Six Easy Pieces

Amber Gate

THERE WAS A SMALL shoe repair shop at 86th Place and Central Avenue back in those days. But Mr. Steinman, the owner and only employee, also made shoes. And if Steinman made you a pair of shoes you’d have to work in a junk-yard in order to wear them down. It took him three months to finish just one pair. He charged two hundred dollars but that was cheap for the craftsmanship and style. And he didn’t make shoes for just anyone. No. He had to know his customer before agreeing to spend a quarter of a year on a pair of shoes for him. He had to work on your footwear and see how you cared for what you bought in the stores. You had to prove that you would maintain the shine and use a frame to keep up the shape. You couldn’t have scuff marks or uneven heel wear from poor posture if you wanted to wear a pair of handcrafted Steinman’s.

He was an odd little white man but I liked him quite a bit. And he must have liked me because he had left a message that he’d just finished my third pair of handmade shoes.

When I opened the front door, a small bell tinkled and there was a rustling behind the wall of hanging shoes that stood between Steinman’s workroom and the front. The front room was less than three feet deep and just about eight feet across. There was no chair for waiting because, as Steinman once told me, “I never hurry at my work, Mr. Rawlins. If they want speed, let them buy cardboard soles from Drixor’s department store.”

We probably didn’t have one drop of blood in common but we were cut from the same cloth still and all.

“Mr. Rawlins,” Steinman said. He stood in the small opening that led to his workshop.

“Good morning, Mr. Steinman.”

We had given each other permission to use first names years before but courtesy kept us proper except at odd, more intimate moments.

“Come on in, in back.”

I followed the little cobbler into his workshop, knowing that I was one of only four or five people who were ever given that privilege.

The back room was composed of endless shelves cluttered with pairs of shoes tied together by their laces and marked with yellow tailor’s chalk. Women’s shoes were held together by string.

“Sit, sit,” Steinman said. “I wanted to talk to you. Can I get you something to drink? I have schnapps.”

This was unusual even for our cordial relations. Often I sat for a half hour or more and talked to Theodore. I had been part of an invading army that subdued his homeland—Germany. But Steinman had come to America as a child in 1910 and had no patriotism for the Third Reich or its war on the rest of the world. We talked about cities and streets that I’d seen.

“My mother always told me that Germany is one of the most beautiful countries in the world,” he often said.

I didn’t really agree with her but I always nodded and said, “It sure is.”

But he’d never offered me a drink before. If he had, he would have known that I’d stopped drinking soon after my first wife left me.

“No thanks, Mr. Steinman. It’s a little early for me.”

“Yes. Yes. It is early.”

“How are you, Theodore?” I asked, sensing that we weren’t conducting simple shoe business.

“Yes,” he said, nodding his large bald head. “For me things are fine. I have a good business. My children are doing very well. I have three grandchildren now.”

“That’s great,” I said. I was in no hurry to get to the point. If I had an office, I thought, I wouldn’t have had a waiting room either.

“But some people are not so lucky.”

“Who for instance?” I asked.

“Mr. Tanous.”

I’d never heard that name before and my expression said so.

“He’s the man who owns this building,” Theodore Steinman said. “The whole block really. He’s a nice man. A good man.”

“But he’s got trouble?”

“Yes. Yes. The police found her in the alley behind this building and they took him right off to jail. Right off. They had no proof but still they took him just like Nazis.”

“Who did they find?”

“Jackie Jay, that’s what they called her. She was a…a loose woman I think you say. She made her living being with men. But then somebody killed her.”

“And the police think it was Mr. Tanous?”

The little shoemaker nodded. He had broad shoulders and thick hands. For all that he was a small man, Theodore Steinman was a powerhouse. It was sad to see him so defeated over his friend’s arrest.

“You don’t think he did it?”

“No. Definitely not. Musa would never commit such a crime. He is a peaceful man no matter how angry he gets. How else could he run a building this size with all the trouble some people can be?”

“So why do the cops think he did it?”

“Because he is not a white man.”

“He’s Negro?” I asked, surprised. I thought I knew every black property owner in the neighborhood.

“I don’t know where he’s from. Somewhere from the Mediterranean, maybe from North Africa. Maybe even Iran, he never really said.”

Steinman clasped his hands and stared at the floor. I rubbed my fingers together and considered. A pair of shoes was not worth me getting involved with a murder, but Theodore had given me much more than that. He had always offered me friendship without prejudice.

My weakness had always been the offer of equality.

“This Mr. Tanous in jail?”

“No. He put up five thousand dollars for bail and is waiting for a trial.”

“Did he know this Jackie Jay?”

“Most people around here knew her. When she was a little girl she used to come into my store with her father and brother. He father, Robert, would bring me his shoes to fix.”

“So why are you telling me all this?”

“They say that you know what goes on in this neighborhood. Maybe you could ask around. Maybe somebody would tell you something that might help Musa.”

“You know I probably can’t do anything,” I said.

“But you will try?”

I hesitated a moment.

“I can’t pay you, Ezekiel,” he said. “But I can promise you that whenever you need a pair of shoes I will make them. And these,” he picked up a package of brown wrapping paper and held it out to me, “these are free.”

The time to turn down the job was then, before I laid hands on the package. I should have taken out my wallet and insisted on paying. But that would have insulted my friend and I was raised better than that.

“Your friend might have to pay a little something too,” I said.

“He is a rich man,” Theodore said.

THEODORE LOCKED HIS FRONT DOOR and put up his CLOSED sign. Then he guided me through the back of his workshop into a long, lime-colored-plaster hallway. The dim corridor led to a stairway lit by small windows at the elbow of each half-flight up. The stairs were well maintained and the window panes were clean. There was no dust in the corners or crevices. I was beginning to like Musa Tanous even before we met.

On the fourth floor we entered another mild-green passageway. This hall was filled with light because there were windows at either end. It was a wide corridor lined with maple doors that were sealed with bright tawny varnish. Theodore led me to the last door on the left side. My heart skipped when we came to that amber gate. I don’t know why. There was no sign on it. It was just a door but somehow it seemed perfect. The hinges were brass and the bottom panel was flush to the floor. I imagined that it was hung just right and would open with hardly a squeak.

From inside the room a man’s voice rose. There was worry, maybe even fear in his tone.

“Musa,” Theodore whispered.

I reached for the brass knob and turned.

The door was noiseless and that’s probably what saved me from a slash wound or worse.

