Miss McKenzie’s mouth came open showing no teeth and resembling a cornered Gila monster.
“Trevor?” she said, and the big young man appeared.
He had been standing off to the side just as Mouse was.
“What you want?” Trevor barked.
“I’m working on a job,” I said. “Tryin’ to prove that Jackie was killed by Musa Tanous.”
“You lyin’, man. You the one saved him from me.”
“I’m the one saved you from the electric chair,” I corrected, “just where my client wants to put Tanous.”
Trevor squinted and moved his head around as if trying to hear some far-off sound.
“Nuh-uh, man,” he said at last. “You hit me upside the head and took my knife.”
Trevor pushed the door open, confident that round two would go in his favor. I took a pace backward and Ray took a sidle pace into view. Trevor noticed the periphery movement and swiveled his head.
“Hey, brother,” Mouse hailed.
“Trevor,” Miss McKenzie cried. “Stop it before you get in trouble.”
She would have said those words anyway but I don’t think Trevor would have stopped his onslaught if he wasn’t worried about my friend.
Mouse had the aura of danger around him. The way he walked, talked, and smiled were all harbingers of violence.
When Miss McKenzie looked at him, her frown deepened. She turned to me and asked. “What you want here, mister?”
“My name is Easy Rawlins, ma’am, and I want prove that Musa Tanous killed your daughter.” I said this with absolute certainty. And it was true. If I tried my best to prove Tanous’s guilt then maybe I’d achieve the opposite.
“Get inside, Trevor,” she said.
He obeyed her and she made room for me and Mouse.
* * *
THE FRONT ROOM was just that—a room. It had no carpeting or decoration. There was a wooden bench and a couple of wood chairs. There was a stool. Mouse took that. We all sat, even Trevor.
“Who you workin’ for?” Trevor asked.
“I can’t tell you his name,” I said. “He’s a married man and he’s afraid that his wife might find out. But he paid me to make sure that Jackie’s killer gets convicted.”
“Is it Durgen?” Trevor asked, “that white man own Trellson’s?”
“No,” I said quickly, as if avoiding the question. “Tell me what happened the day your sister was killed. Did you talk to her? Did Tanous call her?”
“She didn’t stay around here much any more,” Miss McKenzie said. “She has her own apartment and most of the time she was out cattin’ around. You know men loved her and she loved them too. I tried to get her to stay here with me but she went her own way.”
“Did she have lots of boyfriends?”
“What’s that got to do with anything?” Trevor said belligerently.
Mouse grinned.
“What you grinnin’ at, fool?” Trevor asked him.
“Don’t listen to him, Mr. Alexander,” Miss McKenzie said. “He too young to know respect.”
Mouse shrugged generously.
“I need to know what she was doin’ and who she knew,” I said. “Because that way maybe I can put Jackie and Musa in the same place at the time she was killed.”
“You ain’t the police,” Trevor said.
“And she’s no white girl,” I replied. “I hope you don’t think the cops gonna work up a sweat over her killer. If Tanous got the money for a good lawyer then he’s gonna walk.”
“And I’ll kill his ass.”
“And spend the rest of your life behind bars, or maybe the court will be lenient and execute you.”
This prospect seemed to confuse Trevor.
“Yes, Mr. Rawlins,” Miss McKenzie said. “She knew a lotta men. She wasn’t no prostitute now. Sometimes men helped her with her rent and she was out to dinner every night. But money never changed hands for gettin’ in the bed.”
“Did you know many of them?”
“Not a lot. Mr. Tanous was really the only one she stuck with. He was nice to all of us.”
“He killed Jackie, mama. He killed her. How can you call that nice?”
“The Lord will take care of all that, boy. Yes he will.”
Trevor jumped up from his wood chair and stormed out the front door.
After he was gone conversation became easier.
“Other than this Durgen, are there any other men that she might have known, Miss McKenzie?”
“She had started to see a man named Bob Henry. He’s got a gas station on Alameda. And then there’s Matthew Munson. He does taxes down here on Central.”
“How old was Jackie?” I asked.
“She told everybody she was nineteen. She looked twenty-one but she was just seventeen, Mr. Rawlins. Just a girl.” Miss McKenzie’s eyes filled with tears. “When she moved out she took all of her dolls. And you know she was a good girl. She always said that she was going to buy me my own house in the country where I could have a garden and Trevor could have him a horse.”
“WHY YOU WANT me wit’you on this, Ease?” Mouse asked as we rode down Hooper.
He had one foot up on my dashboard and the other knee laid flat on the seat. He wore a yellow short-sleeved shirt that was loose fitting with soft gray slacks and maroon-colored shoes with no socks. Those were his “slumming” clothes.
“Somethin’ to wear but not to go nowhere in,” as he’d told me more than once.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I missed runnin’ around with you when I thought you were dead. And if the guy who hired me is right and he didn’t kill that girl, then I thought I might need you to back me up.”
“So you was lyin’ when you said that you were tryin’ to prove Mustard did it.”
“Musa,” I said. “And, yeah, I was lyin’ but either way I’ll do what she would want. If Musa did it I’ll find out and if he didn’t I’ll find out who it was instead.”
“An’ what’s he payin’?”
“It’s just a country trade, Raymond. No money.”
“Then what do I get wastin’ my time when I could be winnin’ money off’a Ginny?”
“Theodore asked me to look into this,” I said.
“So?”
“That means he will owe me a pair of handmade shoes.”
Raymond lit up there next to me. He might have been a child he was so pleased.
“Drive on, my man,” he said. “Drive on.”
* * *
OUR FIRST STOP was a small apartment building on Manchester. Doreen McKenzie had given us the key to her daughter’s apartment mostly because she seemed to have a deep regard for Mouse.
“How do you know that woman?” I had asked my friend.
“Don’t know her far as I can remember, Ease.”
“Then why she show you so much respect?”
“I got a rep, man. People know who I am. You know that.”
“Yeah.”
Her apartment was built on the model of shotgun architecture of the Deep South. Three rooms in a line from front to back. And because she was on the first floor there was a back door too.
We entered into her bedroom. It was furnished with a big mattress held aloft by a cherry frame, and a vanity with lipsticks, powder cases, and bottles of perfume scattered about. The next room was the toilet. There was makeup crowding the sink and nylons hanging from a rack above the tub.
The last room was the kitchen. It was stacked with dirty dishes and fashion magazines. She had been cutting out pictures of women in sexy poses.
The only food she had was milk that had gone bad and cornflakes, both of them kept in the refrigerator.
Other than the magazines there was no reading material in the house. There were no photographs, no calendar, phone book, telephone directory, or television set. There was a radio on the kitchen counter. It was set on the station KGFJ which specialized in soul music. I knew that because Mouse turned it on.
There were condoms in her medicine cabinet—dozens of them.
There was nothing under the bed.
I was looking between the mattress and box springs when Mouse asked, “What you lookin’ for, Easy?”