesitation in her voice. That little gap of silence told me everything Alva thought about me. I was a menace, a threat, a violent piece of John’s past that she hadn’t been able to cut out — yet.
“Yeah?” John said when he got on the line.
“I got a problem, John.”
“My car?”
“No, man. Your car was okay the last time I saw it. No. It’s Grace.”
John didn’t want to hear about an old girlfriend. Alva wanted to hear about it even less. But he was the only one I knew who would sit with Grace through the worst of it.
“A friend’a hers is coming,” I told Bertrand Stowe. “The man who told me about your problems before.”
Stowe nodded, yielding to the necessity of the situation.
“Who was her connection?” I asked.
He shook his head.
“Don’t lie to me now, Bert. It’s not the time to lie.”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Yes you do too.”
He wanted to keep his secret but the pressure of all that pain in someone he loved had worn away his resolve. “It was the man who got killed at your school.”
“Roman Gasteau?”
“Yes,” he sighed. “He was… Lonnie’s father.”
“Who?”
“The baby. Roman was his father. I made a deal with Roman when Grace left him. I gave him a job.”
“A job?”
“Yes. Nighttime building consultant. I gave him the master keys to the district and a salary of eight hundred dollars a month. He promised to leave Grace alone.”
“That man had the keys to my school?”
“He had keys to all the schools.”
“So he’s the one been stealin’?”
All Stowe could do was to steal glances at my eyes.
“That why you killed him?” I asked.
“I didn’t kill anybody. All I did was to give him a job in return for his promise that he’d leave Grace and Lonnie to me.”
“Are you crazy? All the cops got to do is read his name in the records and you’re busted.”
“They won’t find his name in the files.”
“Oh? And why not?”
“Because I hired him under another name. Landis Defarge. He used the name Landis Defarge.”
“You hired a man who had your girlfriend on heroin for a job under an alias — but you know his real name. And now that man is dead at one of your schools.” With each word Stowe wilted more.
“I didn’t know that she was back on drugs until after he was dead,” Bert said. “Ask her if you don’t believe me.”
I didn’t mean to laugh.
“What possessed you to do all that, Bert?”
“It was the child,” he said earnestly. “I couldn’t let Lonnie be brought up in that kind of life. I know I was wrong. I know it but it would have been worse any other way.”
“Except now they might look at you for murder.”
“Well,” he said, “I didn’t kill him.”
“How about her?”
“No.”
“You know that for a fact? Cop was askin’ me was there anybody at the school at four or five in the morning. Where were you?”
Bertrand’s mouth started to tremble.
“Honey,” Grace said.
“Yeah, babe,” he answered. Yeah, babe.
“Could you hold me please?”
Bertrand ignored me and my questions to mold his body around the woman who gave his life its spark.
John and Alva came together. I think Stowe was relieved that he didn’t have to leave his woman with a solitary man.
Alva took the baby in her arms and John sat down next to Grace on the bed. When she started acting up he said, “Lay down and be quiet, Grace. Ain’t nobody got time for your noise.”
She did what she was told. John had a powerful presence about him. Not many a man, or woman, would tell him no.
When i was leaving, John came to the door and asked, “Where’s my car, Easy?”
“I got it parked somewhere, John. Don’t worry, I’ll have it back to you by day after tomorrow.”
Out on the street Stowe asked me, “What are you going to do, Easy?”
“Save my ass.”
“What do you have to do with it?”
“More than I want. I’ll tell ya that. You go on home, Bert. Go on home and I’ll call ya about Grace. Don’t worry, John’ll take care of her.”
“Thank you,” he said.
I left him trying to start his car.
34
Bonnie was in the kitchen when I got there. She was talking to Jesus while Feather fooled around with Pharaoh. There was a pile of freshly made chocolate chip cookies on the table.
“What’s goin’ on here?” I asked from the doorway.
They were all smiles and giggles.
“Hi, Daddy,” Feather said. “We made cookies.”
Bonnie looked proudly down on my girl.
Something good had happened while I was gone. I tried to remember the last time in my life that someone, other than Jesus, took care of something for me, without me having to ask; the last time that I could lay back and relax, sure that someone else was at the wheel. I thought all the way back to my childhood but I couldn’t remember it still.
Don’t look too close, a voice said in my head. I shuddered and blinked and turned away from Bonnie Shay.
“What’s wrong, Easy?” she asked.
“Nuthin’,” I said.
“Huh?” Feather said, voicing the question for everyone in the room.
“Nuthin’,” I said again. “Here, let me throw some dinner together.”
“That’s okay, Easy,” Bonnie said. “You just sit with the kids.”
Bonnie had been preparing dinner while the kids ate cookies. We had thin string beans made with slivered almonds sautéed in butter and drop biscuits that were very short. The main course was omelets made with fine herbs and white cheese. Feather made herself a can of tomato soup too.
After dinner Jesus went to bed while the rest of us watched TV; Rawhide, half of The Jimmy Dean Show, and then Hazel. Feather loved Hazel but she fell asleep before Jimmy Dean.
Then Bonnie cleaned up in the kitchen and I bundled Feather off to bed. When I came back Bonnie was sitting on the sofa looking sad. Pharaoh was nuzzling her thigh with the side of his snout.
Maybe that dog and I hated each other because we were so much alike.
“Hi,” I said.
Bonnie looked up at me and smiled. She extended her hand to draw me down next to her.
“You have a beautiful family, Mr. Rawlins.”
“They look even better wit’ you.”
That’s where the conversation stopped. We sat there listening to Pharaoh move his nose on her leg. I felt so comfortable right then that I had the urge to pet the dog.
“I’ve got to get my clothes, Easy,” Bonnie said. “Do you think it’s safe?”
“That depends,” I said.
“Depends on what?”
“On how deep you’ve gotten yourself into this mess.” I believe that Bonnie would have talked to me before then — if she could have gotten the words up to her mouth. She needed to be primed.
“What did Idabell do with those croquet sticks when she got off your plane, Bonnie?”