White Butterfly (15 page)

They were seated at a small round table in front of the stage. Both of them staring at both of us. There was an electricity in the air. Westley looked like he wanted to make a break for the door.

If Charlene was going to break something it would be our heads. “What are you doin’ in here?” It was more of a warning than a question.

“Easy got sumpin’ t’ask,” Mouse said in his friendliest tone.

“Get the hell outta here,” Charlene said, but then she froze. I looked over and saw that Mouse had drawn his pistol.

“I ain’t here t’play, Charlene. We need t’know what we need t’know an’ you is gonna tell us,” Mouse said.

“What you want from us?” Westley asked. His eyes were moving from side to side in a shifty manner. I knew that he was up to something and that scared me. I wasn’t worried about him hurting us or getting away. What worried me was that Mouse might kill poor Westley and then I’d be struggling to get
myself
out of jail.

“Tell me ’bout the fight with that man and Gregory Jewel,” I said quickly. Maybe we’d get what we wanted and get out before things got out of hand.

“I told you what I know already, Easy Rawlins.” That was Charlene. “And then you go tryin’ to get me in bad with the police.”

“I wanna know who that man was, Charlene. Either you tell me or you convince me that you don’t know.”

“And what if I don’t?” the big woman dared.

Mouse’s grin was a boy’s joy on a hot summer’s day. Westley brought his foot up to his seat and put his hands together at the ankle. He had on red socks but I caught a glimpse of brown leather too. Westley pulled a small pistol from his pant leg. I yelled, “No!” and shoved my hand against Mouse’s gun-bearing arm. Charlene called, “Oh no.” The shots, big and small, deafened me. I saw Westley pitch sideways out of his chair.

Charlene cried, “West!” and ran to his side.

Mouse swung the barrel of his pistol at my head but I stepped out of the way. “What the fuck is wrong with you, Easy?” he cried.

I knew better than to answer. Mouse glared at me while Charlene was desperate over Westley. There was blood oozing down the bartender’s arm.

Mouse went up to them and pushed Charlene aside. He checked the bartender’s wound and moved away again taking the bartender’s pistol with him.

“He ain’t gonna die,” Mouse said.

“Tell me,” I said to Charlene.

Mouse clacked back the hammer of his pistol.

“His name is Saunders,” she said in even, defeated tones. “He’s bad news from here to St. Louis. Get inta fights and use his knife. I didn’t want no trouble with him.”

“Even if he was killin’ girls?” I asked.

“I didn’t know nuthin’ ’bout no killin’s. I see men and women do what he did to Gregory Jewel almost every night.”

I remembered how Jasper Filagret was beaten over Dorthea.

“He got any friends?” I asked.

“One time he brought this cousin’a his down here. Redheaded man he called Abernathy. He works at Federal Butcher’s with my nephew, Tiny. That’s all I know.”

Mouse turned friendly then. He got a rag from behind the bar and handed it to Charlene.

“He only got it in the shoulder,” Mouse said. “He lucky Easy hit me.”

Outside Mouse wasn’t smiling. “Don’t you never do that again, Easy Rawlins.”

“You might have killed him.”

“Westley coulda got us both if I didn’t get him in the arm. Next time I shoot you too.”

He wasn’t lying.

With that over, Mouse’s anger faded away. “We gotta take this butcher boy first thing, Easy. We could lay for him ’fore he even go into work.”

“I can’t till later.”

“How come?”

“I gotta go to school with Jesus in the mornin’. He got trouble with some teacher and I have to go with him.” All of a sudden I was very tired. I almost dozed off while we spoke.

“All right. Why don’t you come on around Minnie’s after that?”

I agreed. We said our good-byes, then I drove home. I parked in front of my house but didn’t have the strength to open the door.

I was thinking about a dead woman sitting peacefully under a tree. Mouse was talking to her. Talking and talking. Whatever he was saying he read from a little black book, like a telephone diary.

She just sat there, peacefully listening. Mouse went on talking. A thousand birds gathered in the trees. They were waiting silently for Mouse to finish talking so they could descend on the corpse and pluck the flesh from her bones.

I HEARD LOUD SNORING and wondered that I had never heard Regina snore like that before. I lifted my hand to nudge her and touched something that was hard and smooth, the steering wheel. It was my own breathing that I heard. I stared up out of the windshield at the overcast skies. Even that dim light hurt my eyes.

