parents, knew that innocence was a term for white people. We were born in sin.
“I like my job, Miss Shay. I got a pension and a ladder to climb. They will fire me if the cops do something like cart me off to jail.”
Bonnie Shay gave me a long look. I liked it. I hadn’t lied to her, except about Idabell and that damned dog. But that was just a lie of necessity. I was sure that she wouldn’t hold that against me.
“Roman,” she said. “Her brother-in-law. He stole something from me. I told Ida about it. I guess she just felt bad about it.”
“What did he take?”
“What?”
“What did he take from you?”
“Oh. Well, yes. A ring.”
“It sure don’t sound like that,” I said.
“It doesn’t?” she dared me. “What does it sound like then?”
I decided to go out on a limb. “It sounds like Roman was smuggling heroin from France into L.A. and using you to do it. It sounds like Holland was in on it with him. It sounds like Idabell took the heroin from Holland and killed him for playing her like a fool. It sounds like you’re into it up to your neck and you’d be lucky not only to keep your job but to stay outta jail.”
The hardness in her face was something to behold. I had delivered a devastating stroke and she weathered it.
“What do you want, Mr. Rawlins?”
“All I want is enough to give to the cops if they decide they want me. I wanna know who killed the twins and why they did. I wanna know why Idabell ran.”
“I don’t know any of it. Nothing.”
It had to be the whiskey. Had to be. There I was talking about murder with someone who was obviously involved, and all I could think about was how much I liked it that I could tell when she was lying. I was feeling an intimacy with her. I would have liked to get to know her as well as I understood her.
She felt it too, I could tell. It was like we were looking over a field and catching each other’s eye; our animal sides slowly overpowering our minds.
Who knows what might have happened if there hadn’t come that knock on the door?
It was three hard raps and then silence. Bonnie was about to say something but I put up one finger for her silence.
Ten seconds passed.
Three more raps. This time harder.
I stood up and went to the kitchen.
The raps turned into blows. “Bonnie Shay!” Rupert sounded as if he were in the room with us.
I put my fingers to my lips to keep Bonnie quiet and lifted an iron pan from the stove. Bonnie’s eyes showed fear but she trusted me—at least more than she trusted the man banging on her door.
The door was hollow. I was surprised that Rupert hadn’t broken through it with his knocks.
“Open up!” Rupert called.
I sidled up to the door and readied myself for the wrestler.
He probably used his shoulder to batter the door. On his first blow he cracked it down the middle, almost going through.
Bonnie let out a small screech.
“Who’s out there?” someone shouted from down the hall.
“Hey, man,” Rupert said. “Mind your own … Hey! Hey watch it!”
“Clear outta here or I shoot, bastid!”
“Hey, watch it!” Rupert shouted. His voice was already down the hall.
“I’m callin’ the police!” our savior yelled. “I’m callin’ ’em.”
Then there was a brief stretch of silence.
The next knock on the door was mild.
“Miss Shay? Miss Shay, you okay in there?”
“Yes, Mr. Gillian.” Bonnie went to the door and opened it.
He was an older man, smallish. But he made up for his size with the three-and-a-half-foot shotgun levered in the crook of his arm. He was black, yellow actually, with weblike soft white hair. His orange flannel robe was open at the throat. You could see the skin of his throat sagging, as if it knew that it was time to abandon the bones.
He had one foot in the room, the other one in the hall.
His eyes were on me as he asked Bonnie, “You want me to call the cops?”
“No, Mr. Gillian. Thank you for scaring him away. I don’t think that he’s going to come back.”
