Farewell, Amethystine

30

When Fearless was gone, Melvin said, “So, Easy, what is it that I can do for you, exactly?”

I told him all that I could about Amethystine looking for her ex, him winding up murdered, and then how Shadrach and Purlo might have played parts in that.

“I need to figure out how the gamblers were involved with the dead man,” I said.

“The girl your client?”

“Woman, and yeah, she put me on it.”

“The ex is dead. What else is there for her in this?”

“These guys are dangerous. She’s not all that worried, but I’m dotting our i’s.”

“You know I can’t do anything directly.”

“You could talk to Anatole.”

The clouds above us were the size of atolls, moving fast in the upper atmosphere.

“Okay,” he admitted. “What else can the LAPD do?”

“Curt had an uncle named Harrison Fields. He’s the only one in the family who seemed to know anything. I talked to him the first time I went to the parents’ house, but by the time I went there again they told me that he was with a girlfriend down in San Diego. Her name is Chita Moyer. She ain’t listed. It would be good to find her.”

“Anything else?”

“No, nothing,” I said. “Get me as much as you can on them and I’ll play whatever hand I got.”

“Anatole’s good for strength and straight-ahead investigation, but he colors inside the lines. And I can’t be seen. Two out of every three cops would report it if they saw me.”

“Fifteen years on the force and those the best odds you got?”

The cop commander gritted his teeth against the heartbreak of a truth spoken out loud.

“But you can trust Anatole,” I said. “Right?”

“Not to break any laws.”

“Okay. Maybe a bone or two, but no laws.”

“Which one you think Annie’s best to go after?”

“Annie?”

“Your people ain’t the only ones who make up nicknames. Who do you need him to look into? And how do you expect to work with him?”

That final question was a good one. Even though I had my own detective agency, I rarely worked jointly or in unison with anyone.

“Tell him, uh, tell him to look into the gangsters. If he gets something on ’em, then bust ’em. If not, then he could pass anything he finds on to me, or else to you if he feels it’s too, um, sensitive.”

Melvin nodded, enjoying his sobriety, I think.

“And what you gonna do for me up ahead?” he asked.

“When you talk to Anatole, ask him to give you all he’s got on the man doin’ the legwork for Laks.”

“Okay.” I could tell by his tone that Mel was impressed with me.

Simultaneously we took deep breaths and then rose to our feet. The time for talking was over. We were foot soldiers with marching orders. Mel headed down to meet Fearless, and I called the front desk to stop the elevator at my floor.

The phone jangled me awake at a few minutes past three that afternoon.

“Yeah?”

“It’s Captain McCourt.” He was definitely perturbed at having to call me. Maybe he was also bothered by the afternoon sleep in my voice.

“Mel asked me to get you information as it came in, so—”

“Where you callin’ from?” I asked, cutting him off.

“A phone booth down the street from my office.” He didn’t like being interrupted or questioned, but these were extraordinary times. “That okay with you?”

“Go on.”

“Shadrach Tellman lives in Hawthorne.” He gave me the address.

“Thank you, Captain. You got my answering service number?”

His reply was hanging up the phone in my ear.

The silence of the confidential hotel bade me to sleep a bit longer. My eyes were drowsing when the phone rang again.

“Yeah?”

“Sleepin’ on the job, Brother Rawlins?” Melvin Suggs asked.

It was strange hearing his voice because the sleep didn’t register much time between now and when I last saw him.

“S’up, Mel?”

“I got Chita Moyer’s numbers in San Diego.”

I jotted down the address under the one Anatole had given me. For some reason it felt as if I were penning a last will and testament.

“Why didn’t Anatole gimme this?” I asked. “I just talked to him.”

“I got it from a guy I know in the intelligence unit. I took a chance that no one told him about the trouble I’m in. Those guys are great for questions like that. They got files on everybody.”

“Okay,” I said. “Great.”

“Talk later,” Mel said.

I was asleep in less than a minute after cradling the receiver.

In the dream I walked up to the bare door of an unpainted shotgun shack on Concord Street in Third Ward Houston.

I knocked.

“Hold on,” a sweet feminine voice called. “I’m comin’.”

A few moments later Angel Lee opened the door. Black-skinned and barefoot, the thirty-something woman wore a bright-yellow dress.

“Mrs. Lee?”

“Yes, young man, can I help you?”

“My name’s Ezekiel Rawlins, but e’rybody calls me Easy, ma’am. I’m here lookin’ for Anger.”

The smile on her face dimmed but did not disappear.

“I haven’t seen her in a few days,” Angel said. “She come by to pick up some’a her church clothes and then lefted. Are you bleedin’?”

I looked down at my left shoulder and saw, under my undershirt strap, that blood was seeping from my wound.

“It happent more than a week ago,” I told her. “It’s okay.”

“Nonsense,” she said, her smile strengthening. “Come on in here.”

She sat me on a plastic-encased sofa and changed Anger’s dressing from five days before.

“What happened?” she asked while moving her feather touch around the wound in my shoulder.

“A man,” I said, “a man tried to take Anger away and when I went to stop him, he stuck me.”

Angel leaned back, still working on the bandage.

“That was a man named Edgar that stabbed you?”

“Yes’m.”

“Are you an’ my daughter close friends, Easy?”

“Yes’m.”

“You care for her?”

“She saved my life.”

“Then you’ll understand it when I tell you that she done left Houston for good.”

“Why?” I whined.

“That man Edgar has a lotta friends that don’t feel too kindly toward my girl.”

When I awoke, it was to a pain in my chest. Thinking or dreaming about Anger Lee often left me feeling wounded.

I tried to remember if I had really gone to her mother’s house in Third Ward and she, Angel, actually ministered to my wound. It felt real but I think Angel left Houston around the same time Anger did.

It didn’t matter anyway. All that was a long time before, and I had a job to do.