Little Scarlet Read online

  “Oh,” she said.

  “And if he didn’t kill her, then somebody else did. But the cops won’t care about that. They never worry about exactly who did what. Catchin’ crooks is like herdin’ cattle for them. So what if one or two get away? They’re bound to be caught somewhere down the line. And if they round up an innocent man, they’ll just tell ya that he probably did somethin’ else they didn’t catch him for.”

  “But Easy,” Bonnie said.

  “What?” I lit up a Lucky Strike.

  “You don’t have the kind of resources that the police do. You can’t go out there and find some killer that you know nothing about.”

  “You’re right about that, honey. But . . .”

  “What?”

  “That’s why those people were out there shootin’ and burnin’ and throwin’ rocks. Because they’re sick and tired of knowin’ that they can’t ever get it right. They’re tired’a bein’ told that they can’t win.”

  “Did they win?” she asked me.

  “They mighta been wrong,” I said. “But at least they tried.”

  “Okay.”

  It was more than her giving in to my hardheaded ways. She knew that I needed her blessing to go out so far from safety.

  “I love you,” we both said together.

  After she hung up I slammed the pay phone handset down so hard that it broke in my hand.

  I DROPPED BY my office at Sojourner Truth before going to meet Juanda. I had an extra suit of clothes in a locked closet there. It was a rabbit gray two-piece ensemble with a single-button jacket. I also had a cream-colored shirt and bone shoes. I took the clothes down to the boy’s gym, where I showered and shaved, powdered, and dabbed on cologne. There were still a few soldiers and policemen prowling the campus but the aftermath of the riot was winding down.

  JUANDA WAS WAITING out in front of her door on Grape Street. She had preened a bit too. She was wearing a white miniskirt and a tight-fitting multicolored striped blouse. She wore no hose or socks and only simple leatherlike sandals. She wore no jewelry and had nothing in her hair.

  Juanda’s hair was not straightened, which was rare for Negro women in the ghettos of America at that time. Her hair was natural and only slightly trimmed. There was a wildness to it that was almost pubic.

  She smiled for me when I hopped out to open her door.

  “That’s another reason I like older men,” she said when we were both seated and on our way.

  “What’s that?”

  “They remember to be gentlemen even after you kissed ’em.”

  “But you never kissed me,” I said.

  “Not yet.”

  I STARTED DRIVING and Juanda began to talk. She told me about her cousin Byford who had recently come to Los Angeles from Texas by hitchhiking. His mother, Juanda’s mother’s sister, had died suddenly and he was alone in the world.

  Juanda’s mother, Ula, had been angry at Byford’s mother for over twenty years. It seems that when their mother died, Ula suspected her sister Elba of having taken their mother’s set of cameos that she’d received from a rich white lady she worked for.

  That was why Ula left Galveston, because she couldn’t stand living in the same town as her thieving sister.

  The sisters were estranged, so all that Byford, who was only thirteen, knew was that his Auntie Ula lived somewhere in L.A. He stuck out his thumb and made it all the way to southern California, getting rides with young white longhairs mainly.

  He found his auntie by walking the streets of Watts asking anybody he met, did they know an Ula Rivers.

  “Byford is pure country,” Juanda was saying. “I mean, he go barefoot everywhere and only drink from jelly jars. Sometimes he even go to the baffroom in the backyard if somebody in the toilet an’ he cain’t hold it . . .”

  I could have listened to her for weeks without getting tired. She was from down home, Louisiana and Texas. She was more than twenty years my junior but we could have been twins raised in the same house, under the same sun.

  I knew many young teens like her who attended Sojourner Truth. But they were children and I harbored the mistaken belief that I had left my rude roots behind. I owned apartment buildings and a dozen suits that cost over a hundred dollars each. But a tight dress on a strong country body along with the prattle that I hadn’t heard since childhood sent a thrill through my heart.

