Gray Dawn

10

There I was, a Black man with three dead white people two rooms away and a white girl-child, maybe nine years old, shrieking and holding me around the neck with such strength that the only way to disengage her would have been to cause injury. After what felt like a long time she stopped yelling at the top of her lungs for maybe one minute, holding tight, panting like a small animal surrounded by fire.

Then she started yelling again.

As the time dragged by, she took little breaks now and then before starting up again. If we weren’t so removed from the neighborhood, I might have worried about someone hearing her loud complaints, but the size of the mansion and the huge property itself, I felt, would swallow any sound a human could make.

After a while the sporadic spans of silence got longer.

During one of these pauses I began talking to her.

“Does anything hurt you?” I asked.

Her response was to double the volume of her complaint.

“Do you need some water?”

That time she nodded before crying bloody murder again. Carrying her in my arms, I went to a cabinet, threw it open, and found that it contained only cooking spices, then the next cabinet was filled with plates of varying sizes; the third cupboard specialized in large, probably handmade ceramic mugs. The girl was still hollering, but I paid no attention. I lugged her over to the double-basined aluminum sinks, ran water, and then held the fat vessel to her lips. She had to stop crying in order to drink, and after the third swallow she had to take a deep breath to get the right volume.

I became inured to sounds of terror, this because I was terrified myself, frightened of being discovered and lynched just for being there.

When I was a child they hanged Black people without a trial, without any excuse whatsoever. That reality lived inside me, a colony of long-toothed tapeworms writhing in my gut.

When the girl took another break from screaming, I asked, “What happened to you?”

To my surprise, she said, “My... my... my Uncle Rolfo put me in the secret room in the hall closet and said not to make a sound.”

“He did?”

She nodded.

“Why did he do that?”

“Because they broke the front window.”

“Who did?”

The child couldn’t find words and started screaming again. She wouldn’t let me put her down, so during this bout I sat on a tall stool that stood before a kitchen counter that loomed like an island in the middle of the immaculate kitchen.

When next she paused, I asked, “Are you okay?”

“Where’s Uncle Rolfo?” she whimpered.

“I don’t know,” I lied. “Maybe we should call the police.”

More shouts and screams. More holding on tight.

Then, “We got to look for him,” she commanded.

“I’m too scared,” I said. “I want the police.”

More crying. This time it felt as if she might have been crying for me.

“What’s your name?” I shouted over her screams.

“I’m scared,” she answered.

“Me too,” I replied honestly. “We need the police to protect us.”

“Are the police like... like... like you?” While asking this she rubbed her small hand over my forearm, making me wonder if she was referring to my dark color.

Not knowing what answer would soothe her, I said, “They’re my friends.”

“Your real friends?”

“Yes.”

“O-o-o-okay.”

There was a phone next to one of the kitchen doors. Lifting the receiver from its cradle, I dialed a number I knew well.

“Melvin Suggs’s line,” Myra Lawless said in my ear.

“Hi, Myra, Easy Rawlins here. Please tell me he’s in.”

“Is it important? He’s trying to finish a presentation he’s doing for the chief.”

“I’d say it was life and death, but really it’s only just death.”

Three clicks and: “Melvin Suggs.”

“Hey, man, Bel-Air’s in your jurisdiction, right?”

“Yeah.” We were such good friends that there was no need to stand on ceremony.

“Well, I’m here at...” I gave him the address. “There’s three homicides and one frightened little girl. It’s bad.”

“Anatole’s in West LA right now. I’ll send him and a few uniforms out there.”

“Tell ’em there’s a Black man here. There’s a Black man here and they shouldn’t shoot him. Make sure they know that.”

“Talk to you later, Easy.”

He hung up and it was just me and the girl, with death in the other room, and retribution on the way.

“Are they coming?” she asked.

“Yeah. They’re gettin’ into their cars and drivin’ all the way out here.”

She smiled at what I said but I didn’t think that it had to do with the information imparted.

“They came in through the broken window, I think,” she said with prodding. “I could hear Mamie screaming like she was hurt.”

