Little Scarlet

51

They called me to Gerald Jordan’s office three days later. The riots were dead by then. Vietnam and the space shuttle dominated the news. There was no coverage of the nearly forty funerals held in memory of those who had died.

It was just Jordan and me at the meeting. No Suggs, no uniforms, no elite cadre of police bodyguards.

“You’ve heard about the discovery of the body of the man you claim killed Nola Payne?” he asked after the preliminaries.

“Uh-huh.”

“He had the gun on him that was used to shoot her,” Jordan continued. “That lends credence to your story.”

“I don’t need any credence, Deputy Commissioner. Harold killed Nola and a dozen other women. You got men in jail right now today that were railroaded because your department don’t give a damn about a black woman’s death.”

“So you say,” he said with a smile. “Detective Suggs agrees with you. I’ve given him permission to reopen certain cases. If he can come up with something, my office will support him. I also had Peter Rhone released.”

“Okay,” I said. “That’s it, I guess.”

“The coroner says that Harold was poisoned, that he was killed somewhere else and brought to that lot on Grape.”

“Really?”

Jordan’s eyes were like the twin bodies of black widow spiders hovering in space, waiting for an opportunity.

“What would you like from me, Mr. Rawlins?”

“I already told you that this job was for Nola and Geneva. They both might be dead but at least they weren’t forgotten.”

“You don’t like me,” Gerald Jordan said. “I understand that. You and I are on opposite sides of the street. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have common interests.”

I didn’t like the drift of his conversation. It was as if he were trying to pull me into something, something dirty and rife with disease. I was reminded of a conversation I had with a white man named DeWitt Albright in 1948. Up until that moment, I had thought that Albright was the most morally corrupt man I had ever met. But Jordan beat him easily.

“The only thing we have in common is what we hate about each other,” I said.

“I don’t hate you, Rawlins. I like you. I like you so much that I recommended to the chief that we give you an investigator’s license. So the next time you’re out there hustling, nobody will be able to say you have no right to be there.”

THERE WAS A small cemetery north of Inglewood where we laid Geneva and Nola to rest. Benita stayed home with Jesus and Feather. EttaMae came because she helped Bonnie with the service. I invited Peter Rhone because he was the only one I knew who truly loved Nola.

EttaMae’s minister, Zachary Tellford, gave the eulogy under a hot sun.

“These women were taken from us, Lord,” he said. “They were good women who worked hard and who loved each other so much that they come to you in one chariot. They are the best we have to offer, Lord. You may see millionaires and kings and queens this week. There may be saints and hardworking clergy at your door. But no one of them will shine brighter in your heaven. Our own lives will be less for their absence.”

Peter started crying from the first words. He cried harder and harder until EttaMae had to hold him up.

The service was brief and the caskets were lowered side by side into the grave. I drove Peter’s rented car to my house because he was too broken up to drive and EttaMae said that he could come home with her. His wife had thrown him out when he confessed his love for a dead black woman. He really had nowhere else to go.

THREE WEEKS LATER the riots were all but forgotten. Benita was still with us but she had a job and would move out soon. On the weekends she went sailing with Jesus. They both seemed to love the quietude and possibilities of being out on the Pacific.

Jackson bought five suits and worked eighty hours a week. He dropped by now and then to bring over bottles of French wine in appreciation for my lies.

One Tuesday I called Juanda and asked her to meet me for lunch at Pepe’s.

She was early and at the same banquette we sat at on our first date.

She wore a flouncy orange dress and white low-heeled shoes. When I came up to the table she stood and kissed me on the lips.

“Hi,” she said.

I exhaled, thinking that she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.

“I missed you,” she told me.

“I wanted to call you every day,” I said.

“You know, I don’t care if you got a girlfriend,” she said. “I mean, I want you all for myself but I need to see you sometime and I don’t mind if that has to be when you say.”

She had thought about it as much as I had. She’d made concessions in her own mind and offered them up to me. But I had other ideas. And where Juanda’s thoughts were young and about the light of love, my deliberations were of a much darker cast. I’d been thinking about Nola and Geneva and the lucky one, Benita—the woman who survived. I was thinking about Honey, who killed a boy that she’d help to raise, and Jocelyn, who hated the skin she came in and the blood that spawned her.

“There’s no way I could have you on the side, Juanda,” I said. “I love you the way you are and I want you to do the best you can. I went to LACC the other day and they have a high school equivalency program there. You can get your diploma and then start taking college classes.”

“I cain’t afford that,” she said.

I took out the envelope with the money Mouse had given me. That and the ring I handed to the young woman.

“I can’t be with you the way we both want to be,” I said. “But I’d like to help you get through this school thing and see you be what you want to be.”

There was no moment of weakness with Juanda. No secret assignation, no one-time love in the dark. We talked for a long time about the envelope between us. I talked to her about the riots and the dead women and the hatred we have for ourselves.

When I finished she said, “You know, I love the way you talk, Mr. Rawlins. You done talked the dress off my back and then talked it back on my shoulders. I’ll take your money if you promise to be my friend.”

“You better watch out, girl,” I said. “You might just make me into a happy man.”