“I’m sorry . . . about before.”
“About what?” I knew what she meant but I asked anyway.
“I’m from Memphis,” she said.
With the emphasis on the last word her Tennessee drawl took control. Her origins explained why she looked at Suggs and not me when she asked for our names. Where she came from, a white woman didn’t address a black man directly. I wasn’t supposed to speak in her presence or even look in her general direction.
“Yeah,” I said, turning back to the door.
I reached for the knob.
“Mr. Rawlings.”
“No ‘g.’ ”
“I’m sorry. Mr. Rawlins.”
I turned all the way around and went to her desk. “That’s okay. No blood drawn.”
“Are you related to those poor women?” she asked.
“Yes I am,” I said. And I didn’t feel that I was lying. Over the past few days, I came to feel a new connection between myself and the people caught up in the throes of violence. It was as if I had adopted Nola Payne as my blood sister.
“They brought them in in the early morning,” the receptionist-nurse said.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
A tremor went through her and she looked around, maybe for the Klansmen that would hang us both if she answered.
“Marianne,” she said softly. “Marianne Plump.”
We both smiled.
“What were you saying, Marianne?”
“I have a girlfriend, a colored girl that has the graveyard shift. She told me that Miss Landry said that they were killing poor black people.”
“Who?”
“She just said that it was a white man.”
“Did she say anything else?” I asked.
“Maybe,” Marianne said. “I don’t know.”
“What’s your friend’s name?”
“Tina Monroe.”
“Do you have a pencil and some paper, Marianne?”
She pointed at a pad on the edge of her desk and handed me a yellow number two. When I took the pencil our fingers touched. I think we both got a shock. It wasn’t a sexual thing but the breaking of a taboo that had governed her people and mine for hundreds of years.
“This is my number,” I said as I wrote. “I’d really appreciate knowing anything about what happened to Nola, anything that Miss Landry said. So if she can I’d like Tina to call me.”
Miss Plump nodded solemnly, taking the flimsy slip of paper.
WALKING DOWN La Cienega I thought about Marianne Plump and the shock we both felt when we touched. It wasn’t that I’d never made physical contact with a white woman before. I had been through World War II. I had had many French and English and even German lovers. I had known American white women too. But this was different. Marianne and I were cut from the same rag. We spoke the same language. And though I couldn’t explain how, I knew that the riots had broken down the barriers between us.
I WALKED SOUTH to Wilshire and then headed east.
It was a beautiful day. In the eighties and nearly clear because of a slight breeze. Wilshire was a nice street in those days. Small businesses and a few nondescript office buildings. I was walking at a brisk pace, steeling myself for the second test that day.
After I’d crossed to Fairfax Avenue the police car pulled to the curb beside me. Two tall white policemen got out as a team. Really I should call them policeboys because both of their ages put together wouldn’t have added up to my forty-five years.
“Hold it right there,” one cop said. He had a button nose, pale skin, and small, stunned-looking eyes.
His partner was a few inches shorter and six shades darker.
They both wore hats, so I couldn’t say what color hair they had.
“What are you doing here?” the taller, paler cop asked.
“Walkin’ home.”
“Where do you live?”
I gave him my address on Genesee Avenue, a few blocks away.
Without asking permission the interrogator started patting my sides and pockets. The darker white cop stood a few paces away with his hand on the butt of his gun.
“Where are you coming from?” the pale cop asked, still frisking me.
