A Little Yellow Dog

31

His door was next to the exit sign.

“Sit down, Rawlins.” He wagged a hand over his shoulder as he went around his desk. He was taller than I, spare as the barrel of a .22-caliber rifle. His head was shaped somewhat like a square loaf of store-bought bread. Arno was the second-most-powerful man in the hierarchy of the precinct; second only to the captain. It didn’t surprise me that he had the authority to send Sanchez on an errand in the middle of an interrogation. What puzzled me was why he chose to do so.

Lieutenant Lewis didn’t like me. He didn’t like, or dislike, anybody. He simply sat in his office and pulled the strings of the law. He didn’t play favorites and so he didn’t have any friends to help. He caught the bad guys — and put them in jail. We’d brushed up against each other now and then, but there was no love lost at our partings.

He leaned back into the swivel chair and gave me another rare smile.

“In trouble again, huh, Easy?” He even showed a few teeth.

“I don’t know a thing about it, officer. Not a thing.”

“What about Idabell Turner? She’s your friend, you’ve admitted that. She was at the school early on the morning that her brother-in-law was killed. She could have gotten access to keys to the gardens. Her husband was shot in her own home after she left the school. No forced entry there either.

“At that very house she hosted pot parties with people from your own school. Even one of your own janitors attended. And by the way, Miss Eng claims that you tried to get information out of her by saying that the police were looking into her relationship with Mrs. Turner — you didn’t tell old Sanchez about that.

“You’re the centerpiece, Easy.”

“How you figure?”

“We get a call. Man says that Easy Rawlins has been stealing from schools in the South Central School District. He even gives us an address up on Olympic where you store the stuff before you sell it. It’s just a shack but it’s got this trapdoor cellar where the stuff is hidden. Caller knows all about that.”

“And you think I hid it there?” I asked.

Arno smiled a second time. “No, I don’t think it’s you, Easy.”

“No?”

Lewis shook his head but instead of allaying my fears he just made me more wary. His head moving from side to side was less a gesture of human kindness and more like the sway of a cobra marking distance.

“It’s too easy,” he said. “Man gets killed and then out of thin air we get this call on you. Somebody’s trying to cover his tracks and he’s using you for the broom.”

“So if you think that then what am I doin’ here?”

“Sanchez wants you here, that’s why. He thinks he knows how to do things down here and doesn’t want to listen to old fools like me.”

For the first time I saw some light.

“I want to find the real crooks and put them in jail,” Lewis continued. “I want to stop gangsters from running the streets. And I want my precinct to belong to me, not to some snot-nosed goody-goody from a two-year college.”

“Uh-huh,” I grunted. “So what could I do to help you?”

“I know that you’re not moving drugs, Ezekiel. I know because I haven’t seen you that you’re not trying to do okay. But you might have had a moment of passion….” He let those words hang in the air.

“No, sir,” I said. “All this is news to me. All of it. I know Mrs. Turner like I know any number of people up at the school. I asked after her when I heard that her dog got run over, but that’s it. And I don’t steal, man. You know that. Whoever called you just wants me to look bad, like you said.”

My explanation was lame in both legs. I knew it. Lewis knew it too.

“Some people think that you know more than you’ve said.”

“Do you?” I asked.

“Me? I don’t care. I don’t care if you go to work, go to jail, or go to your grave. None of that matters to me.”

“What does matter, lieutenant?”

“You like my office?” he asked.

“Yeah. Sure.”

“I sit here next to the back door but I make sure that things happen. I keep up with all the goings-on. All the names and places. Captain Connery never has to worry because he has me and I have my ear to the ground. I don’t ever sneak over to the Hollywood division behind his back. I don’t try to make a big name for myself with some spectacular arrest. I just do my job.”

“I could look around,” I ventured. “Ask some questions if it could help.”

“You’d be doing us both a favor,” Arno said. “Because you know there are some people in this building who don’t feel kindly toward a man who wants to set things right in his life. Sanchez wants to see you go down, Easy. He wants you fired and he wants you in jail. Me, I don’t care. You seem to be trying to do okay. I believe in live and let live.”

“You want me to look around…” I began.

“…and bring what you find in through that back door right there.”

“Anything you wanna know in particular?”

“That’s right,” the lieutenant said. “I want to know anything you find.”

That got me to my feet.

“One thing, Rawlins,” Arno said before I could pick up speed.

“What’s that?”

“You know a woman name of Grace Phillips.” It was no question so I didn’t answer. “You might want to look into her a little bit.”

I was out of that jailhouse in sixty seconds flat.

I don’t know exactly why I returned to the school. Maybe I just felt comfortable there, heaven knows why.

Gladys Martinez told me that Vice Principal Preston had gone down to my office to wait for me.

