Blonde Faith (22 page)

“Look up at me, man,” I commanded.

His face and body were a hodgepodge of the true Afro-American experience. There were northern European features to his bulbous nose and cheeks, Slavic influence in his Asiatic eyes, serflike economy to his compact bone structure and wide hands. His hair was kinky and his lips full. He was the jambalaya of the New World, a dozen or more European and African races competing for a piece of his body’s geography.

“Who you?” the frightened man whispered.

“Easy Rawlins.”

“What trouble you got wit’ me, man?”

“They say that Raymond Alexander killed you.”

“No, brother. No. I ain’t dead.”

“But the cops think you are,” I argued. “They after Ray.”

“Mouse know where I am, man. He got me this place.”

“You a lyin’ mothahfuckah,” I said, digging deep into the language of the street.

“I could prove it.”

I waited maybe thirty seconds before speaking. I wanted Pericles Tarr as frightened as possible so that I could get down to the truth quickly and switch back onto the track of Christmas Black.

“Get up.”

INSIDE, JACKSON BLUE, Pretty Smart, and Jean-Paul Villard were sitting in the sunken living room, gabbing like old friends. Pretty was leaning forward in her chair, asking J.P. a question.

She was wearing a blue wrapper now, with sandals that had yellow ribbons to hold them in place. When she saw me, she stood up and said, “You,” with a kind of emphasis that implied I was in trouble. But then she saw the pistol in my hand and decided it was time to sit down.

“Hey, Easy,” Jackson said, “come on in. Pretty was just tellin’ us how she live in this cute li’l house all by herself.”

I was wondering how my accomplices had insinuated themselves into the mercenary young woman’s good graces, but I didn’t have time to consider that for long.

“Yeah,” I said. “She’s been known to stretch the truth in my brief experience with her. She also said she don’t know Mouse.”

“I said I didn’t know that nickname for him,” Pretty said.

“Uh-huh. Listen up. You people stay out here and continue on with your chat. Me and Perry gonna go in the bedroom and figure a few things out.”

Perry glanced at Pretty, looking for some kind of support or help, but she turned her head away.

“Come on,” I said to the dead man.

DOWN THE HALL on the right side was a bedroom with two single beds. The one on the right was tousled. I sat on the made bed and gestured with the pistol to the one that Pretty and Perry had used for sex.

Perry sat down, clasping his hands. He slapped the palms together and rubbed them like an anxious fly.

“So?” I said.

“What you worried ’bout, man?” he whined. “I ain’t dead, so they cain’t hang Ray.”

“They can if they don’t find you,” I said.

“I wouldn’t let ’em take Ray down.”

“Don’t look like that to me.” I was speaking a street dialect that was filled with unspoken threats. This was a language that black people all over the nation knew.

“I give you my word,” Pericles pleaded.

“An’ what you give to Leafa?”

“Leafa?”

“I’m a detective, Pericles. Your wife borrowed three hunnert dollars for me to hunt you down. She told me about when you got ambushed in the war, about how you smeared the blood of your dead friends on your own face to keep from gettin’ killed. She said that she knew you weren’t dead.”

My claim was so shocking that it knocked the fear right off Perry’s face. He was trying to understand how his ploy had failed.

“Who gonna lend Meredith three hunnert dollahs?”

“EttaMae Harris, that’s who. Meredith went to EttaMae and told her that she didn’t believe Ray killed you. She said that she would hire me if Etta lent her the money.”

“What? She borrowed three hunnert dollahs just in case I was alive? She some kinda fool?”

“She’s desperate, man,” I said as if I were an enemy pretending he was a friend. “She ain’t got nuthin’. You gone. They wanna kick her outta that rented house.”

“I got money for her,” Pericles said, squaring his shoulders at the insult to his manhood.

“You do?”

“Thirty thousand dollars.”

My mind went blank for a moment. There wasn’t one Negro out of a thousand that I ever knew who could say that they had held thirty thousand dollars in their hands. As for the ones who could make such a claim, they were all gamblers or criminals.

Mouse.

“Armored car or payroll?” I asked Pericles.

“Say what?”

“You heard me, niggah,” I said, lifting the .38 three inches.

