Farewell, Amethystine

35

I drove straight to Studio City from Watts. It was a sleepy town at the dawn of the seventies, with houses that were little more than bedrooms for aspiring middle- and lower-middle-class workers.

The Gaynor apartment building was on Porga Lane, in the heart of the suburb. It was a monolith compared to the one- and two-story businesses and houses that comprised the rest of the neighborhood.

I was studying the directory in the vestibule when a middle-aged white woman was coming out. She wore a dark-blue dress suit that was almost military with its straight lines and cuts. The hem of her skirt came down to the middle of her knees.

She studied me for a few seconds and then said, “She’s in one-A.”

“Who is?” I asked.

“The colored girl you’re looking for.” There was a shrug in her delivery. “Go straight ahead to the end and turn right.”

“How do you know I’m not looking for, umm...” I said, scanning the list of names. “Colonel Hatton on floor three?”

Blue Suit threw up her hands and said, “Have it your way.” Then she walked out the front door of the little lobby.

I was angry, but I didn’t have time to worry about that woman. She actually helped me.

Through the second set of doors, there were halls either to the left, the right, or straight ahead. Following the woman’s directions, I came to a glass wall. Behind this transparent barrier was a dense and beautiful garden crowded with rosebushes, slender trees, bamboo, and flowering vines. I grinned at the beauty and then turned right, passing apartments 1F, 1E, 1D, 1C, and 1B on the right. At that point the hallway abruptly turned left. Before me was the door to apartment 1A.

I knocked and waited.

After a minute I heard, “Who is it?”

“It’s me, Mary, Easy.”

Mel’s Lilith opened the door, considered me, and then smiled. Barefoot like her husband had been, she wore tight coral slacks and a bright-red blouse that revealed her midriff.

Behind Mary stood Amethystine Stoller. She wore a dress that was pretty much shorts and a T-shirt sewn together. Her hair was slicked back and she was sporting a smile that I couldn’t quite read.

Mary took me by the arm and walked me to my client, who took my other arm. The ladies escorted me into a living room where one entire glass wall looked out upon the garden. There was a glass door built into the far right of the wall. The contained, and verdant, wilderness could have been Eden or a tiger’s den — maybe both.

“I like your friend,” Mary said, letting me go.

Amethystine stepped back from my other arm and I sat down on the velvety buff sofa they’d brought me to.

“Oh?” I said. “Why’s that?”

“Because she’s a complex girl,” Mary replied, putting an arm around Amethystine’s waist.

I noticed that my client didn’t complain about being called a girl.

“That’s the way it has to be for me,” Mary continued. “Girls like us are just a long list of secrets, while men are straight shots, predictable even when they explode.”

“Then what about Easy?” Amethystine asked, still sporting that smile.

“He’s the exception.”

“You mean all men other than me are open books?” I asked, realizing we had to do this play before getting down to business.

“Of course not,” Mary said, still playful. “But most men with knotty natures are either con men or dogs.”

Amethystine laughed with all the potential her wide mouth had to offer.

“Sis,” came a youthful male voice.

“Yeah, Garnett,” Amethystine called.

At a doorway at the far end of the living room stood a young Black adolescent. He was tall, his sister’s skin color, and no more than fourteen.

“Can I make a sandwich?”

“Sure. How about your sister?”

“She takin’ a nap, but I’ll make one for her too.”

“Before you do, com’on out here and say hello to my friend — Ezekiel Rawlins.”

Up close the young man contained equal parts beauty and awkwardness.

“Good to meet you,” he said, holding out a hand.

“Good to meet you, Mr. Rawlins,” his sister corrected.

After he made the proper adjustment I asked, “You play basketball, Garnett?”

He grinned and nodded.

“Go on and make your food,” she said. Then she turned to Mary and asked, “You wanna go outside?”

I’d never been plagued by allergies before, but the wealth of pollens, floral scents, and the pregnant earth of that garden started my nostrils to tickle.

Mary led us to a round marble table that had two semicircular benches, one on either side. I took one bench and the ladies settled on the other.

“This is nice,” I said.

“Jewelle knows her properties,” Amethystine agreed.

“Anybody else out here?”

“No,” said Mary. “There’s only four apartments with access, and your friend Jewelle told me she keeps them for special clients like you.”

I nodded, looking around to ensure our privacy.

“Okay, Easy,” Mary said, “let’s have it.”

“Maybe you wanna talk to me alone?” I suggested.

“That’s okay. I trust your Amy.”

“You don’t trust anybody but Mel,” I amended.

Mary smiled and then turned to kiss Amethystine on the cheek.

I was a little surprised at the flash of jealousy I felt.

“There was a reason you sent her here to me, Mr. Rawlins.”

“And what, pray tell, was that?”

“She knows the rules. I mean, why else would you dare to send her here?”

“I just thought that since you’re both smart, and Mel and I were working together, that having you in the same place would be a good thing.”

“Let’s have it,” Mary said again.

“I have that film clip you sent me after.”

“That’s all we need, right?”

“I don’t know. He’s already killed Tommy Jester and he sent the same hitter after me, Mel, and Fearless.”

