“Well…” Saul looked down at his coffee cup, hesitating, “it’s not that simple.”
“Oh no?”
“No. You see, when Ross was younger he was arrested for assault and robbery. They even convicted him but all he did was six months.”
“Why?”
“It was a dispute he had with a bartender on Central. He had fixed up a TV on a platform so they could play the baseball games at the bar. Ross told the bartender, a man named Grey, that he’d do it for thirty-five dollars, which was his rent at that time. Grey said okay, but when it came time to pay up he said that he had agreed on twenty- five…”
There was real feeling in Lynx’s words. I could see that he and Mr. Henry were close.
“Ross fought with Grey, knocked him out and took his thirty-five from the till.”
“And they arraigned him for felony assault and robbery but then argued it down because of extenuating circumstances,” I said, finishing the all-too-common tale.
“There was a woman in the bar, the waitress. She heard the deal and the judge was feeling merciful that day,” Saul said, wrapping up the story.
“So? What he needs is a lawyer. What do you want with me?”
“We got him representation,” Saul said. “But she’s gonna need some help if we want to prove he’s innocent. The problem is if Ross didn’t do it, then somebody else had to.”
“What else they have on him?”
“He was the only one to use the torch. And he was the only one who had access to all the keys except for Gator and his cousin.”
“Why didn’t they take his keys when they fired him?”
“He’d left them at home that morning because it wasn’t his day to lock up.”
“It sure is a mess,” I said. “But what could I do about it that you can’t?”
“That’s just it, Easy. I made the mistake of going over there when Ross got in trouble. I went up against Oliphant and he called me a kike. I didn’t do anything, but let’s just say that there’s no love lost between us.”
“And so you want me to what?”
“He likes people from down around where he comes from,” Saul explained. “Southerners, especially from Louisiana. They got a machinist opening now that Ross is gone…”
“I got a job, man,” I complained.
“Yeah, I know. For a favor, Easy.”
It never hurt to have a white man owe you a favor, that’s what I believed. And Saul was a good guy. Even the fact that he was there giving a bad-tempered black man the benefit of the doubt made me want to help him.
And then there was Bonnie and Mouse. Him dead and her—a dead place in my heart.
“Where is this Ross Henry now?”
“We got him out on bail. His mother put up every cent she has for the bond. He’s down in Watts, at his mother’s place.”
* * *
SOMEBODY IN ROSS HENRY’S apartment building had a very bad cough. We heard it from the bottom of the stairs. It was one of those deep, wet, rolling coughs that, in my childhood days, almost always preceded a funeral.
They lived on the third floor of the building, which had been constructed from wood some time before the First World War. The stairs sighed with each step. The colorless paint had separated with the grain of the drying wood planks. The screen door we stopped at was divided into two equal panes. The top screen was as old as the house, rusted and crumbling. The bottom one was brand new, gray, and supple.
The cough was coming from inside the apartment.
Saul knocked but I didn’t think anyone could hear it over that rheumy hacking, so I tried pulling the door open. It was latched from the inside.
I was glancing over to the right, looking for a button or something harder than knuckles to knock with, when Saul said, “Um, Easy.”
Behind the ancient haze of the upper screen I saw a sour-faced black woman with staring yellow eyes.
She coughed.
“I thought you might not have heard us knocking,” I said lamely. “I mean—”
“I’m sick, not deaf,” the woman said and then she suppressed a cough.
“Hello, Clara,” Saul said. “This is Easy Rawlins. He’s a specialist that I’m using to help Ross. Is your son in?”
Clara Henry was tall and dark. She had manly shoulders and hands that had seen so much work that they seemed too large for her body. She looked me up and down and curled her lip.
“I guess,” she said, and unlatched the door for us to enter. Then she called, “Ross, it’s that white man and somebody for ya.”
The entryway of the apartment was bisected by a wall that separated two parallel halls. Clara Henry went