  Juanda’s conversation was like home cooking was to me after five years’ soldiering in Africa and Europe. I didn’t stop eating for a week after I got home.

  WE HEADED WEST toward Grand Street downtown. There we came to a small hotel called The Oxford. It had a fine restaurant on the first floor called Pepe’s. The maître d’ was a chubby, golden-hued Iranian named Albert who liked me because I once proved that he was in San Diego when his wife’s mother’s house had been robbed. Albert had married a white woman whose parents hated him. He had never experienced racism of that nature before. Being Persian, he disliked many other peoples but never for something as inconsequential as skin color or an accent.

  “Mr. Rawlins,” he said, giving me a broad grin.

  The room was dim because, like most L.A. restaurants, Pepe’s had no windows. That’s because the sun in the southland was too strong and the heat generated by windows didn’t make for comfortable dining.

  Most of the fifteen tables were set for two at lunchtime. The chairs had leather padded arms and seats.

  The dining room was nearly full. All of the other diners were white.

  Albert led us to a secluded corner table that had a banquette made for two. He didn’t say anything about Juanda’s faux leather or revealing attire. He would have seated us if we were wearing jeans and straw hats.

  Once we were comfortable Albert asked, “Is there anything that the lady does not eat?”

  “Juanda?” I said, passing the question on to her.

  “I don’t like squash or fish,” she told me.

  “Then we won’t bring you any,” Albert said.

  He went away and Juanda hummed a long appreciative note.

  “You come here a lot?” she asked.

  “Not often,” I said. “I did Albert a favor once and he told me that I could always eat here free of charge.”

  “Don’t the people own the restaurant get mad at that?”

  “His brother owns the hotel.”

  “Damn.”

  “Juanda?”

  “Yeah, Easy?” Even the way she said my name exhilarated me.

  “Do you know a man named Piedmont?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “He’s a man. Big long arms and bug eyes. He used to be a boxer but then he got hurt and by the time he was better he was too lazy to go to the gym anymore.”

  “Is he a bad man like Loverboy?”

  “No. He okay.”

  “Your salads,” Albert said.

  He put two plates before us. They were green salads made up of frisée lettuce, cherry tomatoes, cut green beans, and a strong garlic vinaigrette.

  Juanda loved it. And I loved her loving it.

  “You know how I can get in touch with Piedmont?” I asked as she was eating her third slice of French bread.

  “Why?”

  “Because I think he might help me find a man I’m looking for.”

  “Can I at least finish my salad before you start askin’ me all kinds’a questions?” she asked playfully.

  “Sure,” I said.

  I watched her concentrate on the lettuce and bread. She ate all of the greens, except for the beans, and then used her bread to mop up the dressing.

  Albert must have been watching because as soon as she was through he brought the entrée. It was chicken breasts stuffed with ham and white cheese, accompanied by mashed potatoes under a Cognac sauce.

  “Is this to your liking, miss?” he asked Juanda.

  “It’s great,” she said.

  This elicited a big smile from the round Persian. His hairline was
receding and his eyes were cunning but Albert was a man I knew that I could trust.

  When he left, Juanda said, “I don’t know if I should tell you about Piedmont.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because then you might not call me no more.”

  She gazed into my eyes and I froze, realizing that what she said was true.

  “I live with a woman,” I said.

  “Will you kiss me one time?”

  “I have two kids,” I continued, “three if you count one that left with her mother eleven years ago.”

  “Just one kiss and you have to promise that you will call me one more time at least.”

  I wasn’t thinking about Nola or Geneva or Bonnie right then. I leaned over to give Juanda a chaste kiss on the lips but when her fingers caressed my neck I lingered and even drifted to plant a gentle peck on her throat.

  When I leaned back Juanda was smiling.

  “He live on Croesus only a couple’a blocks from the corner where you met me,” she said. “I don’t know the number but it’s this big ugly red house that got a bright orange door.”