“Where’s the hitter now?” Mary was suddenly still.

“Nowhere near here.”

“Mom... I mean, Sis,” Garnett called from afar.

“I’ll be right back,” Amethystine said to us both. She laid a hand on Mary’s shoulder and then rose.

Watching her skip off toward their apartment, I understood what it was when people would say they lost a part of themselves.

“Are we in trouble here?” Mary asked.

“No.”

“Are you sure?” she insisted.

“Yes. And that’s all you get.”

She took a moment, to trust, and then said, “Then Laks has to think that Mel will be after him, and so he’ll be after Mel.”

“And you.”

Mary’s smile actually showed some tooth.

“Hi,” Amethystine said. She’d come back all in a rush, hurrying back to her seat. “You have to teach boys everything.”

“Easy says that there will be no peace with the assistant chief.”

“Oh?”

Turning back to me, Mary asked, “What about Mouse?”

“Who’s that?” asked Amethystine.

“A friend’a mine,” I told her. “He knows people. Dangerous people.”

“You think he’d help us?” Mary asked.

“I was under the impression that you wanted to stay with Mel,” I replied.

“Don’t tell him.”

“This is Mel we talkin’ ’bout. By smell alone he can tell when a quart of milk will go sour next week.”

Nodding, Mary leaned back on the backless bench.

“Okay,” she said. “What’s your plan, Mr. Rawlins?”

“We need Melvin here, where we can talk it out.”

Mary’s chin rose and her eyes smiled.

“Okay,” Amethystine accepted. “Then what about me?”

I glanced at Mary, somewhat reluctantly.

“You want me to leave while you guys talk?” Mel’s wife asked.

I was wondering how to say yes politely when Amethystine said, “No, honey, you can stay. My problems are probably over by now anyway.”

I shrugged and went into the story about the work I’d done for her. That just went to prove what an odd mood I was in. Most of my life I never told anybody anything that mattered. That’s why Fearless didn’t know about where I lived. It was an unspoken creed among my people that the more anyone knew about your business, the more you were likely to lose.

But I didn’t care. I told the ladies about Shadrach and Purlo, Chita and Harrison, leaving out the bit about Harrison being Sturdyman.

“You left Shad tied up in a closet? Really?” Amethystine laughed like a schoolgirl.

“I wanted to kill him.”

“I’m sorry, Ezekiel,” Amethystine said, the merriment gone in an instant.

“Sorry for what exactly?”

Before my client could answer, a telephone rang from somewhere.

“That’s our phone,” Mary said, her laughing eyes now wary.

“I didn’t give it to anybody,” Amethystine told us. “I don’t even know the number.”

“It’s for Mr. Rawlins,” a girl called out.

I was on the phone maybe fifteen minutes before returning to the women. They were drinking chilled white wine and laughing again.

“Who was it?” Mary asked.

“Mel.”

“You gave him my number?”

“Yeah.”

“What did he have to say?”

“He’ll be here as soon as he can.”

Mel arrived just over half an hour later. Maybe six minutes after he got there, Mary took him off to her room to get reacquainted.

Amethystine and I wandered back out to the marble table in the Studio City Garden of Eden. We sat side by side. The first few minutes were spent in silence.

“You’re an odd one, Ezekiel,” Amethystine said at last.

“In what way do you mean?”

“Even the way you ask me that. I mean, most people I’ve known would be a little bothered by bein’ called odd.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I like you too. It would have been better if we met under a different cloud. I wish I could have saved Curt.”

She took a moment to let the pain subside and then asked, “Do you have any idea who killed him?”

“Not for a fact.”

“What about for maybe?”

I showed my palms in mock surrender and said, “Shadrach and Purlo had a lot invested in the casino deal goin’ through. Maybe, somehow, the knowledge Curt had was a threat to that. Or...”

“Or what?”

“Maybe Curt, or somebody he knew, realized how much was to be made off the deal. I mean, if you had the money and the muscle, an investment like that could be worth millions, tens of millions. More money than most people could imagine.”

“Is that what you would do?” she asked. “Sell the deal to some mobster guy?”

“Would you?”

After a long pause, and through a soulful stare, Amethystine uttered, “Maybe.”

“What about Curt?”

“What about him?”

“Would he take that kind of risk?”

She concentrated on the question, sneered at it. Then she shook her head and shrugged, telling me, wordlessly, that she didn’t really have an answer.

“Your brother had something wrong with his intestines. Tied up or something. Now he doesn’t, and Curt wanted to take you to Paris.”

“So?”

“Maybe he thought if he could make enough money, you could save Garnett and give Curt another chance to be interesting.”

“Ron wanted me to entertain some of his better customers,” she said, as if in answer. “I told Curt that I would kill either him or myself.”

“Was your ex going to make enough for the operation and to cut you free?”

“Enough to be broke after.”

“But he was talkin’ about Paris.”

“He wanted the chance to work again and for me to let him believe that we could be together.”

“And what did you want?”

“I don’t need nobody to pay my bills, Ezekiel.” She was talking directly to me, not about Curt. Not about some casino/oasis out in the desert.

“Who is Sturdyman?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”