coming back. I was sure that it had been Rupert who killed Ida. And he was coming back for Bonnie.
I didn’t want to think about how good Bonnie was because thinking about her sooner or later would lead me back to thinking about her role in Idabell’s plight.
“BONNIE.” I shook her bare shoulder. “Bonnie.”
There was a peaceful look on her waking face. A trusting, good-morning kind of look.
“What time is it?” she asked.
“What you do with the heroin?” I asked.
“Huh?”
“Come on now, Bonnie. Tell me.”
She sat straight up. “What are you trying to say?”
“The only reason Beam would send his killer after you is because you stole from him. And the only thing you could have stolen is the heroin.”
For the first time I noticed that she was bare-chested. There was a small blemish over her left breast about the size and temper of an inflamed pimple. She saw my eyes and pulled the sheet to cover up.
“I … I threw it away,” she said.
“Come on now, Bonnie. You could do better than that.”
“I’m not lying, Mr. Rawlins,” she said with dignity that was barely forced.
“Naw.”
“Yes. I threw it away. Ida had unscrewed the mallets and balls and taken out the heroin.”
“How’d she know about the heroin? You said you didn’t know when Roman was movin’ it. Why’d him or Holland even take a chance on tellin’ her?”
Bonnie’s face relaxed and she sighed. I could tell that all the lying had gone out of her.
“Roman didn’t want her to know,” she said. “But Holland did. He gave her a sachet of potpourri and an empty can of baby powder. He wanted her to open up the hammers and balls and put the heroin in the can. He gave her the glue and said that she could refill the balls with flour and then seal them.”
“So if Holland was supposed to get the drugs, how’d you end up with ’em?”
“He never got them.”
“How’s that?”
“Ida put flour and the potpourri in the empty can. She had the heroin in a hot-water bottle in my travel bag.”
“A hot-water bottle?”
“I didn’t know about it until the plane was almost landing, Easy. That’s the truth. She’d done everything on her own. She was keeping the drugs as insurance that Pharaoh would be safe.”
“She put her life on the line, and yours, for a dog?”
“That was her heart.”
I could have cried. Pharaoh definitely had to leave from my house.
“And so you threw it away?”
“It was an evil thing and I wouldn’t trade my life for my soul.”
I was trying to understand; trying to believe. But I couldn’t.
“Where’d you throw it?”
“In the trash,” she said as if I were some kind of simpleton.
“You mean in one of those cans behind your building?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“The morning after we got back from France. Right after Idabell called and said that she had Pharaoh.”
“And when’s garbage pickup?”
The question startled her. “Oh. I … Today, I mean … tomorrow … this morning coming up.”
I looked at my watch. It was still a while until Mouse got off of work. Even if I was late he would wait for me, because I had his car.
I WAS GOING THROUGH the fourteenth trash can and wondering at what a fool I was. If any of the neighbors heard me the cops would come. If Rupert was still waiting out front, which he probably was, I was dead from his hand.
And there I was sifting through soggy newspapers and greasy brown paper bags. One can held a half-eaten ham that was alive again with a thriving colony of leaping maggots. Ants crawled along my ankles. A dog barked out of a corridor that led to the main body of the building.
I was there because I wanted to believe in something—in Bonnie Shay. I wanted her to be what she said she was; a good woman with a strong mind who did what she knew was right. I couldn’t live in the streets, and the workaday world wasn’t enough—not without some kind of faith.
Maybe I was more like Mouse than I thought. Maybe somebody looking at me would have thought that I was
