A Little Yellow Dog

28

I wanted another drink. Canadian Club whiskey — no ice, no chaser. Straight up and straight down. But instead I stayed in John’s Ford outside of Bonnie Shay’s apartment building. It was a hair past five and I figured that if I waited long enough she’d appear. I didn’t want to go into any more hallways or apartment buildings. I didn’t want any more surprises.

I wanted to surprise somebody else for a change.

And I wanted some whiskey.

The sun was far off somewhere. The edge of the world had begun to glow orange. I planned to be home before Jesus and Feather woke up. But if I didn’t make it in time I knew that Jesus would be up to dress and feed Feather; she’d be there to hug him and kiss him good morning. I had children who were more adult than I was. Jesus didn’t have an after-school job because he was always taking care of us.

A small gray bus pulled up in front of Miss Shay’s apartment building. It had the words AIR FRANCE stenciled across its side in blood-colored paint.

Bonnie Shay, in a sleek little uniform, got out and put down two small bags. Somebody said something from one of the windows. Bonnie laughed and waved. When the bus drove off she bent down to pick up her bags.

“Miss Shay!” I yelled out of my window. I got out and stood across the street waiting for her reply.

“Yes?” She didn’t recognize me at first.

“I was given a letter by Idabell to give to you. I wanted to ask you what this was all about, so I waited here.” I held the letter up over my head.

If I was out to hurt her I could have slipped from my car and hit her over the head, she knew that. But maybe, maybe I was slick and wanted to get her into the car with me. She looked at the bags she had hanging from either hand, then put them down and waved for me to come over.

“Thank you,” I said as I came up to her.

I handed her the letter and she read it. Then she read it again.

“Where is she?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “She said that she had to get out of town but she didn’t say why. She just left her dog with me and went.”

“She left Pharaoh with you?”

It was a mistake to mention the dog, I knew that as soon as it was out of my mouth. But I had to go with it once it was out.

“Yeah. Yeah, she said that she didn’t know where she was going first and that she was going to go by bus. I told her that the dog wasn’t gonna like his cage for weeks on end. I said that I could take him, or give him to you, until she sent for him.”

“They don’t allow pets in my building, Mr. Rawlins.”

“Oh. Tell me, Miss Shay, what’s goin’ on?”

Her eyes narrowed just a bit and she said, “Do you want a cup of coffee?”

“Sure thing.”

Her apartment was designed for what they call architectural efficiency. That is to say, the most rentable space with the least waste — or comfort. One big square room was the living space. Tucked off in the corner, behind half walls, was the small open kitchen. Her bedroom, I suspected, was exactly half the size of the living room so another bedroom for the apartment next door could neatly fill in the gap.

There was an Air France poster on the wall. It was a cartoonish drawing of Paris with a bright blue gendarme twirling his whiskers while ogling a pretty brunette. The Eiffel Tower was falling on them, or so it seemed to me. Along the floor were dark African carvings; all of them of women with pointed breasts and “outie” belly buttons.

She put her bags down, went into the kitchen, and flipped the on switch of her electric coffee percolator. She’d probably set it up with grounds when she left so that there would be coffee waiting almost when she came in the door. Her life seemed simple and elegant to me.

“Excuse me,” she said. “But I have to wash up a little before I can sit down.”

She went through the door to the other room, closing it behind her. She could have been making a call to somebody dangerous. But there was nothing I could do about that.

The coffee smelled strong. French roast.

I heard a toilet flush and then water running. The building was constructed from the kind of cheap materials that allowed you to hear mice sneezing through the walls and ants tramping across the floor above.

When she came out she had changed into a one-piece lime dress. It revealed her womanly figure without a lot of fanfare or too much sex.

“You work for the airlines?”

“Air France. I’m a stewardess.”

“You just comin’ back from there now?”

“Uh-huh.” She was concentrating on the coffeemaker. “Sugar and cream?”

“Black,” I said.

She gave me a smile with the cup.

“What do you want to know, Mr. Rawlins?”

“I’m a simple man, Miss Shay. I’m a head custodian for the Board of Education and I own a few apartment buildin’s here and there…” I stopped myself. That was the first time in my life that I told somebody about what I had just in conversation. Where I came from you kept everything a secret — survival depended on keeping the people around you in the dark. The tenants in my buildings didn’t know that I owned them. The government didn’t know where I got my money from. Nobody I worked with knew, with the exception of Etta and Mouse. The cops knew but I’d been on intimate, if dicey, terms with them for over a decade.

I blamed my slip on the whiskey and I swore silently never to take another drink.

“Mr. Rawlins?”

“Yeah?”

“You were saying?”

“Oh, yeah. Yeah. I go in to work one day and Idabell comes crying to me that her husband wants to kill her dog. The next thing I know her brother-in-law is dead — right there on the school grounds — and her husband gets shot at their house. She disappears, and then when she calls me she says that she’s runnin’ away.”

“I read about Roman in the paper. And the police came here to question me about Idabell and Holland. They should probably have this letter?” She looked to see how I’d take that question.

It wouldn’t have looked good for me if she went to the police and told them that I’d seen Idabell in the last couple of days. A cold chill ran up under my scalp. It hurt where I’d been sapped.

“What’s it say?” I asked innocently.

She handed it over to me and I pretended to read.

“What’s all’a this mean?”

“Why do you want to know, Mr. Rawlins? This doesn’t have anything to do with you. All you have to do is go home.” She was harsh but it didn’t bother me. I was a fool.