“Did anybody hurt you?”

Shaking her head, she said, “Only Uncle Rolfo when he pushed me into the secret room at the back of the closet where they keep the towels. Where is he?”

The ghost child had to be always touching me. She was seated on my lap, sipping her water with one hand holding the mug and the other on the side of my face. I took the mug, holding it for her to drink from while she used the free hand to grasp my sports jacket lapel.

Time was passing by sluggishly, bringing to mind thick molasses dripping from a crack in a crockery jar at the back of an unheated winter pantry that belonged to my grandfather. Sometimes I’d go out there to sniff at the sweet, burnt-smelling leak.

“What’s your name?” I asked to fill in the moments.

“Geraldine, but they call me Gigi.”

“Gigi?”

“Yeah.”

“Did a woman named Lutisha used to stay here?”

“Lutie!” she cried, grinning broadly and nodding.

“She had black skin like me?”

“Yeah. She’s my best friend.”

In the distance sirens whined.

“Was Lutie here last night?”

Gigi shook her head no.

The sirens were getting louder.

“Did you see anything that happened after you went in the secret room in the closet?”

She went stock-still and stared at me.

“It’s okay. You won’t get in trouble.”

Hesitating, she said, “I had to go to the bathroom, so I got out really quiet and I — and I saw Uncle Rolfo screaming at this man that had on a suit jacket that was like a checkerboard. The man hit him real hard and I ranned back to the closet.”

“The checkerboard suit jacket was red and black?”

“Uh-uh, yellow and black. I’m sorry I ranned out.”

“Don’t worry, honey, everything you did was perfect.”

She nestled her head against my chest and then a cop burst into the room. He had his pistol out and was pointing it at me and Gigi.

“Don’t move!” he shouted, and Gigi started her banshee’s cry.

Another cop, also with a pistol in hand, ran in from another room. That direction, I knew, was from where the dead bodies were.

“Let the girl go!” the second cop commanded.

I put my hands up next to my ears.

“Come to me,” the second cop said to Gigi.

“Go away!” she screamed at him. It felt as if she was trying to climb into my sports jacket.

“I’m the one who called you guys,” I said.

A third uniformed officer came in then. His gun was out too. I was hoping beyond hope that Gigi would stay holding me because I believed that it was only her physical proximity that could protect me from a dozen bullet wounds.

“Put those guns down!” someone yelled. Just hearing his voice sent cold prickles down the back of my neck, replacing the fever of absolute fear.

The voice walked into the room. It was Captain Anatole McCourt.

“You okay, Rawlins?”

“Ask me that after my heart slides back down into my chest.”

“You two go back to the crime scene,” he said to the first two cops. “And you, Rath,” he said to the third man.

“Yes, Captain.”

“You call down to the precinct and get a full team up here.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And don’t give ’em any details. Just say that we need a full team to examine a suspected crime.”

“Yes, sir.”

When the gunmen were gone, Anatole walked over to us and sat down on a stool like ours.

Gigi’s eyes opened wide at the sight of McCourt’s great height and breadth. The red-haired, green-eyed cop was at least six six, blessed with a Neanderthal’s chest.

Gigi held tight on to me while appreciating the gray-suited captain.

“Okay,” Anatole said in a world-weary tone of voice. “Let’s hear it.”

I told him almost everything. Why not? I was looking for Lutisha James, it didn’t matter who knew it. Santangelo said it was to call her mother. Nothing wrong with that. But when it came to talking about the dead bodies in the other room, I softballed it for Gigi’s sake.

Anatole was the kind of student who never took notes, but he listened very closely. When I finished, he requested that we stay in the kitchen. Gigi and I were happy to comply.

Some time went by while various police officials came to inspect the crime scene. Gigi left my lap only once, when I had to carry her to the bathroom, wait, and then bring her back to our stool in the kitchen.

The child was too frightened to maintain any kind of conversation. Whenever we spoke about anything beyond creature needs, she tended toward tears. My only job, right then, was to hold her.