  Albert brought crème brûlée for dessert and Juanda was in heaven.

  WHEN WE GOT to the car I unlocked her door and opened it.

  “You see?” she said. “You’d open the door for me even after we’ve had a dozen kids.”

  ON THE RIDE back to her home Juanda talked about her experience in high school. She had gone to Jordan High and got good grades until halfway through the eleventh grade.

  “. . . then I messed up,” she said.

  “What happened?”

  “I met this boy. His name was Dean and he was fiiiiine. Uh. He’d already dropped out but he’d sneak into the schoolyard and stand outside my homeroom door waitin’ for the passin’ period. I’d tell him that I had to go to class but he put his hand on my waist and I couldn’t say no. They finally expelled me.”

  “Expelled you? Why?”

  “’Cause I wouldn’t listen,” she said. “’Cause I thought I was a woman and they couldn’t treat me like a child no more.”

  The riots and Nola Payne’s death and Juanda’s heaving chest were pumping in my veins. I was happy when we got to her block.

  I pulled to the curb. She turned to me and touched my forearm.

  “You gonna call me again, right?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “No more than two days.”

  “You still got my number?”

  I recited it from memory. That made Juanda grin. She jumped out and I sped off. In the rearview mirror I could see her waving.

  23

  I knocked on the bright orange door. Then I knocked again. I don’t know how long I stood there. I was in no hurry. I had death and sex and race on the brain. No matter which way I turned in my mind, there was one of those vast problems.

  “That’s the problem with most’a you black mens, Easy,” Jackson Blue had once said to me. “White people think we stupid but it’s the other way around. We got so much on our minds all the time that we ain’t got no time for little things like exactly what time it is or the rent. Shit. Here he askin’ you about long division and you thinkin’ ’bout Lisa Langly’s long legs, who you gonna have to fight to get next to her, and why this ugly white man think anything he say gonna make a bit’a difference to you when you get out in the street.”

  I smiled remembering the cowardly genius’s glib words. Jackson was the smartest man I had ever known. I thought that maybe I should talk to him about the riots when I was finished with my official work.

  The orange door came open. A tall man in a crimson minister’s suit was standing there before me.

  “Yes?” he asked.

  “Are you Piedmont?”

  “No. My name is Lister, Reverend Lister. Who are you?”

  “My name is Easy Rawlins, Reverend. And I need to have a conversation with a man named Piedmont.”

  “Brother Piedmont isn’t here right now,” the minister said with a paper-thin smile on his sculpted lips. “What is your business with him?”

  Lister was the color of tanned leather that had been left out in the sun too long. He wasn’t light skinned but he was lighter than he had once been. All of his facial features were small but well arranged. His hands were weak and he had big bare feet. His shoulders were small but he carried them with authority so I decided to treat him with the respect he demanded.

  “Mr. Piedmont gave a man a ride the other night. That man is in some trouble and Piedmont is the only person who might clear him.”

  The cherry-frocked minister pondered me for quite a while and then he smiled and nodded.

  “Come in, Brother Rawlins,” he said. “We can wait for Harley together.”

  We entered a large room. It must have been almost the whole first floor of the three-story house. The pine floor and walls and ceiling were painted bright red. This chamber was bare except for a twelve-foot gray couch against the far wall with a small raised dais set opposite.

  This room, I was sure, was Lister’s church. When the congregation was having a service, they would come out with folding chairs for his acolytes.

  We walked to the long gray couch and Lister gestured for me to sit. After I was situated he sat a few feet away. As soon as he was comfortable a woman wearing a wraparound purple dress came in. She had a glass in each hand and a yellow cloth wrapped around her head.

  She stopped a few feet from Lister and nodded.

  “Lemonade?” she said.

  “Yes, Vica,” Lister said. “Mr. Rawlins?”

  “Sure.”

  The woman, girl really, served the minister first and then handed me a glass. She looked directly at me and smiled. Her earnestness called up a moment’s shyness in me, so I looked down. It was then I noticed that she too was barefoot.

