Little Scarlet (22 page)

I drank the liquid down in one swallow. There wasn’t any alcohol in it but it certainly had a kick.

“After six hours get yourself into bed, honey,” she said.

“Don’t forget about Jesus,” Dom said.

“I’ll ride with ya, Easy,” Mouse informed me. “When Jo called about you, LaMarque drove me over. He needed the car to impress some girl.”

As we walked out from between Jo’s trees her elixir hit me. I felt like I could go out and run a ten-mile race.

“You talked to Benita?” Raymond asked me after I’d driven about six blocks.

I don’t know what it was that Jo had given me but I could feel the blood pumping in my veins. I was wide awake and ready for anything — even the implied threat in Raymond’s tone.

“Yeah,” I said confidently. “Yes I did.”

“What for?”

“I was just goin’ around lookin’ for my boy — Harold. I run into her at Stud’s.”

“What she say?”

“That she loves you, that she misses you, that you broke her heart.”

“Then what?”

I pulled the car to the curb, came to a halt, and yanked on the parking brake.

“I took her home,” I said. “Then I read the phone book while she fell asleep in the bathtub. After that I left. You wanna make somethin’ outta that?”

Ray’s gray eyes seemed to flash as he looked at me.

He was a small man. That’s where most men who went up against him made their biggest mistake. They thought that a small man had to cave in to a bigger one. They didn’t know that Mouse was strong as a man twice his size. But that’s not what made him dangerous. Mouse was fast and he was a killer. He killed without a second thought or a moment’s remorse. He was a soldier who had been at war his entire life.

“What’s wrong with you, Easy? You crazy or sumpin’?”

“You wouldn’t understand, Ray. What’s been goin’ on the last few days don’t mean nuthin’ but business to you. But this shit has fucked me up. I’m lookin’ for this killer and the streets I’m walkin’ down today ain’t what they were last week. I’m your friend, Ray. But you know that girl has let herself go all the way down to the ground over you. She could die.”

“Die? What she gonna die from, man? It’s not poison.”

I was breathing hard. I knew that my friend could see it. I hoped he knew that I wasn’t a threat to him.

“Black women, Ray. You know how they are. Tough as you ever wanna be. Go up against a whole gang to protect her man. Ready to walk away if you do her wrong the next day. But you know about her heart. You know when you talk that sweet shit, she gonna believe every word even if she knows it ain’t true. And when you leave her alone it eats at her like acid.

“I went home with her because she needed someone to look after her. I ain’t interested in your girl. I just don’t want her to feel like she’s all alone.”

While I spoke Ray didn’t say a word. He just stared with those killer eyes. For all I knew he was waiting for me to finish so he could say I had my last words.

But instead of killing me he scratched his nose.

“You know they’s hardly anybody talk to me like that, Ease. I once killed a man fightin’ over a woman and you know that woman was his wife. But you right. Just ’cause I tell ’er about Etta don’t mean I don’t snake up in there an’ confuse her mind. Yeah.”

He turned around and faced forward. We sat there for a while and then I turned over the engine.

I let Raymond off at his house. He got out of the car and walked away without another word.

I drove off thinking that I would never take another one of Mama Jo’s potions without asking her how it was going to affect me.

IT WAS NIGHTTIME
and I hadn’t spoken to Bonnie in quite a while. I was running low on gas too. So I pulled into an A-Plus gas station on Normandie and waited for the attendant. It was a white guy in a tan jumpsuit with “A+” printed over his breast pocket. He was back on the job and the end of the riots wasn’t three days old.

“What can I get you, mister?” he said.

“Two dollars,” I said.

“Right away.”

He attached the nozzle to my car and the pump started ringing. I got out and stretched my legs. I took a deep breath that went all the way to my toes. There was a phone booth at the corner of the lot. I took a few steps toward it, when three squad cars ran up on the curb and surrounded me.

Those three cars contained a dozen policemen.

One of them yelled, “Put your hands where I can see them!” He had a shotgun pointed at me.

All the cops had guns out. Six of them took positions around the perimeter of the station and the rest pounced on me.