It was a good size for an office, rectangular in shape with the long wall leading toward the windows to the street. There was no furniture except for one pine chair. The two men facing each other did not notice the well-oiled door opening. One man was tall and black and powerful, holding a nine-inch butcher’s knife. I would have thought the other one was Mexican if I wasn’t ready to meet a man named Musa.

The black man felt the draft maybe two seconds after I opened the door. While he turned toward me I threw the shoes, hitting him in the temple. Then I grabbed the chair and tossed it lightly, just enough to block any stabbing he might have been contemplating. I kicked him in the knee and hit him on the jaw with four blows before picking the knife up off the floor. It wasn’t a move from any rule book but real fights never are.

The black man, who had a boy’s face, fell against the wall but no further. When he saw me with the knife he rolled away and lurched through the door. He pushed Theodore down. I could hear his heavy steps all the way down the stairs we’d taken.

I helped the cobbler up and then turned to the other man in the office.

“Mr. Tanous?”

“Who are you?” he asked in an accent that I couldn’t place.

He was looking at the knife in my hand. Maybe he thought I stopped his attacker so that I could kill him myself.

“He is my friend, Musa,” Theodore said. “The one I told you about.”

“Easy Rawlins,” I put in.

I walked past Tanous and went to one of the three large windows that looked out on the street. Central was bustling by then. There was a hardware store, a stationery shop, a grocery store, and a liquor store all squashed together across the street. I put the knife down on the window sill and smiled at the waxed pine floor.

If it wasn’t for the obvious threat to Theodore’s friend I would have spent a good deal of time appreciating the simple room. The dark wood trim and the antique white walls seemed almost regal.

Instead I turned and asked, “Who was that man I just beat on?”

“He thinks I killed his sister,” Musa said. His voice was hollow, removed.

“Mr. Rawlins knows many people around here,” Theodore was saying. “People talk to him. Maybe he can find out what happened to Jackie.”

“Are you a detective?” Musa Tanous asked me.

“No. I’m just a guy who trades in favors, that’s all. And I know folks all over the neighborhood, like Theodore says. The kind of people who would know the habits of a girl like he told me about.”

“But you don’t have some kind of certification, a license?”

Musa Tanous was slender and very well dressed. His silver-hued suit might have been made from silk. I could tell that it wasn’t an American cut because there was only one button. It was a European design probably made in some eastern country. Tanous had a trim mustache and manicured fingers. He was as neat as his office building. There was a heavy and sweet odor mixed in with the sweat of fear coming off him.

“Did that guy with the knife have a license?” I asked.

“What does that mean?”

“It means that the government doesn’t regulate the action down here. I would expect that you’d know that, bein’ in business and all.”

“I don’t understand,” he said. “I didn’t do anything. Why are people mad at me?”

“The kid with the knife have a name?” I asked.

“Trevor McKenzie. I told you he’s Jackie’s brother.”

“Jackie Jay?”

Musa looked over at Theodore. The smaller man nodded.

“Yes,” Musa said. “She did not use her last name.”

“And what was he doing here?”

“He said that he was going to kill me for what I did to his sister.”

“Did you kill her?”

A passionate anger rose in Musa’s eyes.

“Listen, man,” I said, heading off his tirade. “The cops think you did it. Her brother thinks you did it. That’s not proof but it means something.”

Emotions passed across the man’s face like colors in a kaleidoscope.

He was struggling to get something out. I let this go on a moment and then I said, “We need to sit down if we want to have a conversation. You got a room with two chairs?”

“My office,” Musa said, literally choking on the words.

“Does Trevor know where that is?”

“Yes, but…”

“Where do you live, Mr. Tanous?”

“Pacific Palisades.”

For some reason that made me smile.

“Hey,” I said. “Why don’t we go there?”

“We could go to my apartment,” Theodore suggested. “I live closer—on Grand.”

THEODORE GAVE US the address and we each made our own way. That was L.A. Every man had the right of life, liberty, and the freedom to drive alone.

The building Theodore Steinman lived in was ugly, eight stories high, and constructed from brown brick. His apartment was on the top floor. We got there in an elevator made for three.

The front door opened into a sitting room that was quite spacious. All the windows were open. There were four extrawide chairs surrounding a glass-top coffee table and a potted fern in the corner.

“Sit,” Theodore said, and then he called, “Sylvie.”

On cue a woman entered through a small doorway. She was taller than the cobbler but by no means tall. She had white skin, white hair, blue eyes, and wore a dress that was four shades of gray. She was thin, happy to see us, and wordless.

“Mr. Rawlins,” Theodore said, introducing me.

Her mouth moved and she smiled but no words were spoken or necessary. She touched my hand and nodded.

“Pleased to meet you,” I whispered in return.

“You know Musa,” Theodore continued.

Sylvie smiled for the landlord but it was a bit chillier than my greeting.

“Can I get you anything?” Theodore asked us. “Tea, schnapps?”

“Just let us talk for a few minutes,” I said. “Then we can get outta your hair.”

When Sylvie turned to leave I felt that she was dancing to some music I couldn’t hear.

“I’ll be right through that door if you need me,” Theodore said. “Just call.”

He went with his wife: the hard-working dwarf following his elfin dream.

“THANK YOU FOR HELPING ME back at the office, Mr. Rawlins,” Musa said. “I don’t think he would have really hurt me but you didn’t know that.”

“Imagine how many people come up to the Pearly Gates,” I replied, “shaking there heads and sayin’, ‘I never thought he’d really do it.’”

Musa smiled and we moved to the coffee table.

I sat first and the maybe–Middle Eastern man sat directly across from me. He leaned back in his chair and concentrated on his left hand.

This tactic amused me. Usually when a man’s in trouble his defenses break down. He sits next to you and then leans forward, he looks you in the eye. But Musa Tanous leaned back, downplaying the deadly game he was involved in.

“Why did you drive over here, Mr. Tanous?” I asked at last.

“Because Theodore seems to think that you could do something for me.”

“You don’t?”

“You aren’t a licensed detective. You don’t know the people involved. How can you help me?”

“I can’t if you don’t want me to,” I said.

“And if I said I wanted you to help then something would be different?”

“No.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m here because of Theodore too,” I said. “He asked me to see what I could do and I intend to try. But if you don’t open up and admit you got trouble, I have no way in.”

Musa Tanous sat up and then leaned toward me, maybe an inch.

“What do you charge?”

“Did you kill Jackie Jay?”

The elegant man stood up. He didn’t step away or even turn his head. It was a threat of dismissal but nothing more.

“Sit down, Mr. Tanous.”

“I don’t intend to stay here and take insults from you.”

“I’m not insulting you. People out there seem to think you did kill her, and I have to hear from your own lips that you didn’t before I can tell you what it will cost to get you off the hook.”

