Farewell, Amethystine

5

That was back in the last few years when Santa Monica was still almost a village. I drove to an address on Maritime Lane that sat across the street from a nameless garden park. If you had the inclination, you could walk through the park, descending past the lawns and shrubs across an asphalt bike path and, finally, to the beach.

Matchbook houses painted in pastel colors perched there on the rise looking out over the Pacific, the largest continuous expanse on the face of the earth.

Toward the center of the block there was a wood-frame California bungalow painted pale pink behind the barest strip of lawn. The front porch was one step up and the two chairs on the deck were covered with windblown leaves under a thin crust of silt.

Approaching the front door, I stopped for a moment. It had been a big day and the sun hadn’t yet set. There I was, driven forward by just a name from a woman whose mere presence plowed up my earliest adolescent memories.

The front door of the house was eggshell white behind a green screen. I considered walking away from there. I might have done so if the muted door hadn’t swung inward.

“Can I help you?” asked a small woman.

She was white and stout like some elf or sprite from a German fairy tale. Her head was large, covered in coiffed gray, and her eyes, behind crystalline glasses, held on to a strong blue.

“Hi,” I said. “My name is Ezekiel Rawlins.”

Those blue-stained orbs asked, And?

“I’m a private detective. A woman named Amethystine Stoller retained me to help you with the disappearance of your son, Curt.”

The little elf-woman’s mouth opened slightly, and she took a step backward, becoming partially submerged in the shadows of the house.

Then a man, the same height as the woman, stepped forward — from nowhere, it seemed.

“What’s that again?” he asked me.

Where the woman was solidly built, her male counterpart looked as if life had eaten away much of the substance of his manhood. Once blue, his eyes were now gray, and his shoulders were sharp under the drab green T-shirt.

I repeated word for word what I had said to the woman.

“Amy?” he replied.

“Yeah.”

The three of us stood there for a moment, almost as if the conversation was over.

Then another man, shorter, older, and more slender still, emerged from the oblivion of the interior.

“What’s your name?” he asked in a stronger voice than either of the others.

“Ezekiel Rawlins. They call me Easy.”

The newest cast member of our improvised scene was smiling and friendly, wearing a sporty buff-colored suit, dark-brown shirt, and true-yellow silk tie. He pushed the screen door open and said, “Come on in, Easy. You need something to drink?”

The living room was twelve by twenty feet with a low, eight-foot ceiling and a thin tan carpet made from some grainy, synthetic fabric.

There were two short burgundy couches that were set together to form an el. I took the settee facing the front door while my three hosts fit easily onto the other sofa.

We sat there for a moment. The front door was still open, the Pacific Ocean lounged under slowly darkening blue.

“I’m Harrison,” the oldest of the family piped. “Harrison Fields.”

“Curt’s father?”

“No,” the other man murmured as he shook his jowls. “I’m Curt’s father... Alastair. And this is Curt’s mother, my wife, Winsome.”

“Winsome Barker-Fields,” the woman added. “You say that Amy hired you to look for Curt?”

“Amethystine works for a friend of mine, and she, my friend, suggested that your ex-daughter-in-law call me. I do this kind of work for a living.”

“We don’t have any money,” Alastair claimed. He was leaning forward, elbows on knees and hands clasped.

“That’s all taken care of, sir.”

“Where’d Amy get money like that?” he demanded.

“This is a favor for the woman she works for.”

“Are you a real detective?” Winsome asked.

Instead of trying to explain, I leaned over, dug out my wallet from a back pocket, and produced my detective’s license. She read it closely and then tried to hand it to her husband, but he waved it off. Harrison took it instead.

“You’ve already done more than the Santa Monica PD,” the elder Fields said, standing up and leaning over to hand back the ID. “We had to go down to the station and all they did was have us fill out a form like a fucking application for a job.”

“Harrison!” Winsome said sharply.

“I’m just sayin’.”

“You don’t have to curse.”

