Farewell, Amethystine

19

We were quiet the first few minutes of the drive. She was downcast and I had nothing to offer. When we made the freeway, she turned her attention to the radio.

I was somewhat surprised at her choice: 93 KHJ, the bubblegum station filled with loud a.m. DJs, their impossible giveaway offers, and lots of ads. I didn’t listen to the radio much because my time driving was, most often, used to work out problems. Problems that came with consequences. Even when the radio was on, I didn’t really listen.

But that morning was different. Amethystine’s ex had already suffered the most serious consequence. There was nothing to work out.

The first cut was Diana Ross and the Supremes singing “Someday We’ll Be Together.” After that a guy named B. J. Thomas sang “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head.” And then the Real Don Steele, pop DJ extraordinaire, came on identifying KHJ Boss Radio. After a commercial, called the Top 30 Giveaway for the record store Wallach’s Music City, they played “Take a Letter Maria,” by R. B. Greaves. It stunned me that radio had become so deeply integrated. My entire life the radio kept Blacks and whites separated. And here Greaves even had mariachi-style horns backing him up.

“You didn’t answer my question,” my passenger chided amid this minor revelation.

“What question?”

“If you trusted me.”

The song “Aquarius,” by the Fifth Dimension, started. I liked that song. After a few seconds I said, “I learned a long time ago that when somebody you barely know asks for trust, there’s a problem somewhere.”

Amethystine smiled at that, smiled and remained silent.

By midmorning we’d come to the tiny-house ridge overlooking the small park and, beyond that, the Pacific Ocean. We disembarked and walked to the shabby porch. I knocked and before long the door opened.

Winsome Barker-Fields stood there, looking worried.

“What?” she said.

“We came to talk to you about Curt, Winnie,” Amethystine answered softly.

Skinny Alastair emerged from shadow. He placed a hand on his wife’s shoulder.

“Talk about what?” he said.

“Can we come in?” Amethystine asked.

They turned to each other for an answer to this question. Taking the couple in was almost like reading a book. To begin with, Curt wasn’t with us. This alone was bad news. Why invite trouble into your house? That’s what they were wondering.

“What do you want?” Winsome asked, putting off the inevitable.

“Excuse me.” The unapologetic voice came from somewhere behind us.

Turning around, I wasn’t surprised to see the police. The two young white men were uniform in uniforms. Both hatless and brunette, clean-shaven and a whisper under six feet, armed, of course. The guy on my right rested his palm on the butt of his gun, where his partner was the one speaking.

“Can I help you?” he asked me.

“No.”

That was not the answer he expected. His brown eyes tilted at me, and a stony demeanor recast his face.

“What the hell?” the other cop uttered.

“Can I help you guys?” I asked.

“What are you doing here?” the cop on my right demanded.

“Talking to the Fieldses.”

“Do you know these people?” the cop on the left asked the elderly couple.

After a brief, worried silence Winsome said, “Yes, Officer. This is Amy, my son’s ex-wife.”

“And what about you?” the other cop asked me.

“What about me?”

“What are you doing here?”

“This is Mr. Rawlins,” Winsome said. “He’s doing some work for us.”

“What kind of work?”

“Installing hummingbird feeders,” I said on a lark. “You know, everybody loves hummingbirds.”

Those cops didn’t love us. Like old-fashioned radio, Amethystine and I were supposed to be played on a completely different bandwidth from nice white people.

“Come on in, Amy, Mr. Rawlins.”

We did as she asked, leaving the cops on the dowdy porch.

She closed the door on them.

The lady and her husband put us on one couch, and they took the other. We sat for a brief, uncomfortable moment. The parents didn’t want the bad news that Amethystine was better suited to tell them.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, “but Curt is dead.”

The cry that Winsome let out tore at my heart. She bent over her knees and spoke words that weren’t language, blubbering and chittering at the same time.

Alastair looked as if he’d just been struck.

“What do you mean?” he asked me.

“Where’s Harrison?” was my reply.

“What does he have to do with this?”

Amethystine moved to sit next to Winsome. She sat her up and put her arms around her.

“When Harrison walked me to my car the other day, he mentioned that your son knew a man named Purlo,” I said to Alastair. “You ever hear that name?”

“No,” Al said. “Who is he?”

“He’s a gambler, and it looks like he had hired your son to do some forensic accounting for him.”

I might as well have been speaking Greek.

Winsome was still gibbering, still raging. Amethystine struggled to physically contain her elder’s grief and fury.

“What does any of that have to do with Curt?” Alastair asked me.

“I don’t know,” I said honestly.

“How do you know that Curt is dead?”

“I found his body, called the cops.”

That sat the little man back.

“Why was he dead?” Winsome managed to utter through animal-like panting. “Why?”

“Somebody killed him, but I don’t know who or the reason why.”

Winsome pulled away from her ex-daughter-in-law and wrapped her arms around her husband’s neck. She hollered so loud I worried about the old man’s eardrums.

Amethystine put a hand on Winsome’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“Get your hand off of me!” this universal mother yelled, pulling away. “It’s your fault. You destroyed my beautiful son.”

After that she fell back into tears.

“Mr. Fields,” I said.

“What?”

“Where is your brother?”

“What do you want with Harrison?”

“Do you know the man called Purlo?”

“No.”

“I think your brother does. It would be good information to share with the police.”

“I never knew any of Curt’s clients. And, and, and Harry told us that he was going down to San Diego to visit Chita, the sister of his dead wife.”

“What’s Chita’s last name?”

“Moyer. Chita Moyer.”

“When did Harrison leave?”

“Not long after you did. He called her and she asked him to come help her with something.”

“Did you talk to her?”

“No, no.”

At that moment Mrs. Barker-Fields jumped up shrieking. She took a water glass from the coffee table and hurled it at the picture window. The drinking glass shattered, leaving the windowpane whole. Then she grabbed a cushion from the sofa. Amethystine tried to stop her but the elder lady slapped at her with the flat bolster.

That’s when I got up and wrapped my arms around the distraught mother. She struggled and fought, even scratched at my arms. But I didn’t let go, and finally she held on to me, crying softly.

We stood there in the middle of the small living room.

“He’s dead,” she said. “Dead.”

We held on to each other. I understood what she was feeling. I had children. I thought about the cut on Jesus’s face, about the attack on the native man he fought to protect. I thought about Amethystine’s husband’s impotent promise to take his ex to Paris.

Winsome’s heaving cries softened. When I let her go, her husband took my place.

“Have either of you ever heard of someone named Sturdyman?” I asked.

They were beyond my questions by then.

“I’ll stay with them,” my actual client said. “I’ll call the police and maybe go with them if they have to... identify...”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“I’d go with you, but I’ve got another appointment.”

“You go on.”