He hung his head and sat down again.

“No,” he said.

“No what?”

“I did not kill her.”

“Do you know who did?”

“No.”

“How did the cops convince the prosecutor to charge you?”

For the first time sadness showed in his eyes. He looked at the Steinmans’ sheer curtains undulating on the breezes.

“Jackie and I went to the Dinah Motel the night before the morning she was found. We stayed there together and in the morning I went off to work,” he said. “She stayed in bed. Jackie liked to sleep late. The last time I saw her she was, she was sleeping.”

“What time was that?”

“Close to five.”

“Early.”

“I like to have the whole building checked over before people come in. That way I know what needs to be done.”

I liked that answer. It was how I worked.

“How’d you meet Jackie?”

“Trevor worked for me. He did cleaning and some fixing but then he stole from one of my tenants. He took a turntable and a pair of speakers from room C-fifteen and tried to sell it to Mr. Dodson, who owns the hardware store across the street. I went over to his house, to speak to his mother. I told her that I would call the police if I did not get the things he stole or the money they were worth.”

“And did she pay you?”

“A week later Jackie came to my office with the money.” Musa’s lips began to quaver, his hands were unsteady. “When I opened the door she came right in and looked me in the eyes. She said that she had my money. She was so beautiful. I asked her to come in. I have a little couch in my office, Mr. Rawlins. A chaise lounge. Instead of going to a chair she went right to the chaise lounge and patted a place next to her.” Musa patted the arm of his chair to show me. “We were kissing before three more words. I loved her.”

“Did she give you the money?”

“I bought her a new dress and shoes with it. Then we drove to San Diego and went to the zoo.” Tears welled in his eyes. “She taught me how to dance.”

He certainly loved her enough to kill her.

“How long this go on?”

“Months,” he said. “Three…no, four months.”

“Love at first sight.”

He smiled at me and shook his head.

“My wife left me. She took the children but I didn’t care. Even now that Jackie’s dead I don’t regret. Have you ever loved like that, Mr. Rawlins?”

It sounded more like a contest than a profession of love.

“No,” I said. “Cain’t say that I have.”

We were both silent there for a while. It was a pleasant day. I thought about my good friend Raymond Alexander. When I believed he was dead I was as distraught as the man before me.

“What happened to her?” I asked.

“Somebody had beat her…. They found her in the alley, behind my building.”

“What was she doing there?”

“I don’t know. She had the key. Maybe she was coming to surprise me.”

Tremors shook Tanous’s forearms and knees.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll do it. I’ll try and find out who killed her. But I warn you, man: I will find out who did it so it better not be you.”

“You haven’t told me your price.”

“Who rents that office we found you in?”

“No one. It’s been vacant for over a month. I was trying to do my work from there without anyone knowing. But Trevor found me somehow.”

“If I find out who did it and get you off, you give me that office for twenty dollars a month for as long as that building is in your family,” I said. “The rent stays the same, forever.”

My demand amused him. He smiled for a moment and then nodded.

For my part I was surprised. I had no need for an office but somehow that room seemed as if it had been waiting for me. I wanted to go back there, sit in a chair, and look out of the window at the street.

“Where does Trevor live?” I asked.

He gave me the address. It wasn’t far.

“And I’ll need a picture of Jackie. Do you have one in your wallet?”

“No,” he said. He seemed rather embarrassed. “I have some at home.”

“Then let me have your address and telephone number. I’ll call before I come by, probably tonight.”

COX BAR WAS A DIVE in a back alley off of Hooper, not far from Steinman’s Shoe Repair. I don’t think the alley had a name. It had been paved at one time but most of the asphalt had worn away, leaving a rutted dirt path that ruined the alignment of any car that drove on it.

It was a boxlike structure tiled with tar paper flaps that had green-and-red pebbles pressed into them. The sign was a hand-painted flat board leaned up against the front wall.

I parked on the street and walked the hundred yards or so to the screen door. The room smelled of cigarettes, smoked sausage, and stale beer. At noon its only inhabitants were Ginny Wright and Raymond Alexander.

She was the girlfriend of the now-dead Tiny Cox and he was my best friend.

They sat across from each other in the gloom, under a dim light, playing blackjack. Ginny had sixty years, three hundred pounds, and one of the best memories I had ever encountered on her side. Mouse had what he called the “luck of the black man” on his.

“Easy,” he had once told me, “you know a black man has to be luckier than any white guy you ever met.”

“How you get that?” I asked.

“Well you know white men had it easy. They had jobs and guns and the western plains for them. All we had was chains and nooses and shit like that. For a white man’s father’s father to survive was nuthin’. But if one of our people lived it was only because of the best luck. Jackson Blue said it to me. He said that this scientist, Derwin I think, said that you got things from your ancestors through the blood. I got luck from mines.”

That didn’t explain why Mouse thought he was luckier than other black men, but I didn’t question his beliefs because he was the luckiest man I had ever known.

“Twenty-one,” Mouse shouted, slapping down a red queen. “Pay up Ginny. You owe me thirty-seven cents.”

Ginny Cox was slow and deliberate, more than twice the size of Mouse. She looked at his cards and then looked at hers. Then she brought out a change purse and counted out her losses.

“Another game?” she asked then.

Women liked Mouse. It passed through my mind that she might have lost games often enough to keep Mouse around. Who knows? One drunken night she might just drag him off to bed.

“Not right now if you don’t mind, Raymond,” I said.

“Easy.” Mouse turned to me and smiled, his gold-edged teeth glittering.

“I need your company, Ray.”

“You gonna get me shot again?”

“I hope not,” I said. “But you never know.”

“Well if I could beat Ginny here then I must be on a streak. I might even be lucky enough to survive Easy Rawlins.”

With those words he stood and walked out into the alley with me.

WE DROVE THE FEW BLOCKS over to Parmelee, Trevor McKenzie’s street. On the way I told Mouse about the girl Jackie Jay and the friend of Theodore Steinman.

“Teddy’s cool,” Mouse said. “You know him and me go out barhoppin’ sometimes.”

“You do?”

“Oh yeah. Teddy like them bars with the girls got the naked titties hangin’ out. He won’t touch ’em though, not him. He wouldn’t do that to Sylvie—”

“You know his wife too?” I was shocked. For some reason I didn’t imagine Raymond with everyday people.

“Yeah, man,” Raymond said. “One time I brought him a pair of rattlesnake boots that Poor Howard made.”

