When I put Feather down, Pharaoh jumped up between us, barking at me and then turning to lick her fingertips.
“Honey, where did you get this money?”
“In a place.”
“What place?”
“In Juice room.”
Nobody wanted to use the Lord’s name in vain, so Jesus became Juice at Hamilton High School.
Feather led me to a corner in Juice’s closet where there was a cardboard chest that used to hold hundreds of little plastic soldiers. But the soldiers had all died or gone AWOL and in their place were neat stacks of different denominations of bills from one to twenty. Four hundred and eighty-nine dollars in all.
“It’s Juice treasure chest,” Feather said. “But it’s a secret, okay?”
I sat down on the floor. Pharaoh was growling at my elbow. There was too much money there to hope that he would get away from court with a warning.
“Daddy?”
“Yeah, honey?”
“Can I go downstairs and feed Frenchie?”
She’d already given the damn dog her own name. I went outside to have a cigarette and wait for my boy. He was lucky that he stayed away. In the mood I was in I might have struck him—and that was something I swore I’d never do.
My next-door neighbor, Mrs. Horn, came home before Jesus did. She was a skinny and nervous woman from white Christian California stock. Still, I never found any reason to distrust or dislike her.
“Hi, Mr. Rawlins,” she said.
I went over to help her with her bag of groceries.
“Jesus is out, Mrs. Horn,” I said. “And I got an appointment to keep.”
“That’s okay. You go on. I’ll come over and look after Feather. You know she’s just a darling little girl. I really love her.”
I’m sure she did.
Before I went down to my car I said, “Um, when Jesus gets here, please tell him not to go anywhere and wait for me.”
Mrs. Horn gave me a second look; she could hear the threat in my words.
THE RIDE BACK to Sojourner Truth was quick. I got there just a little before six. Everyone from the administration building had gone home. I used my keys to get into the office. There I opened the key closet where they kept the keys to the personnel files drawer.
Turner was her maiden name even though she called herself “Mrs.” Her husband’s name was Holland Gasteau.
She was thirty-two years old and had been born in French Guiana but had immigrated to America when she was four years old. I unlocked the phone plug on the rotary and dialed the Turner-Gasteau residence. I let it ring fifteen times before hanging up. I redialed but still no one answered.
I wrote down her Butler Place address, a street above Hollywood Boulevard, and also the address and phone number of a Miss B. Shay, who was given as someone to get in touch with in case of an emergency.
I didn’t know for a fact that the handsome dead man was Idabell’s husband, but I knew that she was in trouble and that she’d lied about the dog.
COMING OUT OF THE administration building I ran into Sergeant Sanchez. A lock of his longish black hair had trailed down onto his forehead.
“Working late, aren’t you, Mr. Rawlins?”
“How’s the investigation going?” I replied.
He didn’t like my answer. He didn’t like my clothes or the way I walked. If we’d worked side by side on a road gang, swinging sixteen-pound hammers, he wouldn’t have liked the way that I smelled.
“You find out his name yet?” I was actually sweating under his gaze.
“Where’s your night man?” Sanchez asked.
“I don’t know. Mr. Alexander follows his own schedule. All I care about is that the work is done when I come in in the morning.”
“And is it always done?”
“He’s a good worker.”
“Mr. Newgate says that there’s been some property missing from the school over the last year. TVs, musical instruments.” Sanchez the fisherman.
The only thing I was sure of about the thefts was that Mouse hadn’t been involved. Mouse would never have wasted his time with petty theft. But I couldn’t tell Sanchez that.
“You have a little time to walk me around the grounds to find your night man?” Sanchez asked.
“No. I got to make dinner for my kids.”
A frown knitted itself into the policeman’s brow. “You married?”