“Payroll.”

“What state?”

“Washington.”

“Are you a fool, Mr. Tarr?”

“What you mean? What you tryin’ to do, man?”

“Lemme tell you,” I said. “You went up there in a blue Pontiac you and Ray bought from Primo. You had regular plates up to Washington, but then you put on stolen ones when you got near the job. Early in the mornin’ you walked into the shop where guards were movin’ the money, two hunnert fifty thousand or more. The guards let you hit ’em in the head, and you and Ray moved all that money into the trunk, went to a motel, put it in boxes, and shipped it down here to this house.”

“Who the fuck are you, man?”

“Have you told Pretty where you got the money?”

He shook his head.

“Because if you do,” I continued, “Ray will kill both’a ya’ll.”

“I ain’t said a word.”

“You told me.”

“You got a gun and you already knew most of it.”

“If you tell anybody, you’ll be dead.”

“I just told Pretty that I won twelve thousand on the trifecta. That’s all I said. I bought her some dresses an’ said I’d take her to New York in style.”

“Gimme the money for Meredith and the kids,” I said.

Perry didn’t even stall. He went to the closet, turned an iron plate in the floor, and pulled out a pillowcase filled with stacks of twenty-dollar bills held together by rubber bands.

“Thirty thousand,” he said. “There’s a letter in there already sealed and addressed to her. I was gonna drop it off when they were asleep tonight.”

“When you leavin’ for New York?” I asked him.

“Monday. We flyin’ first class. We gonna live in Brooklyn. After I get a divorce, we be married.”

I doubted that the nuptials would ever take place, but that was okay. Perry would be better off without Pretty Smart.

“One more question,” I said.

“What?”

“Where’s Raymond?”

He blinked four times.

“No, man,” he said. “I cain’t tell ya that. Ray kill me wherever I was if I told you about that.”

I put the pistol in my pocket and sighed.

“Okay,” I said. “All right. I can see that you really mean it.”

“I cain’t tell ya,” Perry said again.

“I know. So you won’t mind when me and my friends hog-tie you and drag you back to Meredith and all them kids.”

Pericles Tarr was a man of decision despite his weaknesses. He was more afraid of his family’s love than he was of the deadliest man in Los Angeles. He gave me the address in Compton without another word of hesitation.

W
hen Perry and I came back into the living room, Jean-Paul was talking to Pretty. She was grinning and ducking her head coyly. I had the pillowcase in one hand and the .38 in the other. I’d taken the gun out again to dissuade the young bombshell from asking questions.

When Jackson saw us he got to his feet. Reluctantly, Villard followed suit.

Perry went with his woman to stand by the front door. They watched us file out. There were no words of good-bye or good luck.

“HOW’D YOU GET that girl to let you in the house?” I asked Jackson as we were driving away.

I had put Meredith’s nest egg in the trunk.

“Jean-Paul’s shoes what did it,” Jackson said with a grin.

“Shoes?”

“Martin Lane,” Jean-Paul added.

“Who?”

“These shoes cost twelve hundred dollars,” the insurance kingpin informed me.

“So?”

“Pretty asked me if I was wearing Martin Lanes,” he said. “It seems that she keeps up with the fashion.”

“That was the icebreaker, Easy,” Jackson bragged. “She was fallin’ all ovah herself to get us in there an’ figure out why my man here got them shoes. She and him goin’ out on his yacht for dinner tomorrow night.”

“Perry told me that they were flyin’ to New York on Monday,” I countered.

“She didn’t tell us nuthin’ about that. I guess she gonna be spendin’ Sunday night packin’ or sumpin’,” Jackson said. “You know Perry don’t know Martin Lane from John Henry.”

At least I broke into her house, I thought. At least she will feel some discomfort.

I WAS ANGRY AT PRETTY for being like me. She was showing her man the door because she couldn’t control her compulsions. She wanted to be near real wealth and was willing to give up whatever it was Perry had to offer for a ride on a yacht.

I was upset by her betrayal, but wasn’t Pericles the same? He’d run from a wife and a house full of children. He was just getting what he deserved. None of us were innocent. Why shouldn’t Pretty go for the brass ring?

