Blonde Faith

30

There was a small park down in the center of Watts next to a giant sculpture called the Watts Towers. The gaudy towers were built by a man named Rodia over a period of thirty-three years. He built them from refuse and simple material. It was a whimsical place in a very grim part of town.

The park had a few trees and picnic tables on grass worn thin by hundreds of children’s tramping feet. Meredith Tarr had told me that Timor Reed and Blix Redford were there almost every day, “Drinkin’ gin and wastin’ time.” Pericles would go to visit Tim and Blix once a week or so to share their rotgut and play checkers.

I got there just before noon. There was loud music coming from one house across the street, two teenage lovers playing hooky in order to study the facts of life, and two men of uncertain age sitting across from each other at a redwood picnic table, leaning over a folding paper checkerboard. The board was held together by once clear, now yellowing adhesive tape. About half of the pieces were light-colored stones with crayon X’s, either red or black, scrawled on top.

Looking at those men and that board, I felt as if I were witnessing the devolution of a culture. The decrepit park, the shabby clothes Blix and Timor wore, even Otis Redding moaning about the dock of the bay on tinny but loud speakers, spoke of a world that was grinding to a halt.

“Mr. Reed. Mr. Redford,” I said to the men.

They looked up at me like two soldiers from vastly disparate battlefields who had died simultaneously and were now sitting in Limbo awaiting the verdict of Valhalla.

One man was fat and wore a gray-and-black hat with tiny ventilation eyes sewn in along the side and an old gray trench coat. From Meredith’s description, I knew this was Blix Redford. He smiled expectantly and stood up, saying, “Yes, sir, do I know you?”

At the same time the smaller Timor leaned back and scowled. He wore boys’ jeans, a threadbare T-shirt, and said nothing. Judging from the look of desperation on his face, I thought he might have been considering making a run for his life.

“My name is Easy Rawlins,” I said to Blix. “I just came from Perry Tarr’s house. I told Meredith I was looking for her husband, and she send me here to you.”

Timor calmed down a bit, and Blix’s smile evaporated.

“Didn’t she tell you that Pericles done passed on?” Blix asked.

“No,” I said, shocked at this intelligence. I took the opportunity to sit down next to Timor. The little man turned to face me warily. I could see that his left foot was encased in a filthy plaster cast.

“Oh, yeah,” Blix assured me. He sat down too. “Yeah. Raymond Alexander done slaughtered him and put him in the ground somewhere down around San Diego, I hear.”

“Really?” I said. “Is this Raymand in jail now?”

“Where you from, man?” Timor asked me; the sneer on his face was a hatred older than the mouth that carried it. “Everybody in Los Angeles know about Mouse.”

“Who?”

“Ray Alexander, fool,” he said. “The man that killed Perry Tarr.”

I turned my palms to the sky and shook my head. I was a stranger from another country. Local folklore was a mystery to me.

“You’re telling me that this, this Mouse done killed my friend Perry and the cops won’t even put him in jail?” There was a threat in my voice.

“Keep it down, man,” Blix said. “You don’t play with Ray. That’s what they say around here. Maybe back in Arkansas or Tennessee or wherevah you from they don’t know that. But around here he’s the Grim Reaper.”

“You know where I can find this man, this Raymond Alexander?” I asked.

“Didn’t you hear what I said, brother?” Blix asked. “This man’s a killer. He’ll crush you like a bug.”

“Shit,” I said, approximating the tone of many a fool I’d listened to. “He gotta gun; I gotta gun too.”

“Come on, BB,” Timor said to his friend. “Let’s play checkers an’ let this fool go. We told him. That’s all we can do.”

Timor turned his gaze down upon the board. Blix kept watching me.

“We don’t know where he’s at, man,” the friendlier friend said.

“Well, how can I find him?” I pressed.

“Just jump off the top’a city hall, brother,” Timor said, not looking up. “You be just as dead, only a hair quicker.”

That was all I was going to get there. I stood up, still acting as if I were angry, about to go out looking for the man who killed my friend. Then I paused.

“Tell me sumpin’, man,” I said to Timor.

“What?” He still wouldn’t look at me.

“If this mothahfuckah so bad, how come you safe?”

That got his attention.

“What you talkin’ ’bout, niggah?”

“You.”

“Me? You don’t know me.”

“I know you just sat there on yo broke-leg ass and accused Raymond ‘Mouse’ Alexander of murder. I know you said that he killed Pericles Tarr and buried him in San Diego.”

“Blix said that!” Timor yelled. “You cain’t put that on me!”

He pushed himself up from the table and hobbled off on his broken foot. Blix called to him, but Timor raced away as fast as his lame gait would carry him.

Blix sat at the checkerboard laughing to himself.

“That was a good one, man,” he said. “You give me somethin’ to needle him with for the next five years.”