In a normal state of mind I would have held out my hands in surrender. But with Mama Jo’s drug in me my whole body, from my fingers to my anklebones, went rigid. It took all of those young white men to subdue me. I didn’t say a word and I didn’t fight. I just stood there thinking that those men were no more than rodents trying to intimidate me with their squeals.

Once they got me down they had a problem because there wasn’t any room in their cars for a prisoner. None of them wanted to be on foot and in uniform in the black neighborhood after nightfall. They had learned to respect the anger that glared at them from the darkness.

It was the station attendant who suggested they use my car.

It took three of them, one driving and the other two holding me in the backseat, to drive me to city hall.

And when we got there it took five men to heft my dead weight into a large, well-appointed room.

They dropped me on the floor but I didn’t feel it. I had become the soul of resistance. I could stay like that for years, I believed. No one would ever defeat me again. They’d have to kill me.

“Get up, Mr. Rawlins,” Gerald Jordan said.

I took what felt like my first breath since my arrest and stood up. At the door behind me were the five cops that had carried me. Detective Suggs was there. So were two high-ranking policemen in fancy dress.

Somebody took the handcuffs from my wrists.

Suggs looked a little subdued. But that was okay by me. I had the fortitude of ten men inside of me.

“What the fuck you grab me off the street like that for, man?” I said to the deputy chief.

A hand grabbed me from behind but I flung it off.

Jordan raised his hand to tell the rank and file to stand back.

“I’ve been talking to Detective Suggs,” Jordan said.

He looked every bit as slick and evil as he had the first time we met. The only thing different about him was that the red mark under his eye seemed larger. I decided that this meant I had done something to upset him.

I liked that.

“Yeah,” I said. “So what?”

“He tells me that you’re looking for a mendicant named Harold. He said that you don’t even know his last name but that you believe this Harold killed Nola Payne.”

I didn’t say anything. Why should I?

“Is this true?” Jordan asked.

“What the fuck do you want, man?” I replied.

“Don’t push your luck, son,” one of the fancy black uniforms said.

That had an effect on me. I was born understanding those very words, delivered in that very tone. I and everybody I’d known had survived by gleaning the white man’s final threat.

His words shook me but Jo’s potion poured over them like salt on a garden slug.

“Listen, man,” I said to the uniform, “I’m here because you called on me. I got a job to do and I will do it. But I’m not gonna smile at you or kiss your mothahfuckin’ hand. I’m not gonna let you tell me what it is I should be doin’ neither. So if that’s why I’m here, either throw me in a cell or let me be.”

Suggs, who had been looking at his feet, glanced upward at his bosses. I could tell that he was awed by my outburst and that they were stymied by my resolve.

“This is not going to help your case, Rawlins,” Jordan said.

“There’s only one thing I want, Jerry. I want to find the man who killed Nola Payne. I want him either on death row or dead. If you’re with me on that, then we don’t have a problem. If you not — that’s okay too.”

“There is no Harold,” Jordan said. “I’ve spoken to every captain in the south L.A. precincts. These killings that you and Detective Suggs are talking about have other, better explanations.”

“Sir,” Suggs said.

“You be quiet,” the other fancy uniform said.

“No sir,” Suggs replied, “I can’t do that. The people you’ve been talking to are just trying to cover their own oversights. The cases I brought to you were all done by the same man. I’m sure of that. Mr. Rawlins has a credible suspect…”

“You don’t know that,” Jordan said.

“Yes I do, sir. There’s a murderer running loose and if we find him we will be doing what you asked us to do.”

“If,” Jordan said.

“We ain’t gonna find shit stinkin’ in here with you,” I added.

“You don’t want me as an enemy, Mr. Rawlins,” Jordan said.

“I don’t have any choice about that, Jerry. You know it and I do too. Right here at this minute you and me on the same side even if you don’t know it. I’m gonna do what you want me to do but we still gonna be enemies. There ain’t no question about that. Never was. Never will be.”

Jordan turned to Suggs then.

“You have forty-eight hours,” he said. “Either you have a killer in a cell by then or I will have your ass. Both of you.”

