Gray Dawn

27

Making love to Amethystine blocked out everything that had come before. It was as if I were a kid again experiencing the world for the first time: colors, textures, breath. The feelings were so strong that it felt somehow impersonal, like I was drifting through another man’s dream.

“What you thinkin’?” Amethystine asked.

“That I’m happier than I should be.”

“Why not be happy?”

“Where I come from, if you take a break of any kind from the job at hand, then the ground will crumble from under your feet, and you’ll fall all the way down, into an early grave.”

She sat up in the bed beside me staring hard, not at me but at the words spoken.

After maybe a minute she said, “I know. I know you better than you think, Easy. I do. From the first time in your office when I came to get you to find Curt. I knew right then that we were meant to be together. Or... maybe not definitely, but if the stars aligned, then we could make something out of — of — I don’t know, that we could make something more out of what we are.

“Does that make sense?”

“Yeah. But at the same time, I got a thirty-eight-year-old son downstairs that I didn’t even know about before two days ago. His brother been murdered and the same folks wanna kill him too. And here I am... happy.”

“Here you are,” she said, taking my hands in hers. “Here we are.”

“Tell me somethin’.”

“What’s that, my love?”

“Where’d you get that bullet scar from?”

She took her time, watching me, maybe even glaring a wee bit. The wait was so long that I thought she wouldn’t respond. This was, in some ways, a relief, because part of me really didn’t want to know what happened.

“About a year and a half ago I met this guy,” she said out of nowhere. “His name was Chandler, and he had a doctorate in modern philosophy. I liked the way he thought about things, the way he talked. We spent some time together. His parents liked me. They had money, I don’t know where from. You hadn’t called, and I was, I don’t know, I was feeling like... lost. He took me to Paris over a long weekend. After that we spent time up north in Berkeley, where he was the youngest professor of philosophy that UCB ever had.

“But you know me, Easy. One day I woke up and realized that I was using him for filler in the space you left in my heart. I told him that I wasn’t going to marry him, and he said that I would. So, I walked out. I mean, there’s not a motherfucker on this planet gonna make me be somethin’ other than what I am. Not one. Not even you could do that, Mr. Easy.”

I smiled at myself, enjoying the way she told her tale, making me a part of what happened.

“What does any of that have to do with your scar?” I asked.

“As I was walking away to my car, he shot me.”

“Shot you?”

“Uh-huh,” she grunted in a tone that I could only call defiance. “I don’t know if he was aimin’ for my butt or what, but he didn’t shoot anymore, and so I got in the car and drove to the hospital. Lucky I got some paddin’ back there. They treated me and I came back down to LA.”

“What happened to Chandler?”

“I don’t know. The emergency room physician called the police, and I made up some story about bein’ on Isabella Street in Oakland. I told them that I had been lookin’ around for a friend of mine that lived up there and then somebody, I didn’t know who, shot me.”

I sighed broadly.

“What?” she asked.

“I don’t know, baby. If somebody asked me right now, what should I do, I’d be at a loss. But I could tell ’em this: you are my woman, as long as it lasts. And here I am, between right here and some other place.”

“You see?” she said.

“See what?”

“There Chandler was with his Plato and his Nietzsche. For him it was all just words. But you, Easy Rawlins, you got your feet on the ground, toes dug deep in the soil beneath your feet. I know exactly where I am when I’m with you.”

My mother died when I was seven. I loved her more than anyone I had ever known up until the day I met Amethystine. I tried to jump into the grave they laid my mom in. For years I dreamed of going back there and digging my way down to her. My mother tended my cuts and scrapes, bathed me in a tin tub next to a chicken coop, told me that I was the smartest person she’d ever known. When she died a light went out.

I went downstairs to see the man my wild oats had sown. He was unconscious. Dr. Lambert had told me he would probably sleep for hours.

“What you doin’?” Amethystine asked. She had come up behind me, speaking those words as she leaned up against my back.

“I gotta go do somethin’.”

“What?”

“A chore for my other son.”

