Little Scarlet Read online

  “Hold it,” a voice said.

  It was a man’s voice, a white man, probably over sixty, who was not born in the South. There was confidence in the tone but not the threatening kind of self-assurance that comes with holding a gun. This voice expressed the expectation of being obeyed because that was his place in life.

  I turned toward the dazzling light and said, “Yes?”

  “Clinic’s closed.”

  “My name’s Easy Rawlins. I’m on a special visitors list.”

  “Prove it.”

  “Prove what? That I’m on the list or that I’m Easy Rawlins?”

  The question flummoxed the late-night security guard. He sputtered and then used a key on the door to reception.

  “Go on,” he told me.

  I went in and he came after, flipping the light switch as he did.

  I was halfway to the swinging door when he said “Hold it” again.

  I swiveled on my heel, seeing the man for the first time, at least with my eyes. He was short and white-haired, in his sixties and unarmed except for that large flashlight. I chided myself for believing in my own deductions. Seeing that I was right about that guard might lull me into thinking that I could see in the dark. And all that meant was that one day I’d make a mistake, fall into a pit, and die.

  “What?” I asked the security guard.

  “I need to see some identification.”

  I took out my wallet and produced my driver’s license. He scrutinized the document as if looking for counterfeits.

  “What’s your business here?” he asked.

  I snatched my license from his hands and turned away. As I went through the swinging door he cried, “Hey you,” but I kept on going.

  There was no evidence that he was treating me like that because of my race. He was just a guard taking his job a little too seriously. But I had been asked those questions too many times in my life to shrug off the anger they raised in my heart. If I found myself in a situation where I could ignore a white man in authority I would, even though I might have been wrong.

  As I quick-marched down the hall I could hear the guard’s slower steps behind me. He wasn’t about to let me get away with disregarding his authority.

  I got to H-12 and opened the door without knocking. Geneva Landry was sitting up in her bed and a young black woman sat in the chair. A lamp glowed on a table in the corner, giving the white hospital room the feeling of home.

  “Tommy, what’s going on?” a woman’s voice asked from down the hall behind me.

  “An intruder, Nurse Brown,” the security guard said from the opposite end.

  “Are you Tina Monroe?” I asked the young black woman sitting in the chair.

  “Yes I am. And who are you?”

  “I’m Easy Rawlins. I think Marianne Plump gave you my number.”

  At that moment a huge white woman in a nurse’s uniform entered the room.

  “If you are not off of these premises in one minute I will call the police.” There was a ragged timbre to her voice.

  The little speech seemed rehearsed. I supposed that she’d sat around for many nights wondering what she could say to convince a trespasser to leave.

  “Hello, Mr. Rawlins,” Geneva Landry said. She had bags under her eyes and her words were a little slurred.

  “This is Mr. Rawlins, Nurse Brown,” Tina Monroe was saying. “He has permission from Dr. Dommer to visit Miss Landry at any time.”

  “Why is Miss Landry awake?” was Brown’s answer. “Haven’t you given her her medicine?”

  “Yes. But she was nervous so I’m sitting here with her for a while—until she relaxes a little more.”

  “Give her another dose,” Brown said in an almost threatening tone.

  “The charts don’t allow for that, Nurse Brown,” the serious black nurse replied.

  “Excuse me,” I said then.

  “What?” Nurse Brown said.

  “I’m here on official police business. I have to speak to Miss Landry and Miss Monroe. So if you don’t mind, we need some privacy.”

  The guard and the nurse didn’t want to obey but even they knew that it was a new world.

  “Come on, Tommy,” Nurse Brown said. “Let’s go check Dr. Dommer’s instructions.”

  They turned away slowly, looking for a way back in even as they exited.

  “What are you doin’ here at this time’a night, Mr. Rawlins?” Geneva asked me. “Have you found that man?”

  I perched myself at the foot of the high bed.

  “I found out how I could find him,” I said. “But I can’t do anything about it until morning so I thought I’d drop by and make sure that you were fine. I just thought I’d look in and see you sleepin’. You know you do need your rest.”

  “They give me pills that put me about halfway ’sleep. Then I start thinkin’ about Nola and I wake up. But Tina comes in and talks to me.”

  “Everything’s going to be all right, Miss Landry,” the nurse said.

  She was filled with the beauty of youth. Her light brown skin and luscious hair, her child’s hands and woman’s figure. Her lips were in the shape of a chubby heart and her eyes were always looking somewhere else to keep you from seeing the hunger they held. And even though everything about her was geared to making babies and a home she sat there night after night with Geneva Landry, listening to her grief and loss.

  “You’re a godsend,” Geneva said and her eyes fluttered, filling with tears.

  “In a day or two it will all be settled,” I said. “And I’ll make sure that Nola gets a nice service.”

  “You will?” she asked.

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “Mr. Rawlins?” Tina Monroe asked.

  “Yes?”

  “Are you going to stay here for a while?”

  “Until mornin’ I guess.”

  Tina stood up. “I have to make my rounds and I won’t feel so bad doing it if you stay here with Miss Landry.”

