Little Scarlet

21

I don’t understand, Mr. Rawlins,” Peter Rhone said. “Are you with the police department?”

“No. Not with them. If I was, I would have turned you in the minute I got your name. But they asked me to help them solve Nola’s murder before the newspapers got hold of it because they want to keep a lid on Watts.”

“So you’re a detective?”

“Think of me as a concerned citizen who has the ear of the police and you have a good idea of what I’m doing here.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe I shouldn’t be talking to you.”

“Fine,” I said. “But when I give the police your address they’ll have you in jail and up on charges before you can explain to your wife what you were doing down there in a black woman’s arms.”

Peter Rhone was staring deeply into my eyes. His face was quivering and his fingers were more jittery than those of a two-year-old who’s just eaten a chocolate bar.

“The news hasn’t said anything about Nola . . . There were no reports.”

“She was strangled and then she was shot. Beaten too,” I said.

It was no proof but it broke the man down emotionally. His head lowered nearly to his knees.

“I wondered why she wasn’t home,” he said. “I’ve been calling every chance I get. She didn’t come in to work either.”

“She’s dead,” I said again.

“What did you want to know?” he asked.

“Did you kill Nola?”

“No. No.”

“Did you have sex with her on Tuesday night?”

His forehead touched his left knee.

“Yes,” he said.

“She was willing?”

“Very much. Very much. She was so happy that I was there and, and . . . she kissed me. That’s what started it. She kissed me.”

“Why did you go to her house in the first place?”

“I had driven down to Grape Street looking for her.”

“You already knew her?”

“Yes. Didn’t you know? She works in the office where I do on Wilshire. Nola’s the daytime switchboard operator at Trevor Enterprises.”

“What do you do there?”

“I broker advertising deals. You see, people come to us to find out where they should advertise. We have contacts throughout the southland, so people, especially companies with out-of-town staffs, rely on us for intelligence.”

“And how well did you know Nola?” I asked.

“The operator’s room is next to my office,” he said. “And somehow we started bringing in coffee for each other every other day. Usually it was just a drop-off but sometimes we’d gab a little bit before getting to work. At first, you know, I was just nice to her because the operator is the most important job at Trevor Ent.”

“How’s that?”

“A lot of times people call in wanting help but they have to rely on Nola to route the call to the right person. She was a smart girl so she knew a good prospect when it came in. And if it was good she’d give it to me if it seemed up my alley. Not a bad dividend for two cups of coffee a week.

“But after a while I started liking her. She was smart. Read all the magazines and papers that came through the office and she knew more about baseball than I did. We were friends.”

“So how does that turn into you making love to her with the city burning down around your heads?” I asked.

“When the riots started, Theda went down to La Jolla to visit her uncle and aunt. They’re her closest family and they were afraid that a race war was coming. Crazy. I went to work in the morning and Nola didn’t come in. I worried about her all day and then finally I called in the afternoon. She was so frightened. I could hear it in her voice. She hadn’t come to work because she had to take the bus and she was afraid of snipers. So I told her that I’d come and get her and drop her off with some friends that lived down around Venice.”

“So you worked until the end of the day and then drove down into the riot?”

I had always been amazed by the ignorance that white people showed about blacks. Most of the times I was angry at their lack of awareness—this time I was enthralled. Peter Rhone might have been the only white man in L.A. who wanted to drive down into Watts in order to save a colored woman from the riots.

“And they got you,” I said.

“Yeah.” Peter nodded his battered head. “Beat me pretty bad. All I could do was run toward Nola’s address. And there she was. She threw a blanket over me and took me into her building. They knocked out a tooth and I was bleeding from the head. There I was, trying to save her and she saved me instead.

“We talked for three days. She told me all about her family and her Aunt Geneva. I told her about my wife. She had a boyfriend but she wasn’t in love with him.”

His mentioning Geneva Landry reminded me of something.

“Why didn’t Geneva know your last name?” I asked.

“What?”

“Didn’t she talk to her aunt every day?”

“Yeah. Little Scarlet would call her aunt at sunset each day. Geneva would call at other times too—whenever she was scared.”

“What did you call her?”

“Little Scarlet. That was her nickname. After we got, uh, close she wanted me to call her that.”

I couldn’t see how a rapist-murderer could possibly learn his victim’s pet name.

“Well, why didn’t she tell her that the white man she saved was from her job?” I asked anyway.

“Because I’m married. She didn’t want to start any gossip about me.”

“And how did you get out of there?”

“Early . . . early on Wednesday morning Nola got her neighbor to take me home. I paid him fifty dollars.”

“Did he see you with Nola?”

“No. She just called him and told him to pick me up in front of the house at three.”

“And before all that you fell in love?” I didn’t mean to let my cynicism show but it was hard to hide.

“It’s true.”

And why not? A cute white boy was worth a second look, especially if he was willing to brave the riots to save a young damsel in her tenement tower. He might even be worth a third look. And if he told her that he’d leave his wife to marry her it could well have been too good to pass up. I mean, how many times are there in a young woman’s life when a man would give all that up for her? Imagine what kind of father a man like that would make.

“Who was the man who drove you?” I asked.

“Piedmont is what he called himself,” Rhone said. “I don’t even know if that’s a first or last name.”

“What did he look like?”

“Your height but not so filled out,” he said. “Same color as you are and he had very long fingers and arms. And . . . and he had a mole right in the center of his forehead. I remember because every once in a while he’d touch it.”

“Did you see anybody else while you were laid up at Nola’s?”

“No. Neither one of us left the apartment.”

“What about Theda?”

“What about her?”

“Didn’t she wonder where you were?”

“I called her at her relatives’ and said that I’d got caught in the riots and that a family took me in. I said that they didn’t have a phone and that I was using a phone booth to call.”

“And she believed that?”

“She was staying with people who believed there was a race war unfolding in the streets.”

I thought about Margie, a woman who was so afraid of the riots that she couldn’t even bring me my bill.

“I better call the police,” Peter said.

“No. No,” I said. “The last people in the world you wanna talk to right now are the cops. If one word gets out on the airwaves about Nola they’ll hang your butt out to dry.”

“Why?”

“You really don’t know, do you?” I asked.

“Know what?”

“That you crossed the line when you went down to Nola’s.”

“What should I do?” he asked. “I mean, I don’t want Nola’s killer to get away. Maybe I could help.”

If he was a liar he was good.

I had no idea of what happened in that neat little apartment. Maybe they went crazy after three days. Maybe they fell in love and then they began to hate each other.

All I had to do was give Rhone’s name over to Suggs or, better, to Deputy Commissioner Gerald Jordan, and I was free. I’d have a friend in a high place while the police tried to untangle the knots.

But I didn’t trust the police to do their job and I didn’t think that Rhone was guilty.

“If you’re lyin’ to me, man,” I said, “I will kill you myself.”

“I loved Nola,” he said with stiff conviction.

“Then wait twenty-four hours.”

“For what?”

“I’m gonna do what the cops asked me to do and look for the man killed Nola. If it’s you I’ll send the cops to your door. If you run I’ll find you. But if it ain’t you, well, then we’ll see.”

“Thank you,” he said.

“You don’t have to thank me, man,” I said. “This isn’t for you. I just don’t want the police to let that woman’s death slide by because they’re worried about somethin’ else.”

“That’s what I’m thanking you for.”