Darker Than Amber (11 page)

"Askin' fo' me, mister?"
"I phoned earlier and somebody told me you'd be home round six."
"Wantin' maid work done at the beach?" She was bending, peering in at me, manifestly suspicious.
"Would you please get into the car and sit for a minute, Mrs. Walker?"
"No need, mister. I ain't got me no free day at all. Maybe could get you somebody, you say who to phone up." I took the keys out of the ignition and tossed them onto the seat, toward her. I said, "Mrs. Walker, you can hold the car keys in your hand and leave that door open."
"I Don't want no maid work?"
"No."
"What is it you wantin'?"
I had the folded fifty-dollar bill in my shirt pocket, and took it out and reached and stuck one corner of it under the car keys. She moved away and I suddenly realized she was going to the rear of the car to glance at the plates. She came back, looked in at me. "What you 'spect to buy?"
"Some conversation."
"You tryin' set me up someways, somebody con you rong. Could be some other gal. I never mess with no white stud, never been in law trouble. I'm a hard-working widow woman, and I got two baby boys in the house there, so best thing you be on your way.
I got out Vangie's picture, held it where she could see it. "That there's Miz Western. I wuk for her a long time, here at that Cove Lane."
"You used to work for her. She's dead."
For the first time she looked directly into my eyes. Her mouth firmed up, and I saw a shrewd light of intelligence behind her eyes.
"Fuzz doan throw big money to nigger women, 'less it's got a mark on it, you come back a-raidin', find it and take me into town sayin' it's stole, and get me sayin' things to frame up who you think done it."
"I'm not the law. I just want to know what you know about Tami Western. It might help me get a line on who did it. I want to know her habits. And the longer we keep talking, the more all your neighbors are going to wonder what's happening."
"Big friend of Miz Western maybe?" She had a bland and vacuous expression.
"She was a cheap, sloppy, greedy slut. Where can we talk?"
"Where you from, Mister?"
"Fort Lauderdale."
"Down there any chance you know any Sam B. K. Dickey?"
"I worked with him once. A mutual friend was in trouble."
"Likely he knowin' your name?"
"Travis McGee."
"Please, you wait a piece, mister."
It was a ten-minute wait. Some children came to stand and stare warily at me from a safe distance.
She came back out and leaned in the door as before. Her smile looked tired. "Just to be certain, Mr. McGee, I asked Mr. Sam to describe you. He was quite picturesque about it. But it fits. And he said I can trust you a hundred percent, which is something Mr. Sam would not say too often about our own people. It saved us a lot of time to have you know him. I hope you do understand that the standard disguise is... pretty imperative. If you could come back to this area at nine o'clock, I think that would be best. Four blocks straight you'll come to a traffic light. There's a drugstore on the far corner. Park just beyond the drugstore and blink your lights a couple of times."
When I returned to that corner it was five after nine. She opened the car door quickly and got in.
"Just drive around?" I asked.
"No. Go straight ahead and I'll tell you where to turn. It's a place we can talk." It was a narrow driveway, a small back yard surrounded by a high thick hedge of punk trees. There was a small screened porch, lights on, comfortably furnished. I followed her to the porch. She had changed to a dark green jumper dress, worn with a white long-sleeved shirt, with a big loose white bow at the throat.
As I followed her onto the porch and we sat in two comfortable chairs on either side of a small lamp table, she said, "Friends of mine." She took a cigarette from her purse, lighted it. "Very conspiratorial, I know. But we're getting very used to that these days, huh, McGee. Mr. Sam said I could trust you. I'm one of the regional directors of CORE. I'm a University of Michigan graduate. I taught school before I got married. He died of cancer two years ago and I came back here. Working as a maid gives me more freedom of action, less chance of being under continual observation. Eventually I'm what you might call a militant optimist. I believe that the people of good will of both races are going to get it all worked out. Now you can stop wondering about me and my little act and tell me what you want to know. You gave an accurate picture of Tami Western. If she didn't travel so often, I would have dropped her from my list. That woman could turn that apartment into a crawling slum in about twenty minutes flat. About all I can say for her is that she was generous. Extra money, clothes she was tired of, presents men gave her she had no use for. But in a strange way, she made me feel... crawly. No one could live in Arlentown without being pretty much aware of the facts of life. But whenever we were there alone when I was doing the housework, the times when she wasn't sleeping or fixing her face or taking one of her half-hour showers, she was always trying to convince me how much better off I'd be selling myself to white men. She said she could give me all the pointers I'd need, and introduce me to the right people, and I could clear three or four hundred a week with no trouble at all. I just had to keep telling her no God-fearing Baptist church lady could do like that without going to hell for sure. It really shocked me to hear you say she's dead."
