“What did he want you to do?”
“Ain’t nuthin’, honey,” I said. “Nuthin’ at all. How’s the kids?”
“Jesus is sewing his sail and Feather is helping him. Really she’s just drinking chocolate milk and talking.”
“I got to go out to the Palisades to see this friend of Theodore’s,” I said. “I’ll be back before ten.”
“Raymond called. He said if you needed him to call at this number.”
I wrote down the number and we hung up.
THE PHONE BOOK TOLD ME that Rita Longtree lived on Defiance Avenue. It was an orange stucco building in the middle of the block. Her door was nestled in a third-floor nook that had a small palm growing in a terra cotta pot right outside.
She was surprised to see me standing there. The orange had been wiped from her lips. Her eyes seemed different.
“Yeah?” It was the same word she used when we first met, only this time the edge was gone.
She’d been crying but that’s not what was different. I realized that she was wearing false eyelashes before.
“Rita, I need to talk to you about Jackie.”
“I don’t know her.”
“Yes you do, and if you don’t want me to say that to the cops you’ll let me in and answer my questions.”
As a rule I don’t threaten black folk with the law. That’s because most of the time I’m trying to help someone black. The police are hardly ever in the position to make a Negro’s life easier. They’re there to keep us from making trouble. But I needed to know what Rita’s connection with the dead girl was and the law opened almost any door in the ghetto.
She let me in and showed me to a chair.
The chair was blue and the couch gray; there were lavender walls and a red-and-brown carpet. It was a poor working girl’s apartment, clean and ill-fitted.
She was wearing cranberry slacks and a white T-shirt.
She looked good. Even the sorrow made her attractive.
“What you wanna know?”
“You got a picture of Jackie?”
From a table behind the couch she took a small frame that had an oval aperture. The photograph was of a lovely, smiling young woman, a little heavy but worth every pound.
“She was beautiful,” Rita said.
“You knew her pretty well?” I asked.
“Uh-huh. We were friends.”
“Did you know her before she got to know Mr. Munson?”
“No. She met Matt at a hamburger stand down Hoover. At first he’d bring her over to the office after I went home but after a while they got sloppy and I’d catch ’em. After that she’d call sometimes when he was out with a client and we talked. She was a really good person.” Sorrow constricted the last few words.
“Did she love your boss?” I asked.
Rita smiled through the tears.
“Jackie just liked men,” she said. “I mean they had to be older and they couldn’t be black but after that she wasn’t too picky. She didn’t mind if they was fat or bald or plain.”
“How about rich?” I asked.
“No. I mean she had her investment plan but you didn’t have to be rich to belong to that.”
“That was to buy her house?”
“Uh-huh. She fount this house for only twelve thousand dollars in Compton. Then she would ask her boyfriends to put up the money, like an interest-free loan. She had started payin’ it back. She called it her rent.”
“And where’d she get that?”
“She was a good girl,” Rita said. “She was only seventeen you know. And her mama could hardly make enough to pay the rent. And Jackie really liked the men she was with. So what if a couple’a them gave her money?”
It was a discussion held between women that I had been overhearing since I was a child. Poor young women with no money, and no hope for a job, taking a handout now and then from a “friend.” Maybe he was called “uncle” or a family friend. He was older and lonely and willing to let her go out dancing when she wanted to. The money was always in an envelope and never in the bedroom. Sometimes there wasn’t even sex at all, just a series of well-dressed dates and maybe a kiss or two at the end of the evening.
“Why not black men?” I asked.
“She hated her father,” Rita said. “He used to beat her mother and brother. She said that most’a the white men she was with were gentle.”
“What about Musa Tanous?”
“She loved him for real. She’d call me after they were together and tell me about his stories about castles in Jordan and Lebanon. His family used to own a castle that was a thousand years old.”
“When’s the last time she called you?”
“The morning she was killed.” Her throat tightened again.
“What time?”
“About eight. We planned to meet at Brenda’s Sunshine Diner on Eighty-second at eight-thirty but she never got there.”
“Where’d she call from?”
“The motel.”
“You sure?”
Rita nodded.
“Can I use your phone?”
“Is it long distance?”
“Station to station but I’ll give you two dollars for it.”
“You better. It’s ’cause of you I lost my job.”
“What do you mean?”
“Matt really didn’t know that Jackie was dead. When he asked me if I knew and I said yeah he fired me.”
“Oh.”
“YES?” Musa Tanous said into my ear.
“It’s Easy Rawlins,” I said.
“I’ve been waiting for you, Mr. Rawlins.”
“Where were you from eight to nine on the day Jackie was killed, Mr. Tanous?”
“Picking up floor wax from a distributor on Alameda. S&J Distributions.”
“You were in the place at eight?”
“Yes. Mr. Hind and I were having coffee. He’s an old friend.”
“What time did you leave Mr. Hind?”
“Quarter to ten. Why?”
“What time did they find Jackie?”
“Nine-fifteen,” he said, and then he choked. “She had been stabbed and beaten. She wasn’t dead until they got her to the hospital.”
Nothing I could say seemed important but still I went on, “If that’s true then I can prove that you didn’t do it.”
“Do you know who did?”
“I didn’t sign up for that. But once the cops clear you then they’ll probably find the man who did it. It’s somebody she knows. It always is.”
“So what do we do now?”
“Give me the name of your lawyer. I’ll tell him what I found out.”
Musa gave me a name, William Berg, and the number to call.
I told Rita that the lawyer would probably call but that it wouldn’t be any trouble.
It was time for me to leave but I hesitated.
“He really fired you because of Jackie?” I asked.
“Yeah. I asked him for my last paycheck but he said that I didn’t even deserve that. I can take him to court but my landlord’ll have me on the street before he’ll pay me.”
“Can you do accounting work?”
“I learned a lot from Mr. Munson. I could do simple stuff. Preparin’ and like that.”
“I can probably get you a job. I know a guy runs a place that does unofficial accounting work. Over on Pico.”
I gave her Anatole Zane’s name and number. I told her to use my name and he’d probably hire her right off.
I keep a hundred dollar bill in my wallet at all times—in the secret fold. I gave it to the young siren.
“What’s this for?” she asked. It was almost an accusation.
“To pay your rent until the next check comes through.”
“Why?”
“How old are you, Rita?”
“Twenty.”
“I’m forty-four. I went in there today and slapped your boss to the ground. That’s why he fired you. At my age a man should take responsibility where he finds it. Take that money and use it. And remember, you didn’t have to do anything for it except be on the right side of life.”
* * *
BONNIE AND I MADE LOVE that night. It wasn’t the way we usually came together. Afterward she asked, “What is it, Easy?”