White Butterfly (19 page)

“Open that do’, man, fo’ I put you’ head th’ough it.” That was Mouse.

He hadn’t noticed Mouse before. Maybe he thought that the short one was my ugly date.

Anyway, he looked down then and said, “What?”

“You heard me, Leonard, I said open up that door.”

Mouse had a big grin on his face. The man in the gold suit was grinning too.

“Mouse,” he said.

“Thatta be Mr. Mouse to you.” They shook hands and laughed some.

Then Mouse asked, “Man, what they got you wearin’?”

Leonard spread a big hand across his golden chest and looked down shyly.

“That’s what they pay me for, brother,” he said.

“I hear ya,” Mouse intoned.

We were waved in.

The hostess at the podium was black. As were the waiters, the musicians on the platform up front, and most of the patrons.

Mouse asked for a table but I interrupted and said that we’d stand at the bar for a while.

I ordered a triple shot of scotch. Mouse ordered beer.

“Nice place, huh, Easy?”

He was grinning and looking around the room. It was a large room with low ceilings, painted black from the floor up. The waitresses wore white satin gowns and the waiters wore tuxedos.

There were people and more people. The band was playing upbeat jazz, not like the religious refrains of Lips McGee. A crystal globe hung in the center of the room throwing off bright fragments of light that made everything seem a little unreal. Maybe Tiny Bland’s was worth two weeks’ pay.

“How’d you know that dude?” I asked Mouse.

“I hung out here for a while.”

“When?”

“When Terry Peters got killed.”

It was in the street that Mouse had killed Terry in a dispute over two thousand dollars.

“How long you up here?”

“Until somebody else got killed and the cops started worryin’ ’bout that.”

The bar was long and shiny black. A few feet down from us, Crew Cut was drinking and telling a story to his white date.

She was making eyes at the man next to them.

I don’t know if the woman wanted to start trouble but she was well on her way with that flirtation. The man she was making eyes at was of normal height but you could tell by looking at him that he was brawny and full of violence. He had shaggy hair and a thin mustache. His eyes were murky and unfocused even though he stared directly in the white woman’s face. But none of these features matched the gash in his neck. There was a wide and jagged scar at his throat, made all the more unsightly because it was lighter, yellowish actually, than his medium-brown skin.

I wondered what kind of accident or war could have caused such a catastrophe. I was more than a little awed that this burly fellow, or anyone, could have survived that pain and bloodletting.

But he just smiled and flirted with the white woman while Crew Cut talked about how he had installed a shortwave radio in his Pontiac.

“Easy,” Mouse said. I turned back to him. He was looking around the room.

“Yeah?”

“He ain’t here, man.”

“We ain’t even looked good yet, Raymond.”

“I looked.”

“You mean you wanna get back to that sloppy girl’s house. That’s what you mean.”

Mouse beamed and smoothed his mustache. “I know what’s waitin’ back at home, man.”

“An’ what if she got a boyfriend come in at twelve? What you gonna do then?”

“I do what I do, Easy. An’ you know I do it good.”

“Hey, man, back off,” someone behind me declared. It was said with such anger that I turned quickly and took a step back.

The orange man was pulling his date’s hand from the scarred man’s caress. The scarred man held his hands out, palms up, and smiled just like Mouse had smiled. I felt the force of the triple shot hit my hands; they felt weak and impotent.

The woman in front of me got out of the way but I was too slow. The scarred man flipped his right hand over and made it into a fist that went crashing into Crew Cut’s face. The next thing I knew I was being struck in the chest by the orange man’s back. His fuzzy head was at my chin. He pushed against me and went back up against his foe.

It was a mistake he paid for.

By the time he was on the floor he was bleeding from the mouth and nose. There was a circle around the two men. Nobody moved for a brief moment. The orange man was panting on his back, propped up by both elbows. The scarred man was in a crouch with a vacant look on his face. The last time I had seen a look like that was in the Battle of the Bulge. It was on a German foot soldier who intended to send me to hell.

The scarred man reached into his gray jacket.

The orange man smiled.

The scarred man came out with short thick-bladed knife and took a step.

Somebody screamed.

