Bad Boy Brawley Brown

She took my joke about friends seriously. 'Are you alone?'

'What do you want, Daphne?'

'I have to talk with you, Easy.'

'Well go on, talk.'

'No, no. I have to see you. I'm scared.'

'I don't blame ya for that. I'm scared just talkin' to ya on the phone,' I said. 'But I need to talk to ya though. I need to know some things.'

'Come meet me and I'll tell you everything you need to know.'

'Okay. Where are you?'

'Are you alone? I only want you to know where I am.'

'You mean you don't want your boyfriend Joppy to know where you hidin'?'

If she was surprised that I knew about Joppy she didn't show it.

'I don't want anybody to know where I am, but you. Not Joppy and not that other friend that you said was visiting.'

'Mouse?'

'Nobody! Either you promise me or I hang up right now.'

'Okay, okay fine. I just got in and Mouse ain't even here. Tell me where you are and I'll come get ya.'

'You wouldn't lie to me, would you, Easy?'

'Naw. I just wanna talk, like you.'

She gave me the address of a motel on the south side of L.A.

'Hurry up, Easy. I need you,' she said before hanging up. She got off the phone so quickly that she didn't give me the number of her room.

I scribbled a note, making my plans as I wrote. I told Mouse that he could find me at a friend's house, Primo's. I wrote RAYMOND ALEXANDER in bold letters across the top of the note because the only words Mouse could read were his own two names. I hoped that Dupree came with Mouse to read him the note and show him the way to Primo's house.

Then I rushed out the door.

I found myself driving in the L.A. night again. The sky toward the valley was coral with skinny black clouds across it. I didn't know why I was going alone to get the girl in the blue dress. But for the first time in quite a while I was happy and expectant.

25

The Sunridge was a smallish pink motel, made up of two rectangular buildings that came together in an 'L' around an asphalt parking lot. The neighborhood was mostly Mexican and the woman who sat at the manager's desk was a Mexican too. She was a full-blooded Mexican Indian; short and almond-eyed with deep olive skin that had lots of red in it. Her eyes were very dark and her hair was black, except for four strands of white which told me that she had to be older than she looked.

She stared at me, the question in her eyes.

'Lookin' for a friend,' I said.

She squinted a little harder, showing me the thick webbing of wrinkles at the corners of her eyes.

'Monet is her last name, French girl.'

'No men in the rooms.'

'I just have to talk with her. We can go out for coffee if we can't talk here.'

She looked away from me as if to say our talk was over.

'I don't mean to be disrespectful, ma'am, but this girl has my money and I'm willing to knock on every door until I find her.'

She turned toward the back door but before she could call out I said, 'Ma'am, I'm willing to fight your brothers and sons to talk to this woman. I don't mean her any harm, or you neither, but I have got to have words with her.'

She sized me up, putting her nose in the air like a leery dog checking out the new mailman, then she measured the distance to the back door.

'Eleven, far end,' she said at last.

I ran down to the far end of the building.

While I knocked on number eleven's door I kept looking over my shoulder.

She had on a gray terrycloth robe and a towel was wrapped into a bouffant on her head. Her eyes were green right then and when she saw me she smiled. All the trouble she had and all the trouble I might have brought with me and she just smiled like I was a friend who was coming over for a date.

'I thought you were the maid,' she said.

'Uh-uh,' I mumbled. She was more beautiful than ever in the low-slung robe. 'We should get outta here.'