It took many minutes for me to sit up.

Breathing slowly and taking small steps, I made it to the house. Regina was still asleep. It was five A.M. I stayed in the bathtub until I heard her moving around. Then I shaved and toweled off.

I was in the kitchen drinking coffee when she came in. She wore a flowered housecoat that had a bright orange-and-blue painting of a macaw down the left side.

“You didn’t come home last night,” she said.

I felt like a man who’d walked off the street and into a play. Nobody would let me off the stage until I said my lines, but I’d forgotten them.

Regina got a mugful of coffee and sat across from me. “Well?”

“The cops need me to find a toehold. They put Mouse in jail so I’d tell’em I’d do it.”

She just stared.

“I went to Aretha’s with Mouse last night… ”

“Who?”

“It’s a bar.”

“Where?”

“On Bone Street.” I tried to keep my voice normal but it lowered when I named that name.

“Oh.” She nodded and her beautiful eyes closed, shutting me out for the moment.

“It ain’t like that, baby. We had to get somebody to talk to us. There was a fight, it got pretty bad. I made it home but I passed out in the car. You don’t have to believe me, baby. I know you might wonder at how crazy I’m actin’. But I swear it’s gonna get better. I swear it.”

She put the coffee mug down and got up slowly. I sat there looking up at her.

“You don’t have to swear to me, Easy,” she said. “I ain’t yo’ keeper.”

“But you know it’s been kinda hard on me lately.”

“Don’t worry. Ain’t nuthin’ gonna happen if you miss one night at home. That ain’t gonna bother me. All I wanna know is what happened. Maybe you in love with somebody else. I just asked.”

“I love you.”

She picked up the mug and went into the kitchen to fix Jesus’s lunch. Later Jesus came out and sat by the front door.

Regina brought him his sack. She knelt down in front of him and straightened his shirt. She ran a finger along his cheek and he smiled; more from love than the tickle he felt. When she stood up and turned I saw that there were tears in Regina’s eyes.

Regina went into our room and dressed quickly. She left the house without saying good-bye. Gabby Lee came and took Edna away.

I drove up to the Eighty-ninth Street school with Jesus. It was one big blue stucco building. Three floors of classrooms and a big asphalt field behind that. To the left of the field was a small bungalow where the children would go at various times during the week for an hour of calisthenics. They’d do jumping jacks and sit-ups and running in place. I knew because I had asked Jesus what he did in each of his subjects. He showed me in books for most things but when it came to PE he did the exercises to entertain both me and Edna.

Mr. Arnet, the coach, was standing in front of a group of little boys that were lying on their backs with their hands behind their heads. They were struggling to pull themselves up by their necks.

“One, two,” Mr. Arnet said. “One, two.”

I don’t know what he was counting. The little heads and young bellies just strained and strained.

When Mr. Arnet saw Jesus and me he said in a loud voice, “All right, everybody, elimination ball in the big square.”

The children all jumped up and started screaming. Arnet pulled a white volleyball out of a canvas bag behind him and threw it into a tall boy’s waiting arms. All the children went into a large white square and started throwing the ball at each other. It looked like fun.

“Mr. Rawlins?” It was Arnet. He was a tall white man with strawlike blond hair, an extremely long neck, and a potbelly. When he walked up to me I saw that he wasn’t nearly my height, but the long neck made him seem tall from the distance.

“Mr. Arnet,” I said. “Looks like we had a little problem.”

He ran his hand back through the straw, shook his head, and gave me a rueful grin.

“I had to bend over the sink for fifteen minutes with the bloody nose your boy gave me, Rawlins.”

The way he used my name, the way he said it, rubbed me wrong. I took a deep breath and tried to overcome my anger.

“He’s real sorry about that, Mr. Arnet. He feels bad and I told him that I won’t have him fighting like that.”

The gym teacher shook his head again and shoved his hands in his pockets. He clucked his tongue, giving the impression that I had failed the test.

“Is Jesus your natural son?” he asked.

I turned to Jesus, who had been looking up at us with a scowl of concentration. “Go on to your class now, honey,” I said. “Me and Mr. Arnet gonna talk a little more.”