The orange man took out a pistol and pointed it.

I could see the knife-wielder’s eyes change. He was defeated and the murder was gone from him; maybe he even started to lower the blade.

I’ll never know, because the smiling orange man began pulling off shots. At the first shot the scarred man started to genuflect. Pow!… and a cursory bow. Pow!… and chin comes down to hide the scar. By the sixth shot he was prostrate over his knees on the floor.

The orange man never stopped smiling.

People were either running or kissing the floor. One very fat woman in a vast sky-blue gown tried to squeeze herself down into a corner. I saw the orange man’s date run out the front door, but her boyfriend hardly moved.

After a few moments he got to his feet. He dusted himself off in a ritual fashion, slightly patting his forearms and knees. He put the gun in his pocket and sat down at the bar. The room had almost emptied out by then.

“Com’on, man, let’s get outta here,” Mouse said at my side. “Cops be here any minute. An’ you know I ain’t gonna answer no questions when I could be with Marlene.”

Being at the scene of a murder meant no more to Mouse than a dead cow meant to Randall Abernathy. All us poor Southern Negroes had lived and breathed death since we were children, but Mouse was different—he accepted it. To him death was as natural as rain.

I agreed that we should leave but I was bothered by the murder. Everything seemed logical. I mean, one man has been killing the other over women for a hundred thousand years. But why didn’t he even look for his date? Why didn’t he run?

Outside we joined the crowd across the street. I thought that we might catch a glimpse of Saunders.

The ambulance was there in under ten minutes. The police were there before that. They hustled the killer off. I couldn’t be sure but the orange man’s hands seemed to be free. Unshackled.

While Mouse talked to the doorman I moved around looking for the bearded man. I didn’t catch sight of him.

I did see the two toughs who were eyeing the club earlier. They were talking to some of the men from the club. Thinking that they might know why the killing was so unusual I moved near to them and listened.

At first a big man in a tan cotton suit was talking.

He said, “Yeah. The short-haired dude seen that man you said holding on to his girl’s hand. You know he was lookin’ right down her dress an’ lickin’ his lips… ”

“Yeah, yeah,” a smaller, mutt-faced man said. “I’da kilt him too. You see that? Guy says leggo my-my girl and here-here he go kickin’ his ass. Th-that ain’t right.”

“Yow main,” said one of the T-shirts. “Sand’r’n them allus like’n take it. Shit, he fock my cousin an’ a’most kilt Bobby Lee.”

“Who you said that was?” I asked the boy.

He glared at me because of my tone. Maybe I reminded him of his truant officer.

“Sander,” he said, almost swallowing the word.

“Did he useta wear a beard?” I held my hand under my chin to show him what I meant.

“Yeah.”

“Where he from?”

“Who the fuck’re you, man?” the other boy shouted.

The mutt-faced man and his friend walked away. I remember thinking that they were smart men. I thought that I’d never do this kind of work again.

Then I thought about fighting those youngsters. They were in their late teens, maybe one was older. The one on the left had well-defined arms in the lamplight. I was still young enough that I could take them. I might have gotten a bloody nose but those boys’ lives were in my hands.

They moved apart, watching my hands and eyes. Maybe they did this for a living. More probably for fun.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out two five-dollar bills, handing one to each of them.

“Where’d you say that man Saunders was from? I mean where was he born?” I asked.

“He talk funny,” the first boy said. He snatched the bill at the same time as his partner did.

“Yeah,” the other boy said. “He always say ‘mon’ insteada ‘main.’ ”

“He been gone for a while?” I asked them. But now that they had my five dollars they had somewhere to go. I could see it in their eyes again.

“Hell, main, I ain’t been’ paid t’watch that crazy mothahfuckah. Shit!”

With that they both took off.

I WAS THINKING about what I had to say while the phone rang. The girls next door were having a party with two men and the neon light from the motel sign was flashing through the gauzelike curtains.

Mouse was at Marlene’s house. I’d let him off there.

“Hello?” Quinten’s voice was thick.

“Sorry t’be botherin’ you, man, but I got somethin’.”

“Where you calling from?”

“San Francisco.”