Poor Howard was a Cajun who lived in the woods of southern Louisiana. I hadn’t thought of him in years. He was a cobbler. All of his shoes were made from the things you could gather in the swamplands. From alligator hide to water moccasin skin, from opossum fur to cougar fleece—Poor Howard made it all.

“Where’d you get that?” I asked.

“Howard up around here nowadays, man. He killed a white boy slapped his woman and then made beeline for L.A.”

“He’s in town?”

“You know Howard,” Mouse said. “He’s somewhere. In the woods or down by the sea. Settin’ traps and whatnot. Anyway when Theodore got a look at those snakeskin boots, he was my best friend from then on. I like the guy. Them Frenchmen are all right.”

“He’s not French,” I said. “He’s a German.”

“Same thing,” Mouse said with a shrug.

I would have argued further but we were at the McKenzie house.

I knocked while Mouse stood off to the side. After a moment or so a woman answered. She was small and blunt-looking, dark-skinned with eyes that never looked straight at anything.

“Yes sir?”

“Mrs. McKenzie?”

“Miss McKenzie.”

“Is your son here, ma’am?”

“Who wants to see him?”

“Tell him that it’s the man who hit him in the head earlier today. I came by to apologize and ask him a question.”

Miss McKenzie’s mouth came open showing no teeth and resembling a cornered Gila monster.

“Trevor?” she said, and the big young man appeared.

He had been standing off to the side just as Mouse was.

“What you want?” Trevor barked.

“I’m working on a job,” I said. “Tryin’ to prove that Jackie was killed by Musa Tanous.”

“You lyin’, man. You the one saved him from me.”

“I’m the one saved you from the electric chair,” I corrected, “just where my client wants to put Tanous.”

Trevor squinted and moved his head around as if trying to hear some far-off sound.

“Nuh-uh, man,” he said at last. “You hit me upside the head and took my knife.”

Trevor pushed the door open, confident that round two would go in his favor. I took a pace backward and Ray took a sidle pace into view. Trevor noticed the periphery movement and swiveled his head.

“Hey, brother,” Mouse hailed.

“Trevor,” Miss McKenzie cried. “Stop it before you get in trouble.”

She would have said those words anyway but I don’t think Trevor would have stopped his onslaught if he wasn’t worried about my friend.

Mouse had the aura of danger around him. The way he walked, talked, and smiled were all harbingers of violence.

When Miss McKenzie looked at him, her frown deepened. She turned to me and asked. “What you want here, mister?”

“My name is Easy Rawlins, ma’am, and I want prove that Musa Tanous killed your daughter.” I said this with absolute certainty. And it was true. If I tried my best to prove Tanous’s guilt then maybe I’d achieve the opposite.

“Get inside, Trevor,” she said.

He obeyed her and she made room for me and Mouse.

* * *

THE FRONT ROOM was just that—a room. It had no carpeting or decoration. There was a wooden bench and a couple of wood chairs. There was a stool. Mouse took that. We all sat, even Trevor.

“Who you workin’ for?” Trevor asked.

“I can’t tell you his name,” I said. “He’s a married man and he’s afraid that his wife might find out. But he paid me to make sure that Jackie’s killer gets convicted.”

“Is it Durgen?” Trevor asked, “that white man own Trellson’s?”

“No,” I said quickly, as if avoiding the question. “Tell me what happened the day your sister was killed. Did you talk to her? Did Tanous call her?”

“She didn’t stay around here much any more,” Miss McKenzie said. “She has her own apartment and most of the time she was out cattin’ around. You know men loved her and she loved them too. I tried to get her to stay here with me but she went her own way.”

“Did she have lots of boyfriends?”

“What’s that got to do with anything?” Trevor said belligerently.

Mouse grinned.

“What you grinnin’ at, fool?” Trevor asked him.

“Don’t listen to him, Mr. Alexander,” Miss McKenzie said. “He too young to know respect.”

Mouse shrugged generously.

“I need to know what she was doin’ and who she knew,” I said. “Because that way maybe I can put Jackie and Musa in the same place at the time she was killed.”

“You ain’t the police,” Trevor said.

“And she’s no white girl,” I replied. “I hope you don’t think the cops gonna work up a sweat over her killer. If Tanous got the money for a good lawyer then he’s gonna walk.”

“And I’ll kill his ass.”

“And spend the rest of your life behind bars, or maybe the court will be lenient and execute you.”

This prospect seemed to confuse Trevor.

“Yes, Mr. Rawlins,” Miss McKenzie said. “She knew a lotta men. She wasn’t no prostitute now. Sometimes men helped her with her rent and she was out to dinner every night. But money never changed hands for gettin’ in the bed.”

“Did you know many of them?”

“Not a lot. Mr. Tanous was really the only one she stuck with. He was nice to all of us.”

“He killed Jackie, mama. He killed her. How can you call that nice?”

“The Lord will take care of all that, boy. Yes he will.”

Trevor jumped up from his wood chair and stormed out the front door.

After he was gone conversation became easier.

“Other than this Durgen, are there any other men that she might have known, Miss McKenzie?”

“She had started to see a man named Bob Henry. He’s got a gas station on Alameda. And then there’s Matthew Munson. He does taxes down here on Central.”

“How old was Jackie?” I asked.

“She told everybody she was nineteen. She looked twenty-one but she was just seventeen, Mr. Rawlins. Just a girl.” Miss McKenzie’s eyes filled with tears. “When she moved out she took all of her dolls. And you know she was a good girl. She always said that she was going to buy me my own house in the country where I could have a garden and Trevor could have him a horse.”

“WHY YOU WANT me wit’you on this, Ease?” Mouse asked as we rode down Hooper.

He had one foot up on my dashboard and the other knee laid flat on the seat. He wore a yellow short-sleeved shirt that was loose fitting with soft gray slacks and maroon-colored shoes with no socks. Those were his “slumming” clothes.

“Somethin’ to wear but not to go nowhere in,” as he’d told me more than once.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I missed runnin’ around with you when I thought you were dead. And if the guy who hired me is right and he didn’t kill that girl, then I thought I might need you to back me up.”

“So you was lyin’ when you said that you were tryin’ to prove Mustard did it.”

“Musa,” I said. “And, yeah, I was lyin’ but either way I’ll do what she would want. If Musa did it I’ll find out and if he didn’t I’ll find out who it was instead.”

“An’ what’s he payin’?”

“It’s just a country trade, Raymond. No money.”

“Then what do I get wastin’ my time when I could be winnin’ money off’a Ginny?”

“Theodore asked me to look into this,” I said.

“So?”

“That means he will owe me a pair of handmade shoes.”

