Six Easy Pieces

“Call ’em up. Tell ’em you can’t do it before five. Tell ’em Mofass has to get a shot or somethin’.”

“Why?”

“To buy me time. I wanna look at Clovis, see what’s happenin’ at that house of theirs. Do you have a picture of Misty around?”

JJ reached into a fold of her cranberry dress and came out with a faded photograph. The sepia tones revealed a tomboy, with a space between her front teeth, smiling so wide that you wondered if she had ever known sorrow.

I must have grinned when I saw the photo.

“She’s the closest person to me in the world,” JJ said. It was both a vow and a threat.

Clovis shared a big four-story house with her brothers and sisters on Peters Lane, up in Baldwin Hills. They lived there with various other husbands and wives, and some children.

I parked down the street in a run-down old Ford sedan that I borrowed from my mechanic friend, Primo. I got there at four-thirty in the afternoon.

The MacDonald clan was a filthy lot. They parked their cars on the lawn and kept a ratty old sofa out on the front porch. The paint was peeling off the walls. But even though they lived like sharecroppers I knew they had money in the bank. While Clovis had Mofass under her power she’d siphoned off enough money to buy property under her own name.

At six, the brothers, Fitts and Clavell MacDonald, came out of the house with two dark-skinned women, laughing loudly, probably half drunk already, they climbed into a new Buick and drove off.

As the evening wore on I saw most of the whole ugly tribe. Grover, Tyrone, Renee, Clovis and her husband Duke. There were other men, women, and children who seemed to live there. But there was no one who matched up with Misty’s photograph.

I DROVE HOME AT EIGHT O’CLOCK.

Feather had refused to go to bed until I was there. Jesus sat up with her watching some show that was mostly canned laughter.

“Daddy!” my little girl shouted when I came in.

I guess Jesus was worried too. He kissed me, which is something the seventeen-year-old hadn’t done in two years. I put Feather to bed and talked with Jesus about his boat for a while.

“I want to go camping with some friends next weekend,” he told me.

“Where?”

“Around Santa Cruz.”

“Who you goin’ with?”

“A girl and some of her friends.”

“Who’s that?”

“Marlene.”

“How old is she?” I asked.

“Eighteen.”

“You can get in trouble behind that shit, boy.”

Again he was silent. Jesus never argued with me. When he disagreed or got angry he just clammed up.

“White girl?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Friends too?”

He nodded.

I stared at my adopted son. He was my child more than blood might have been. For many years he was mute. He had been molested as an infant and young child, sold to men for sex. I took him out of that. For a while I had him living with Primo because I thought that a Mexican child needed a Mexican family. But Jesus wanted to be with me and somehow it just felt right.

I wanted to protect him but telling him no or which way to go would never work. Jesus had a mind of his own and all I could do was make suggestions.

“Be careful,” I said, feeling as helpless as I feared he might be.

Jesus smiled and hugged me.

AT ELEVEN-THIRTY I was still up, reading Anthem by Ayn Rand in the living room. The little yellow dog had taken up his post at the hallway, guarding Feather’s sleeping place from the grim ogre– —me. As time had gone by I had begun to appreciate the dog. He came to me, the last living testament of a woman who had been murdered. He hated me because he blamed me for his mistress’s death. Now his love was for Feather and he took her protection as his purpose in life. I had grown to respect him for his devotion to my daughter and so our regular standoffs at the door to her room made me smile every evening at bedtime.

The phone rang. I picked it up before it was through the first bell.

“Hello.”

“Easy?” she said in a brittle voice.