“I’m sure the police are doing their job,” I said. “But it’s always good to have extra eyes on the lookout.”

“We don’t have any money,” Alastair said again.

“I understand that, sir. Amethystine and my friend have covered all costs.”

Alastair nodded, but it didn’t feel like he understood.

“Amethystine...” I began.

Winsome grunted when I said the name.

“She told me,” I continued, “that she’d heard from you that he was missing and wanted to help.”

“She could have helped by leaving him alone in the first place,” Winsome said.

“Don’t listen to them,” Harrison declared, somehow sounding friendly. “You know, we’re farming stock from rural Ohio. People back home don’t trust anything new or different. But you’re right, an extra pair of eyes will see things that others don’t understand.”

I nodded slightly, accepting and agreeing with his words.

“What I don’t understand is why you’re here in the first place,” Alastair said.

“I went to talk to the police in Los Angeles...” I began.

“Why?” Alastair challenged.

“What do you mean why?” Harrison asked his younger brother. “Curt works in LA. He lives there.”

“I asked the man why he’s here,” was the younger brother’s answer.

“The LA police said that your son was doing some kind of business with guys that were, um, suspicious. Did he tell you about any of the people he was working with?”

Three little white faces turned toward me. They seemed like children then. I could almost understand why Amethystine got involved with her ex’s disappearance.

“No,” Winsome replied. “Curt never talked too much about his job.”

“Are the people he’s working with crooks?” Alastair wanted to know.

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

“What do you need from us, Mr. Rawlins?” Harrison asked.

“Anything useful. Friends, clubs, sports he might play or go to watch.”

“When he was a kid he liked to play checkers,” Alastair pulled out of memory.

“He has a baseball card collection in his room,” Winsome added. “And, and, and he has a Japanese pen pal.”

“What’s his name?”

The parents thought really hard on this question. Every once in a while, they’d toy with a syllable or two, but with little progress.

“Damn,” Harrison said. “It’s Eiko Ishida. Don’t you two ever listen to Curt?”

“Where does this Eiko live?” I asked.

“In Japan,” Alastair said in a tone that called me fool. “Where else you gonna find a Jap?”

Raised on a steady diet of white mouths saying nigger-this and nigger-that, I was half-ready to walk out of that matchbook of a house. I might have done it if Winsome hadn’t spoken up.

“Be quiet, Al,” she said. “Can’t you see the man wants to help?”

“He wants my money, that’s what he wants,” her husband replied.

“Do you have Curt’s current address?” I asked anyone.

“He’s out in Culver City, but we don’t know the street address,” Winsome admitted.

“You don’t know where your son lives?”

“We never drive far, and he comes to see us. He only moved out a few months ago.”

“He moved here after divorcing Amethystine?”

“Yes,” Winsome said. “Of course. Why wouldn’t he?”

“House seems kinda small for four people.”

“The bedrooms are small but there’s four of ’em back in that rabbit warren,” Harrison said, pointing at a door at the back of the living room.

“We have his phone number,” Winsome added.

“That wouldn’t help me. But maybe you have the numbers of some of his friends.”

“No, no. We never called his friends. Maybe I could remember some of their last names.”

“What about Giselle?” Harrison suggested to his sister-in-law.

“Who’s that?” I asked.

Looking both distressed and distracted, Winsome stood up from the red sofa and walked toward and then through the doorway that Harrison had said led to a warren.

There was silence among the men for a few moments, and then...

“How could you make a living doing work for nuthin’?” asked Alastair.

“I usually charge seventy-five dollars a day.”

“A day!” the penny-pinching farmer complained. “A day?”

“Plus expenses. That way I can afford to do work pro bono now and again.”

“Seventy-five a day. Most I ever made was two fifty a week. And I’m a white man.”

You certainly are, I thought.

From the corner of my eye I could see Winsome coming through the rabbit door. She was holding a slip of paper in her left hand. She stared at the note until reaching me. Then she held it out away from her body as if she wanted to be free of it.

