Little Scarlet

20

I dropped Tina off at her bus stop on Pico and then drove toward the address for Peter Rhone on Castle Heights a few blocks south of Cattaraugus. I had all of Mr. Rhone’s information on his registration forms taken from the Galaxie 500.

I got lost for a while driving around the Palms area looking for a way to Rhone’s house. On the way I thought about Margie. I knew Nips Coffee Shop from the time I bought my house down on Genesee. I had seen the small waitress there for the past three years. She never remembered me, though. I gave my order and she filled it with neither a smile nor a frown on her face. But today she was afraid to be in my company. She still didn’t recognize me and so, as I drove around the white neighborhood, I began to see that my history with white people was much more complex than I had ever thought it was. On the one hand Margie had ignored my existence, and on the other I scared her to death. And even while she feared me she still didn’t know me. And what about that cook? How did his impatience with her fears fit in?

I didn’t come up with an answer. But after forty-five minutes of driving in circles I found Peter Rhone’s home.

It was coral pink and box shaped. The roof was flat and the drainpipes were painted a light rust color. The front door was turquoise, and white dahlias decorated the fence around his lawn. There was a lemon-yellow Chevy in the driveway and only one banister for the three wooden steps that led to the front door.

Four weeks ago this house would have sold for three times the amount that the same home would have gone for in Watts. Now the multiplier was more probably five.

“Hello,” she said, answering my knock.

She was a small woman with brown hair piled up into a helmet on the top of her head. She was thirty but wearing braces.

“Peter Rhone,” I said.

“He’s sick,” she told me.

“Yeah,” I said. “I know what happened to him. But you have to believe me when I tell you that he really needs to talk to me. Now.”

“What’s your name?”

“My name is John Lancer. I think I might have some information that he would want to know.”

“What is it about, Mr. Lancer?”

“It’s private.”

“I’m his wife.”

“And I’m sure he will want to talk to you about what I have to say. But believe me, ma’am, it is not my place to talk about it first.”

She blinked three times and then turned her head.

“Peter. Peter, it’s some man named Lancer.”

She turned back to me and looked me up and down. I was wearing the same work clothes I had on when I went down to Nola’s neighborhood. Realizing this set off a chain reaction of thoughts. First I thought that I needed a bath and a shave as soon as possible. Then I wondered why I hadn’t even yawned, when I’d been up and moving for well over twenty-four hours. I also realized that I hadn’t spoken to Bonnie since leaving with Mouse. Thinking of Bonnie reminded me of Juanda. Luckily, before I could go too far down that road a man appeared out of the mist of the Rhones’ screen door.

There was a deep cut on the left side of his swollen lower lip, a knot over his right eye, and two fingers of his left hand were taped together.

“Yes?” he asked affably in spite of his obvious discomfort.

“Peter Rhone?”

“Yes. And you are?”

“My name is John Lancer.”

“Oh. Do I know you?”

“I think you might have met my cousin Nola when you were down on Grape Street a few days ago.”

“I think so,” he said. “She was the neighbor of the people that took me in.”

Mrs. Rhone was paying close attention to our lies.

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s what she said. Anyway, Mr. Rhone, I have something very important to discuss with you. I’m sorry but it has to be private.”

“I told him that you were sick, Peter,” his wife said.

“That’s okay, Theda,” he told her. “You know I owe these people something. Mr. Lancer, there’s a park just a few blocks down from here. We could go sit on a bench there for a while.”

I smiled and nodded.

“Peter,” Mrs. Rhone said.

“It’s okay, honey.”

He pulled the screen door open and said, “It’s just a few blocks. We can walk.”

We walked out of the flowery yard and turned right onto Castle Heights.

Peter Rhone was a tall man and good-looking in a boyish kind of way. He was lean and fair with blond hair and blue eyes—just the kind of man who had no business in Watts when there was a riot going on.

I noticed that he limped slightly when he walked.

“Looks like it’s cooling down a bit,” he said as we strolled toward the corner.

“Yeah. But the heat’s still here,” I replied.

“I like a hot day,” he said. “It’ll be cold enough, long enough later on.”

We were at the corner.

“So tell me what happened when you were at Nola’s,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean—what happened?”

“Are you her husband?” he asked then. That was the first moment I had an inkling that the situation was much more complex than I had even suspected.

“Nola’s dead,” I said.

Peter stopped walking. He grabbed me by the forearm.

“What? What happened?” There were already tears in his eyes. “What happened?”

“That’s what I wanted to ask you.”

Peter glanced back toward his house. I did too.

Theda Rhone was standing on the sidewalk, looking at us.

“Come on,” Rhone said. “Let’s keep walking.”

He turned and started moving at a fast pace.

I kept up with him. Walking is what I did all day long at Sojourner Truth. There was both an upper and a lower campus and space enough for over thirty-five hundred students. Some days I didn’t sit at all.

As we walked he kept asking what happened. Finally I told him about Nola and Geneva and her claims.

At the end of the third block we came to a small park. It had four or five trees and two benches. Peter sat and started rocking.

“Who could have done such a thing?” he said. “Who?”

“Everybody I’ve talked to has got their money on you.”

“Me? Why would I? She saved my life.”

“Maybe she wanted something you couldn’t give,” I suggested.

“Like what?”

“Maybe she was going to call your wife.”

“Why would she? I was going to leave Theda. I told Nola that.”

“Come again?”

“I loved your cousin. Didn’t she tell you that?”

“Well,” I said. “I have to admit that I misled you, Mr. Rhone. My name is Easy Rawlins and the first time I saw Nola was on a coroner’s slab.”

“I, I don’t understand. What do you have to do with her . . .” His words trailed off because he didn’t want to call her dead.

“The police are stepping lightly around this murder —”

“Murder,” he repeated the word.

“Yeah. Anyway, the cops called on me because I know people around the neighborhood and I can ask questions without arousing too much attention. You know public attention to her murder could set off the riots all over again.”

“I don’t understand, Mr. Rawlins. Who would want to kill Nola?”

There we were again. By now I was more than half convinced that he hadn’t killed her. Rhone wasn’t trying to hide anything from me. He was frightened but not for himself. Nola was still alive in this man’s heart.

“Do you own a gun, Peter?”

“A twenty-five-caliber pistol.”

“Where is it?”

“In my house. In the dresser.”

It was a beautiful day. Low eighties and fairly clear. There was a robin singing somewhere and the traffic was sparse.

“Why don’t you tell me what happened, Peter? Then maybe I can help make some sense out of it all.”