  “Vica,” Lister said.

  “Yes, Reverend?”

  “When Brother Piedmont comes in will you tell him that there’s a Mr. Rawlins here to see him?”

  “Yes, Reverend.”

  She left the room.

  “Won’t Brother Piedmont be coming through the front door?” I asked.

  Instead of answering me Lister asked, “What is his name?”

  “Who?”

  “The man that needs Harley’s help.”

  “DeFranco,” I said easily. “Bobby DeFranco. He’s a white boy.”

  “I see.”

  “Do the bare feet mean something?” I asked.

  “Jesus went barefoot in the world,” Lister said. “So did our ancestors under the African sun.”

  I wondered if Africa was all that barefooted but I didn’t want to argue. I wanted to keep the minister talking so as not to have to tell him too many lies.

  I took a sip of the lemonade. It was sweet for my taste but fresh-squeezed.

  “What about Vica?” I asked.

  “What about her?”

  “She work for you?”

  “She works for our master, as we all do, brother.”

  There was a minor strain of fanaticism in the minister’s tone. But I didn’t care. I once heard that extreme times call for extreme measures. Living in Watts was extreme three hundred and sixty-five days a year.

  “Twenty-three adults live here among us, Brother Rawlins,” Lister said. “The women serve and raise children while the men work to pay for our bread.”

  “I don’t hear any kids.”

  “The school is in the basement.” He smiled and then added, “I thought that you had come to join us.”

  “Join you what?”

  “We’ve had six converts since the riots,” he said. “People looking for hope in a world gone crazy.”

  “Might not be a bad idea,” I speculated. “What do you have to do to join up?”

  “Not much. Give yourself over to our master. Dedicate your life and worldly possessions to our family.”

  “That’s all?”

  Reverend Lister smiled.

&nb
sp; “Do you know him, Harley?” he said, looking at me but talking to someone else.

  “No suh.”

  The voice came from a door behind the red minister. A tall brown man with long arms and bulging eyes came out. He wore a gray Nehru jacket and blue jeans. There was a raised mole in the center of his forehead.

  As Piedmont approached us the minister rose.

  “I will leave you men to your business,” he said. “And, Brother Rawlins . . .”

  “Yes sir?”

  “Your life is the only thing you truly have to give.”

  He turned and walked away. I watched him, thinking, rather resentfully, that what he had said might prove to be the most important lesson of my life.

  “Do I know you, brother?” Piedmont asked as he lowered himself onto the couch.

  “Nola Payne,” I said. “And Peter Rhone.”

  Even as I spoke he rose up.

  “Let’s take it outside,” he said.

  Piedmont had long legs too. I had to jump up and scurry to make it with him to the door. He went through and I followed but after I crossed the threshold I turned to look once more at the consecrated living room. Vica had come back and was removing the lemonade glass I’d put on the floor in my haste to leave. She had gotten down on one knee, a voluptuous purple sail with a yellow flag dipping into a crimson sea. My breath caught as Piedmont pulled the orange door shut.

  I believed at that moment that I would one day be compelled to give up my life and that when the time came I would go gladly.

  I shivered at the thought and turned away.

  24

  On the sidewalk and two houses down Harley Piedmont stopped walking and confronted me.

  “What the fuck you want, niggah?”

  I remembered that the googly-eyed Piedmont had been a boxer. Boxers as a rule are peaceful men outside the ring but when they feel cornered they can be very dangerous.

  “No problem, Brother Piedmont,” I said mildly, keeping my hands at my sides. “I just been hired by a woman named Geneva Landry to find out what happened to her niece—Nola.”

  Piedmont’s eyes grew even larger and a bead of sweat ran a jagged line from his forehead down between his eyes, forming into a large drop at the tip of his nose. The droplet hung there precariously like a long ash at the end of a burning cigarette.