“Here,” she said.

“What’s this?” I asked, taking the offering.

“Giselle’s number, of course.”

“Who is she?”

“Some woman Curt knows. He told us if he didn’t answer his home phone we were to call this one.”

“And did you call her?”

“No.”

I wanted to ask why not, but there are some mysteries not worth solving.

Turning my attention to the phone number, I saw that Winsome’s handwriting was lovely. There was the first name and the number rendered in loving cursive.

“What’s Giselle’s last name?”

“I don’t know,” Winsome said. “We never met.”

Alastair’s wife was standing in front of me. I realized that she wanted me to leave.

“Is she a Black girl?” I asked, brandishing the paper.

“I have no idea.”

I stood up then and the lady took three steps back, almost to the wall.

“I’ll walk you out, Mr. Rawlins,” Harrison offered. He levered himself up by putting one hand on his brother’s shoulder.

Alastair looked at me and said, in wonder, “Seventy-five dollars.”

I was parked down the block from the Fieldses’ house. Harrison walked me all the way to the driver’s side. When I opened the door, he put a hand on my left biceps.

“Curt’s been doing some gambling out in Gardena,” he confided. “His parents don’t approve so they don’t know. I don’t know about the people he worked with, but there’s some guys he gambles with sometimes.”

“You know any of their names?”

“Just two. One’s named Shadrach. Shad works for a guy named Purlo, he manages the poker club.”

“What’s the name of the place?”

“I don’t really know. Might not even have one. It’s the kinda place you have to know to go there.”

“What do they look like?” I asked. “Shadrach and Purlo.”

“You know, white guys. Tall like you. One a little less and the other an inch or so more. Um, uh, yeah... Purlo has a little scar over the left side of his mouth.”

“A noticeable scar?”

After a few seconds’ consideration Harrison smiled and then nodded.

I liked him. He was a familiar type.

“So, you’ve been to this place?” I asked.

“Yeah. Once or twice. Curt took me because he knew I wouldn’t criticize or tell his parents.”

“What’s the address?”

“It’s on South Normandie Avenue around 166th Street, but that won’t do you any good.”

“Why not?”

“Cops busted it some time ago and, and I don’t think it opened back up.”

“You know anyplace else Curt might be?”

“Not really.”

I handed him my business card and said, “Thanks anyway. If you think of anything, you could reach me at this number. And tell your brother that I’ll never charge him a dime.”

“I’ll tell him,” the old man said on a laugh, “but he’ll never believe it.”

The nearest gas station was at the northeast corner of Lincoln and Pico. There I checked the oil and topped off the tank. After that I drove to the southeast corner of the lot and availed myself of the phone booth.

“Hello,” she answered on the fourth ring.

“Miss Giselle Simmons?” I asked in my most courteous neutral voice, what white southerners call a northern accent, while Black folk call it a white voice.

She was quiet for a moment.

“You must have the wrong number,” she said finally. “I’m Giselle Fitzpatrick.”

“Oh, Lord,” I improvised. “My name’s Jack Farmer. I offer magazine subscriptions over the phone. You know, they give me a list of names and numbers and I make cold calls to see if you ladies might like a cheap subscription to Redbook, Glamour, or Vanity Fair. They must have mixed up your first name with somebody else’s last.”

“Well,” she said clearly. “I don’t need any subscriptions.”

With that she hung up, leaving me standing there, receiver in hand, and looking at the rotary dial. I took out another dime and rolled out a number I hadn’t called in a very long time.

“Hello?” she answered.

“Hey.” The word was almost a grunt.

“Mr. Rawlins?”

“Yes, it’s me, Karin.”

“Is everything all right?”

“Can I come by?”

“Of course,” she replied without hesitation.

Exiting the booth, standing there in the late twilight, and feeling the chilly sea breeze — I realized that I was no longer just gathering information. I was now committed to the case of the missing ex.