“We got to get outta here,” I said.
“Not without him,” JJ said.
“He got his oxygen mask,” I reasoned. “When the cops come they’ll call it self-defense. But if you’re here you might get in trouble.”
I CALLED THE POLICE from a phone booth, telling them that I had heard shots from Mofass’s home. Then I took JJ down near Jackson Blue’s apartment on Ozone Street in Venice.
I parked down the street and called him from a booth.
“JJ’s in trouble,” I said to the sleepy con man. “If you got a woman in there with you send her away. Take JJ in and make her feel comfortable. If the police ask, you tell ’em she was with you for the night.”
“Ain’t no woman up in here, Easy. Send her on.”
I watched as JJ walked down the block to Jackson’s house and then I went home to bed—if not to sleep.
THE MORNING EXAMINER had the triple murder and suicide on the front page. The police, tipped off by an anonymous call, went to the secluded Laurel Canyon home where they found the four corpses. Mofass had given his life for Jewelle.
She returned home that morning and told the police that she’d left early to see her boyfriend. She also informed them that Clovis had been pressing to get back into business with them. The contracts Clovis wanted them to sign seemed to prove the story.
My name was not mentioned. And I have no idea where Misty and Crawford went. Jewelle stayed in her home. Jackson didn’t move in but they still see each other.
I went back to work the next day wondering how long it would be before my past showed up and put me into an early grave.
Lavender
IT WAS A TUESDAY MORNING, about a quarter past eleven. The little yellow dog hid in among the folds of the drapes, peeking out now and then to see if I was still in the reclining living room chair. Each time he caught sight of me, he bared his teeth and then slowly withdrew into the pale green fabric.
The room smelled of lavender and cigarette smoke.
The ticking of the wind-up clock, which I had carried all the way from France after my discharge, was the only sound except for the occasional passing car. The clock was encased in a fine dark wood, its numerals wrought in pale pink metal—copper and tin most probably.
The cars on Genesee sounded like the rushing of wind.
I flicked my cigarette in the ashtray. A car slowed down. I could hear the tires squealing against the curb in front of our house.
A car door opened. A man said something in French. Bonnie replied in the same language. It was a joke of some sort. My Louisiana upbringing had given me a casual understanding of French, but I couldn’t keep up with Bonnie’s Parisian patter.
The car drove off. I took a deep drag on the Pall Mall I was nursing. She made it to the front step and paused. She was probably smelling the mottled yellow-and-red roses that I’d cultivated on either side of the door. When I’d asked her to come live with us she said, “As long as you promise to keep those rosebushes out front.”
The key turned in the lock and the door swung open. I expected her to lag behind because of the suitcase. She always threw the door open first and then lifted the suitcase to come in.
My chair was to the left of the door, off to the side, so the first thing Bonnie saw was the crystal bowl filled with dried stalks of lavender. She was wearing dark blue slacks and a rust-colored sweater. All those weeks in the Air France stewardess uniform made her want to dress down.
She noticed the flowers and smiled but the smile quickly turned into a frown.
“They came day before yesterday.”
Bonnie yelped and leapt backward. The little yellow dog jumped out of hiding, looked around, and then darted out through the open door.
“Easy,” she cried. “You scared me half to death.”
I stood up from the chair.
“Sorry,” I said. “I thought you saw me.”
“What are you doing home?” Her eyes were wild, fearful.
For the first time I didn’t feel the need or desire to hold her in my arms.
“Just curious,” I said.
“What are you talking about?”
I took two steps toward her. I must have looked a little off wearing only briefs and an open bathrobe in the middle of a workday.
Bonnie took a half-step backward.
“The flowers,” I said. “I was wondering about the flowers.”
“I don’t understand.”
“They been sittin’ there since the special-delivery man dropped them off. Me and the kids were curious.”
“About what?”
“Who sent ’em.” The tone of my voice was high and pleasant but the silence underneath was dead.
“I don’t understand,” Bonnie said. I almost believed her.
“They’re for you.”
“Well?” she said. “Then you must have seen the note.”
“Envelope is sealed,” I said. “You know I always try to teach my children that other people’s mail is private. Now what would I look like openin’ your letter?”
She heard the my in “my children.”
Bonnie stared at me for a moment. I gestured with my right hand toward the tiny envelope clipped to an upper stem. She ripped off the top flowers getting the envelope free. She tore it open and read. I think she must have read it through three times before putting it in her pocket.
“Well?”
“From one of the passengers,” she said. “Jogaye Cham. He was on quite a few of the flights.”
“Oh? He send all the stewardesses flowers?”
“I don’t know. Probably. He’s from a royal Senegalese family. His father is a chief. He’s working to unite the emancipated colonies.”
There was a quiet pride in her words.
“He was on at least half of the flights we took and I was nice to him,” Bonnie continued. “I made sure that we had the foods he liked and we talked about freedom.”
“Freedom,” I said. “Must be a good line.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, suddenly angry. “Black people in America have been free for a hundred years. Those of us from the Caribbean and Africa still feel the bite of the white man’s whips.”
It was an odd turn of a phrase–—“the white man’s whips.” I was reminded that when a couple first become lovers they begin to talk alike. I wondered if Jogaye’s speeches concerned the white man’s whips.
I didn’t respond to what she said, just inhaled some more smoke and looked at her.
After a brief hesitation Bonnie picked up her suitcase and carried it into our bedroom. I returned to the big chair, put out the butt and lit up another, my regimen of only ten cigarettes a day forgotten. After a while I heard the shower come on.
I had installed that shower especially for Bonnie.
If someone were to walk in on me right then they might have thought that I was somber but calm. Really I was a maniac trapped by a woman who would neither lie nor tell the truth.
I’d read the note, steamed it open, and then glued it shut. It was written in French but I used a school dictionary to decipher most of the words. He was thanking her for the small holiday that they took on Madagascar in between the grueling sessions with the French, the English, and the Americans. It was only her warm company that kept his mind clear enough to argue for the kind of freedom that all of Africa must one day attain.
If she had told me that it was a gift from the airlines or the pilot or some girlfriend that knew she liked lavender, then I could have raged at her lies. But all she did was leave out the island of Madagascar.
I had looked it up in the encyclopedia. It’s five hundred miles off the West African coastline, almost a quarter million square miles in area. The people are not Negro, or at least do not consider themselves so, and are more closely related to the peoples of Indonesia. Almost five million people lived there. A big place to leave out.