I could imagine how they felt with buildings going up in flames around them and wild, angry voices shouting up and down the street. People were being shot dead in front of their homes and the law was helpless to keep the violence in check. Old people and children, working men and women, and any other peaceful soul had to hunker down in their living rooms and hope that the fires wouldn’t spread to their walls.
“What?”
The door had come open on a sand-colored man with hair that wasn’t much darker. He was slight but tall, young but already he had the slouching shoulders of someone who has been defeated by life.
Maybe he read the judgment in my expression because he stood a little straighter and cocked his head with bravado.
“Who are you?”
“Easy Rawlins,” I said. “I’m here about Geneva Landry. The police got her and I’d like to help out if I could.”
“The police got Miss Landry? What for?”
“I don’t know for sure,” I said. “But I bet it’s got something to do with Nola Payne.”
All Bobby had on was a pair of briefs. His sallow chest and knobby knees meant that any lover he had would have to be there because of the inner man—or a twenty-dollar bill.
“Nola’s Geneva’s niece. What do the cops think an auntie gonna do to her own blood?” he asked.
“I don’t know what it is exactly,” I said. “But from the sounds of it Nola’s missing and the cops think that Miss Landry had somethin’ to do with it. She don’t know neither, so I told her that I’d come down and ask around.”
“So what you want with me?”
“Can I come in?” I asked. “I mean, we don’t really need everybody in the buildin’ to know this stuff.”
Grant studied me for a moment. He slouched down again and the sour taste came back into his mouth.
“Yeah. Okay,” he said. “I guess.”
I followed him into the one-room apartment. There was no real home furniture in evidence. The only thing his three chairs had in common was that they were all made from wood. The bed was a mattress on box springs on the floor and his curtain was a sheet that should have been shredded for rags.
In the corner, away from the window, he had six crates of new dishes, three model-train box sets, and a dozen or more pairs of green work pants.
He saw me looking and asked, “You wanna buy some dishes?”
“Not right now.”
I sat on a whitewashed wooden chair and Bobby followed suit.
Despite his boy’s body Grant held himself like an old man. Bent over, rubbing his hands together as if he could never get warm.
“What you got to do with Miss Landry?” he asked.
“She called me from jail and asked for help.”
“I never heard’a you before,” he said.
“I got an office over on Central. I help people out now and then. She told me her problem and I said that I’d ask around. A couple’a people mentioned that you been talking about a white man that got pulled outta his car and got the shit beat outta him. I just wanted to see if you knew who it was.”
“Who said?” Bobby wanted to know.
“I didn’t get no names,” I said, using language that made us both feel at home. “I just heard about you and went around tryin’ to look you up.”
“I’d like to help Geneva out, man, but I don’t know nuthin’.”
“You know that a white man got pult outta his car and messed,” I suggested.
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Geneva said that Nola said on the phone that she had seen a white man runnin’ around her buildin’.”
I could see in Bobby Grant’s eyes that I had hold of some facts.
“I—I don’t know nuthin’ about that,” Bobby said. “All I know is that she was in the buildin’ where he ran to after, um, after they beat on him.”
“Who was that?”
“Just some guys. You know it was Friday night and he was drivin’ down around here. They was pullin’ every white person they found outta their cars. Beatin’ ’em an’ shit.”
“Who was?” I asked again.
“What’s that got to do with Nola and Geneva?”
“What kind of car was he drivin’?” I shifted gears easily.
“Red.”
“Was it a Ford or a Chevy?”
“I’ont know, man. It was a car. A nice car. They pult him out and beat on his ass and then somebody drove it