  “No problem.”

  I watched the young black woman in white move through the doorway.

  “She’s beautiful,” Geneva Landry said.

  “She sure is,” I added. And I meant it even though it wasn’t really true. Tina was handsome, she was well built, but not beautiful.

  “It’s nice that she can come and sit with you,” I added.

  “Oh yes. You know I think I might go crazy in here if it wasn’t for her. I start thinkin’ about Nola and my mind feels like there’s razor blades in it.”

  “Don’t think about it,” I said. “Let it go.”

  Geneva had lost weight in the few hours since I had seen her. Her face was drawn and her eyes drifted in her head even when she was talking to me.

  “I cain’t help it, Mr. Rawlins. I should have told Nola to get away from that white man. I know what men like that can do to a woman or a girl.”

  “Men like what?” I asked.

  “White,” she said as if I were a fool. “White men. They rotten. I mean they smile and say nice things in company but when they get you alone it’s another story . . . another story altogether.”

  She started to cry and I took her hands in mine.

  “You don’t want to cry, Miss Landry,” I said. “Nola’s in heaven, you know. She’s in a better place. And the man who harmed her will pay the price. I promise you that.”

  “Will he lose an eye like the one he took from my beautiful Scarlet?”

  “More,” I said. “More.”

  The promise of retribution seemed to calm Geneva. She kissed my forearm and then laid a cheek against it. I pulled one hand free and stroked her cheek. She sighed and shuddered and then drifted off into a deep sleep.

  I sat there for over an hour stroking her face now and then. Whenever I touched her she started and then smiled.

  Light filled the small window near her bed. The birds began their morning songs and Tina returned. When she saw me sitting so close to the sleeping woman she smiled.

  “She’s a darling,�
�� Tina said.

  She leaned over the bed and kissed the older woman’s brow. At the time I thought that was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. The feeling Tina had for her charge made my heart run hot.

  When we went out into the hall she told me, “My shift’s over in fifteen minutes.”

  I looked at my watch. It was five forty-five.

  “Can we go get some coffee after?”

  “Okay.”

  19

  Nip’s Coffee Shop on Olympic opened at six. We got there fifteen minutes later but there were already a dozen or more customers eating scrambled eggs and doughnuts, drinking reconstituted orange juice and coffee that tasted mostly like the urn it came from.

  We sat in a window booth across from each other.

  Tina didn’t have a beautiful face. It would have been plain if it weren’t for that inner light young people have. As it was she probably had her pick of the young men down in the riot area. I tried not to think about it and so I started talking.

  “Marianne said that you two see each other in the morning,” I said.

  “Uh-huh,” Tina replied. “She usually comes in at about eight-fifteen and then we talk until she has to be on the job at nine.”

  “But you get off at six.”

  “I use the coffee room to study for my RN tests after work,” she said. “And when Marianne come in we talk about it. She’s real sweet. Don’t know nuthin’ but at least she willin’ to find out.”

  “What can I get for ya?” a man asked.

  It was the chef. He was skinny everywhere but his stomach, which was half the size of a volleyball. He wore white pants with a checkered T-shirt and a pale blue apron. If he shaved that morning it didn’t take. His chin was still gray. His eyebrows were so long that they resembled horns. There was even hair growing out of the man’s ears.

  He’d come from behind the stove to take our orders. The waitress, a small strawberry-blond thing, was behind the counter, staring at us with a terrified expression on her face.

  “I could use a couple’a scrambled eggs and ham with orange juice and some dark toast,” I said, smiling for the man. “And coffee for the both of us.”

  “Juice and an English muffin,” Tina added.

  He jotted down our order and strode back to the kitchen. On the way he threw the receipt pad at the waitress.

  She took up two coffee cups and brought them to our table. She was so shaky that the saucers under our cups were filled with coffee.

  I watched the waitress going back to the counter. Once she looked over her shoulder. When our eyes met she bumped into a customer sitting on his stool.

  “Watch it there, Margie,” the jovial man said to the waitress. “My wife might have spies in the kitchen.”

  Margie, I thought.

  “She’s a good woman,” Tina said.

  “Miss Landry?”

  “Yes.”

  “She seems nice,” I said, “but I guess she’s had a real hard time.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” Tina said. “Miss Landry been through the wringer three times and now the Lord got her goin’ back again.”

  “You mean Nola’s death.”

  “Yes I do. Her niece gettin’ killed like that is gonna take years off that poor woman’s life. She’s getting weaker every day.”

  “What did happen to her?” I asked.

  “Nola?”

  “No. What happened to Geneva? She told me that there were things that happened to her that she never told Nola, that if she had told her maybe she’d still be alive. What do you think she meant by that?”

  “I . . .”

  “Here you go,” a woman said.

  It was Margie again. She was trembling, barely able to put our order down on the table. She wouldn’t look either one of us in the eye. And as soon as the plates and glasses were down she scurried away.

  I took a big mouthful of scrambled egg. It was delicious. Cooked in butter and just an instant past runny. That skinny chef knew what he was doing.