"Murdered. How long did you work for her?"
"I think... fifteen months. Yes."
"And she went on trips how often?"
"On cruises. Cruise ships to the Caribbean. Anywhere from five days to fifteen days. She'd tell me when she was leaving and when she'd be back, so I could clean it after she left and show up again the day after she was due back. She'd leave from Port Everglades. And she'd bring back some little present for me, usually. Those ships, you know, go winter and summer, all year. I'd say she went off, oh, a dozen times while I worked for her."
"Was there any predictable pattern?"
"Sort of, I guess. When she'd get back she'd stay at the apartment there, not going out at all. Sleep until noon, play those records, watch the TV, and do those exercises of hers. One thing about that woman, Mr. McGee, she kept herself fit. She'd lie down on the floor and hook her feet under the edge of the couch and lace her fingers behind her neck and do situps, dozens of them, just as slowly as she could. Sometimes she'd try on everything she owned and leave it all stacked around for me to put away again. And there were two girlfriends she had. Sometimes when she was staying home neither of them would come around. Other times it would be one or the other, and a few times they'd both come by. They'd fool with each other's hair, fixing it in different ways. And they'd play gin rummy, gambling. You never heard such language."
"Do you know the names of the girlfriends?"
"DeeDee was one of them. Small and redheaded and a little bit heavy. Let me think, now. For fun sometimes they'd use her full name, to tease her. It was... Delilah Delberta Barntree. Usually it was DeeDee or DeeDee Bea. She seemed more educated than the other two, but she had the dirtiest mouth. And she was the same age as Miss Western, in her middle to late twenties, I think. The third girl was younger, early twenties, and very slender. She's a natural blonde, with very thick and heavy hair, that creamy kind, and she wears it usually in some way that leaves her little face sort of peering out from under all that weight, a pretty little face with sharp features and black eyebrows and black lashes. Not naturally that way, just to make more of a contrast. I don't know her last name. They called her Del."
"What kind of a car did Tami Western own?"
"A red Mustang convertible with a white top."
"How long would she stay in the apartment after her cruises?"
"A week or so. Ten days. Then she would start going out. Usually then she did a lot of shopping. She'd be out a lot in the evenings. And then she'd start not coming home at all at night, three or four nights a week, and when she was home and I was there, sometimes there would be phone calls and she'd lie on her bed and make love talk into the phone, and wink at me and make a face if I walked by. Once she was crying and begging into the phone to somebody, but it didn't mean a thing. The wink and the face were the same. Then after a while she'd start packing to go on a cruise."
"Did men come to the apartment?"
"No. She had a thing about that. She said it was her place and out of bounds and it was going to stay out of bounds."
"The man in Seven C knew her. Griff."
"Yes. I know. A big man with a mean look. I don't know what the relationship was. He'd call up and she'd go next door for a little while."
"What if you had to make a guess at the relationship?"
She frowned. She pressed a slim brown finger to the corner of her mouth. When she stepped out of her housemaid role she had that slightly forced elegance of the educated Negro woman, that continuing understated challenge to you to accept her on her terms or, by not doing so, betray the prejudice she expected you to have. I cannot blame them for a quality of humorlessness. They carry the dead weight of all their deprived people, and though they know intellectually that the field hand mentality is a product of environment, they have an aesthetic reserve, which they will not admit to themselves, about the demanding of racial equality for those with whom, except for the Struggle, they would not willingly associate. They say Now, knowing that only fifteen percent of Negro America is responsible enough to handle the realities of Now, and that, in the hard-core South, perhaps seventy percent of the whites are willing to accept the obligations of Now. But they are on the move with nowhere to go but up, with the minority percentage of the ignorant South running into the majority percentage of ignorant Negro America, in blood, heartbreak, shame and confusion. I hoped that this penny-colored dedicated pussycat wouldn't stick her head under the wrong billy club, or get taken too often to the back room for interrogation. If, even on the word of one of their shrewdest lawyers, Sam Dickey, she was willing to trust a white man, it meant she had a vulnerable streak of softness in her, which could guarantee martyrdom sooner or later.
My intolerance is strictly McGee-type. If there were people around colored green or bright blue, I would have a continual primitive awareness of the difference between us, way down on that watchful animal level which is a caveman heritage. But I would cherish the ones who came through as solid folk, and avoid the slobs and fools and bores as diligently as I avoid white slobs and fools and bores.