Raymond lit up there next to me. He might have been a child he was so pleased.

“Drive on, my man,” he said. “Drive on.”

* * *

OUR FIRST STOP was a small apartment building on Manchester. Doreen McKenzie had given us the key to her daughter’s apartment mostly because she seemed to have a deep regard for Mouse.

“How do you know that woman?” I had asked my friend.

“Don’t know her far as I can remember, Ease.”

“Then why she show you so much respect?”

“I got a rep, man. People know who I am. You know that.”

“Yeah.”

Her apartment was built on the model of shotgun architecture of the Deep South. Three rooms in a line from front to back. And because she was on the first floor there was a back door too.

We entered into her bedroom. It was furnished with a big mattress held aloft by a cherry frame, and a vanity with lipsticks, powder cases, and bottles of perfume scattered about. The next room was the toilet. There was makeup crowding the sink and nylons hanging from a rack above the tub.

The last room was the kitchen. It was stacked with dirty dishes and fashion magazines. She had been cutting out pictures of women in sexy poses.

The only food she had was milk that had gone bad and cornflakes, both of them kept in the refrigerator.

Other than the magazines there was no reading material in the house. There were no photographs, no calendar, phone book, telephone directory, or television set. There was a radio on the kitchen counter. It was set on the station KGFJ which specialized in soul music. I knew that because Mouse turned it on.

There were condoms in her medicine cabinet—dozens of them.

There was nothing under the bed.

I was looking between the mattress and box springs when Mouse asked, “What you lookin’ for, Easy?”

“Something that might give us an idea about who killed Jackie,” I said, a little vexed that he wasn’t giving me a hand.

“You mean like this here?” He was holding out a thick sheaf of legal documents.

“Where’d you get that?”

“In the vanity drawer.”

Sooner or later I would have checked that drawer. But I had got it in my mind that Jackie was a devious child, that she would have kept her secrets in some pretty obvious hiding place.

It was the deed to a house at the southern outskirts of Compton. She’d paid twelve thousand dollars in cash for the place. It was large enough for a garden but I didn’t know if it was zoned for stabling a horse.

On a small piece of paper, folded in between the various documents, she had listed a dozen or so names under an underlined title—$500. Bob Henry was on the list. Ted Durgen was too. Musa Tanous was the second to last name, just before Matthew Munson.

WHEN WE WALKED OUT of the front door I noticed a man pushing a wire shopping cart, stolen from some supermarket, down the street. I say stolen because he wasn’t coming home from the grocery store. Neither had he been to the laundromat in the past year or so. His cart was filled with junk he’d picked up along the way. Broken umbrellas, a painting of a white woman holding an apple up to her eye, bottles, cans, newspapers, and various types of clothing. There was a green felt derby in there with a yellow hatband that sported three green feathers and a new-looking powder-blue scarf, festooned with large black polka dots, tied to the guide bar.

Close up the man stank. Mouse refused to get within three steps of him.

“Excuse me,” I said. “My name’s Easy.”

“Hello, Easy,” he replied holding out a hand. “I’m Harold.”

His hand was big and soft, bloated almost. I didn’t want to shake it but I needed to gain the man’s confidence.

“You got a cigarette, Easy?” Harold asked me.

I handed him a Chesterfield and lit it. His bloated hand was quivering; there was a line of sweat across his upper lip.

Harold’s brown chin sported white stubble and his eyes saw everything and nothing all at once.

“Do you hang out around here much, Harold?”

“Oh yeah. I sleep in that empty lot down the street two, three days a week. You know—when John Bull ain’t beatin’ the bushes. Sometimes they catch on to me and send me to county jail. It’s alright except if it’s in with the drunks. You know I hate the smell in there. I stay with my mama sometimes—”

“Did you know a young woman live in here, down on the first floor? Her name is Jackie Jay?”

“Jackie Jay,” he said, considering the name for a moment or two. “Jackie Jay. No. No. No I cain’t say that I do. My mama’s name is Jocelyn—”

“You sure?” I asked. “She’s a young black woman…” I was wishing that I knew what the woman-child looked like. “…a young woman hangs out with men more my age.”

“No, sir. Uhp. Whop. Maybe. Did one’a her boyfriends drive a red T-Bird? Convertible?”

“I don’t know,” I said, honestly. “It could be.”

“There’s a real pretty young thing wear them, what my mama calls scandalous short skirts. She come outta there every once in a while and this Mexican picks her up in a red sports car. Then they drive off.”

“Did you see them last Thursday?”

“Thursday I was in the can,” Harold said.

He was short and powerful, maybe fifty years old, but his hairline had just begun to recede. And even though his skin was medium brown you could see the streaks of filth on the back of his hands and across his face.

“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “I had a stomach bug, couldn’t hardly walk but they said I was drunk and took me off. When I was still sick the next day they took me to the nurse’s office and she sent me home. There I was sick like some kinda dog. First they arrest me and then they throw me out on the street. It’s a wonder that a colored child ever makes it to be a man.”

“Did you notice anything else about the pretty girl and the man in the red car?” I asked. “Did they ever fight?”

But Harold was still thinking about the disservice that the nurse and the police had done him.

“Easy,” Mouse said from his three-step distance. “Let’s get outta here, man.”

“YOU STILL WORKING over at that school, Ease?” Mouse asked me.

We were on the road again, heading back for Ginny’s so that Mouse could retrieve his car.

“What else I’m gonna do?” I asked him. “I got to pay the bills.”

“What about them apartments you got? Don’t they make you some money?”

“I put that away, for Jesus and Feather.”

“How is Juice?”

“Almost finished with that boat. It looks good too.”

“Why’ont you come to work for me, Ease? I get you rich in no time.”

“Doin’ what?”

“I got this dockworker gig goin’.”

“What’s that?”

“I gotta couple’a guys movin’ anything from Swiss watches to French champagne for me. I get ’em to drop it off different places and then I make some calls. The people I do business wit’ pick the shit up and then they pay me.” When Mouse smiled his gray eyes flashed. “Everybody gets paid and the police be scratchin’ they heads.”

“What you need me for?”

“I don’t know, Easy,” Mouse shrugged. “You my friend, right? You cleanin’ up toilets, right?”

“I’m the supervisor, Raymond. I tell people what to do.”

“Whatever. It’s the same chump change all these workin’ fools bring home. You should live better’n that.”

“I like my life just the way it is thank you very much.”

“No, baby. That ain’t true.”

“Why not?”

“If you did like it you wouldn’t be out here takin’ a pair’a shoes to go out and find a murderer. No, man. You need to come around.”

