“I mean, am I safe? The cops are on me already. I asked where you were gone to and now the cops wanna talk to me.”
“You didn’t tell them about Pharaoh, did you?”
“No, I didn’t. But I woulda told’em if I didn’t think that they’d throw me together with you. For all I know you’d tell ’em that I killed your husband ’cause we had a roll on the desktop.”
She had no answer to that.
“Don’t you have anything to say?” I asked her.
“I don’t know what to say, except that if you don’t help me I don’t know what I’ll do.”
“Hold up, Mrs. Turner. I don’t even know you. I don’t give a damn about you or your husband an’ I surely don’t care ’bout that damn dog—”
Pharaoh jumped to his feet and yelped once. I swatted him off the couch and he went running, probably to look for my other slipper.
“Was that him?” Idabell asked. “Was that Pharaoh?”
“Yeah, but I can’t put him on right now. He had to go to the bathroom.”
Feather shifted peacefully, putting her arm up on my lap.
“I know you’re angry, Easy,” she said. I was sorry that I’d told her my name. “It’s not your problem, you’re right. But I still need you to do one thing for me.”
“What’s that?”
“Could you bring me my dog? I’m going to leave L.A. I’m going to leave the country. All I need is Pharaoh.”
“That dog’ll mark you,” I said. “You’d be better off leavin’ him somewhere and having him sent on later.”
And I didn’t feel guilty either. If Ida was running that meant she thought the police could get her on something. If she ran their attention would concentrate on her. But if they got frustrated and wanted to give me heat, and if I knew where she was—well then …
“I couldn’t live without my little man, Easy. He’s all I have. Bring him to me. Please.”
“If I was going to give’im to you when would you want him?”
“Tonight. Late though. I can’t get to the place I’m staying until late.”
“How late?”
“Not before eleven.”
“Where?”
She gave me an address on Hoagland Street, off of Adams Boulevard. It was a house and not an apartment. She promised that she’d be there by twelve.
So did I.
“DADDY, WHERE’S FRENCHIE?” Feather had been sleeping with the top of her head nuzzled up against my thigh for nearly half an hour. I didn’t have anywhere to go and no place that I’d rather be.
“He ran off in the back somewhere,” I said. “But the woman who owns him called. She wants him back. You know she really loves him.”
I wanted to be able to say the next day that I’d told her about returning Pharaoh to Idabell. She might get upset but at least she wouldn’t think that I was doing things behind her back.
She sat up pushing her little hands against my chest and asked, “What was my momma like, Daddy?”
“Oh,” I crooned in a low voice. I lifted her and held her in my lap. “She was light-skinned and a very beautiful dancer. I only ever met her once,” I lied. “That’s when she asked me to take care of you. She was flying away to Europe somewhere to dance for somebody really important but the plane crashed and she was lost out there in the ocean.”
It was a story that we’d made up together over the years.
Most of it was true. Her mother was actually white. And she was a dancer, of the exotic variety. I never knew who Feather’s father was; her mother might not have known either. As a matter of fact I had never even met her mother. I found Feather after the police had forced me to help them catch her mother’s killer.
“Was my real daddy on that plane too?”
“Uh-huh.”
Feather nestled her head against my chest.
“Did they love me a whole lot?”
“More than anything, honey. More than anybody. That’s why they asked me to take care of you forever if anything happened, because they loved you so much.”
Feather went to sleep with the declaration of love burrowing down into her dreams. I took her to her room and undressed her. I placed her in the high bed that she wanted so much and hung all of her clothes in the stand-up closet that I’d built for her.
A GIRL’S VOICE ANSWERED my call to Mofass. “Hello?”
“Jewelle?”
She hesitated for a second and then said, “Hi, Mr. Rawlins. How are you?”
“Fine, JJ. Just fine. Mofass there?”
