I studied the album for hours after Feather and Jesus went to bed, until I was pretty sure I knew who the murderer was.
I ENTERED THE DEEP LOT on 101st Street at nine-fifteen the next morning. Mrs. Boughman was sweeping the ground with a straw broom. I hadn’t seen anyone sweep bare earth since I’d left the South. It wasn’t a pleasant memory.
“Good morning, Mr. Rawlins. Cedric went to work this morning,” she said proudly.
“He did? That’s great. He must be feeling better.”
“I’ll tell him that you dropped by when he gets home,” she said. “You know, it’s funny. When you left the other day, he asked me who you were.”
“Yeah. I know. How are you, Mrs. Boughman?” I asked in a tone that was less than concerned.
“Fine.”
“You know I got a gift and a warning yesterday afternoon.”
“I don’t know what you mean, Mr. Rawlins.”
“One of the deacons from that department store you call a church dropped off an envelope at my doorstep. He left it because I asked for it. But the fact that he left it at my door meant that he knew where I lived; that was the threat.”
The elder Boughman shook her head as if nothing I said made sense.
“It was a photograph album,” I continued. “A woman named Etheline Teaman had put it together. It was full of snapshots of her and her friends. All the men she ever knew. All of ’em except for two.”
If Celia Boughman were thirty feet tall, she would have spun my head like a noisemaker and left my decapitated body to run around that yard bumping up against her leg.
“Missin’ is Medgar Winters and Cedric Boughman.”
“Cedric,” she said, with odd emphasis.
“She called you, didn’t she?”
“Who?”
“Etheline. She called you and left a message for Cedric. Or maybe she saw you at church Sunday last, and said something, a little too much. Maybe about wanting to see Cedric. Maybe about taking him on a vacation to Richmond. Whatever it was, you weren’t gonna lose your deacon son and he wasn’t gonna lose his soul to a whore.”
It was when Celia Boughman’s mouth fell open that I was sure of my logic.
“You stabbed her through the heart and took the evidence that your son had been so close to her,” I said. “And then when you couldn’t take it anymore, you brought the picture album and probably a stack of letters to Reverend Winters. You confessed your sins and left him with the evidence. That’s how I see it. I saw manila envelopes like the one the book was in at the church, and I could smell the slightest hint of cheap rose water on the pages of that book.”
“Don’t tell Cedric,” she said. “Don’t tell him. He wouldn’t understand. He didn’t know what a woman like that would do to his life.”
She leaned against her broom to keep from falling.
I shook my head and walked away.
“YOU SAY THAT you suspect the woman?” Detective Andre Brown asked me. We were sitting in his office at the 77th Precinct.
I had given him the photo album and told him of my adventures between the whorehouse and church, leaving out my discovery of the murdered girl.
“Yes sir, Detective Brown.”
“Because this book was in a manila envelope and you smelled perfume when you first opened it?”
“That’s about it.”
“That’s pretty slim evidence.”
“I know.”
“So what do you want me to do?” the tall and slender Negro policeman asked. “There weren’t any fingerprints on the knife.”
“I hope that you can’t do anything. There’s no court that could judge this crime.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because an innocent young woman was murdered, officer. I owe it to her memory to tell somebody the truth.”
Silver Lining
MRS. MASTERS, I’d like you to meet Mr. Ezekiel Rawlins,” Kathy Langer said. “He’s our senior head custodian.”
I had just entered the secretary’s office. Masters was standing there next to Kathy’s desk.
“Nice to meet you,” I said to the new principal of Sojourner Truth Junior High School. “I hope you’re going to like it here at Truth.”
“Oh, yes,” Ada Masters replied. “I already love it. It’s a beautiful school. And it’s so good to meet you at last, Mr. Rawlins. Are you feeling better?”
I had missed a few days of work looking for the photograph of a man I might have known. It turned out to be the picture of a stranger. I had squandered my sick days and made a bad impression on the new boss. The worst thing about it was, I didn’t give a damn.
“Okay now,” I said. “One’a those seventy-two hour viruses. Woke up this morning and it was gone.”
Mrs. Masters’s pale blue eyes concentrated on me. She was at the midway point between fifty and sixty, petite and well dressed. The gray suit she wore was elegant, made from cashmere. The light gray blouse showing at the V of her jacket had the high sheen of silk. Her sapphire ring was real and her glasses were lined with nacre cut from a single shell. For all that expense her clothes weren’t showy; a careless eye might miss the finer touches and think that Masters was dressed according to a city employee’s salary.
The secretary, Kathy Langer, was an interesting contrast to her new boss. She was young, pert, and ready to make babies. Her coarse, nut-brown hair was almost shiny, her clothes came from the May Company bargain table or maybe JCPenny’s. A vegetarian could have eaten her blunt-toed brown shoes with a clear conscience. Her face wasn’t pretty but it was hungry, a thing most working-class men like. And she had a habit of lifting her chin to bare her throat, at least when I was in the room with her.
There I was, a big black man, in the room with two white women who would never meet traveling in their own social circles. It seemed odd to me and I wanted to say something about it. But I didn’t think that either one of them would understand or appreciate my views.
“Will you take a walk with me, Mr. Rawlins?” Mrs. Masters asked.
“Easy,” I said. “That’s the name I go by.”
I saw Kathy mouth the name. When she saw me regarding her she smiled and moved her shoulder like a lounging cat getting comfortable in a new corner.
“I’d like you to walk me around the lower campus,” Principal Masters said.
WE VISITED SEVERAL CLASSROOMS. The teachers looked wary until they saw Mrs. Masters smile at them and wave. She wasn’t like the previous principal, Hiram Newgate, who only dropped in to see what infractions he might find.
We also spent a while in the garden: the biology and agrarian science department of the school. Out there the students grew radishes and studied elementary anatomy.
Finally we came to the custodians’ bungalow. The rest of my crew was out working by then so we had the room to ourselves. It was a big rectangular space with a large table down the center of it. Along the walls were shelves crowded with cartons of paper towels, toilet tissue, and boxes filled with bottles of ammonia, window cleaner, and bleach. There were five-gallon cans of wax piled in one corner and an entire wall of pegboard hung with dozens of sets of keys next to the door. The table was strewn with newspapers, overflowing ashtrays, empty paper coffee cups, and plates with half-eaten cakes on them.
“Nice place,” Mrs. Masters said. “The kind of place where the job gets done.”
“Sorry about the mess. But, you know, if I want ’em to keep the school clean I can’t complain about this room until Friday after lunch.”
“I understand,” she said. “May I have a seat?”
“Please do.” I was thinking that Newgate never asked permission for anything. He’d stand up if you didn’t offer a seat and nurse a grudge against you from then on.