broken into and a goodly quantity of blood had been found. Foul play had not been ruled out in his case.
Jackson Blue disappeared with Jesus’s life savings.
FOR A WEEK THE NATION mourned the passing of JFK. Everybody wondered would things ever get set straight again; they never did.
I wanted to call Bonnie, but Holland Gasteau’s lip-branded corpse came to mind whenever I thought of her. Holland and also Sallie Monroe. Sallie’s death had settled into my finger bones. I found myself rubbing my hands together with the strange feeling that my fingers had gone numb.
After the week was out I got the courage to go down to Temple Hospital. EttaMae hadn’t shown up for work at all, nor had she answered her phone.
I had friends at the front desk. They sent me to the intensive care unit to talk to a woman named Norva Long. I asked her about Mouse.
“Dead,” she told me.
“What?”
“Doctor told Mrs. Alexander five days ago that it was only a matter of a day or two. She said no and that she was gonna take him home. But the doctor wouldn’t release him.” Norva’s tone took the doctor’s side.
“An’ he died?” I asked.
“I was on duty with an orderly named James Pope. There was supposed to be another man but he came down with flu and stayed home. Maybe if he was with us we could have stopped her, but … “ Norva twisted her lips and shook her head. “But I doubt it.”
“What happened?”
“EttaMae come about two in the morning. I told her that visitin’ time was over and that’s the last thing I remember, except her ham fist.”
EttaMae had a strong arm.
“James said that he tried to grab her,” Norva said. “But she threw him up against a wall and laid him low with a metal tray. James was two floors down with a concussion for forty-eight hours. His momma say they gonna sue.”
“What happened to Raymond?” I asked.
“Front desk said that she carried him out the front door in her arms. The security guard was gonna take her but then she come out with his gun. He said he wasn’t gonna get in no shoot-out with a woman.”
“Why wasn’t any of this in the paper?”
“They kep’ it pretty quiet, I guess. James prob’ly get some money out of it, after all.”
“Then you don’t know that Raymond’s dead,” I said. “He could be alive.”
When Norva shook her head it broke my heart. She was sorry to tell me that Mouse had been in a coma and that he had been steadily fading over the days. Their house was abandoned. There were still dirty dishes in the sink.
I WAS IN THE MAINTENANCE office a few days later waiting to interview the replacements for Etta and Mouse. When the door slid open I was surprised, and not very happy, to see Sergeant Sanchez. He’d come alone.
“Mr. Rawlins,” he said from the door.
He wanted for me to say come in, and I did.
He came up to my desk, did not offer to shake hands, and sat down.
“I don’t like you, Mr. Rawlins,” he said straight out. “I just came from your principal’s office and he doesn’t like you either.”
“You come all the way down here to tell me that?”
“No. Lewis has me looking for evidence about Bill Bartlett. I told him that he’s wrong about that but I guess you have more friends than I knew about.”
Our eyes met and we were equals at last.
“Were you here when Bartlett was?” he asked.
“No,” I said truthfully. “I replaced the man but we never met.”
“I know that you were in it, Ezekiel. And when we find Bartlett I’m going to prove it.”
I didn’t think that he’d ever locate Bartlett. If I’d read the man right he was too smart to stay in L.A. He was a black man who was implicated in the murder of other black people. There wouldn’t be any national manhunt. They’d wait for him to be arrested on some other charge and then hope that fingerprint checks would do their job. But Bartlett wasn’t the kind of crook who was arrested often, if ever. And even if he did get caught, he didn’t have anything on me. I was innocent of everything except the murders of Sallie Monroe and Raymond Alexander. One I regretted and the other haunted me.
THE PHONE RANG as Sanchez was leaving.
“Where’s my car, Easy?” John asked in my ear.
We drove around L.A. that evening picking up cars. We went up to the hill behind the Black Chantilly to retrieve Primo’s wild roadster. I paid Primo by letting him sell Mouse’s car off for parts. I retrieved the bookie boxes and dropped them off at the Chantilly. To Philly Stetz, but Rupert took them.
It was when we were headed over to Bonnie Shay’s block that John got serious with me.
“Easy, I thought you had got yourself out the street,” he said.
“Yeah, me too.”
“You know you can’t be livin’ like this, man. You too old for this shit. Things gettin’ serious in this town, Easy. People turnin’ mean. Even Mouse got hisself killed.”