“A man raising children has to set an example, Ray,” I said. “Our children, especially our sons look at us to tell what it is they should be doing with their own lives. That’s human nature.”

“I don’t know what you call it but Etta done raised LaMarque well enough to know that if he tried to do like me that he’d get killed inside of a week.”

“But it’s not just what they think they might be doing,” I said. “What they do is buried deep in their minds.”

“I don’t know about all that shit,” Mouse said. “But even if it is true you cain’t expect a man to give up everything he is ’cause one day one’a his kids might slip up. This is life, Easy. In the end it’s every man for himself.”

With those words he climbed out of the car and I drove off. On the way I castigated my friend for his mistaken beliefs. But as I drove I wondered about my own actions; about the late-night visitors, men and women, white and black. I wondered about what my own children saw when they looked at me. At least Raymond’s son had seen him seemingly lifeless with a hole ripped in his chest. He looked like a criminal so his son had the ability to make a choice. But to my kids I might have seemed like some kind of hero.

Maybe I was angry with myself and not Raymond at all.

IT WAS JUST A STOREFRONT with a hand-painted canvas sign in the window that read TAXES. There was a camel-colored young woman sitting at a desk set off to the right. She had a sensual face with big orange-tinted lips that must have motivated half the men in the neighborhood to ask her opinion on their taxes.

“Yeah?” she said to me before I could ask my question.

“I need to see Matthew,” I said.

“Why?”

“I wanted to talk to him about a five-hundred-dollar murder.”

If there had been a movie camera on the receptionist it would have stopped at that frame. She neither blinked nor breathed for a good five seconds.

“What did you say?” she asked at last.

“Get him for me will ya, sister?”

“Matt,” she said, raising her voice.

“What?” came a man’s voice from the room at the back.

“I think you better come out here.”

A medium-sized white man came out. He had thinning hair combed across his head to hide the encroaching baldness. His eyes were blue and his skin yellowy. His lips were almost as large as his secretary’s. But his were wrinkled like a day-old balloon that’s lost half its air.

“Mr. Munson?”

“Yes?” he asked warily.

“You knew Jackie Jay?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m here representing a man named Musa Tanous. Do you know him?”

“No.”

“He owns a building a couple’a blocks down. He was arrested a few days ago for murder.”

Matthew gulped and touched his throat with all the fingers of his left hand.

“Rita,” he said to the secretary. “I’ll be spending a few minutes with this gentleman.”

“Yes sir,” she said in a thick voice.

I turned her way in time to see her wiping tears from her eyes.

“Follow me, Mister—?”

“Rawlins.”

* * *

LIKE THEODORE, MUNSON had a backroom much larger than his front office. But most of the space back there went unused. The only furniture was a pine desk shoved into one corner. This was crowded with papers and files which were in turn covered in a fine layer of rubber eraser dust.

The accountant led me to the desk but he didn’t sit—neither did I.

“Now what’s this about Jackie?” he asked me.

“I was hired by a man, another man who knew Jackie. He wants me to make sure that Musa Tanous gets the chair for the crime.”

“You said something about her and a murder?”

“Don’t you know?”

“Know what?”

“Jackie was murdered three days ago.”

Munson’s mouth fell open. His eyelashes fluttered. If he was acting he was the best I had ever met.

“Who, who is this man? The one you’re working for?”

“I can’t tell you that, Mr. Munson,” I said. “He’s married and, well, you know—important. He doesn’t want it to get out that he was involved.”

Munson watched my eyes with a steady gaze. I wasn’t worried though. A good liar learns to use his eyes in the tales he spins. And I was a good liar, a very good one.

“Who are you, Mr. Rawlins?” Munson asked.

“I’m unofficial,” I said. “I look into things when people want to be sure that there’s no notes or forms to be filed or remembered. Right now I’m the man looking for Jackie Jay’s killer.”

Munson winced.

“I thought you said that this Muta guy did it?”

“That’s what I thought,” I said. “But then I found this list.”

I handed him the list I took from Jackie’s apartment.

He read it over, then over again.

He held it away from me and asked, “Isn’t this police evidence?”

“I got the mother’s permission to search Jackie’s house. There was no police notice telling me not to look around.”

“Well,” he said with sudden authority in his voice, “I think I’ll hold onto this for the cops if they need it.”

I have fast hands. I snatched the list out of Munson’s grasp before he could move. He tried to muscle and I slapped him. I didn’t think I’d hit him hard but he tipped over and fell on his side. He was up quickly though. There were tears in his eyes.

“Who the hell do you think you are hitting me?” he said.

“You try an’ take this paper from me again and I’ll kick your ass up and down the block.”

He reached for the phone on his desk.

“I’m calling the police.”

He picked up the receiver.

I watched him.

He watched me.

“Are you going to give me that list?” The threat was thick and ridiculous on his tongue.

“Why’d you give her the money, Matt?”

The tears were still streaming from his eyes. I doubted if any man ever hated me more than he did at that moment.

“When we met she told me that one day she would ask me for five hundred dollars. She said that I didn’t have to give it to her, that I should only do it if I wanted to.”

“And did you?”

“What’s it to you?” Munson said. He was regaining his feeling of superiority so I reminded him:

“It ain’t nuthin’ to me, man. But the cops’ll be more interested in you bein’ on this list than me havin’ it.”

The accountant’s lashes fluttered again. He was so upset that I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had started foaming at the mouth.

“Yes,” he said.

“You gave it to her?”

“Seven-hundred-and-forty-eight dollars,” Munson said, nodding. “And she gave me a letter stating that she owed me the money and that she’d pay off the loan at the rate of five dollars a month.”

“Long-term loan. Did she ever make a payment?”

“Yes. Two of them.”

I should have felt good. I got what I wanted and I was able to show a superior-feeling white man that he couldn’t bully me with his arm or his will. But seeing him so defeated only reminded me of all the defeats me and mine had experienced. I actually felt sorry for him.

“Is Rita’s last name Wilford?’ I asked.

“No. It’s Longtree,” he said. “Why?”

“I thought she was a Wilford from down Dallas. Guess I was wrong.”

LONG AND LEAN BOB HENRY was sitting at a desk behind a glass wall when I drove up to his Atlas gas station. I asked him about the $500 club and he was easy enough.

“Sure,” the copper-haired fifty year old said. “I’ve spent more on girls give me less in a week than she did in one night. That girl was sex-crazy. When’s the last time you had a twenty year old beggin’ you for sex?”

“Seventeen,” I said.

“What?”

“Seventeen years old.”

