The students had put up an art show down the main hall of the arts building. Some of those black children had real talent. Portraits and landscapes, abstractions and stories about the good life of being young. Most of them would end up trading in their paintbrushes and watercolors for janitors’ brooms and mail sacks.
There was one painting of me. It was a full body portrait. I was wearing my herringbone jacket and pointing the way to a small boy, probably First Wentworth. I was pointing on ahead and looking in that direction. There was a smile on my face, my teeth were showing.
“You like it, Mr. Rawlins?” Nora Dewhurst, the art teacher, asked.
“That’s somethin’ else. Who did it?”
“Starla Jacobs. It’s her first attempt with oils. You know, she’s a natural painter. See how she made the paint thicker in your face and hands. I think she knew intuitively that that application would make the portrait come to life.”
It wasn’t the person I saw every morning in the mirror; not the hard-knocks black man from the Deep South. Not my jaw-line exactly. But it had my spirit and my style. She caught the pride in my eye from being able to help a young boy make it on his way. It was the Easy Rawlins they knew at Sojourner Truth.
“You think she’d take seventy-five dollars for it?” I asked.
Nora Dewhurst had blue-gray hair. Her eyes were nearly clear with just a touch of blue to them. She was close to retirement, had taught in Los Angeles public schools since 1926. But her eyes bulged with such surprise that you’d think no one had ever purchased one of her students’ paintings.
“Mr. Rawlins, I don’t know what to say. You would make a painter out of Starla if you were to do such a thing.”
“She’s already a painter.”
“You know what I mean.”
And there we were, a black man from the Deep South and a white woman from New York City, both aware of how little chance those kids had. We didn’t quite say it because neither of us wanted to know what would happen if we let the truth out of the bag.
“Tell her to put a matte board around it and I’ll pick it up on Friday after the last class.”
Nora kissed me on the cheek. Two little girls standing nearby gasped and ran away.
THAT EVENING I was in my car, down the street from Oliphant’s garage. I’d parked next to a vast concrete wall, far away from any streetlamp. And I sat low so that any passing cruiser wouldn’t see me watching.
Redheaded Ed came out at eight-fifteen. He wheeled a small motorbike to the corner. Five minutes later Amiee drove up. She opened the trunk and Ed put the bike in.
Everybody but Tilly and Eggersly had gone by nine. At ten they were still in there. They were playing cards, throwing down money and pulling from the deck.
Just past eleven a yellow Porsche drove up to the garage door and was admitted. Fifteen minutes later a red sports car pulled up. It must have been European because I didn’t recognize the make.
After that Tilly Monroe put up ten-foot opaque screens in front of the glass doors. That didn’t bother me though. I had already scoped out a building behind the garage that had a fire escape. I made my way back there and climbed up halfway between the second and third floors. From there I had a night bird’s eye view through the skylight.
There had been two men in each car. By the time I reached my perch they’d donned blue coveralls and covered the floor with a heavy tarp. Then they put up clear plastic tents around the cars. Tilly was already taping the chrome.
I decided at that moment I should take a class in photography.
The yellow car turned a dark green while I watched.
They were just turning their attention to the red car when a police cruiser pulled up to the door. I smiled. The job was being done for me. Any lawyer could punch holes in Oliphant’s story about Ross if he had been arrested for painting stolen cars.
But it was just a friendly visit. The police came in and conversed with Oliphant while the red car turned white. They received an envelope and a handshake and went on along their way.
Two of the thieves were rolling up the tarp and washing off the spray-paint nozzles by the time the cops left. The other two were shining powerful lamps on the newly painted cars. I watched them clean and dry while Tilly and Gator went into the glassed-in office and smoked.
The thieves were through with their work by three. Three of them drove off in the stolen automobiles but one walked away.
He went over to Pico and turned east. I followed him for two blocks, taking one-and-a-half steps for every one of his. When I was right behind him he turned his head to the side.
“Don’t turn around,” I said. “Unless you want I should shoot you.”
I pressed the muzzle of my .38 in between his shoulder blades and took out his wallet.
“You robbin’ me?”
The short, white car thief sounded surprised. I guess he figured that a man committing a crime was immune from being held up. Like a first-class passenger thinking that his plane can’t crash.
“Oliphant sent me,” I said.
“What for?”
We had stopped walking by then. We were standing there at the corner, two men on a short line to nowhere.
“He wants his money or your blood,” I said, reading the name on his license, “Mr. Tremont.”
“Then what you take my wallet for?”
“To see if you had one of his thousand dollar bills.”
“He had thousand dollar bills in there?”
“Don’t try and play me, man,” I said. “Just gimme the money and I bust your leg. That’ll make us all even.”
“I swear I didn’t do it,” the thief cried.
“Step over here, out of the light,” I said.
Alan Tremont did as he was told. We walked into the entryway of a bank building. He tried to turn around but I cuffed him on the ear, saying, “Eyes front.”
He started trembling then.
“Please, man. I didn’t do it. I swear I didn’t do it.”
“Then why Oliphant put me on you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.”
“Gimme somethin’ then,” I said. “Gimme somethin’ or I blow out the back’a your head.”
“I wasn’t even there, man,” Alan Tremont said. “I wasn’t even in town. We had a line on a car down in San Diego. Me and Pete did.”
“I’m goin’ to see Pete right after I kill you.” I wanted to put my intentions in plain language. Simple terms are often the most frightening.
“I can’t prove it, man. If you think it was me and Pete what, I mean…Listen, I got thirty-six hundred dollars I been savin’ up…I could give it to you.”
I paused for a moment, letting him think I was considering the offer.
“I could get it for you tonight,” Alan said.
“Who do I hang it on then?” I asked.
“You could just say that I got away from you.”
“Better to have the man who did it. You say it wasn’t you, right?”
“No. But I don’t know who did it. All I know is that it wasn’t me and it wasn’t Pete neither. We weren’t in town.”
“Then who?”
“It could’a been anybody. No one was workin’ that night and we all knew it. That was Tuesday and Tuesdays Oliphant spends with Thana Jamieson. Nobody works if Oliphant ain’t there.”
“Who do you think though, Alan? ’Cause you see, boy, I got to kill somebody. I’d like your money but I got to kill somebody or else I got to take Eggersly out. ’Cause if I don’t get you he bound to come after me.”
“Maybe it was the one they said. Maybe it was the, the colored guy.” He almost said “nigger” but held back due to the cast of my own words.
“He’s out.”
“Then Tilly’s your man,” Alan said. “Tilly hates Oliphant. He’s always talkin’ behind his back. He’s been fuckin’ Ollie’s wife for over a year. He does it on Tuesdays, when Ollie’s with Thana. Tilly stoled it if anybody did.”
“Okay. Okay. You know the Farmer’s Market up on Fairfax and Third Street?”
“Yeah.”