White Butterfly (2 page)

“Juliette LeRoi had been in that can for two days before somebody called in the smell. Rigor mortis had set in. They didn’t find the marks until after the news story was out.”

My stomach let out a little groan.

“Willa Scott and Bonita Edwards had the same marks.”

“What marks do you mean?”

Quinten darkened like the night. “Burns,” he said. “Cigar burns on their, their breasts.”

“So it’s all the same man?” I asked. I thought of Regina and Edna. I wanted to get home, to make sure the doors were locked.

The policeman nodded. “We think so. He wants us to know he’s doing it.”

Quinten stared me in the eye. Behind him L.A. sizzled into a net of electric lights.

“What you lookin’ at?” I dared him.

“We need you on this one, Easy. This one is bad.”

“Just who do you mean when you say ‘we’? Who is that? You and me? We gonna go’n hire somebody?”

“You know what I mean, Rawlins.”

In my time I had done work for the numbers runners, churchgoers, businessmen, and even the police. Somewhere along the line I had slipped into the role of a confidential agent who represented people when the law broke down. And the law broke down often enough to keep me busy. It even broke down for the cops sometimes.

The last time I worked with Naylor he needed me to lure a killer named Lark Reeves out of Tijuana.

Lark had been in an illegal crap game in Compton and was down twenty-five dollars to a slumming white boy named Chi-Chi MacDonald. When Chi-Chi asked for his money he was a little too cocky and Lark shot him in the face. The shooting wasn’t unusual but the color line had been crossed and Quinten knew that he could make a case for a promotion if he could pull Lark in.

As a rule I will not run down a black man for the law. But when Quinten came to me I had a special need. It was a week before Regina and I were to be married, and her cousin Robert Henry was in jail for robbery.

Robert had argued with a market owner. He said that a quart of milk he’d bought had soured in the store. When the grocer called him a liar Robert just picked up a gallon jug and made for the door. The grocer grabbed Bob by the arm and called to the checker for help.

Bob said, “You got a friend, huh? That’s okay, ’cause I got a knife.”

It was the knife that put Bob in jail. They called it armed robbery.

Regina loved her cousin, so when Quinten came to me about Lark I made him an offer. I told him that I’d set up a special poker game down in Watts and get the word out to Lark. I knew that Lark couldn’t resist a good game.

High-stakes poker put Lark in San Quentin. He never connected me with the cops who busted the game and dragged him off to be identified at the station.

Quinten got his promotion because the cops thought that he had his thumb on the pulse of the black community. But all he really had was me. Me and a few other Negroes who didn’t mind playing dice with their lives.

But I had stopped taking those kind of chances after I got married. I wasn’t a stool for the cops anymore.

“I don’t know nuthin’ ’bout no dead girls, man. Don’t you think I’d come tell ya if I did? Don’t you think I’d wanna stop somebody killin’ Negro women? Why, I got me a pretty young wife at home right now… ”

“She’s all right.”

“How do you know?” I felt the pulse in my temples.

“This man is killing good-time girls. He’s not after a nurse.”

“Regina works. She comes home from the hospital, sometimes at night. He could be stalkin’ her.”

“That’s why I need your help, Easy.”

I shook my head. “Uh-uh, man. I cain’t help you. What could I do?”

My question threw Naylor. “Help us,” he said feebly.

He was lost. He wanted me to tell him what to do because the police didn’t know how to catch some murderer who didn’t make sense to them. They knew what to do when a man killed his wife or when a loan shark took out a bad debt. They knew how to question witnesses, white witnesses. Even though Quinten Naylor was black he didn’t have sympathy among the rough crowd in the Watts community; a crowd commonly called
the element.

“What you got so far?” I asked, mostly because I felt sorry for him.

“Nothing. You know everything I know.”

“You got some special unit workin’ it?”

“No. Just me.”

The cars passing on the distant streets buzzed in my ears like hungry mosquitoes.

“Three girls dead,” I said. “An’ you is all they could muster?”

“Hobbes is on it with me.”

I shook my head, wishing I could shake the ground under my feet.

“I cain’t help you, man,” I said.

“Somebody’s got to help. If they don’t, who knows how many girls will die?”