“I didn’t know that.” Bob Henry sat up in his swivel chair. “Any judge in the world look at her and he’d know that she looks twenty.”

“She looks dead.”

“What?” It was the same question but it took on a whole new tone.

“Murdered. Three days ago. In an alley off of Central.”

It’s a strange thing seeing a white man go white.

“Who is she to you?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“She’s a complex girl. I didn’t know about her until after she was dead but even still she’s full’a surprises. Did she start paying you five dollars a week?”

“Yeah. How did you know?”

“Jackie was a very organized young lady. It seems that she paid all of her gentleman friends five dollars a week for a long-term loan.”

“What did you say your name was?”

“Easy.”

“And what do you have to do with this?”

“I’m looking into it—for the family.”

“Isn’t this a police job?”

“You’d think so, but I haven’t seen one cop looking into it and I bet you haven’t either. Look, you didn’t even know the girl was dead.”

The red-headed man took in my claim with a certain amount of bewilderment.

“What are you saying?” he asked.

“Do you know who might have killed her?”

“No.”

“No enemies? No jilted lovers?”

“Jackie had a lot of boyfriends,” Bob said. “Sure she did. She never hid that. No. Nobody had any reason to kill her.”

TED DURGEN’S HARDWARE STORE was closed by the time I got there. I could wait a day to talk to him. I drove down to a Thrifty’s Drug Store on 54th Street and made a call from a phone booth near the ice cream counter.

“Hello,” Bonnie said in a musical voice.

“Hey, honey,” I said.

“Where are you, Easy? You said that you were just going to get a pair of shoes.”

There was a time, when we first got together, that neither one of us would have asked that question. But another man had crossed her path, and though she swore that her love for him was that of a friend, we still asked questions where once there would have been only trust.

“Theodore said if I did something for him that he’d let me have the shoes for free.”

“What did he want you to do?”

“Ain’t nuthin’, honey,” I said. “Nuthin’ at all. How’s the kids?”

“Jesus is sewing his sail and Feather is helping him. Really she’s just drinking chocolate milk and talking.”

“I got to go out to the Palisades to see this friend of Theodore’s,” I said. “I’ll be back before ten.”

“Raymond called. He said if you needed him to call at this number.”

I wrote down the number and we hung up.

THE PHONE BOOK TOLD ME that Rita Longtree lived on Defiance Avenue. It was an orange stucco building in the middle of the block. Her door was nestled in a third-floor nook that had a small palm growing in a terra cotta pot right outside.

She was surprised to see me standing there. The orange had been wiped from her lips. Her eyes seemed different.

“Yeah?” It was the same word she used when we first met, only this time the edge was gone.

She’d been crying but that’s not what was different. I realized that she was wearing false eyelashes before.

“Rita, I need to talk to you about Jackie.”

“I don’t know her.”

“Yes you do, and if you don’t want me to say that to the cops you’ll let me in and answer my questions.”

As a rule I don’t threaten black folk with the law. That’s because most of the time I’m trying to help someone black. The police are hardly ever in the position to make a Negro’s life easier. They’re there to keep us from making trouble. But I needed to know what Rita’s connection with the dead girl was and the law opened almost any door in the ghetto.

She let me in and showed me to a chair.

The chair was blue and the couch gray; there were lavender walls and a red-and-brown carpet. It was a poor working girl’s apartment, clean and ill-fitted.

She was wearing cranberry slacks and a white T-shirt.

She looked good. Even the sorrow made her attractive.

“What you wanna know?”

“You got a picture of Jackie?”

From a table behind the couch she took a small frame that had an oval aperture. The photograph was of a lovely, smiling young woman, a little heavy but worth every pound.

“She was beautiful,” Rita said.

“You knew her pretty well?” I asked.

“Uh-huh. We were friends.”

“Did you know her before she got to know Mr. Munson?”

“No. She met Matt at a hamburger stand down Hoover. At first he’d bring her over to the office after I went home but after a while they got sloppy and I’d catch ’em. After that she’d call sometimes when he was out with a client and we talked. She was a really good person.” Sorrow constricted the last few words.

“Did she love your boss?” I asked.

Rita smiled through the tears.

“Jackie just liked men,” she said. “I mean they had to be older and they couldn’t be black but after that she wasn’t too picky. She didn’t mind if they was fat or bald or plain.”

“How about rich?” I asked.

“No. I mean she had her investment plan but you didn’t have to be rich to belong to that.”

“That was to buy her house?”

“Uh-huh. She fount this house for only twelve thousand dollars in Compton. Then she would ask her boyfriends to put up the money, like an interest-free loan. She had started payin’ it back. She called it her rent.”

“And where’d she get that?”

“She was a good girl,” Rita said. “She was only seventeen you know. And her mama could hardly make enough to pay the rent. And Jackie really liked the men she was with. So what if a couple’a them gave her money?”

It was a discussion held between women that I had been overhearing since I was a child. Poor young women with no money, and no hope for a job, taking a handout now and then from a “friend.” Maybe he was called “uncle” or a family friend. He was older and lonely and willing to let her go out dancing when she wanted to. The money was always in an envelope and never in the bedroom. Sometimes there wasn’t even sex at all, just a series of well-dressed dates and maybe a kiss or two at the end of the evening.

“Why not black men?” I asked.

“She hated her father,” Rita said. “He used to beat her mother and brother. She said that most’a the white men she was with were gentle.”

“What about Musa Tanous?”

“She loved him for real. She’d call me after they were together and tell me about his stories about castles in Jordan and Lebanon. His family used to own a castle that was a thousand years old.”

“When’s the last time she called you?”

“The morning she was killed.” Her throat tightened again.

“What time?”

“About eight. We planned to meet at Brenda’s Sunshine Diner on Eighty-second at eight-thirty but she never got there.”

“Where’d she call from?”

“The motel.”

“You sure?”

Rita nodded.

“Can I use your phone?”

“Is it long distance?”

“Station to station but I’ll give you two dollars for it.”

“You better. It’s ’cause of you I lost my job.”

“What do you mean?”

“Matt really didn’t know that Jackie was dead. When he asked me if I knew and I said yeah he fired me.”

“Oh.”

“YES?” Musa Tanous said into my ear.

“It’s Easy Rawlins,” I said.

“I’ve been waiting for you, Mr. Rawlins.”

“Where were you from eight to nine on the day Jackie was killed, Mr. Tanous?”

“Picking up floor wax from a distributor on Alameda. S&J Distributions.”

“You were in the place at eight?”

“Yes. Mr. Hind and I were having coffee. He’s an old friend.”

“What time did you leave Mr. Hind?”

