“You don’t have a house now anyway, do ya?” I asked him.
“No,” he said, his head bowed down.
“Then stay, man. I got E.D. enrolled in a school. She needs other kids. She needs a life.”
The sour twist of Black’s lips was the taste of bile and blood, I’m sure. He was thinking about breaking my neck. I knew this from my own impression and also because Mouse raised his head to regard us.
Easter Dawn was all that Christmas had left. He wanted to take her and crawl into a hole somewhere to heal. And there I was, the first-ever impediment between him and his daughter. My life, my home, my children called to her. Christmas wanted to silence that song.
But he was a good man beneath all the insanity. He loved his daughter and wanted what was right for her. In the car he had dismissed me as a subordinate, but that was over now. I was an equal in an unfair world.
AFTER A FEW long good-byes I drove Ray to Lynne Hua’s apartment. He slapped my shoulder and winked at me before getting out.
“You got to take it easy, Easy,” he told me. “You gettin’ all worked up, man. I mean, I got people out there plannin’ to kill me an’ I ain’t as upset as you.”
“I got it covered, Ray. Just a few more steps and I’m home free.”
I STOPPED ON LA BREA in the early evening, went into a phone booth, and dropped two nickels. I dialed a number I knew by heart and wrapped a handkerchief around the mouthpiece.
“Seventy-sixth Street Precinct,” a woman told me.
“Captain Rauchford,” I said in a deep voice with a growl inside it.
Without reply, she plugged me into the switchboard. A phone rang one time before a man answered, “Rauchford.”
“I hear you lookin’ for Ray Alexander.”
“Who is this?”
“Don’t you worry about who this is, just listen up,” I said in a voice I heard in my mind sometimes. “Mouse outta town right now, but he be back with his boys in a day or two.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know yet, but I will know because that mothahfuckah fuckin’ my woman,” I said with real feeling, too much feeling. “She gonna run to him the minute he’s in town.”
“Tell me your name,” the white man commanded.
“My name ain’t got nuthin’ to do with it.”
“This call has been traced. I know where you live.”
Just about then an ambulance raced by, its siren crying.
“I’ll call you tomorrow, late morning or noon, and give you the knowledge.”
48
Hello,” Jewelle said, answering her home phone.
“Hey, honey.”
“Oh, hi, Easy. How’d you like the house?”
“House? Oh, you mean Buckingham Palace?”
Jewelle giggled. “It’s nice, huh?”
“Yeah, it’s nice. I won’t even ask you how you got it.”
“You and your family can stay there as long as you want, Easy.”
“You don’t have to do all that, baby. A month or so do us fine.”
“A month, a year, five years,” she said. “As long as you want it.”
I realized then why Jewelle and I could never have been lovers. The majority of our relationship was a dialogue that occurred between the lines. She was thanking me for helping her when she was in trouble and in love, for not judging her when she fell for Jackson but stayed with Mofass. Jewelle and I were like the symbiotic creatures I sometimes read about in nature magazines, like the hippopotamus and the birds that picked its teeth, or the ants that herded aphids in the South American rain forest. We were not the same species, but our fates were entwined all the way down to the instinct.
“That house over on Hooper and Sixty-fourth still vacant?” I asked.
“Uh-huh. Why?”
“You gonna build there, right?”
“Lot’s so big they tell me we could put in sixteen units. Why?”
“I’ll talk to you later, baby. Shout at Jackson for me, will ya?”
Jewelle didn’t question me any more than a heron questions the wind.
I hung up the phone and turned on the motel TV. The Million-Dollar Movie was playing on channel nine. That night they were featuring The Seventh Seal. At first I just had it on, but after a few minutes the stark black-and-white film entranced me. Death walked as a man among men, and we fell like leaves, like dust, around him. The Knight struggled against the Specter, each one winning even as he lost. I was deeply moved by the severe performances and the truths they told. When the film was over, I realized that I had a sour taste in my mouth. This reminded me that I had fallen off the wagon not twenty-four hours before. But I didn’t want a drink; I didn’t need one. I laughed to myself: all those years I’d avoided alcohol when I could have used moderation.
I was a fool.
IN THE MORNING I shaved, showered, and ironed my clothes before dressing. Across the street on Centinela there was a coffee shop that served freshly made doughnuts. I drank and smoked, read the paper, and flirted with the young waitress from seven to nine.
Her name was Belinda and she was nineteen years old.
“So what you do for a livin’, Mr. Rawlins?” she asked after half an hour of my asking questions about her life.
“Just about what you see me doin’ right now,” I said.
Belinda had a big butt and a plain face, but when she smiled I couldn’t help but join her.
“You mean you drink coffee for a livin’? Sign me up for that job.”
“I’m a detective,” I said, handing her my business card. “Most of my investigations have me sitting in restaurants, cars, and motel rooms, watchin’ people and tryin’ to hear through walls.”
“You the only one in here, Mr. Rawlins,” Belinda said to me. “Everybody else jes’ buy they coffee and go on. Are you investigatin’ me?”
“I sure am lookin’ at you,” I said. “And you look good too. But right now I’m doin’ the biggest job that a detective has.”
“What’s that?” she asked, leaning across the counter, peering into my eyes.
“Waiting for all the pieces to fall into place.”
“What pieces?”
“On a chessboard, they call ’em men.”
It was an innocuous enough statement, but Belinda caught the hint of evil that it gave off. She frowned a moment but did not move away. The trouble I represented was just what she was looking for. Her mouth opened ever so slightly, saying without words that she was willing to jump over that counter and run off with me, that even though I was an old man, I had the leisure to sit with her and the goodwill to tell her that she was lovely. It doesn’t take much when you’re nineteen and it doesn’t take long. The trouble is that it doesn’t last long either.
“Why don’t you write down your phone number for me, girl?”
“Why I wanna do that?” she said, not wanting to seem easy.
“You don’t want it,” I said. “I do. You must have every young man in the neighborhood ringin’ your bell. I just like talkin’ to you.”
Her brows knitted as she tried to find some insult or trap in my words. When nothing came to mind, she shrugged and wrote her number on the back of my check and handed it to me.
“You can pay for the coffee some other time,” she said, and the balance of power between us shifted. I had been flirting before, but now she had a hold on me. I wanted to call her, to see her, to show her the valley behind my Bel-Air home.
Our fingers touched as she handed me the check. I took her hand and kissed those fingers twice.
I left with no intention of ever speaking to Belinda again.
49
I drove down to the Sears, Roebuck and Company department store in East LA and bought a high-powered CO2 BB gun with three cartridges and a tube full of 6 mm shot. Then I drove down to Hooper and Sixty-fourth Street. Toward the corner of Sixty-fourth was a house that had gone vacant after the riots. It was a very small house on a huge lot. Maybe that’s why the windows weren’t broken, because you’d have to stand out in plain sight to lob a rock through the panes.