“Is it important, Ace? I got things on my mind.”
“I think so.”
“What, then?”
“Newgate called me to his office yesterday. When I went there he was with that Sergeant Sanchez fellah. They, uh, they started asking all kinds of questions about you, Mr. Rawlins. They wanted me to be a Benedict Arnold and give you away. Sanchez wondered if there was anything I could tell him about you.”
“Like what?”
“If you stole something, maybe. If you broke the rules with some of the children.”
“Naw.” I believed it but I didn’t want to.
“Yes, sir. But I told them that I didn’t know a thing except that you were the best boss I ever had.” There was passion in his voice that I’d never heard from him before.
“Well thanks, Ace, uh, thank you.”
“But I mean it, Mr. Rawlins. I’ve worked for a lotta people down here in Los Angeles. And up until you I didn’t have much use for them. The way they put a hand on your shoulder and pat you like you weren’t no more than a dog. The way they tell you things like they knew it all and you were just stupid. But I like you, Mr. Rawlins, because you make it a good place and when people get harsh you don’t come down on me even if I did something wrong. Like that time I left the window in the electric shop open. All you told Mr. Sutton was that it was a mistake. You told him that you allow for mistakes.”
I had forgotten the incident. I had misjudged Ace. What else had I lost or missed?
“So I’m gonna tell you something, Mr. Rawlins,” Ace said. “You know I don’t talk to the cops much. I mean, they’re okay for traffic and like that but if you start testifying the police will find some reason to turn it around on you.”
I had never heard him say as much in the whole time he’d worked for me.
“I won’t tell the cops, but I’ll tell you just in case it means something to ya.”
“What’s that, Ace?”
“That man who was killed in the garden. He had a key to the fence. I seen’im go into the garden four or five weeks ago. It was that week I was opening up early for you. You know I came in a whole two hours early because I was so nervous that I’d get something wrong. I didn’t dare do the boiler without going through all the steps of bleeding it out first. Anyway, that’s when I saw him.”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“If something happened I would have, but I didn’t know. I didn’t want to get into any trouble if nothing was wrong.”
All the times I distrusted Ace, all the times I saw his respect as guile—now all I saw was a kindred spirit; a man trod on by his history, his poverty. A man who knew that the people in power wouldn’t notice his broken bones, or if they did, they would blame him for his own misery.
I put out my hand and said, “Thanks, man.”
CHAPTER 33
GRACE PHILLIPS LIVED on Pinewood Terrace down below Adams. When John was helping her to look for a place I told him about a woman I knew, Mrs. Grant, who’d been looking for a long-term tenant. Grace took the little cottage huddled behind Mrs. Grant’s house. You had to walk through the driveway to get there.
“Easy Rawlins, is that you?” The voice came from behind the opaque sheen of her front-door screen.
“Hello, Mrs. Grant,” I said, squinting at the doorway.
“She givin’ a party back there?” the screen door asked.
“Not that I know of,” I said. “I just come by to shout at her.”
“You might have to raise your voice pretty high,” Clara Grant said. She pushed the screen door open with the rubber tip of her cane. The light on her face revealed why she hid behind that door. She’d been laid low by stroke. Her pear-shaped, walnut-brown face was cut in two by the broken vessel. Half made of warm brown wax that was flowing down from the skull; half left to wonder why she couldn’t do what she used to do.
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“She always got a pack’a yowlin’ dogs back there yappin’ an’ carryin’ on.”
“Somebody back there now?” I asked.
She made a gesture that would pass as a nod. “I don’t exactly know who but I heard footsteps a while ago. You know I nap when the sun come in.”
“Okay now, Mrs. Grant. See ya later.”
At another time I would have offered to come by and see after her now and then. But my working life kept me away from the everyday country kind of living that I had known in Texas and Louisiana. It bothered me that I couldn’t be of more help, but I had chosen my path—and I followed it down to Grace Phillips.
THE DOOR TO THE COTTAGE was open. There was a baby crying somewhere in another room. I rapped lightly on the doorjamb.
“Anybody home?” I called.
A woman’s scream was cut short, punctuated by a blow.