"If I have to make a guess," she said, "from what I overheard, those three were lining up men who'd take them on trips. They were whores who kept it from looking like ordinary whoring, and they'd clip the men for all the traffic would bear. So I guess they'd have to have some kind of protection, some muscle they could call on if the customer got ugly about it. It had to be something like that, with that man Griff scaring them off. And maybe he even helped find the customers in the first place somehow."
"When they were talking together, did the names of other men come up?"
"The other two kidded Del about some man. Somebody named Terry. They'd kid her in a very rough way, and she'd get angry." She shook her head. "No other names I can remember."
"Do you know if she kept much cash on hand?"
"I know she paid cash for everything, even the rent. But that's all I know about that. Oh, wait a minute. One time, months ago, I finished up and it was time for her to pay me the twelve dollars. She just had some ones in her purse and she told me to wait. She took her purse into the little kitchen and closed the swinging door. She was in there a long time. Five minutes, maybe. Then she came out with the ten-dollar bill for me. I don't think she worried about me being honest, not after the time I took a pretty pleated blouse of hers home with me to wash and iron for her. It was Italian, hand-made, and she'd bought it in Nassau. The minute I got it wet, I saw the shadow through the little pocket, and there were four hundred-dollar bills in there, folded into thirds and fastened with a paper clip. I dried the money out and took it back to her the next time, and she thought it was the funniest thing in the world. I told her we good church-going Baptist ladies, we don't hold none with stealin'. She made me take twenty dollars for bringing it back."
"Did she tell you this time she was leaving?"
"No. I had to go there last Monday, expecting her to be in bed when I unlocked the door and went in. But she'd packed up and left. I looked around and saw she'd taken all her best things and all her luggage, so I knew it would be a long trip. It was a mess there, believe me, things thrown all over, empty glasses, drawers all open. It looked as if she had to leave all of a sudden. So I straightened it all up, made the bed fresh, and decided she'd get in touch with me when she got back."
"Just one last thing, Mrs. Walker. Would you know where she usually went when she went out in the evening?"
"Good places along the beach, I'd say. Before she gave up smoking, that's what the book matches would say. The Ember Room, and Ramon's and The Annex. Places like that. And when the other women were there, sometimes they'd talk about places like that, who they saw there, things like that."
"I certainly appreciate your help, more than I can say."
"I want to ask questions about what happened to her, and I have the feeling you don't want me to."
"I'll make a deal with you. When this is over, one day I'll look you up and tell you how and why it happened, because by then there couldn't be any danger to you in knowing."
She nodded. "And I haven't talked to you at all."
"Right."
We went out toward my car. She stopped and said, "I'll walk home from here, Mr. McGee."
"No trouble to drop you off, Noreen. They've kind of lighted the neighborhood street lights."
She turned so that the porch lights shone on her face. Suddenly she grinned in a mischievous way, giving me a glimpse of the wry humor she kept so carefully hidden. She backed away a full step, crouched slightly, and with a little snap of her right wrist, a slender four-inch blade appeared. She held it with an ominous competence, palm upward, knife hilt butted into the heel of her hand, thumb holding it against the bunched fingers.
"Mess wid me, you studs, you no use to no gal henceforth. Back off outen my way.
"I'm suitably impressed."
She straightened, sighed, thumbed the blade shut, slipped the knife into the jumper pocket. She looked up at the stars, no expression on her face. "We housemaids have to keep in character. This is the ghetto. The laws don't work the way they work outside. We're the happy smiling darkies with a great natural sense of rhythm. You can't hurt us by hitting us on the head. We'd still be nice and quiet except the Communists started getting us all fussed up." She looked at me and I saw bitterness on her face. "In this state, my friend, a nigger convicted of killing a nigger gets an average three years. A nigger who rapes a nigger is seldom even tried, unless the girl happens to be twelve years old or less. Santa Claus and Jesus are white men, Mr. McGee, and the little girls' dolls and the little boys' toy soldiers have white faces. My boys are two and a half and four. What am I doing to their lives if I let them grow up here? We want out. In the end, it's that simple. We want out, where the law is, where you prosper or you fail according to your own merits as a person. Is that so damned much? I don't want white friends. I don't want to socialize. You know how white people look to me? The way albinos look to you. I hope never to find myself in a white man's bed. I don't want to integrate. I just don't want to feel segregated. We're after our share of the power structure of this civilization, here. McGee, because when we get it, a crime will merit the same punishment whether the victim is black or white, and hoods will get the same share of municipal services, based on zoning, not color. And a good man will be thought a credit to the human race. Sorry. End of lecture. The housemaid has spoken."