Little Scarlet

10

Robert Grant didn’t get any checks in the mail. No one in the five-floor gray building did. The mailbox was two wooden crates, each of which once contained six one-gallon bottles of milk. The crates were hung side by side on the wall with names and apartment numbers scrawled over each square in red ink.

Bobby’s number was 4-D.

With all the strength tapped in my blood I ran up the three flights without breathing hard.

The stairs and wall, floors, and ceiling had once been painted white but most of that had worn away years before. Now the color was pitted, dirty pine.

“Who is it?” a man called when I knocked.

“Easy Rawlins.”

The apartment doors on either side of his came open. An old man stuck his head out of one side and a child peered from the shadows of the other. Both of them looked frightened.

I could imagine how they felt with buildings going up in flames around them and wild, angry voices shouting up and down the street. People were being shot dead in front of their homes and the law was helpless to keep the violence in check. Old people and children, working men and women, and any other peaceful soul had to hunker down in their living rooms and hope that the fires wouldn’t spread to their walls.

“What?”

The door had come open on a sand-colored man with hair that wasn’t much darker. He was slight but tall, young but already he had the slouching shoulders of someone who has been defeated by life.

Maybe he read the judgment in my expression because he stood a little straighter and cocked his head with bravado.

“Who are you?”

“Easy Rawlins,” I said. “I’m here about Geneva Landry. The police got her and I’d like to help out if I could.”

“The police got Miss Landry? What for?”

“I don’t know for sure,” I said. “But I bet it’s got something to do with Nola Payne.”

All Bobby had on was a pair of briefs. His sallow chest and knobby knees meant that any lover he had would have to be there because of the inner man—or a twenty-dollar bill.

“Nola’s Geneva’s niece. What do the cops think an auntie gonna do to her own blood?” he asked.

“I don’t know what it is exactly,” I said. “But from the sounds of it Nola’s missing and the cops think that Miss Landry had somethin’ to do with it. She don’t know neither, so I told her that I’d come down and ask around.”

“So what you want with me?”

“Can I come in?” I asked. “I mean, we don’t really need everybody in the buildin’ to know this stuff.”

Grant studied me for a moment. He slouched down again and the sour taste came back into his mouth.

“Yeah. Okay,” he said. “I guess.”

I followed him into the one-room apartment. There was no real home furniture in evidence. The only thing his three chairs had in common was that they were all made from wood. The bed was a mattress on box springs on the floor and his curtain was a sheet that should have been shredded for rags.

In the corner, away from the window, he had six crates of new dishes, three model-train box sets, and a dozen or more pairs of green work pants.

He saw me looking and asked, “You wanna buy some dishes?”

“Not right now.”

I sat on a whitewashed wooden chair and Bobby followed suit.

Despite his boy’s body Grant held himself like an old man. Bent over, rubbing his hands together as if he could never get warm.

“What you got to do with Miss Landry?” he asked.

“She called me from jail and asked for help.”

“I never heard’a you before,” he said.

“I got an office over on Central. I help people out now and then. She told me her problem and I said that I’d ask around. A couple’a people mentioned that you been talking about a white man that got pulled outta his car and got the shit beat outta him. I just wanted to see if you knew who it was.”

“Who said?” Bobby wanted to know.

“I didn’t get no names,” I said, using language that made us both feel at home. “I just heard about you and went around tryin’ to look you up.”

“I’d like to help Geneva out, man, but I don’t know nuthin’.”

“You know that a white man got pult outta his car and messed,” I suggested.

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Geneva said that Nola said on the phone that she had seen a white man runnin’ around her buildin’.”

I could see in Bobby Grant’s eyes that I had hold of some facts.

“I—I don’t know nuthin’ about that,” Bobby said. “All I know is that she was in the buildin’ where he ran to after, um, after they beat on him.”

“Who was that?”

“Just some guys. You know it was Friday night and he was drivin’ down around here. They was pullin’ every white person they found outta their cars. Beatin’ ’em an’ shit.”

“Who was?” I asked again.

“What’s that got to do with Nola and Geneva?”

“What kind of car was he drivin’?” I shifted gears easily.

“Red.”

“Was it a Ford or a Chevy?”

“I’ont know, man. It was a car. A nice car. They pult him out and beat on his ass and then somebody drove it off.”

“Did the white man know Nola?” I asked.

“Naw, man. That motherfucker was just lost, tryin’ to get his ass back to Hollywood or wherever. Did Geneva say that that white man they beat on went to Nola’s?”

“Like I said, all she knew was that that white man was runnin’ around Nola’s place. So if you don’t mind I’d like to know if Nola knew the white man you boys beat on.”

“What you mean by that?” Bobby asked, his face now filled with fear.

“I see what you got here, man,” I said, pointing at his pitiful pile of loot. “And what you ain’t got. You was out there that night when your boys pulled that white man outta his car. Either that or you were up here twiddlin’ your thumbs figurin’ out what chair to sit in. You were out there. Maybe you didn’t get a lick in. Maybe not. But you saw him and you saw where he went too.”

It was all guesswork. He was a looter and young. He was black in America, transplanted from the South, and all alone in a room hot enough to brew tea.

Bobby stared at me with anxious, calculating eyes. He wanted to steer clear of trouble and he was wondering if a lie or the truth would accomplish that end.

“I don’t know nuthin’ about what happened to Nola,” he said at last. “I haven’t even seen her since before the riotin’ started. All I know is some men pult that white man outta the red car and beat him. He ran away an’ after that I don’t know nuthin’.”

It could have been true.

“So you didn’t see Nola since the riots started?” I asked.

“No sir.”

“Did anybody around here see her?”

“Nobody I know.”

The police had put a muzzle on the murder. It hadn’t happened—yet.

“I need to know two things, Robert,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“Where does Nola live exactly and who stole the white man’s car?”

“What do I get out of it?”

“For starters I won’t throw you out the window.”

“You think I’m scared’a you, old man?” the youth asked me.

“You should be, son. You should be.”

Grant had a weak jaw. When his mouth hung open he looked pathetic, though I’m sure he thought he was looking mean.

When he saw I wasn’t buying it he broke into a half-hearted laugh.

“I’m just fuckin’ wit’ you, man. Yeah, sure I’ll tell ya. Nola live over on the right over here on the third floor, apartment three. And it was Loverboy stoled that man’s car.”

“Loverboy?”

“Uh-huh. He famous around here. He steals cars for a livin’. One boy tried to set that white man’s car on fire but Loverboy an’ this other dude pushed him down an’ stoled that mothahfuckah.”

“You know his real name?” I asked.

Bobby Grant shook his head.

I couldn’t think of anything else to ask so I left him with his train sets, work pants, and his stacks of empty dishes.