“Yeah?”
“Now what do you think is gonna happen down there when people find out that a pious colored woman was killed by a white man? When they find out that he raped her and strangled her and then shot her in the eye?”
“Oh.”
“I’m lookin’ for that white man and I’d like to know what happened.”
“But Miss Landry already told you,” Tina said.
“She didn’t see her niece get killed. She never even saw him. And Nola didn’t have a pistol or any other gun in her house.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“If Nola didn’t have a gun, then what did this white man shoot her with?”
“His own gun,” she said.
“And if he brought a gun with him, then why didn’t he open fire on the mob that beat him?”
That argument made her forehead furrow and her head cock to the side.
“So you think Miss Landry’s makin’ it all up?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “I think that she’s just filling in some of the spaces with her own experiences.”
“And that’s why you wanna know about what Miss Landry said about what she shoulda told Nola?”
I nodded and took another big forkful of egg.
“Why didn’t you ask her yourself when we were in her room?”
“It’s like you say,” I said. “She looked weak, fragile. I figured maybe you’d know.”
“Maybe so but . . . I mean she’s talkin’ to me because it’s a confidence and she thinks I’ll keep her secret.”
“Did she ask you not to tell?” I asked.
“No. But I’m sure she wouldn’t like it.”
“If what she told you didn’t have to do with who else might have killed Nola then I won’t tell anybody,” I said. “I just want to know how to understand why she thinks that white man killed Nola.”
“It’s ’cause of what happened to her that she’s so upset,” Tina said. “But that don’t mean that white man didn’t kill her.”
“What happened to her?”
“She, I mean her father used to work for this white man outside of Lafayette —”
“Louisiana?”
“Uh-huh. Anyway, they grew pecans down there and Miss Landry’s father would spend the whole day out on the plantation takin’ care of the trees. And when the white man knew that her father would be gone a long time he’d go up and find little Ginny and do things to her. Things that most women wouldn’t let their husbands do.”
“How old was she?”
“It started when she was twelve,” Tina said. “He did that to her three or four times a week. And when she’d cry and beg him not to, he’d tell her that if her father ever found out, they’d have to kill him because he would go crazy and try and kill a white man if they didn’t.”
“So she never told anyone?”
“No. And that’s why she’s so upset. She feels that if she had told Nola, then Nola woulda known that you couldn’t trust a white man. That all white men wanted to do was rape and defile black women.”
Tina felt the pain of her charge.
I took her hand and she grabbed on to me. What had happened to Geneva Landry could happen to any black woman. She had to take mountains of abuse while protecting her blood. She could never speak about the atrocities done to her while at the same time she dressed the wounds of her loved ones. Of course they both hated the white man who took refuge in a black woman’s home.
But even with all that I had to wonder—where did that pistol come from?
AT THE CASH register I had to wave to get the cook’s attention.
“How much we owe?” I asked him.
“Margie,” he shouted to the waitress. “The man wants his check.”
The blond waif shook her head and ran through a door at the back of the restaurant.
“Go on,” the cook said to me. “I guess it’s on the house today.”
20
I dropped Tina off at her bus stop on Pico and then drove toward the address for Peter Rhone on Castle Heights a few blocks south of Cattaraugus. I had all of Mr. Rhone’s information on his registration forms taken from the Galaxie 500.
I got lost for a while driving around the Palms area looking for a way to Rhone’s house. On the way I thought about Margie. I knew Nips Coffee Shop from the time I bought my house down on Genesee. I had seen the small waitress there for the past three years. She never remembered me, though. I gave my order and she filled it with neither a smile nor a frown on her face. But today she was afraid to be in my company. She still didn’t recognize me