“You find Saunders?”

“Yeah, I found’im.”

“It’s late, Easy. I don’t have time to play with you.”

His father probably said the same words when Quinten was just a baby cop.

“He’s dead.”

“Where?”

“Probably in the morgue over in Oakland.”

“You sure?”

“Pretty much so. I saw’im get shot. I saw them carry him off with a sheet over his eyes.”

“Who killed him?”

“Nobody I know. The police got him too.”

There was a silence on the other end of the line. Maybe I was needlessly worrying about how the man I sought out in another city was murdered before my eyes.

“You go to police headquarters office downtown, in Oakland, at about noon. Where are you now?”

I gave him the number of the motel.

“You be at police headquarters at noon unless I call you to say something else.”

“Okay, Quinten. All right, man. I’ll be there. But if this is the dude I want the reward and I want you people to get off my ass and to stay off it too.”

“Noon,” he said, and then he hung up.

“HELLO.” Her voice was soft and sweet and inviting.

“Hey, honey, I wake you?”

“Easy?”

“Yeah, baby.”

“When you comin’ home?”

“Prob’ly not till day after tomorrow. Around dinner. Did I get you outta bed?”

“No.”

“You up at midnight?”

“I couldn’t sleep so I was cleanin’ the kitchen.”

“I love you, honey. You know I got a lot t’tell when I get home.”

“Okay,” she said so softly that I almost didn’t hear.

“You know I got money, baby, but it’s yours too. I never… ”

“Tell me when you get here, Easy.”

“Cain’t we talk now?”

“I don’t wanna talk like this, on the phone. You come on home, Easy.”

“I love you,” I said.

“We’ll talk when you get home,” she whispered back.

THE NEXT MORNING found me at Marlene’s apartment door.

“Momma an’ them in the bedroom,” the dirty-blond girl told me. She had the disdain of a woman in her voice. She was learning early to hate men for their indifference, and to lament the treachery of her mother.

“Will you tell the man, Mouse, something for me?”

She just stared at the floor.

I took a silver fifty-cent piece from my pocket and handed it to her.

Her frown never left her face but her eyes widened and she took the coin. She started to run but I touched her arm.

“You tell him that I will be back at four. Okay?”

“ ’kay,” she told my wrist. Then she ran hard into the house calling her sister’s name.

“EZEKIEL RAWLINS,” I told Miss Cranshaw for the third time.

“How do you spell that?” the gray-haired, stick-figured old secretary asked.

“I don’t know.”

“What?”

“I ain’t never been to school an’ my momma us’ly signs all my papers. Ain’t nobody evah axed me t’spell it at all really. You the first one.”

I had been standing there in my best brown suit with a cream-colored shirt, real gold cufflinks, brown blucher shoes, and argyle socks. I had on a hand-painted silk tie, double-knotted to perfection. And this woman had called everybody but me. I had been there, and in the chair in front of her, for over an hour.

I had told her, in my best white man’s English, “I would like to be announced to the chief’s office. I know that this is an unusual request, but a police officer from Los Angeles, a Sergeant Quinten Naylor, told me to meet him, with the chief, concerning a case in Los Angeles that seems to overlap with a case in your lovely city.”

“You should go to your own precinct to give information you have there, sir,” she said and then opened a drawer to look in, giving me a chance to withdraw.

I insisted.

She asked me my name.

I gave it, and spelled it, and she called the aide to the captain of the precinct we were in.

She told me that he had never heard of me.

I restated my speech.

She asked me my name.

We might have gotten to hate each other if one of the aides to the assistant mayor hadn’t been informed that there actually was an L.A. cop in with the chief. They were waiting on an informant from L.A.

Miss Cranshaw almost spit bile as she made the call for me. Her jaws clenched so that I thought her teeth might crack.

It might have been the first time she’d had to serve a Negro. I was working for progress.

“IS THIS THE MAN you were looking for from Los Angeles?” Chief Wayland T. Hargrove asked me.

We were in the Oakland City morgue standing over a lab table that bore the remains of J. T. Saunders. He was naked and mottled. He smelled sour like old vegetables smell just before they sprout fungus.