kicked Newell when he was down but I didn’t. I could have told everybody that I was a friend of Raymond Alexander’s but I didn’t. That’s because I was sure of myself and Juanda liked that, she liked it very much.
It may sound like I’m making light of the young woman in the tight yellow dress but I’m not. I remembered every word she said. They were burned in my memory.
“Do you know Nola Payne?” I asked during a lull in her narrative.
“Yeah. Why?”
“Her aunt Geneva is in some trouble. Nola might be too.”
“Bobby said that Geneva was in jail and that Nola was missin’,” Juanda said.
She crossed her legs and I resisted laying my hand on her bare knee.
“Did Nola have a white boyfriend?”
“Not that I know about,” Juanda said. “I mean, Nola’s a friendly girl and she don’t hate nobody. If she met a nice white man she would go out with him I bet.”
“What about a guy named Loverboy? You know him?”
“Uh-huh. He around. He wear nice clothes and have a nice car but you know he’s a thief and a thief always wind up in jail or another woman’s bed.” It was clear that Juanda judged every man on his prospects as a boyfriend or more. But I didn’t hold that against her. She was a young woman ready to make her nest. A man would have to be an important part of her plans.
“What do you do, Mr. Rawlins?”
She inched over on the seat and I held my breath.
We were driving on Central toward Florence.
Juanda touched my thigh with three fingers.
“You gonna tell me?”
“I own a couple’a apartment buildings here and there,” I answered her honestly, as far as it went.
I was a property owner but I didn’t want to tell her about my job at Sojourner Truth or my little office on Eighty-sixth and Central. I worried that if I opened up that far I’d never be able to close the door on her.
“That’s nice,” she was saying. “My daddy always says that real estate is your best investment because rent is always part of your salary.”
“You know where Loverboy lives?” I asked.
“No. Why?”
“I think I might need to talk to him.”
“That’s my auntie’s house right up there,” she said.
I pulled to the curb. A large, light-colored woman was sitting on the front porch. She frowned at my car, obviously not expecting her niece to be inside.
“I got a pencil and paper in the glove compartment,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“Why don’t you write down your number. I might need to ask you some more questions about Loverboy and Nola.”
Juanda’s grin was victorious. She jotted down the number and put it on the dashboard.
“Don’t forget to call me now,” she said.
“I sure won’t.”
12
I did a U-turn on Florence even though there was a National Guard bivouac across the street. I wanted to see if the Guard were enforcing traffic laws—they were not.
Three blocks from Juanda’s aunt, on the opposite side of the street, was an unscathed two-story building that had a large white tarp hanging from the second-floor window. The red letters spray painted on the tarp read SOUL BROTHER. Sitting on the front porch of the barbershop-turned-bookstore was Paris Minton, the sole proprietor of Florence Avenue Bookshop.
I pulled up to the curb and jumped out. The exuberance I felt over Juanda now fastened onto my joy that Paris’s bookstore was saved.
The little bookworm rose to greet me.
“Hey, Easy,” he said. I could hear the exhaustion in his voice.
Paris was short and had a slight build. His skin was the same dark brown as mine.
“Paris. What you doin’ outside?”
“Been sittin’ out here for six days and nights, man. Me an’ Fearless tryin’ to keep people from bustin’ up my store.”
“Damn. You didn’t get any sleep?”
“Not too much,” Paris said ruefully. “Every hour or so some new mob come by and wanna set a torch to my walls. But Fearless stood ’em all down.”
