As it was she probably had her pick of the young men down in the riot area. I tried not to think about it and so I started talking.
“Marianne said that you two see each other in the morning,” I said.
“Uh-huh,” Tina replied. “She usually comes in at about eight-fifteen and then we talk until she has to be on the job at nine.”
“But you get off at six.”
“I use the coffee room to study for my RN tests after work,” she said. “And when Marianne come in we talk about it. She’s real sweet. Don’t know nuthin’ but at least she willin’ to find out.”
“What can I get for ya?” a man asked.
It was the chef. He was skinny everywhere but his stomach, which was half the size of a volleyball. He wore white pants with a checkered T-shirt and a pale blue apron. If he shaved that morning it didn’t take. His chin was still gray. His eyebrows were so long that they resembled horns. There was even hair growing out of the man’s ears.
He’d come from behind the stove to take our orders. The waitress, a small strawberry-blond thing, was behind the counter, staring at us with a terrified expression on her face.
“I could use a couple’a scrambled eggs and ham with orange juice and some dark toast,” I said, smiling for the man. “And coffee for the both of us.”
“Juice and an English muffin,” Tina added.
He jotted down our order and strode back to the kitchen. On the way he threw the receipt pad at the waitress.
She took up two coffee cups and brought them to our table. She was so shaky that the saucers under our cups were filled with coffee.
I watched the waitress going back to the counter. Once she looked over her shoulder. When our eyes met she bumped into a customer sitting on his stool.
“Watch it there, Margie,” the jovial man said to the waitress. “My wife might have spies in the kitchen.”
Margie, I thought.
“She’s a good woman,” Tina said.
“Miss Landry?”
“Yes.”
“She seems nice,” I said, “but I guess she’s had a real hard time.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” Tina said. “Miss Landry been through the wringer three times and now the Lord got her goin’ back again.”
“You mean Nola’s death.”
“Yes I do. Her niece gettin’ killed like that is gonna take years off that poor woman’s life. She’s getting weaker every day.”
“What did happen to her?” I asked.
“Nola?”
“No. What happened to Geneva? She told me that there were things that happened to her that she never told Nola, that if she had told her maybe she’d still be alive. What do you think she meant by that?”
“I . . .”
“Here you go,” a woman said.
It was Margie again. She was trembling, barely able to put our order down on the table. She wouldn’t look either one of us in the eye. And as soon as the plates and glasses were down she scurried away.
I took a big mouthful of scrambled egg. It was delicious. Cooked in butter and just an instant past runny. That skinny chef knew what he was doing.
“What do you have to do with all this, Mr. Rawlins?” Tina asked me.
“I got a little office down on Central and Eighty-six,” I said. “It’s just a room with a toilet down the hall. On one side of me there’s a guy sells dollar life insurance to people doin’ day work. Across the hall is Terry Draughtman. He’s the pool table expert for all of Watts and thereabouts. If you got trouble with your pitch or your bumpers you come to Terry and he’ll fix you right up.
“My office door says ‘Easy Rawlins—Research and Delivery.’ And that’s what I do. You can find me any Tuesday or Thursday evening and most of the day on Saturday. If you have a problem and you want some advice, I do that.”
“What about the office on the other side of you?” Tina asked.
“It used to be a bookkeeper, but he had a heart attack and died. After that nobody has stayed in there more than a month or two.”
For some reason that made Tina smile.
“So who are you helping right now?” she asked.
“You,” I said.
“Me?”
“You live down in SouthCentral L.A., don’t you?”