Maybe two hours later Anatole came in with a woman clad in a dull orange dress and boatlike dark brown low-heeled shoes. She was white, somewhere around forty, with a smile that seemed forced under the vise of her squashed-down face.

“Mrs. Alice Fabricant, meet Ezekiel Rawlins,” the giant announced.

“Pleased to meet you,” she said dismissively. Then, bearing that forced grin, she said to Gigi, “And who is this?”

My temporary papoose turned her face away, burying it in the fabric of my jacket.

“This is Gigi,” I said.

Alice Fabricant gave me a sour look.

“She will have to come with me,” she said. “I represent Child Services. Um, and who are you?”

“Mr. Rawlins,” I replied formally. “I just met the young lady. She seems to think of me as a kind of protector.”

Mrs. Fabricant reached out a hand to take Gigi’s arm.

“No!” my charge screamed. “You leave me alone!”

“But, honey,” Alice said softly, “you have to come with me.”

“No! I want to be with my friend, Easy!”

That battle went on for some time. I tried to help, but Gigi was absolutely sure of what was best for her. No one could gainsay that.

After a long while Fabricant went away and then came back with a pint bottle of lemonade.

The social worker pretended to take a sip from the bottle and said, “This is really good lemonade. It’s sweet and tart and helps you to relax.”

She held the bottle toward Gigi, but I put up a hand. I looked Anatole in the eye, the question unspoken. He nodded at me, and I allowed Fabricant to commit her misdemeanor.

A few minutes later the little victim child laid her head against my chest again and yawned.

“Hand her to me, Mr. Rawlins,” Fabricant requested.

“She’s not asleep yet, lady.”

“I have a time schedule to keep.”

“Keep whatever you want, but Gigi’s not asleep yet.”

“I—” she started to say.

“You will wait,” Anatole interrupted, using that cop’s commanding voice that would stop anyone short of Mouse.

“Your superiors will hear about this,” she warned Anatole.

“Oh yeah? You got your MD on you, sis?”

“What?”

“I don’t think you have the license to prescribe lemonade. Do you?”

Fabricant’s brows furrowed while she worked out the quality of the cop’s threat.

Finally, she said, “I’ll be outside.”

A few minutes later Gigi was in a light sleep. I carried her out to the social worker’s car and strapped her into the child’s seat in back.

Gigi woke up then and looked at me sleepily.

“Easy,” she said.

“Yes, baby?”

“Are you gonna come see me?”

I kissed her cheek and whispered, “Wherever you are, just say you want to see me, and I’ll come to you.”

Watching the Child Services car roll down the path toward the street, I felt a little pang for the girl. I was about her age when I lost my one surviving parent, my father. Gigi was like me in that she was going to have to make it in a world that didn’t know to care. I hoped that she had someone, somewhere.

There was an ambulance-like van parked in front of the house.

“That the coroner’s truck?” I asked Anatole.

“No. It’s for the old lady.”

“What old lady?”

As if my words were a magical incantation, the front doors of the mansion flew open and out came a man in white. He was pushing a wheelchair that held an ancient woman, swathed in a blanket and strapped to the chair. She was moving her head from side to side, trying to get a look at the man, while yelling hoarse curses at him. She weighed no more than seventy pounds.

“Millicent Corbet?” I asked.

“She was in a room upstairs,” Anatole said on a nod. “Sitting in her own waste. I guess the killers didn’t think she was worth the effort.”

Another male nurse climbed out of the dark van and helped his friend wrestle the old woman and wheelchair into the back of that specialized ambulance.

I watched as they drove off.

“So, Easy,” Anatole said to my back.

“Yeah.”

“You have anything else to add?”

I turned to face him. “You got your car here?”

“I got driven out by Officer Rath. Why?”

“Will you ride with me back downtown?”

“That Lincoln yours?”

“It belongs to the company.”

“I don’t know if I want to ride to headquarters in a pimpmobile.”

“You take your whores in secret?” I retorted, thinking, What the fuck he mean calling my car that?

“You don’t have to be so sensitive, Rawlins. I’ll take a ride.”