I unfolded the white sheet and read it silently.
It was a letter composed on the typewriter.
August 18, 1965
To Whom It May Concern:
The bearer of this letter, Mr. Ezekiel Rawlins, is hereby empowered by the writer, Deputy Commissioner of Police Gerald Jordan, to be given free access by the police and any other security employee as he is conducting private consultations for the Los Angeles Police Department. If there are any questions as to his authority you should contact the central office of the police department and inquire at the desk concerning the police commissioner’s business.
Gerald Jordan
Deputy Commissioner Gerald Jordan
“This is enough?” I asked.
“It should be,” Jordan said.
“And when does it go into effect?”
Past the deputy commissioner’s shoulder I could see Suggs and the third white-man-in-white coming down the hall.
“Right now, Mr. Rawlins. I called it in before coming to find you.”
I refolded the letter and put it in my shirt pocket.
“I have to leave, Mr. Rawlins,” Jordan said. “Is there anything else you need?”
“No sir.”
“What about remuneration?”
“I don’t usually take on white clients, Mr. Jordan.”
“So you want a higher fee?”
“I don’t want no fee whatsoever,” I said. “I’ll do this thing but not for you. I’ll do it for the people I care about.”
For one instant Gerald Jordan’s smug, superior attitude wavered. Behind the mask of sophistication was a face that made Nola Payne’s death mask look benign.
But then he was the politician again. Smiling and nodding at me.
“The city appreciates your goodwill, Mr. Rawlins. It’s too bad that your community doesn’t have more citizens with such a sense of civic responsibility.”
Before I could come up with a fitting reply Jordan was walking away, with Fleck scuttling behind.
“I’ll give you a ride back to your office,” Suggs said to me.
“No thanks. I think I’ll stick around here for a while. Maybe Miss Landry will come to. And I’d like to talk to the doctor.”
“That’s me,” the third white-man-in-white said. “Dr. Dommer.”
He put out a hand and I shook it.
“I don’t really have very much time, Mr. . . . ?”
“Rawlins. People call me Easy.”
“Well, Easy, I can give you a few minutes but I have to prepare for surgery this afternoon.”
“I’ll be quick.” I turned to Suggs and asked, “How do I get in touch with you, Detective Suggs?”
“The Seventy-seventh Precinct will be my home until this is finished.”
“You got it,” I said.
Suggs looked at me a moment, and then he realized that he was being dismissed. At that moment I realized the same thing. The world was changing so quickly that I was worried about making a misstep in the new terrain.
“Okay,” Suggs said. “You call me when you got anything.”
He hesitated a moment more and then turned away.
Before he was out of sight in the long white hall Dr. Dommer asked, “How can I help you, Easy?”
“How did she die?”
Dommer wasn’t a large man. His chest was concave and his brown eyebrows were bushy. His lips were normal size but flaccid and his brown eyes were on the way to becoming yellow. He had hands like a woman, long and slender, soft and tapered.
“Strangled.”
“Then why did he shoot her?”
“I can’t tell you that, Easy. Maybe he wanted to make sure that she was dead.”
“Was there anything else you found?”
“I didn’t do an autopsy. That’s the coroner’s job. But I’d say that she was knocked around quite a bit before she was killed.”
“Was she raped?”
“She had sex with someone,” the doctor said. “But considering the way she was beaten I doubt if he raped her too. There was no trauma in the vaginal area at all. This guy wouldn’t have been a gentle lover.”
“What about Miss Landry?” I asked.
“What about her?”
“Why do you have her all trussed up in that straitjacket?”
“How do you . . . ? The commissioner asked us to keep her sedated and secured.”
“Isn’t there some law against that?”
“Not if we believe that she’s a danger to herself or others.”
“Do you?”
“Is that all, Mr. Rawlins?”
“I’m coming back here tomorrow, Dr. Dommer. Please try and have Miss Landry out of those restraints.”
The doctor and I made eye contact. When I was sure that we understood each other I turned away and walked down the white maze.
6
I wandered up and down the halls until I found my way back to the reception desk. The freckled girl glanced up at me when I emerged from the swinging doors. I made it all the way to the exit before she spoke.
“Excuse me,” she said to my back.
“Yes?” I turned my head to be halfway civil.
“I’m sorry . . . about before.”
“About what?” I knew what she meant but I asked anyway.
“I’m from Memphis,” she said.
With the emphasis on the last word her Tennessee drawl took control. Her origins explained why she looked at Suggs and not me when she asked for our names. Where she came from, a white woman didn’t address a black man directly. I wasn’t supposed to speak in her presence or even look in her general direction.
“Yeah,” I said, turning back to the door.
I reached for the knob.
“Mr. Rawlings.”
“No ‘g.’ ”
“I’m sorry. Mr. Rawlins.”
I turned all the way around and went to her desk. “That’s okay. No blood drawn.”
“Are you related to those poor women?” she asked.
“Yes I am,” I said. And I didn’t feel that I was lying. Over the past few days, I came to feel a new connection between myself and the people caught up in the throes of violence. It was as if I had adopted Nola Payne as my blood sister.
“They brought them in in the early morning,” the receptionist-nurse said.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
A tremor went through her and she looked around, maybe for the Klansmen that would hang us both if she answered.
“Marianne,” she said softly. “Marianne Plump.”
We both smiled.
“What were you saying, Marianne?”
“I have a girlfriend, a colored girl that has the graveyard shift. She told me that Miss Landry said that they were killing poor black people.”
“Who?”
“She just said that it was a white man.”
“Did she say anything else?” I asked.
“Maybe,” Marianne said. “I don’t know.”
“What’s your friend’s name?”
“Tina Monroe.”
“Do you have a pencil and some paper, Marianne?”
She pointed at a pad on the edge of her desk and handed me a yellow number two. When I took the pencil our fingers touched. I think we both got a shock. It wasn’t a sexual thing but the breaking of a taboo that had governed her people and mine for hundreds of years.
“This is my number,” I said as I wrote. “I’d really appreciate knowing anything about what happened to Nola, anything that Miss Landry said. So if she can I’d like Tina to call me.”
Miss Plump nodded solemnly, taking the flimsy slip of paper.
WALKING DOWN La Cienega I thought about Marianne Plump and the shock we both felt when we touched. It wasn’t that I’d never made physical contact with a white woman before. I had been through World War II. I had had many French and English and even German lovers. I had known American white women too. But this was different. Marianne and I were cut from the same rag. We spoke the same language. And though I couldn’t explain how, I knew that the riots had broken down the barriers between us.