“Maybe you’ man’ll just get tired, Quinten.”

“You’ve got to help us, Easy.”

“No I don’t. You livin’ in a fool’s nightmare, Mr. Policeman. I can’t help you. If I knew this man’s name or if I knew somethin’, anything. But it’s the cops gotta gather up evidence. One man cain’t do all that.”

I could see the rage gathering in his arms and shoulders. But instead of hitting me Quinten Naylor turned away and stalked off toward the car. I ambled on behind, not wanting to walk with him. Quinten had the weight of the whole community on his shoulders. The black people didn’t like him because he talked like a white man and he had a white man’s job. The other policemen kept at a distance too. Some maniac was killing Negro women and Quinten was all alone. Nobody wanted to help him and the women continued to die.

“YOU WITH US, EASY?” Roland Hobbes said. He put his hand on my shoulder as Naylor stepped on the gas.

I kept my silence and Hobbes took his friendly hand back. I was in a hurry to get to my house. I felt bad about turning down the policeman. I felt miserable that young women would die. But there was nothing I could do. I had my own life to attend to—didn’t I?

I ASKED NAYLOR TO LET ME OFF at the corner, intending to walk the last few steps home. But instead I stood there looking around. Night was coming on and I imagined that people were scurrying for shelter from a storm that was about to explode around them.

Not everybody was in a hurry.

Rafael Gordon was running a shell game in front of the Avalon, a tiny bar down toward the end of my block. Zeppo, the half-Italian, half-Negro spastic, was standing watch at the corner. Zeppo, who was always in a writhing fit, couldn’t finish a sentence but he could whistle louder than most horn players could blow.

I waved at Zeppo and he shimmied at me, grimacing and winking. I tried to catch Rafael’s eye but he was intent on the two rubes he’d snagged. Rafael was a short Negro, more gray in hue than he was brown. He was missing the greater portion of his front teeth and his left eye was dead in its socket. Rubes would look at Rafael and know that they could outsmart him. And maybe they thought they wouldn’t have to pay even if they lost; Rafael didn’t look like he could whip a poodle.

But Rafael Gordon carried a cork-hafted black iron fishing knife in his sleeve, and he always had a few feet of tempered steel chain in his pocket.

“Just show me where the red ball lands,” he sang. “Just show me the red ball and two dollars. Double your money and howl tonight.” He moved the fake walnut shells from side to side, lifting them at various times to show what was, and what wasn’t.

A big man I’d never seen before pointed at a shell. I turned away and walked toward my home.

I was thinking about the dead party girl; about how she was killed with no reason except maybe how she looked or who she looked like. I shuddered at the memory of how natural she appeared. When a woman forgets that she’s supposed to be pretty and on display she looks like that murdered girl did; just somebody who’s tired and needs to rest.

That got me thinking about Regina and what she looked like. There was no comparison, of course. Regina was royal in her bearing. She never wore cheap shiny clothes or costume jewelry. When she danced it was not in that herky-jerky way that most young women moved. Regina’s dancing was fluid and graceful like a fish in water or a bird on air.

The memory of that dead girl hung around me. I made it down to my front gate and looked to see that Regina and Edna were okay in the living room, I could see them through the window, then I got into my car and headed out to Hooper Street. Mofass had his real estate office on Hooper at that time. It was on the second floor of a two-story building. I owned the building, though nobody but Mofass knew that. The bottom floor was rented to a Negro bookstore that specialized in inspirational literature. Chester and Edwina Remy rented the place. Like all the tenants in my seven buildings, the Remys paid their rent to Mofass. He gave it to me sometime after that.

I knew Mofass would be in, because he worked late seven nights a week. All he ever did was work and smoke cigars.

The staircase that led to Mofass’s door was exposed to the outside. It groaned and sagged as I made my way. Before I ever got to the door I could hear Mofass coughing.

I came in to find him crumpled over his maple desk, making a sound like an engine that won’t turn over.

“I told ya to stop that smoking, Mofass. That cigar gonna kill you.”

Mofass lifted his head. His jowly face made him resemble a bulldog. His pathetic gesture made him look even more canine. Tears from all that coughing fell from his rheumy eyes. He held the cigar out in front of his face and stared at it in terror. Then he smashed the black stogie in a clear glass ashtray and pushed himself upright in his swivel chair.