Jean-Paul and Jackson were talking about how sexy Pretty was when I started considering Mouse.

I knew his address, but still I had to tread cautiously. He’d done the robbery already; that job was over. So why was he still so scarce? The only answer was that he’d gotten into some other business upon his return. And whatever that business was, it was probably dangerous. I was Raymond’s best friend, but he didn’t want me sticking my nose in his affairs.

“…right, Easy?” Jackson was asking.

“What?”

“Ain’t it true what I said to Jean-Paul? That most white men in America don’t know how beautiful a black woman is.”

I could almost see Mouse turning toward me in anger. I felt the thrill of fear right there in the car.

“That’s right,” I agreed.

“Why is that, Easy?” Villard asked.

I resented him using my name without knowing why. He was a nice enough guy. He was a philanderer and a murderer and maybe a trafficker in slaves, but none of that had anything to do with me.

“Because they know what would happen if they let themselves love our women,” I said from some unconscious, resentful, frightened place.

“What do you mean?”

“If they loved our women, then they would become our men,” I said. “And once that happened, they’d lose their advantage. Their children would be dark skinned. Their history would be our history, and their crimes would be shown for what they are.”

Jean-Paul frowned, truly contemplative for the first time since I’d met him. I gazed up in the rearview mirror and saw that Jackson was looking at my reflection in a rare show of intellectual respect.

I drifted back into thinking about my problems.

How was I going to give the money to Meredith Tarr? She didn’t look all that stable from where I sat. She might, given the right (or maybe wrong) circumstances, start blaming me for killing her husband. She wouldn’t have to look too deeply to find out that Ray and I were friends. Maybe I was part of a plot to pay her off.

I decided that I’d have to read the letter.

There’s never a scarcity of problems for people like me. As soon as I’d come to a conclusion about Meredith’s money, I started thinking about Bonnie’s wedding. It came up in my mind stealthily, as if I had already allowed it into my consciousness without any resistance.

I had spent the night with Faith. I was on my way to a relationship with Tourmaline. The kids had accepted Bonnie’s marriage.

“You ever been in love?” I asked the gabbling men.

“You know I love Jewelle more than my whole family,” Jackson said. “You know that.”

“What if you found out that she was seein’ another man on the side?”

“She wouldn’t do that,” Jackson averred.

“Course she would, man,” I said. “When she was livin’ with Mofass she got you that house on Ozone. She was out there with you two nights a week.”

“That was different.”

“I don’t see how,” I claimed. “She loved Mofass more than a baby love her mama. And he died for her.”

We were in my roomy Ford, but it felt as if I were alone, communicating with men in other worlds. Jackson was in my mirror like an image on a small TV. I could see him responding to my statements. I could tell by his distant gaze that Jackson had not considered the depth of Mofass’s love. It was possible, very possible that the old man had loved Jewelle more deeply than Jackson ever could.

Jean-Paul was sitting next to me, wondering about the gravity of the conversation. He was right there, but to me he was no more than a cartoon. He lived in a world that I could never fit into. I lived in a world where he didn’t belong no matter what kind of shoes he wore.

“But,” Villard said, “if a man can love more than one woman, why cannot women love more than one man?”

“You really believe that?” I asked the cartoon.

“I do not want to smell him,” Jean-Paul said. “I do not want him fathering my children. But love, it is like the weather. It is wonderful or it is terrible and then it changes. But you can never change it.”

I was in a vulnerable emotional state at that time. That’s the only reason Jean-Paul’s words seemed so deep. He was telling me something that I already knew but that I never really believed.

“You tryin’ to say sumpin’ ’bout Jewelle?” Jackson asked.

“Naw, man,” I said. “Bonnie’s marrying Joguye Cham.”

“The prince?” Jean-Paul asked.

“Yeah. You know him?”

“Oh, yes, very well. We have conducted business with him over the years. Investments and some insurance.”

“What’s he like?”

“He comes from a long line of headmen of his people. He was educated at Oxford and was active in revolutionary movements. He’s a… what you say… a good guy.”

A good guy. He was more than that. He saved my daughter’s life and then took my lover in payment.