Farewell, Amethystine

12

The sun shone in through the bedroom window. Miss Hua was gone. I felt a mild wave of panic before remembering that I’d called home late in the night after Lynne was asleep. Benita promised to tell Feather that I was okay.

On the pillow next to my head was a tiny pink envelope upon which Mr. Ezekiel Rawlins was written. At the end of that line was a small drawing of a bulbous heart. The letter was scented and sealed. It read:

I got up, staggered to the toilet, then went to the window. No pedestrians at all, just cars, lots of cars. I must have stood there for quite a while. Realizing that I still needed sleep, I climbed back into the starlet’s plush bed and drowsed for two hours more.

“Edgar,” Anger Lee said to me while pressing a fresh bandage against my wound. “His name was Edgar and he wanted to own me like some kinda mothahfuckin’ slave master. Shit, I mean, just ’cause you let a man share your bed don’t mean he could do whatever he want.”

She and I had just made love in her bed. I was seeping blood behind a pounding heart and understanding only too well what Edgar had felt.

“He daid?” I asked.

“Uh-huh.”

“You scared?”

“Happy,” she contested.

“Happy for what?”

Anger stroked my cheek with a warm hand. She smiled and said, “For a man like you, Easy Rawlins. A man stand up for his woman even though he know he bound to lose.”

At that moment, even though he was dead, Edgar knocked down the door hollering and wielding that jagged black blade.

I jumped out of Lynne’s bed, wide awake and scared for my life. Nearly half a minute passed before I realized that it was only a dream.

It was 11:00 and the room was chilly.

I dressed and drove to West Hollywood. Along the way I was thinking that Anger Lee had been my first client; thinking that and wondering where in the world she had gone.

The address Lynne gave me was for an apartment building on Lamar Street. It was a three-story box of a structure encased in sky-blue plaster and spattered with glitter. The entrance to the building, for some reason, was on the left rear side. There were signs prohibiting loitering, trespassing, and sales of any kind. But the back entrance was unlocked and unguarded.

I made my way to the third floor and sought out apartment 3G. The hall walls were painted a dingy gray and the carpet was soiled blue.

I knocked on 3G’s scratched and dented rose-colored door and waited. There was no buzzer.

Having slept the morning away, I thought that maybe TJ was sleeping too, so I knocked a little more. I waited a full minute before knocking again.

Down the hall about twelve feet or so, a door came open. Two heads leaned out, one over the other. One was white and the other black. Both men. I looked at them and they at me. When no words were spoken I knocked again.

“Can we help you?” the white head asked.

“You know Tommy Jester?”

“What do you want with him?” asked the other head.

“Sorry, guys, but my business is with TJ.”

“What kind of business?”

“That’s what I want to talk to him about.”

The heads regarded each other, then pulled back into the apartment, the door slamming shut behind them.

I heard a distant phone behind Tommy Jester’s door. It rang twice.

A minute later TJ’s door swung inward.

The white man before me was dressed in silken violets and pinks, mainly. He was three inches taller and forty pounds lighter than I.

“What the fuck you want?”

“Tommy Jester?”

“Who’s askin’?”

“Mary Donovan.”

His aggressive visage faltered. I might go so far as to say that he experienced a tremor of fear.

“Wh-who’s that?”

“Look, man, Mary told me to tell you to call her.”

“What’s the number?”

I gave him the number Mary had given me. He didn’t write it down.

TJ stalled around in his mind a minute or two, trying to somehow get the upper hand in a conversation that had already concluded.

“How’d you get this address? Mary don’t know it.”

“I asked around.”

“What the fuck that mean?” he said, using the words as a kind of lift for the rage he felt he needed to oppose me.

He looked like he knew how to fight. The pastel colors and fear of answering a door didn’t mean he couldn’t throw a fist... or produce a weapon.

“I got a few actor friends,” I said with a shrug. “I kept calling till one of them called me back.”

The number of words and loose connections deflated TJ’s rage a bit.

“What’s Mary want?”

“She did not say.”

“How’d she know you?”

A half smile made its way to my lips. “We did some work together a few years back.”

Tommy Jester’s eyes opened wide as if he were scanning the darkness for movement.

“All right. You did your little errand. Now get the fuck outta here.”

He slammed the door.

I drove all the way down to Pico before going to a corner phone booth. Using a Franklin D. Roosevelt dime, I called my answering service.

Patty Deworth answered, “Stenman Service. How can we help you?”

“VIP51,” I replied.

“Oh, hi, Mr. Rawlins,” she said, dropping the professional tone.

“How’s your mother, Patty?”

“Thanks for asking. She’s down in Florida in the Keys with that no-good brother’a mine.”

“Which one?”

“Ajax,” she said on a nervous giggle.

Patty had six brothers, each one worse than the next. We usually spent two or three minutes chatting about our lives before getting down to business. It was good to keep the ladies of the service happy with me. Some of the calls that came in were emergencies.

“Any messages for me?”

“A woman, Giselle Fitzpatrick, called about half an hour ago. You want her number?”

“Hello?” was the feminine answer to my next call.

“Miss Fitzpatrick? Easy Rawlins here.”

I could hear her quick inhalation, then she exhaled.

“Mr. Rawlins. Thank you for calling.”

“What’s up?”

“It’s Curt. He called me. I told him that his parents were worried and that they sent you looking for him.”

“What’d he say?”

“He told me that he wanted to meet you tonight.” She hesitated and then said, “At a warehouse on Owens in Canoga Park.” She gave me the address.

“Did he say he was going to call his parents?”

“Yes, um, but, but I think he wanted to talk to you first.”

“Why? He doesn’t know me.”

“I don’t know. He just said that he wanted to talk to you.”

“What did he sound like?” I asked.

“I, I don’t know what you mean,” she pleaded.

“Was he nervous or scared?”

“I don’t think so. I don’t know. I, I have to go. My mother’s at the door.”

“Giselle.”

“Yes?”

I waited a beat. In that silence I imagined her frightened heart fluttering. “Nothing. Thanks for the message.”