“What can I do?”

“Fearless is coming here with Hannibal’s girlfriend, and I left my number with Anger, also called Lutisha. Can you be here for them?”

My best thinking is most often done behind the wheel of a car. I don’t even have to be driving. Just sitting there, I feel powerful, like some barbarian god on a throne of skulls seeing everything I need to and deciding on what had to get done.

The first and most important problem was Waynesmith the rich man. He was after my family. I was safe from most dangers on my mountaintop but not from Von Crudock or cancer. He wasn’t a criminal in the eyes of the law because he had never been, and would never be, convicted of a felony. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t receive punishment. Mouse would kill him if asked to. I mean, that would be human justice. Von Crudock had had both me and my son shot that very day. Murdering the man would be both justified and expedient. But maybe there was another way. My driving mind told me that I should at least try to find a nonlethal alternative.

The city of West Covina was a long drive from my home. But the journey, I knew, would be worth it. Nestled in the bosom of the San Gabriel Valley, the small municipality was a subject of the County of Los Angeles. I got there around sunset and, after consulting my forty-page Southern California map, I made my way to East Thackery Street. There I came upon a faded house that was in dire need of a paint job and a gardener. It was a big house that sat upon a hill of writhing weeds.

I parked out front and scaled the uneven stone pathway to the front door. The doorbell made no sound that I could hear. When I was just making up my mind to knock, the door slowly opened, revealing an older gray-haired white lady with a soft-skinned face and lantern-like green eyes.

“Yes?” she asked on a wisp of a voice. “Can I help you?”

“Hi,” I said brightly. “I came to ask a young man name of Terry a question or two.”

“What kind of questions?” I noticed that her right hand was reaching beyond the door jamb.

“My son, Jesus, is trying to figure out this problem he got, and he told me that Terry knew at least part of the answer.”

“You’re Jesus’s father?” she asked, pronouncing his name the way the Spanish did.

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t he come?”

“Benita, his wife, and their daughter, Essie, are down with the flu, so I told him that I would come.”

“Why didn’t he call?” Her voice was getting stronger.

“He couldn’t remember the number and didn’t have it written down.”

“He could have called Information,” she suggested.

“I dialed four-one-one, but there was no Terry or Terrance Lomax listed.”

I didn’t like the way she was looking at me.

“I don’t know,” she said, dubious.

“I understand, ma’am. Your boy’s been in some trouble and you’re thinkin’ that I might have brought some of that here to your door. But I’m not here to mess things up. Just the opposite. Jesus helped me figure out something I could do that might help your Terry avoid spending time in a federal penitentiary.”

“You’re Jesus’s father?” a young man’s voice asked from behind the woman.

“Yes,” I said, looking up into shadow.

A frowning young man stepped forward. He was white and tall, thin and black-haired. Despite his lean frame I got the feeling that he was pretty strong.

“What do they call you?” he asked.

“Easy. Easy Rawlins.”

My answer elicited a smile.

“It’s okay, Grandma,” he said. “He can come in.”

The elder stepped back from the door, her right hand formed into a fist around the barrel of a Winchester rifle.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Rawlins. She won’t shoot you unless I ask her to.”

“Terry?”

“Yes, sir. Come on in.”

Terry led me down a narrow hallway into a dark kitchen. There was an overhead light shining, but it did little to illuminate the room. The gas stove was old and black. The air was scented with mercaptan, the rotten-egg scent added to natural gas. A heavy wooden table dominated the space. The waxy finish was peeling away from the tabletop, which was also scarred and dented.

“Have a seat,” my young host offered. “Can I get you somethin’ to drink?”

“No, thanks. I just wanna talk a little.”

Terry had the kind of thin face that made you think of the outcome of generations of inbreeding, but his eyes, like his grandmother’s, burned with untamed intelligence.

“How’s T.J. doin’?” he asked.

“Who?”

“Jesus, your son.”

“Oh. Never knew people called him that. At home we call him Juice for short. He’s not too good. The BNDD is lookin’ for him.”

