Little Scarlet

14

Geneva Landry was staring at the wall in front of her, wrapped in a cotton robe, and seated in a chair beside the high hospital bed. Whatever it was she saw, it had nothing to do with that room. The chair was made from chrome and blue padding. Sparrows chattered in a tree outside the window. Sunlight flooded the room without heating it. That was because of the air-conditioning.

Geneva hadn’t turned when I opened her door.

“Miss Landry.”

“Yes?” she asked, keeping her eye on the bare wall.

“My name is Easy Rawlins,” I said, moving into her line of vision.

When I blocked her view of the wall she winced.

“Hello.”

“I see they took you out of that straitjacket.”

She nodded and crossed her chest with her arms, caressing her shoulders with weak, ashen fingers.

“Why they got me in here, Mr. Rawlins?”

“May I sit down, ma’am?”

“Yes.”

I sat at the foot of the mattress.

“Do you remember what happened to Nola?”

I regretted the question when grief knotted up in her face.

“Yes.”

“The police are worried that if a white man killed her, the riots will start up again.”

“He did kill her,” she said. “And there’s nothin’ they can do about that.”

She glanced at me and then looked away.

“Did you see him do it, ma’am?”

“Are you the law, Mr. Rawlins?”

“No ma’am. I’m just tryin’ to find the man killed your niece.”

“But you not a policeman?”

“No. Why?”

“Because that’s what that sloppy cop asked me this morning. He kept askin’ if I saw her get killed. I told him that if I did he wouldn’t have to be lookin’ for the man ’cause I woulda kilt him myself.”

Her hands were pulling at the shiny arms of the chair.

“That was Detective Suggs?” I asked.

“I guess it was.”

“He’s the one wanted me to talk to you and to ask around about who it was that hurt Nola.”

“Killed her,” the distraught woman said. “He killed her. Shot Li’l Scarlet in her eye.”

“What did you call her?” I asked.

“Li’l Scarlet,” Geneva said. “Her daddy, my brother, called her that because’a her red hair. When she was a child she was just a peanut and so everybody called her Li’l Scarlet. Li’l Scarlet Payne.”

I nodded and smiled. I placed my hand on hers but she pulled away.

“Did Nola have a gun, Miss Landry?”

“No. Of course not. She wasn’t that kind’a girl. She went to church and praised Jesus. It was a sin to kill her.”

“Did she keep an address book?”

“She had a small green tin I gave her when she came here from Mississippi. It was for a little holiday whiskey cake. It was just the right size for the note cards she kept. That way she said if somebody’s numbers changed she could just write up a new card and not have to scratch it out. She was very clean, Mr. Rawlins.”

“I know she was.”

“Are you gonna find that white man?”

“Yes I am. Do you want me to talk to the doctor about taking you home?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you afraid to go home?”

“I don’t know. I mean I don’t think so, not afraid of nobody but . . . when I’m alone . . .”

“Do you have a husband or some family? Maybe I could tell them that you’re okay. Maybe they can come and see you.”

“My husband had a heart attack and Nola was my family after that,” she said. “It’s just that I get lost when there’s nobody around, like I don’t know where I am. There’s a nice colored nurse at night who sits with me.”

“So you want to stay here for a while?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Did Nola have a boyfriend?” I asked.

“A piece’a one,” she said. “I mean Toby wasn’t around too much and she broke up with him about every other week.”

“Where does this Toby live?”

“In the big gray slum.”

I knew the building. It was a block down from the Imperial Highway. An empty lot that some real estate syndicate turned into a series of five twelve-story apartment buildings. The quality of the building was substandard and the rents were too much for our neighborhood. Between the high turnover and the crumbling walls the place became known as the big gray slum.

“What’s Toby’s last name?”

“McDaniels.”

I hesitated to ask the next question.

“Did you talk to your niece when the riots were going on, Miss Landry?”

“Every day and every night. We didn’t see each other ’cause I was too scared to go out and she was nursin’ that white man she saved.”

“How did she save him?”

“Rioters beat on him and he ran. He ran past Nola’s front door and she called to him . . . called to him. She took him upstairs and tended to his wounds and then he killed her.”

“Did she tell you his name?”

“Pete. All she ever called him was Pete.”

Geneva Landry turned back to the wall, looking for a way back to Nola. Her hands gripped the arms of her chair and big veins stood out on her dark temples.

“I should have told her about them white men,” she said. “I shoulda told her.”

“Told her what?” I asked.

“Never mind,” Geneva Landry said. “It doesn’t matter now.”

I wanted to ask her more but she seemed so vulnerable in her chair. It was as if she were wasting away as she sat there staring at the wall and regretting words she never spoke.

MELVIN SUGGS WAS waiting for me in the white hall.

“So whataya think?” he asked me.

“She says that Nola didn’t own a gun.”

“Yeah.”

“Nobody saw the white man go into Nola’s apartment,” I added. “And Geneva didn’t see her niece get killed.”

“You think she’s makin’ it up?” Suggs asked.

“No.”

“No,” he repeated, nodding at the floor.

“What are the visiting hours here at night, Detective Suggs?”

“Early evening. Why?”

“Could you ask Dr. Dommer to have them let me in if I come by after then?”

“Yeah but . . . I mean, you already talked to her.”

“She needs some company. If I have the time, maybe . . .” I shrugged and Suggs did too.

It wasn’t that he didn’t like me or was unconcerned about his job. He just didn’t have much sympathy for the woman and her situation. She was a witness or a suspect but nothing more than that.