He smiled quickly and ran off toward the big blue building.

“He’s a beautiful boy,” I said.

“Is he yours?” Mr. Arnet asked again.

That white man’s eyes were mostly yellow but clotted with little gray dots that made them seem green. They were small, cagey eyes.

“Yes,” I said. “He’s my boy.”

“Your wife a Mexican?”

I knew what was coming. Jesus had been with me for years but he wasn’t my natural son. He was a poor soul who had been kidnapped to satisfy a rich man’s evil appetites. I had saved Jesus from all that and, finally, I had taken him as my son. Mr. Arnet wanted to cause trouble about that. Maybe it was because he was humiliated by Jesus or maybe it was because he had a bleeding heart.

“Do you like your job, Mr. Arnet?” I asked.

The question caught him a little off guard. He said, “What?”

“I just ask because I know that a man who feels strongly about his work will stand up and be counted no matter what. I mean, take me and Jesus. He’s my boy. I love him. It was a hard thing for me to get here this morning because I’m a workingman and I had to stay late on the job last night. But you know I got my ass outta bed to come here and see what’s what. I love Jesus. If a man or anybody wanted to hurt him I don’t know what I might do.”

I looked Mr. Arnet in the eye, then I shook my head. “No. No, that’s not right. If somebody fucked with my boy I would kill the bastard. Because you see I’m committed to him. I love him. He’s my son.”

The coach had blanched a little while I spoke. When I finished he swallowed to lubricate his vocal cords, knowing that his next words were important ones.

“I understand you, Mr. Rawlins,” he said. “It’s a rare parent nowadays who takes such a deep concern with their children’s welfare. I’m sure Jesus will be fine now.”

“You call me if he isn’t,” I said. “I want Jesus to grow up right.”

I looked him in the eye for a moment more. He got fidgety, clasping his hands together.

“Well, it was good to meet you, Mr. Rawlins.” He held his hand out. I shook it. “I’ve got to get back to the kids now.”

He pulled a police whistle out of his pocket and blew it at the kids. Then he yelled, “All right! Line up!” and was off running toward the large white square.

I stalked out of that schoolyard with my head throbbing and my heart going fast. It seemed like everything had to happen the hard way.

I called Quinten Naylor from a phone booth. I told him that the guy who beat Gregory Jewel and went off with Juliette LeRoi was called Saunders.

By the time I got home there was a message with Gabby Lee that fifteen thousand dollars had been offered for information leading to the capture of the killer and that a bearded man named Saunders was the prime suspect.

I WENT TO MEET MOUSE at eleven-fifteen. Minnie was at the beauty shop where she worked but there was another woman there. Maxine Cone, Mouse’s other girlfriend.

They were sitting on the bed drinking beers when I got there. Mouse offered me one and I took it.

I was halfway through the third beer when Mouse said, “Our boy be leavin’ for lunch soon.”

I put the bottle down on the floor and got up.

“Where you all going?” Maxine asked. She was very dark and slight with shoulder-length coarse hair that was combed straight back and down.

“We got work to do, Maxie. You go on home an’ I call later on,” Mouse told her.

I thought we were going to have another fight right there. I could see Maxine’s jaw clenching and her eyes narrow like gun turrets. But she kept quiet. As a matter of fact she hardly said another word. She got a sweater from a nail on the wall and walked out before us.

Mouse and I went to my car and I called to Maxine, “Could I give you a ride somewhere?”

She just walked on down the sidewalk ignoring us both. I don’t think she ever talked to Mouse again. In four months she was married to Billy Tyler.

Mouse ran through women like a boy going through toys on Christmas morning. The whole year was Christmas for Mouse; his whole life was.

FEDERAL BUTCHER’S was in a building that I frequented in the late forties. It was a butchers’ warehouse mainly, but there used to be a little bar on the third floor. Joppy’s place.

Joppy had been a friend of mine for many years. He was an old friend from back in the Fifth Ward in Houston and he was a pal in L.A. when I first got there in the mid-forties. But when we did business at a bad angle Joppy ended up dead. My life had dire consequences; there were reminders of it all over Los Angeles.

Lunch hour came and went but we didn’t see any redheaded black men. I went down to a package store and bought a half pint of Seagram’s and two plastic cups.