He stifled a cough and clenched his fists.

“How you doin’?” I asked.

“Fine,” he whispered, and then he gagged on a cough.

I took the chair he had for clients and waited for any business he might have had to discuss. We’d known each other for many years. Maybe that’s why I had two minds about Mofass’s illness. On one hand I was always sorry to see a man in misery. But then again, Mofass was a coward who had betrayed me once. The only reason I hadn’t killed him was that I hadn’t proven to be a better man.

“What’s goin’ on?” I asked.

“Ain’t nuthin’ happenin’ but the rent.”

We both smiled at that.

“I guess that’s okay,” I said.

Mofass held up his hand for me to be quiet and took a porcelain jar from his desk. He unscrewed it, held it to his nose and mouth, and took a deep breath. The smell of camphor and menthol stung my nose.

“You hear ’bout the latest girl?” Mofass asked, his voice back from death’s door.

“No, uh-uh.”

“They found her on a Hundred and Tenth. Out near you. They said that there was nearly twenty cops out there.”

“Yeah?”

“Good-time girls. Ain’t havin’ such a good time no more,” he said. “Crazy man killin’ young things. It’s a shame.”

Mofass pulled a cigar from his vest pocket. He was about to bite off the tip when he saw me staring. He put the death stick back and said, “Gonna be trouble fo’us.”

“Trouble how?”

“Lotsa yo’ young tenants these girls, man. Single girls or deserted ones. They got a baby and a job, and on Friday night they go out with they friends lookin’ fo’a man.”

“So what? You think whoever doin’ this gonna kill all our renters?”

“Naw, naw. I ain’t all that stupid. I might not got no college under my belt like you but I could see what’s in front’a my nose just as good as the next man.”

“An’ what is that?”

“Georgette Wykers and Marie Purdue told me that they movin’ in together—for’ p’otection. They said that they could take care of their kids better an’ be safe too. Course they only be payin’ half the rent.”

“So? What could I do about that?”

Mofass smiled. Grinned. I could see all the way back to his last, gold-capped molar. When Mofass showed that kind of pleasure it meant that he had been successful where money was concerned.

“You don’t need to do nuthin’, Mr. Rawlins. I told’em that the rules didn’t ’low no doublin’ up. Then I told Georgette that if she moved in with Marie, then Marie could th’ow her out ’cause Georgette’s name wouldn’t be on the contract.”

If Mofass made money on the day he died he would die a happy man.

“Don’t bother with it, man,” I said. “Let them girls do what they want. You know they’s a thousand people comin’ out here ev’ry day. Somebody move out an’ somebody else just move in.”

Mofass shook his head sadly and slow. He couldn’t take a deep breath but he felt sorry for me. How could I be so stupid and not bleed the whole world for a dollar and some change?

“You got anything else t’say, Mofass?”

“Them white men called again today.”

A representative of a company called DeCampo Associates had been calling Mofass about some property I owned in Compton. They’d offered to buy it twice; the last time for more than twice what the land was worth.

“I don’t wanna hear about it. If they want that property it must be worth more than they wanna pay.”

I walked over to the window, because I didn’t want to argue about it again. Mofass thought that I should sell the land because there was a quick profit. He was good in business from day to day, but Mofass didn’t know how to plan for the future.

“They got another deal now,” he said. “You wanna say no to a hundred thousand dollars?”

Out the window I saw a little boy pulling a blue wagon past a streetlamp. He had thick soda bottles in the wagon. Six or seven of them. At most that was fourteen cents, enough for three candy bars, just about. The boy was brown with bare feet and short pants and a striped T-shirt. He was deep in thought as he pulled that wagon. Maybe he was thinking about his spelling lesson from last week. Maybe he wondered at the right way to spell kangaroo. But I suspected that that boy was wondering how to get the one cent he needed to buy a third candy bar.

“A hundred thousand?”

“They wanna meet with you,” Mofass rasped.

I heard him lighting a match and turned just in time to see him take his first drag.

“What is it they want from us, William?” Mofass’s real name was William Wharton.