“I didn’t mean to drop it on you, baby,” I said. “I mean . . . I guess I feel a little crazy out here.”
“Are you okay, Easy?”
“No.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t think that white boy killed Nola.”
“That really isn’t up to you, is it?”
“No. But if I don’t look at it closely I can’t be sure the police will either.”
“Why not? That’s their job.”
“At best their job is keeping the peace,” I said. “And right here the peace will be best served by this white man takin’ the heat.”
“Oh,” she said.
“And if he didn’t kill her, then somebody else did. But the cops won’t care about that. They never worry about exactly who did what. Catchin’ crooks is like herdin’ cattle for them. So what if one or two get away? They’re bound to be caught somewhere down the line. And if they round up an innocent man, they’ll just tell ya that he probably did somethin’ else they didn’t catch him for.”
“But Easy,” Bonnie said.
“What?” I lit up a Lucky Strike.
“You don’t have the kind of resources that the police do. You can’t go out there and find some killer that you know nothing about.”
“You’re right about that, honey. But . . .”
“What?”
“That’s why those people were out there shootin’ and burnin’ and throwin’ rocks. Because they’re sick and tired of knowin’ that they can’t ever get it right. They’re tired’a bein’ told that they can’t win.”
“Did they win?” she asked me.
“They mighta been wrong,” I said. “But at least they tried.”
“Okay.”
It was more than her giving in to my hardheaded ways. She knew that I needed her blessing to go out so far from safety.
“I love you,” we both said together.
After she hung up I slammed the pay phone handset down so hard that it broke in my hand.
I DROPPED BY my office at Sojourner Truth before going to meet Juanda. I had an extra suit of clothes in a locked closet there. It was a rabbit gray two-piece ensemble with a single-button jacket. I also had a cream-colored shirt and bone shoes. I took the clothes down to the boy’s gym, where I showered and shaved, powdered, and dabbed on cologne. There were still a few soldiers and policemen prowling the campus but the aftermath of the riot was winding down.
JUANDA WAS WAITING out in front of her door on Grape Street. She had preened a bit too. She was wearing a white miniskirt and a tight-fitting multicolored striped blouse. She wore no hose or socks and only simple leatherlike sandals. She wore no jewelry and had nothing in her hair.
Juanda’s hair was not straightened, which was rare for Negro women in the ghettos of America at that time. Her hair was natural and only slightly trimmed. There was a wildness to it that was almost pubic.
She smiled for me when I hopped out to open her door.
“That’s another reason I like older men,” she said when we were both seated and on our way.
“What’s that?”
“They remember to be gentlemen even after you kissed ’em.”
“But you never kissed me,” I said.
“Not yet.”
I STARTED DRIVING and Juanda began to talk. She told me about her cousin Byford who had recently come to Los Angeles from Texas by hitchhiking. His mother, Juanda’s mother’s sister, had died suddenly and he was alone in the world.
Juanda’s mother, Ula, had been angry at Byford’s mother for over twenty years. It seems that when their mother died, Ula suspected her sister Elba of having taken their mother’s set of cameos that she’d received from a rich white lady she worked for.
That was why Ula left Galveston, because she couldn’t stand living in the same town as her thieving sister.
The sisters were estranged, so all that Byford, who was only thirteen, knew was that his Auntie Ula lived somewhere in L.A. He stuck out his thumb and made it all the way to southern California, getting rides with young white longhairs mainly.
He found his auntie by walking the streets of Watts asking anybody he met, did they know an Ula Rivers.
“Byford is pure country,” Juanda was saying. “I mean, he go barefoot everywhere and only drink from jelly jars. Sometimes he even go to the baffroom in the backyard if somebody in the toilet an’ he cain’t hold it . . .”
I could have listened to her for weeks without getting tired. She was from down home, Louisiana and Texas. She was more than twenty years my junior but we could have been twins raised in the same house, under the same sun.
I knew many young teens like her who attended Sojourner Truth. But they were children and I harbored the mistaken belief that I had left my rude roots behind. I owned apartment buildings and a dozen suits that cost over a hundred dollars each. But a tight dress on a strong country body along with the prattle that I hadn’t heard since childhood sent a thrill through my heart.
Juanda’s conversation was like home cooking was to me after five years’ soldiering in Africa and Europe. I didn’t stop eating for a week after I got home.
WE HEADED WEST toward Grand Street downtown. There we came to a small hotel called The Oxford. It had a fine restaurant on the first floor called Pepe’s. The maître d’ was a chubby, golden-hued Iranian named Albert who liked me because I once proved that he was in San Diego when his wife’s mother’s house had been robbed. Albert had married a white woman whose parents hated him. He had never experienced racism of that nature before. Being Persian, he disliked many other peoples but never for something as inconsequential as skin color or an accent.
“Mr. Rawlins,” he said, giving me a broad grin.
The room was dim because, like most L.A. restaurants, Pepe’s had no windows. That’s because the sun in the southland was too strong and the heat generated by windows didn’t make for comfortable dining.
Most of the fifteen tables were set for two at lunchtime. The chairs had leather padded arms and seats.
The dining room was nearly full. All of the other diners were white.
Albert led us to a secluded corner table that had a banquette made for two. He didn’t say anything about Juanda’s faux leather or revealing attire. He would have seated us if we were wearing jeans and straw hats.
Once we were comfortable Albert asked, “Is there anything that the lady does not eat?”
“Juanda?” I said, passing the question on to her.
“I don’t like squash or fish,” she told me.
“Then we won’t bring you any,” Albert said.
He went away and Juanda hummed a long appreciative note.
“You come here a lot?” she asked.
“Not often,” I said. “I did Albert a favor once and he told me that I could always eat here free of charge.”
“Don’t the people own the restaurant get mad at that?”
“His brother owns the hotel.”
“Damn.”
“Juanda?”
“Yeah, Easy?” Even the way she said my name exhilarated me.
“Do you know a man named Piedmont?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What’s he like?”
“He’s a man. Big long arms and bug eyes. He used to be a boxer but then he got hurt and by the time he was better he was too lazy to go to the gym anymore.”
“Is he a bad man like Loverboy?”
“No. He okay.”
“Your salads,” Albert said.
He put two plates before us. They were green salads made up of frisée lettuce, cherry tomatoes, cut green beans, and a strong garlic vinaigrette.
Juanda loved it. And I loved her loving it.
“You know how I can get in touch with Piedmont?” I asked as she was eating her third slice of French bread.
“Why?”
“Because I think he might help me find a man I’m looking for.”
“Can I at least finish my salad before you start askin’ me all kinds’a questions?” she asked playfully.