  “What do you have to do with all this, Mr. Rawlins?” Tina asked me.

  “I got a little office down on Central and Eighty-six,” I said. “It’s just a room with a toilet down the hall. On one side of me there’s a guy sells dollar life insurance to people doin’ day work. Across the hall is Terry Draughtman. He’s the pool table expert for all of Watts and thereabouts. If you got trouble with your pitch or your bumpers you come to Terry and he’ll fix you right up.

  “My office door says ‘Easy Rawlins—Research and Delivery.’ And that’s what I do. You can find me any Tuesday or Thursday evening and most of the day on Saturday. If you have a problem and you want some advice, I do that.”

  “What about the office on the other side of you?” Tina asked.

  “It used to be a bookkeeper, but he had a heart attack and died. After that nobody has stayed in there more than a month or two.”

  For some reason that made Tina smile.

  “So who are you helping right now?” she asked.

  “You,” I said.

  “Me?”

  “You live down in SouthCentral L.A., don’t you?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Now what do you think is gonna happen down there when people find out that a pious colored woman was killed by a white man? When they find out that he raped her and strangled her and then shot her in the eye?”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m lookin’ for that white man and I’d like to know what happened.”

  “But Miss Landry already told you,” Tina said.

  “She didn’t see her niece get killed. She never even saw him. And Nola didn’t have a pistol or any other gun in her house.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “If Nola didn’t have a gun, then what did this white man shoot her with?”

  “His own gun,” she said.

  “And if he brought a gun with him, then why didn’t he open fire on the mob that beat him?”

  That argument made her forehead furrow and her head cock to the side.

  “So you think Miss Landry’s makin’ it all up?” she asked.

  “No,” I said. “I think that she’s just filling in some of the spaces with her own experiences.”

  “And that’s why you wanna know about what Miss Landry said about what she shoulda told Nola?”

  I nodded and took another big forkful of egg.

  “Why didn’t you ask her yourself when we were in her room?”

  “It’s like you say,” I said. “She looked weak, fragile. I figured maybe you’d know.”

  “Maybe so but . . . I mean she’s talkin’ to me because it’s a confidence and she thinks I’ll keep her secret.”

  “Did she ask you not to tell?” I asked.

  “No. But I’m sure she wouldn’t like it.”

  “If what she told you didn’t have to do with who else might have killed Nola then I won’t tell anybody,” I said. “I just want to know how to understand why she thinks that white man killed Nola.”

  “It’s ’cause of what happened to her that she’s so upset,” Tina said. “But that don’t mean that white man didn’t kill her.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “She, I mean her father used to work for this white man outside of Lafayette —”

  “Louisiana?”

  “Uh-huh. Anyway, they grew pecans down there and Miss Landry’s father would spend the whole day out on the plantation takin’ care of the trees. And when the white man knew that her father would be gone a long time he’d go up and find little Ginny and do things to her. Things that most women wouldn’t let their husbands do.”

  “How old was she?”

  “It started when she was twelve,” Tina said. “He did that to her three or four times a week. And when she’d cry and beg him not to, he’d tell her that if her father ever found out, they’d have to kill him because he would go crazy and try and kill a white man if they didn’t.”

&n
bsp; “So she never told anyone?”

  “No. And that’s why she’s so upset. She feels that if she had told Nola, then Nola woulda known that you couldn’t trust a white man. That all white men wanted to do was rape and defile black women.”

  Tina felt the pain of her charge.

  I took her hand and she grabbed on to me. What had happened to Geneva Landry could happen to any black woman. She had to take mountains of abuse while protecting her blood. She could never speak about the atrocities done to her while at the same time she dressed the wounds of her loved ones. Of course they both hated the white man who took refuge in a black woman’s home.

  But even with all that I had to wonder—where did that pistol come from?

  AT THE CASH register I had to wave to get the cook’s attention.

  “How much we owe?” I asked him.

  “Margie,” he shouted to the waitress. “The man wants his check.”

  The blond waif shook her head and ran through a door at the back of the restaurant.

  “Go on,” the cook said to me. “I guess it’s on the house today.”

  20

  I dropped Tina off at her bus stop on Pico and then drove toward the address for Peter Rhone on Castle Heights a few blocks south of Cattaraugus. I had all of Mr. Rhone’s information on his registration forms taken from the Galaxie 500.

  I got lost for a while driving around the Palms area looking for a way to Rhone’s house. On the way I thought about Margie. I knew Nips Coffee Shop from the time I bought my house down on Genesee. I had seen the small waitress there for the past three years. She never remembered me, though. I gave my order and she filled it with neither a smile nor a frown on her face. But today she was afraid to be in my company. She still didn’t recognize me and so, as I drove around the white neighborhood, I began to see that my history with white people was much more complex than I had ever thought it was. On the one hand Margie had ignored my existence, and on the other I scared her to death. And even while she feared me she still didn’t know me. And what about that cook? How did his impatience with her fears fit in?

  I didn’t come up with an answer. But after forty-five minutes of driving in circles I found Peter Rhone’s home.