“I got a history with the cops, Miss Shay,” Whiskey said. “They don’t like me and they know that I was talkin’ to Idabell the day she left. I didn’t tell’em ’bout her dog ’cause she’d lied about the dog at school, she said that he was in an accident and that’s why she left that day. Now if I do say they’ll lean pretty hard.”

“If you didn’t do anything there’s nothing to worry about.”

I knew right then that she wasn’t a fully American Negro. A black man or woman in America, with American parents, knew that innocence was a term for white people. We were born in sin.

“I like my job, Miss Shay. I got a pension and a ladder to climb. They will fire me if the cops do something like cart me off to jail.”

Bonnie Shay gave me a long look. I liked it. I hadn’t lied to her, except about Idabell and that damned dog. But that was just a lie of necessity. I was sure that she wouldn’t hold that against me.

“Roman,” she said. “Her brother-in-law. He stole something from me. I told Ida about it. I guess she just felt bad about it.”

“What did he take?”

“What?”

“What did he take from you?”

“Oh. Well, yes. A ring.”

“It sure don’t sound like that,” I said.

“It doesn’t?” she dared me. “What does it sound like then?”

I decided to go out on a limb. “It sounds like Roman was smuggling heroin from France into L.A. and using you to do it. It sounds like Holland was in on it with him. It sounds like Idabell took the heroin from Holland and killed him for playing her like a fool. It sounds like you’re into it up to your neck and you’d be lucky not only to keep your job but to stay outta jail.”

The hardness in her face was something to behold. I had delivered a devastating stroke and she weathered it.

“What do you want, Mr. Rawlins?”

“All I want is enough to give to the cops if they decide they want me. I wanna know who killed the twins and why they did. I wanna know why Idabell ran.”

“I don’t know any of it. Nothing.”

It had to be the whiskey. Had to be. There I was talking about murder with someone who was obviously involved, and all I could think about was how much I liked it that I could tell when she was lying. I was feeling an intimacy with her. I would have liked to get to know her as well as I understood her.

She felt it too, I could tell. It was like we were looking over a field and catching each other’s eye; our animal sides slowly overpowering our minds.

Who knows what might have happened if there hadn’t come that knock on the door?

It was three hard raps and then silence. Bonnie was about to say something but I put up one finger for her silence.

Ten seconds passed.

Three more raps. This time harder.

I stood up and went to the kitchen.

The raps turned into blows. “Bonnie Shay!” Rupert sounded as if he were in the room with us.

I put my fingers to my lips to keep Bonnie quiet and lifted an iron pan from the stove. Bonnie’s eyes showed fear but she trusted me — at least more than she trusted the man banging on her door.

The door was hollow. I was surprised that Rupert hadn’t broken through it with his knocks.

“Open up!” Rupert called.

I sidled up to the door and readied myself for the wrestler.

He probably used his shoulder to batter the door. On his first blow he cracked it down the middle, almost going through.

Bonnie let out a small screech.

“Who’s out there?” someone shouted from down the hall.

“Hey, man,” Rupert said. “Mind your own… Hey! Hey watch it!”

“Clear outta here or I shoot, bastid!”

“Hey, watch it!” Rupert shouted. His voice was already down the hall.

“I’m callin’ the police!” our savior yelled. “I’m callin’ ’em.”

Then there was a brief stretch of silence.

The next knock on the door was mild.

“Miss Shay? Miss Shay, you okay in there?”

“Yes, Mr. Gillian.” Bonnie went to the door and opened it.

He was an older man, smallish. But he made up for his size with the three-and-a-half-foot shotgun levered in the crook of his arm. He was black, yellow actually, with weblike soft white hair. His orange flannel robe was open at the throat. You could see the skin of his throat sagging, as if it knew that it was time to abandon the bones.

He had one foot in the room, the other one in the hall.

His eyes were on me as he asked Bonnie, “You want me to call the cops?”

“No, Mr. Gillian. Thank you for scaring him away. I don’t think that he’s going to come back.”

“You know, you should watch the company you keep,” he said, still looking at me.

I kept my hands down at my side. I didn’t want to scare Mr. Gillian into shooting me.

“Thank you again, Mr. Gillian,” she said.

Bonnie moved to push the door closed.

“You can come on down with me and Cheryl if you want, Miss Shay,” he said.

I liked him. He was worried that I was a threat and that she was scared to run from me.

But Mr. Gillian didn’t like me.

“Why’ont you come on with me, Bonnie?” he said.

He leaned forward to cut off my approach to her, balancing the gun so that he could swing it up into action with speed. The only problem he had was the length of the barrel. If he wasn’t used to wielding it it might take a second too long.

Gillian knew what I was thinking. He gave me a little smile that dared, “Go on, boy. Try it.”

He said, “Come on, Bonnie. Let’s go.”

Bonnie saw what was happening. She held the broken door by the knob and looked at me. Who was I? At least she knew Mr. Gillian. Mr. Gillian and Cheryl were safe.

They were safe but what did they know about the man pounding at the door?

“It’s okay, Mr. Gillian. Mr. Rawlins was helping me.”

“You sure?” There was disappointment in his voice.

“I’ll come down and talk to you and Cheryl later on,” she said while pushing the cracked door to usher him out.

“Okay now,” he said as the door was closing. “But I’ll be keepin’ a ear peeled.”

The moment the door was closed Bonnie gasped and brought her left hand to her breast. I moved to help but she held up the other hand to ward me off. Then she shook her whole body, head and all, making a noise with her flapping cheeks like you do when you’re very cold. The shiver subsided slowly until only her head and neck quivered slightly — her eyes shut tight. Then she took a deep breath and opened her eyes to look at me.

“Do you know who that man was?” she asked.