It was close to midnight and I was on the street downtown standing side by side with the white man named Melvin Suggs. He was a cop by trade and I was a criminal by color. But there we were.

“You are one crazy bastard,” Suggs said to me.

“Yeah. You right about that.”

“What are we going to do now?”

“You got any leads?” I asked him.

“A few. Nothing I can act on tonight.”

“Call me at my office by noon tomorrow,” I said. “Then we can share notes and maybe get somewhere.”

I GOT TO
my office a little before one.

There were two messages on my answering machine. The first one was from Bonnie.

“Hi, Easy,” she said in that island-soaked, deep-toned voice. “I think I have something. I called a J. Ostenberg in Pasadena. A man named Simon Poundstone answered. He said that his wife, Jocelyn, was named Ostenberg before they were married. She kept her maiden name. He also said that he thought that once she had had a maid who had a son named Harold. I called back later to speak to her but she said that the maid’s son was named Harrison not Harold and that she hadn’t heard from either one of them for years. But there was something about the way she sounded that I didn’t like. I think that she was hiding something.

“Feather misses you, honey,” she added. “I think she wants you to come home.”

The next message was from Juanda.

“Hi. It’s me. I was just sittin’ here thinkin’ about you and how much I wanted to see you. At first I was gonna call and tell you I saw that man Harold somewhere just to get you ovah heah. But then I thought you’d get mad. Call me, okay? I really wanna see you.”

I disengaged Jackson’s answering machine and then turned out the light on my desk. I stood up with every intention of getting into my car and driving home to my little family.

I took one step without a hitch. The next step was a little wobbly but still I kept my balance. Number three had me bending a little too far down. The fourth stride brought me to my knees.

I had only enough presence of mind to realize that it was Mama Jo’s elixir wearing off. I tried to rise but instead I fell. I was on the floor and then I was floating. As I neared the roof everything went black.

Then a bell started ringing. It was all over the place; loud then soft, long and then in short bursts. It sounded like water fountains and rain forests and waterfalls. But it was a bell. A loud bell. And then it stopped.

I opened my eyes to bright sunlight coming in through the window. I was laid out exactly as I had fallen. The room was hot and my whole body was sweating. I had no headache or even a bad taste in my mouth. Mama Jo could bottle that medicine and make a mint among the down and out.

The phone began to ring again. It sounded odd. There was a pulsing nature to the jingling bell. I got right up and went to the phone. I picked up the handset, said hello, and then fell into my chair. I realized that I couldn’t have gotten up again to save my mother’s life.

“Rawlins, you okay?” Detective Melvin Suggs asked me.

“What time is it?” I asked.

“It’s after one.”

“In the afternoon?”

“What’s wrong with you?” the cop asked me.

“Are you at the precinct?” I replied.

“Nearby.”

“Come and get me. I wanna take a ride out to the valley.”

“What for?” he asked, but I was already hanging up the phone.

I sat back in my chair as weak as water. It was a miracle that I didn’t spill out under the desk. Sounds came to me from the street crazily. A baby’s cry was loud and piercing but a car horn blaring was almost too low to hear. There were birds chattering clearly enough that they seemed to be speaking English, or maybe Spanish. Cars were moving but their mechanical sounds receded into a single rushing sound, like an engorged river flowing a few hundred feet away.

I looked at my hand in awe. It moved and flowed, responded to my every whim like magic. I took a deep breath and felt thankful for the few moments of life I had under a sun that made me sweat and grin.

I was an infant amazed by the miracles surrounding me. I couldn’t move but that didn’t seem to matter. Whatever I needed would come at the proper time.

I had been meandering in my mind like that for some time when a knock came on the door. I tried to say “Come in,” but there wasn’t enough air in my lungs.

The door opened and Detective Suggs entered.

I was actually glad to see him. I don’t know how many white men I’d seen walk through doors but I doubted if I had ever been as happy as I was when a friend visited. I liked Suggs. Was that Mama Jo’s doing? Had my mind somehow been altered to leave behind all of my history, clear my eyes, a man cut loose from his own private anchor of hate?