“Quarter to ten. Why?”

“What time did they find Jackie?”

“Nine-fifteen,” he said, and then he choked. “She had been stabbed and beaten. She wasn’t dead until they got her to the hospital.”

Nothing I could say seemed important but still I went on, “If that’s true then I can prove that you didn’t do it.”

“Do you know who did?”

“I didn’t sign up for that. But once the cops clear you then they’ll probably find the man who did it. It’s somebody she knows. It always is.”

“So what do we do now?”

“Give me the name of your lawyer. I’ll tell him what I found out.”

Musa gave me a name, William Berg, and the number to call.

I told Rita that the lawyer would probably call but that it wouldn’t be any trouble.

It was time for me to leave but I hesitated.

“He really fired you because of Jackie?” I asked.

“Yeah. I asked him for my last paycheck but he said that I didn’t even deserve that. I can take him to court but my landlord’ll have me on the street before he’ll pay me.”

“Can you do accounting work?”

“I learned a lot from Mr. Munson. I could do simple stuff. Preparin’ and like that.”

“I can probably get you a job. I know a guy runs a place that does unofficial accounting work. Over on Pico.”

I gave her Anatole Zane’s name and number. I told her to use my name and he’d probably hire her right off.

I keep a hundred dollar bill in my wallet at all times—in the secret fold. I gave it to the young siren.

“What’s this for?” she asked. It was almost an accusation.

“To pay your rent until the next check comes through.”

“Why?”

“How old are you, Rita?”

“Twenty.”

“I’m forty-four. I went in there today and slapped your boss to the ground. That’s why he fired you. At my age a man should take responsibility where he finds it. Take that money and use it. And remember, you didn’t have to do anything for it except be on the right side of life.”

* * *

BONNIE AND I MADE LOVE that night. It wasn’t the way we usually came together. Afterward she asked, “What is it, Easy?”

“What?”

“The way you touched me. It was so delicate, as if you thought you might hurt me, as if you didn’t know my body.”

“Do you love me, baby?” I asked her.

“Yes. You know I do.”

“I’m not talkin’ about in a perfect world,” I said. “I’m not askin’ do you love me lyin’ here next to you. I don’t mean do I measure up to other men you’ve known pound for pound. What I’m sayin’ is that I’m just a janitor and a small-time property owner. I’m not ever gonna make a difference in the way you live or in the quality of your life.”

“I don’t understand, Easy.”

“The only doors I can open are back doors,” I said. “The only money I’ll ever have is either small change or money that got blood on it, one way or the other it’s not what a woman like you should expect.”

“Is this about Jogaye again?”

“Not just him. There’s other princes and bankers, generals and entrepreneurs you meet. Some of ’em are black but there’s white ones too. What I’m sayin’ Bonnie is that I can’t do for you. I can only follow and hope you don’t take off so far ahead that I won’t even see your dust. I meet people every day that need my help. Kids at the school, people like Theodore Steinman. But you’re in a whole other class. You in the sky half the time around men and women who wouldn’t give me a second look.”

“Does any of this has to do with what Mr. Steinman asked you to do for him?”

“There was girl a friend of his knew. She was murdered.”

“That’s terrible.”

“It was. I met a friend of hers, another girl who needed help. I gave her a little information and a couple’a dollars. I helped her. I made a difference.”

“And didn’t you save me when I was in trouble?”

“You never needed me,” I said, and I meant it. “You’re every bit as tough as I am and smarter too.”

Bonnie touched my cheek with her fingertips. “My father once told me that a great man walks the back roads. He does what’s right every day and no one knows it but those lucky enough to be loved by him.”

“He did, huh?”

“I love you, Easy Rawlins. No matter what happens with us or with how you feel about me. I have never known a better man than you.”

I CALLED THEODORE the next morning and told him that Raymond would collect one pair of handmade shoes. Then I called Raymond and asked him to go over and talk to Jackie’s mother.

“Explain to her that Musa did not kill Jackie and tell her that the police will be put on the right track. Also tell her that I’ll be sending a gift that Jackie had been saving for her.”

“Okay, Ease,” Mouse said. “But you know you wastin’ all that talent on these poor people. A dollar down here don’t stay long, brother. And you know it’s only a matter’a time for that poor woman lose her stupid son too.”

AFTER WORK I drove out to the Pacific Palisades, to Musa Tanous’s home.

It was a modest house compared to some of the mansions in that neighborhood. I doubted if he had more than five bedrooms on the three floors. Birds of paradise proliferated on either side of his front door.

He seated me in his den. There was the heavy odor of port wine and tobacco in there. He had a chess board set up for play.

“Do you play chess, Mr. Rawlins?”

“No sir. I do not.”

He handed me an envelope. Inside was the key I expected but also a small stack of hundred dollar bills, ten by the feel of them.

“I didn’t ask you for money,” I said.

“The money you saved me in legal expenses alone is worth that,” he said. “And I want you to have it. You proved I didn’t kill Jackie and you never even saw the photograph of her.”

“I saw one at the house of a friend of hers,” I said, but he was already reaching for a something on the bookshelf behind him.

He took down a small picture and handed it to me.

All I saw was the polka dot scarf and the felt green derby with the yellow band and green feathers.

I WAS DOWN at the vacant lot across from Jackie’s apartment in less than an hour. At the far corner was a cardboard lean-to that smelled of Harold.

There were twenty-three little girl’s dolls lined up against the paper wall. Above them was a note written in red lipstick.

Little black girls mess with white men ain’t worth the shit in they mamas toilets. They need to die. They going to die. Oh yes, dear lord.

By the time I had gotten to the police station and back again the fire engines were already there. The lean-to had burned up completely. The only thing left of the dolls was the smell of burnt rubber, a few charred limbs, and glass eyes.

I PUT UP A SIGN on my amber door. It reads:

EASY RAWLINS

RESEARCH AND DELIVERY

I spent over six months looking for Harold but he was nowhere among the poor street people of Watts. I couldn’t convince the police to even mount a search. They decided that Musa Tanous had hired someone to kill his girlfriend. And even though they couldn’t prove it they refused to believe that some tramp could be smart enough to leave no clues.

I figure that he saw me go into his cardboard teepee. He set fire to it when I went for the cops. Maybe he had searched Musa’s car when he was in Jackie’s house and knew where they went. Or maybe he followed her somehow. Manchester wasn’t far from Musa’s building.

I still work at Sojourner Truth Junior High School and see Raymond now and then. Bonnie and I are still together. I read the newspapers a little closer nowadays. Looking for the deaths of young black women and reading in between the lines.