On my way down the stairs I took the time to look out over the flat, pale asphalt streets of the neighborhood. The deep green of carob trees and the woody green of the laurel trees made rough lines in between the streets and the red- and brown-roofed houses. Every once in a while there was a wanderer out on the sidewalk making his way, or her way, slowly.

I took the stairs at a slow pace. Not because I felt lazy and calm but because I was wary. Everybody was after me, it seemed. My principal, my supervisor, and two different kinds of cops. Bill Preston had the temper to break a man’s jaw in the name of what was decent and moral. Maybe he’d try to crush my skull down in the main office.

Ace and Bill were sitting at the far end of the long table. Bill wasn’t surprised to see me. Ace leapt up, he always did that to make me think that he was showing me deference.

“Mr. Rawlins.” Preston came to his feet too. “I have to show you something.” His voice and manner were brusque and unfriendly. He seemed angry and even a little off, a little crazy.

“I have to talk to you too, Mr. Rawlins,” Ace said.

“ ’Bout what, Ace?”

“It’s a private thing, uh, but I guess it’ll wait till you’re finished.”

“You do your classrooms yet?”

“I’ll get’em.”

“Okay then.”

When Ace let the fire door roll shut behind him I realized that I was completely alone with the Jawbreaker.

Don’t get me wrong — I wasn’t afraid of Bill Preston. Actually I found myself hoping that he would start a fight with me. It would have given me no end of pleasure to inflict pain on someone who was trying to hurt me.

“I have to talk to you, Mr. Rawlins.”

“Go ahead. Talk.” I wandered over to a chair near a wall of hanging tools — where there was a large rubber mallet dangling in easy reach.

Preston pulled two envelopes from the breast pocket of his jacket. Then he sat down next to me, placing the envelopes on his lap.

“Newgate was talking this morning,” Preston said.

“Yeah?”

“He was saying to me and Mrs. Teale that you wouldn’t be on the job much longer.”

“Really?”

“Yes. He also said that Sanchez would be arresting you soon.”

“Arresting me for what?”

“He didn’t say, but what else could it be but those murders?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Preston. You know more about all of this than I do. Did you speak up?”

Preston stared straight at me. “No,” he said.

I waited him out.

“As a matter of fact,” he continued, “I didn’t tell you all of it. You see, Ida didn’t just come down to my office to tell me about Holland threatening her.”

“No?” I glanced at the envelopes on his lap.

“She gave me these two letters. One of them is from her saying that Holland was crazy and that she was afraid he would kill her. The other one is a letter that Holland wrote to her.”

The letters sat there on the vice principal’s knee. I looked at them while he stared at me.

“You read’em?” I asked finally.

He nodded. “The one from him is crazy.”

“Uh-huh. Well? What do you want me to do about that?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t thought about what you could do. It’s just that Idabell said that she’d call me soon. But she hasn’t called.”

“So? Take the letters and go to the police.” It seemed simple to me.

“I can’t. It would jeopardize my job and my marriage. I already told the police that I didn’t know anything.”

“Well,” I said, “you really don’t know anything. Holland’s dead. He might have had something to do with her not calling you but more probably she killed him.”

“I don’t believe that for a moment. Idabell couldn’t kill anybody.”

That was the second vote for Idabell’s inability to kill.

“So what do you want from me, Bill?”

“I can’t handle these letters. I’d just get in trouble, I know it.”

He was probably right.

“So,” he said, “why don’t I give them to you?”

“Why me?”

“You can tell the police, if they arrest you, that she gave you the letters and was afraid for her life. You didn’t know her husband or her brother-in-law and so you didn’t put the bodies together with the body in the garden. That way, later on, when they started to ask questions, you were afraid, you see, and then you finally decided that it would be best to give them the letters. That way they won’t suspect you.”

“I thought you said you didn’t know what to do?” I asked. “Why don’t you give them the letters? Or better yet — put’em in a big envelope and send them to the police.”

“Will you do it?” he blurted.

I wanted to say yes. I wanted to read those letters. But I wavered. I didn’t want to be impulsive.

“What are you trying to do?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” Again, the rough innocence of the man made him hard to doubt.

But I tried anyway.

“What I mean,” I said, “is that you could be using me here.”

“How?”

“Somebody has already called the school, and the police, blaming me for the break-ins. Maybe if I take those letters you run to Sanchez and tell him that I know more than I’m tellin’.”

“Is that what you think?” Preston was astonished. “I’m not trying to get you in trouble. These letters show that whatever trouble there is is in that family. I want the police to know the truth, but I’m trying to stay out of trouble myself.”

He held the letters out to me.

I strummed my lips with my right hand and then reached.

“Thank you,” Preston said.

Then he put out his hand. I shook it. Why not?