“Oh. Oh yeah. He said that he was in trouble with them. That why you’re here?”

“Yeah.”

“You told my grandmother that maybe you could help me with my legal problems.”

“Yes,” I said, sitting up a little straighter.

“Why you wanna help me?”

“I don’t, but it just so happens that the way I plan to get Juice outta trouble will benefit you.”

“How?”

“The BNDD agents that have charges pending against you are also putting pressure on my son. I know that one of them is named Drake Simmons. If I can identify the other guy, I think I might be able to implicate them both in a thing. Once that happens, Jesus will be cut loose from his problems and anybody else being prosecuted and persecuted by those guys will, hopefully, have their charges dropped.”

“Implicate in what?” Terry asked.

“You don’t have to worry about that, son.”

After gnawing a bit on his lower lip, the strong-shouldered, lanky kid smiled and said, “Okay. T.J. says that you’re cool, so why not? The man who arrested me is a dude name of Agent William Banks. He’s with the BNDD, like you said.”

“What they get you on?”

“I was drivin’ three keys out to Laguna Beach. They stopped me, took the stash, and then charged me for one key. That what they did to T.J.?”

“Somethin’ like that.”

I drove all the way back to my office before making the requisite calls.

“Hello, who is this?”

“Me, Mel.”

“You callin’ my wife again, Rawlins?” he asked, only half joking.

“No, sir. This time I’m lookin’ for you.”

“You know I got an office.”

“And that’s the last place you’d want me sayin’ what I got to say.”

There passed a brief moment in which he could chew on my cryptic words. Then he muttered, “What you got?”

I told him about Warehouse 86 and the rumors regarding BNDD agent Billy Banks.

After I’d finished, Suggs went quiet for at least three minutes. I accepted this silence as a compliment. Mel was a brilliant tactician, and he was rarely moved to act solely on someone else’s initiative.

“You sure this Banks is bent?” Mel said at last. “Dealing drugs.”

“I am. And it’s not just Banks. He’s got a partner named Drake Simmons.”

“He’s an agent too?

“He is.”

“And they use this warehouse out in Bellflower?”

“I’m pretty sure.”

“This isn’t some trick, now, is it, Rawlins? I mean some shit you makin’ up to protect your own.”

“No. I wouldn’t do anything that had a chance of backfiring on my boy. It’s all true. The only thing I can’t tell you is when they’re gonna be movin’ the next shipment.”

“I’ll get back to you.”

My answering service had a message from Niska. I wanted to get home, but that would have made for a late-night call to her.

“Hello?” a man said.

“Reggie?”

“Yeah. Who’s this?”

“Easy Rawlins. Niska’s boss.”

“Oh. Hello, sir. You callin’ for her?”

“I am.”

“Okay. Niska,” he said aloud, and then, whispering: “It’s your boss.”

“Hello,” she said then. “Mr. Rawlins?”

“It is. You called?”

“Yeah. I went down to that street in East LA you said about, looking for the father of that man you met in jail.”

“How’d it go?”

“I went with Reggie. I don’t know if I ever told you, but his mother is from Mexico City. So, he came along, you know, to keep me company. We went to two stores near to where he lives. They knew him and his father. One even saw him the day he disappeared, but they didn’t know where he’d gone to. Then we just started talking to people out in front’a their houses. Two different ladies said about how much Rafael liked playing bingo. It’s like the Mexican Lotería but you could win money. We found out where there was one bingo parlor in that neighborhood and went there.

“It was too early for it to be open, so we went to a movie and then had lunch. After that we went back to the bingo parlor and the lady there told us that Mr. Ortega met a woman named Rosa and that they had come back two more times. They said he liked her because she made food like he used to eat in Sinaloa.”

“Wow,” I said, truly impressed. “Did you find Rafael?”

“When the game started up, there was a lady that knew Rosa and she agreed to call. We gave Rafael a ride to his home so they could send a message to his son.”

“I hope you told them that I sent you.”

“We did.”