in the killings? I wanted to grab the little man by the throat and choke the truth out of him but it wasn’t the right time—not yet. If he was involved and knew who I was, and that I knew him, then he’d run before I could gift wrap him for the cops.
So, for the time being, the only information I could get from him was what he let slip.
“I’ont know where she is, man.” His bullet words were a warning just over my head. “Bitch owe me three hundred dollars for six months. Come by last night to pay me off.”
Our eyes met in the involuntary agreement that we were both liars.
“But if I do hear from her I’ll tell’er you come by,” he lied. “What’s your number?”
“They took out my phone,” I answered. “But do you know her husband? Maybe I could call him.”
“Whose husband?”
“Mrs. Turner’s. Idabell’s.”
“Naw, man. Not me.”
“Where you know her from?”
“Around,” he said easily. “Listen, I got to get back on the job. Maxwell don’t hold much with no coffee breaks.”
I wanted to keep him talking. I wanted to break his face.
Instead I said, “Yeah, man. It’s a bitch.”
“See ya, brother. I’ll tell Ida you lookin’ for her—if I see her.”
CHAPTER 23
DOWN ON PINEWOOD STREET, somewhere on the road from Watts to Compton, was a small turquoise apartment building. Not many people knew that Jackson Blue lived there.
His door was on the ground floor. I knocked. I rang. I called out. I knocked again. I was so persistent because Jackson had become shy about public appearances ever since the white gangsters of downtown and Hollywood had gotten interested in his gambling operation.
After a long time the window to an apartment on the third floor slid open. Someone was leaning away up there, staring down while remaining hidden in shadow.
“They gone!” a woman’s voice called.
“Doris?”
“Easy? Easy Rawlins, is that you?”
“Yeah.”
“Well come on up here and say hey.” Her words were gay but she didn’t sound that happy.
SHE OPENED THE DOOR and came outside, looking both ways down the hall as she did. Doris was a deep brown woman with features that were a series of perfect circles; her nose, her nostrils, her eyes, even her mouth. Her hair had been straightened and now stood up, held by stiff hair spray, like a manicured lion’s mane.
Doris pulled her robe close at the chest. She gave me a worried, searching look and then peered down the hall again.
“You alone, Easy?”
“What’s goin’ on, Doris?”
“Jackson gone. They after him, Easy. Them bookie men wanna kill’im. They send some colored mens down here after him.”
“Where is Jackson, Doris?”
She looked up and down the hall again.
“Doris, I ain’t got time for this.”
“I ain’t s’posed to be sayin’ t’nobody.”
“All right.” I could live with that. I turned away.
“He’s at thirteen twenty-seven and three-quarters Morton Street,” she said to my back.
I kept walking.
“Did you hear me?” she asked. “Easy?”
I kept walking.
I walked down the stairs and out to the car. I saw Doris looking from the window above but I didn’t acknowledge her. I was thinking that Jackson’s help might not be worth its price.
Jackson and his evil friend Ortiz had been running a numbers and bookie operation to oppose the established white gangsters. Jackson had developed a tape recorder system that he could attach to the telephone lines. That way nobody could catch him at his phone center because there was no phone center. Jackson made a few connections at the telephone company and crazy Ortiz ran the collections.
They made more money in three years than an honest man could make in a lifetime.
