Little Scarlet

43

There was only one Honey May in the Los Angeles directory. She lived on Crocker between Eighty-seventh Street and Eighty-seventh Place. I could have walked there from my office but I drove because that was the way you got around in L.A. Down the street or across town, you had your car there at the curb waiting to take you where you needed to be.

Honey lived in a blue apartment building, on the second floor.

“Yes?” she said sweetly from behind the closed door.

“It’s Easy Rawlins, ma’am,” I said. “You don’t know me but I’ve come here to ask you about Harold Ostenberg.”

“Oh my,” she said. “Oh my.”

She opened the door and peered out through the screen.

Honey was a big woman in height and girth and facial features. Her nostrils were cavernous and her eyes were like moons. Only Honey’s voice was small. I got the feeling that the one squeaky voice I heard was just a single member of the chorus that must have lived inside that large body.

She held out a big hand in a delicate motion.

“Mr. Rawlings?”

“Rawlins,” I said. “My grandfather said that we got the “g” shot off, hightailing it out of Tennessee.”

Her grin revealed big teeth. But the smile was quickly replaced by concern. Men had been taking advantage of her by being charming and funny for a whole lifetime—that’s what her face was telling me.

“You said somethin’ about Harold?” she asked.

“He’s in trouble,” I said.

“He been that since the day he was born. You wanna come in, Mr. Rawlings?”

I didn’t correct her.

Honey’s walls were painted violet. She only had four walls to live between because it was just a one-room home. There were framed photographs along the box shelving and prints of paintings tacked on the wall. She had three chairs, one sofa, and a Murphy bed that folded up lengthwise under a window that looked out on a green wall.

“What kind of trouble?” she asked me after I had chosen a seat.

“As bad as you can get,” I said. “So bad that nothing worse could possibly be done to him in revenge.”

My words hit Honey’s face like bombs on a peaceful city.

“It’s not his fault,” she said. “He cain’t help what life made him.”

“Do you know where I can find him, Miss May?”

“Are you plannin’ to shoot him, Mr. Rawlings?”

That was the likeliest solution to a dispute in the black community at that time. If black men had a problem with each other they rarely went to the police. The law didn’t care unless it had to do with white skin or money. Black men settled their own disagreements.

“No ma’am. What Harold’s done has to be made public. He’s killed women,” I said.

“Oh no. No.”

“I don’t even know how many. But he has to be stopped. Because if he isn’t he’ll keep on until he dies.”

Honey started to cry. I got the feeling that she’d been expecting my visit for many years, that she knew the potential tragedy wrapped up in Harold’s hurting heart. But what could she have done with her gentle nature and chocolate skin, her mild demeanor and giant eyes? She was just an exotic witness, an angel, maybe, with no say over the actions of men.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Rawlings. Did he hurt someone close to you?”

“Not really. But since I’ve been looking for him I’ve seen things that were just as bad as the war.” I paused and then asked, “Do you know where I can find him?”

“I don’t know if I should tell you, Mr. Rawlings. You know, I carried that boy in my arms when he couldn’t even crawl.”

“He’s a man now, Miss May. And men have to stand on their own two feet.”

“But he’s had it so hard,” she argued. “You know that no white judge is gonna care about what happened to him.”

“Do you have a daughter, Miss May? Or a mother or sister?”

She smiled but it was as if I had reached into her breast and wrenched the grin out against her will.

“Right here.” She walked over to a shelf near the window and took down a brass frame containing a Polaroid photograph of a young woman cut from her mold. “Sienna May. She married a man named Helms but we all still call her Sienna May ’cause it sounds right.”

I stood up and went over to the window. I took the frame from the big woman’s hand and admired it. Then I turned it so that she could see it.

“If Helms was a white man Howard would have choked your girl until her eyes and tongue was poppin’ outta her head,” I said. “She’d be cold and dead as a Christmas ham in the icebox. And there’d be a dozen other girls layin’ right up in there next to her.”

Honey grabbed the picture from my hand.

“No!” she said.

“Yes,” I replied. “That’s just what I said when I realized it almost a year ago. And when I went to the cops and told ’em they said that I must’ve been mistaken, no vagabond could get around them like that. Now there’s another woman dead. And I’m askin’ you to help me stop Harold.”

“But why should I believe you, Mr. Rawlings?”

“Because you know the man I’m talkin’ about. You know where he comes from and what he might do. You see him doin’ just what I say and you know why.”

Honey May let herself fall onto the sofa. She looked down at her lap and tears fell from her eyes. She shook her head and her shoulders slumped forward.

“It’s my fault too,” she said. “I knew his mama was colored the minute I laid eyes on her. But I never said so. I didn’t argue when she hinted that things would go better for Harold if people thought that I was his mother. But I never lied to Harold. I told him that Miss Ostenberg was his mother and I was just his big mama. I guess I shoulda taken him wit’ me when I left. But you know I didn’t have the strength.”

“Did he come to you after he ran away?” I asked.

“He’d come stay with me and Sienna May now and then. But you know he was so wild. Most the time he was out in the street, livin’ in empty lots or shelters.”

“Didn’t the state come after him?”

“They did but Harold would just run away. They didn’t want him all that bad and he always looked older than he was. That’s because his face was so hard.”

“Do you know where I can find him, Miss May?”

“He comes by here once a year or so,” she said to the floor. “Last time was four or five months ago. He said that he liked the north side of Will Rogers Park because there was some good guys like to play dominoes there.”

“I won’t kill him, Miss May,” I said. “I want to but I won’t. I’ll just make sure the police get him.”

She looked up at me with those big eyes.

“I can tell that you’re a good man, Mr. Rawlings,” she whispered. “But I know Harold too. He wanna be good but he just don’t know how.”

“Do you have a picture of Harold that I can show to them?”

There was a tiny chest of three drawers next to the Murphy bed. She pulled open the middle drawer and took out a simple dark-wood frame. She handed this to me.

Harold was in his twenties when the picture had been taken, wearing a coat that was too large for him, probably borrowed from the portrait photographer. His eyes weren’t as dull and there was some hope in him at that moment. I wondered if he had already started murdering women then.

“Can I have it back when they’re through, Mr. Rawlings?” Honey May asked me.

“Just as soon as we’re through with it,” I said.

We looked at each other, both knowing what my words meant.