Six Easy Pieces (30 page)

I WAS DOWN at the vacant lot across from Jackie’s apartment in less than an hour. At the far corner was a cardboard lean-to that smelled of Harold.

There were twenty-three little girl’s dolls lined up against the paper wall. Above them was a note written in red lipstick.

Little black girls mess with white men ain’t worth the shit in they mamas toilets. They need to die. They going to die. Oh yes, dear lord.

By the time I had gotten to the police station and back again the fire engines were already there. The lean-to had burned up completely. The only thing left of the dolls was the smell of burnt rubber, a few charred limbs, and glass eyes.

I PUT UP A SIGN on my amber door. It reads:

I spent over six months looking for Harold but he was nowhere among the poor street people of Watts. I couldn’t convince the police to even mount a search. They decided that Musa Tanous had hired someone to kill his girlfriend. And even though they couldn’t prove it they refused to believe that some tramp could be smart enough to leave no clues.

I figure that he saw me go into his cardboard teepee. He set fire to it when I went for the cops. Maybe he had searched Musa’s car when he was in Jackie’s house and knew where they went. Or maybe he followed her somehow. Manchester wasn’t far from Musa’s building.

I still work at Sojourner Truth Junior High School and see Raymond now and then. Bonnie and I are still together. I read the newspapers a little closer nowadays. Looking for the deaths of young black women and reading in between the lines.

WALTER MOSLEY
is the author of the acclaimed Easy Rawlins series of mysteries, including national bestsellers
Cinnamon Kiss, Little Scarlet,
and
Bad Boy Brawly Brown;
the Fearless Jones series, including
Fearless Jones
and
Fear Itself;
the novels
Blue Light
and
RL’s Dream;
and two collections of stories featuring Socrates Fortlow,
Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned,
for which he received the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and
Walkin’ the Dog.
He was born in Los Angeles and lives in New York.