“Really it ain’t her. Or maybe it is,” Jackson speculated.
“What, Jackson? What you tryin’ t’say?”
“Misty Stubbs.”
“Who’s that?”
“She’s Jewelle’s half-sister on her dead daddy’s side.”
“Yeah? So?”
“Jewelle’s been writin’ to Misty down in Texas all these years since she been up here. She been askin’ Misty to come up but the girl got married when she was fifteen and had to stay with her husband. You know, like it should be. Anyway, I guess her and the husband started not gettin’ along a while back and Misty finally decided to come out here. We went down to Greyhound and everything but she didn’t show up.”
“But she said she was comin’?”
“Give us the schedule and everything.”
“Did JJ call her house in Dallas?”
“How could she do that, man? Misty was leavin’ her husband.”
“Maybe Misty changed her mind.”
“They closer than full sisters is, Easy. Misty wouldn’t do somethin’ like that and not say.”
“Well what do you want from me?” I said. “Girl got on a bus or she didn’t. Maybe her husband stopped her. Maybe she got pulled off somewhere on the road. Either way it’s the kinda story you tell to the cops.”
“But I didn’t say about Clovis yet,” Jackson said.
“Okay. Okay. Hit me.”
“Clovis come over to the real estate office three days ago. She waltzed right up to Jewelle’s desk like they never had no problems. You know Jewelle ain’t scared’a Clovis and them no more ’cause she got Jackie and Lorenzo workin’ for her. Those boys always go around armed.”
I knew Jackie and Lorenzo. They were okay. But Clovis MacDonald, Jewelle’s aunt, was deadlier than three men and almost as smart as her niece.
“Clovis was all smilin’ and pleasant,” Jackson continued. “So Jewelle knew that somethin’ was wrong. She axed Clovis why she was there and Clovis said that Jewelle done stoled Mofass’s real estate company from her and she wanted a piece of the business back.”
Clovis was wrong to have blamed Jewelle. It was really Mofass and I who pushed Clovis out of the business. But the real problem with her memory was that she had taken the business from Mofass in the first place. When Clovis was just a waitress, at a nameless diner we used to frequent, she seduced Mofass and then imprisoned him in her house. Jewelle helped him escape and then she took over the real estate office and turned it into a major concern. At one time I thought that I could be in the property business, but once I saw how good Jewelle was I realized that I would always be a little fish.
“What did Jewelle say?”
“She axed Clovis to leave. Clovis just smiled and put up her hands. But before she left she said, ‘I bet you Misty would be happy if you signed me back into the business. I bet you that she’d come hug and kiss you if you did the right thing.’”
I could imagine the chill in that evil woman’s smile. Mouse had once asked me if I wanted Clovis dead. He didn’t like hurting women but he made allowances now and then. I told him no, but deep in my heart I knew that it would have been the safe move to make.
“What you think about that, Easy?”
“What do you mean what do I think? I don’t think anything.”
“Come on, man. Clovis knew that Misty came down here. Somehow she fount out and grabbed her.”
“You don’t know that, Jackson. It could have been just some innocent comment. That’s all.”
Jackson Blue stood up from his seat with such force that the chair he was in flew five feet backward and crashed to the floor.
“Fuck you, man!” he shouted. “You know better’n that shit!”
I was amazed. I had never seen, nor ever expected to see, Jackson show anger or rage. He was a coward down into his bones and always fled from confrontation.
“What’s wrong with you, Jackson?”
“She’s up in that house with Mofass now. She cain’t eat or sleep or do her job. I axed her to come to you but she wouldn’t. She’s afraid that you might go against Clovis and get her friend killed. But you know tomorrow afternoon she’s gonna go down to Equity and sign half of the business over to Clovis. That’s what’s wrong.”
It was wrong, there was no question about that. And there was no question about what I should do. JJ was a friend of mine. Equity Realty managed my three small apartment buildings in and around Watts. And Clovis was the closest thing I ever had to a true enemy.
“How can she do that, Jackson? Mofass owns the business.”
“She got the power of attorney ever since Mofass been sick. She the one wit’ the final say.”
I looked over at my pegboard of keys. They reminded me of the homemade Christmas ornaments we had when I was a child.
“You know I have to talk to her, Jackson.”
“Yeah.”
“She’s gonna be mad that you came to me.”
“I know she will, brother. But what can I do? Clovis be like a cancer once she get in there.”
I took a deep breath and wondered if a vengeful supreme deity actually existed. Or maybe it was Hindu karma that had caught me by the tail. Something was pulling me back into the street.
I DROVE UP TO MOFASS’S HOME. It was at the end of an unpaved path two turns off of Laurel Canyon Road. From the driveway of their hidden home you could see the Los Angeles basin. Ragged brown smoke clung to the atmosphere like some kind of evil spirit dancing the dance of the damned.
Jewelle opened the door. She wore a cranberry-colored dress with wide skirts and a tapered waist. The neckline was straight across and low cut. If it wasn’t for that frown she would have been captivating.
When I met JJ she was still a child. She was hopeful, filled with life and energy that made you want to laugh and do things for her happiness. Now, though sad, she had the figure and presence to make a man want to change his life for her. That’s what Jackson Blue had done. He had gone against everything that came naturally to him in order to bring me to that door.
“What you doin’ here, Easy Rawlins?”
“You know why I’m here, girl. ’Cause you need help.”
“I don’t need your kind of help,” she said.
She swung the door in my face. It would have slammed if I hadn’t put my foot across the threshold.
Jewelle possessed a powerful spirit. She had stood up to Clovis while still in her teens, saving Mofass from that evil woman’s clutches. She had borne the weight of her half-sister’s disappearance up until the moment that door would not close; then she fell up against me and cried. I walked her outside toward the sheer cliff that was the marker of their backyard. I held her as we walked because she would have fallen if I hadn’t. She was wailing by the time we reached the overhang.
“Tell me about it, baby,” I said.
“You shouldn’t be here, Easy. You shouldn’t.”
“I ain’t gonna do nuthin’ unless you say to, JJ. But you know you got to talk this out.”
“They’ll kill her.”
“Not if it means that Clovis don’t get Equity. She’d set loose Satan in the kingdom of heaven if she could just make a dollar and not pay the tax.”
It was true and JJ knew it. The woman-child smiled bitterly and pushed away from me.
“I’d give her every dollar I got to keep Misty safe,” JJ said.
“Has she told you that she has her?”
“No. Not in so many words. She says that Misty would be happy, that she’d come over and make me a toast if I did the right thing by the MacDonald clan.”
“Could she have heard that Misty was supposed to come down here? I mean if she knew that she was supposed to come and didn’t, then she could feed you a story and there’d be no way you could find out the truth.”
“She had Mr. Sunshine,” JJ said with trembling lips.
“Who’s that?”
“It’s a rag doll, a lion with jade-green eyes. Misty had that thing since before she could even talk. She always kept him with her.”