“No ‘g,’ ” I said.
“Oh.”
“Can we go in now?” Suggs asked.
The nurse stood aside, looking down.
I remember that moment very clearly. The white walls and floors, even the doorknobs were painted that colorless hue. And that brave young woman made shy by simple honesty. The cop who was the first piece of solid evidence I had that the white man’s grip on my throat was losing strength. All of that brought me to a doorway that I didn’t really want to go through. I should have turned away right then. I wanted to turn away. But it was as if there was a strong wind at my back. I had resisted it all through the riots: the angry voice in my heart that urged me to go out and fight after all of the hangings I had seen, after all of the times I had been called nigger and all of the doors that had been slammed in my face. I spent my whole early life at the back of buses and in the segregated balconies at theaters. I had been arrested for walking in the wrong part of town and threatened for looking a man in the eye. And when I went to war to fight for freedom, I found myself in a segregated army, treated with less respect than they treated German POWs. I had seen people who looked like me jeered on TV and in the movies. I had had enough and I wasn’t about to turn back, even though I wanted to.
The door opened and the wind blew me through.
The room we came into was bright. Three men were standing around a silver table that held the nude corpse of a Negro woman.
The men had on white smocks. Almost everything in this room was white. The walls and floor, the counters and the ceiling. Two of the men had on white shoes.
Just one pair of black dress shoes and Nola Payne brought any color into that lifeless room. And the shoes and Nola were just so much dead flesh.
“Yes, Detective Suggs,” a bald white man with a trim gray mustache said.
“This is the man I told you about, sir. Ezekiel Rawlins.”
“Why did you bring him here?”
“I thought he should see what we saw, Captain. I mean he is going to go out investigating.”
The bald man turned his eyes to me. He started at the floor and worked his way up. I knew what he saw. I had on brown-red leather shoes, gray slacks, and a square-cut charcoal shirt. I had gone casual down into SouthCentral, not expecting an interview with a white man standing in a black man’s hell.
“Investigate?” he said to me.
“And your name is?” I replied.
The captain looked over at Suggs. The detective had no response.
“I’m the one in charge here,” the captain said.
I made the mistake then of glancing at the corpse. She wasn’t young—thirty-three or -four. I couldn’t tell if she’d been pretty. Her hair had a reddish tint that some midwestern Negroes were prone to. One of her eyes was gone, probably due to a gunshot, and her tongue was sticking out of her mouth from her having been strangled, no doubt. The thing that caught my eye was the trickle of red blood that had started from somewhere above her lip, crossed over her teeth, and dribbled down her cheek. It was as if she died with her lips whispering vermilion secrets.
“Well if you’re in charge, then may I be excused?” I asked the arrogant white man.
“What is this, Melvin?” the captain asked. “A joke?”
“No sir,” Suggs said.
“What’s your name again?” the captain asked me.
“I haven’t got yours the first time yet.”
“Enough of this, Lee,” the other as yet unnamed white man said.
He was a head taller than the captain or Suggs, my height. He looked familiar but I didn’t remember where it was that I had seen him. His face was slender and hard. He had tight black eyes and black hair, no lips to speak of, and a tiny red mark under his right eye.
“I’m Captain Fleck,” the bald cop said. “And I asked you a question.”
“No sir, Captain, you did not. You said the word ‘investigate’ in an interrogative tone. But tone alone does not a question make.”
The third white man snickered. I appreciated the audience.
“Let’s get out of here,” the tall white man who was really in charge said.
I had no argument with that.
4
The tall man led Captain Fleck and me into an office that had a sign on it saying DR. TURNER, M.D. We left the third white man and Suggs in the colorless hallway.
Turner’s office was a welcome relief. There was an orange-and-blue carpet, a brown desk, and four splashy landscapes on the wall.
And there was a test there for us. The room had three chairs: one behind the desk and two in front. The tall man went to the guest chair on the left. Captain Fleck turned toward the doctor’s chair, but I was closer. I cut him off, taking the padded swivel chair for myself.
Fleck stood over me and stared down, waiting for me to give up the preferred seat.
It was crazy. All of it. I never did anything like that when involved with the intricate dance necessary to keep out of trouble with the law. I rarely spoke around white men with authority. I never willingly said anything intelligent. And to go so far as to tease a cop—that wasn’t even me.
But there I was, sitting back in the head man’s chair with Captain Fleck staring death down on my head.
“Sit down, Lee,” the tall white man said.
For a moment Fleck remained motionless.
“Lee.”
He faltered and I smiled. If we were alone he would have drawn his pistol, I’m sure. But all he could do was obey his master’s call. It’s no wonder I always order sweet and sour when I go to a Chinese restaurant. You can’t enjoy the pleasures of one without at least the presence of the other.
When we were all seated and comfortable the tall white man said, “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Rawlins. My name is Jordan, Gerald Jordan.”
“You’re the deputy chief,” I said, remembering at last, “the one in charge of the curfew.”
“That’s right. But the curfew has been lifted. Everybody can go where they want when they want as long as they obey the law.”
Deputy Commissioner Jordan was a terror on the TV. He called the rioters thugs and criminals who had no respect for property and no reason to riot other than their own immoral desires to loot and destroy. Jordan’s inflammatory words had probably caused the violence to last a day longer than it would have. On television he always wore a black dress uniform with medals across the left breast. That’s why I hadn’t recognized him in the makeshift morgue.
“Well, Deputy Commissioner, what is it you want from me?”
“I’m not here, Mr. Rawlins,” he said.
“No? Am I here?”
“Not with me. As far as any records are concerned, we had you come down to identify Nola Payne. You failed to do so and were taken home.”
“And who brought me here?”
“Detective Suggs brought you, and Captain Fleck debriefed you.”
“I see.”
Jordan smiled. I liked him. I liked him the way a slave learns to love his master or a prisoner develops an affinity with his warden. Gerald Jordan was the white man in charge. He was the closest I had ever come to the source of our problems. I wondered if I killed him right then, would the problems of my people become that much lighter? Of course the idea was ridiculous. Realizing the impotence of my fantasy, I laughed.
“Something funny, Mr. Rawlins?” Jordan asked.
“Not you, sir.”
“Let’s get down to business, shall we?”
“It’s your show.”
“Lee?” Jordan said.
The bald captain cleared his throat.
“Nola Payne was found by her aunt in the living room of her third-floor apartment on Grape Street earlier today,” the sour captain reported.
“Not to me, Lee,” the deputy commissioner said. “Mr. Rawlins is the one who will need this information.”
Fleck would have much rather spit in my face but he controlled himself. He did a quarter turn in the visitor’s chair and fixed his gaze on my forehead.