“No ‘g,’ ” I said.
“Oh.”
“Can we go in now?” Suggs asked.
The nurse stood aside, looking down.
I remember that moment very clearly. The white walls and floors, even the doorknobs were painted that colorless hue. And that brave young woman made shy by simple honesty. The cop who was the first piece of solid evidence I had that the white man’s grip on my throat was losing strength. All of that brought me to a doorway that I didn’t really want to go through. I should have turned away right then. I wanted to turn away. But it was as if there was a strong wind at my back. I had resisted it all through the riots: the angry voice in my heart that urged me to go out and fight after all of the hangings I had seen, after all of the times I had been called nigger and all of the doors that had been slammed in my face. I spent my whole early life at the back of buses and in the segregated balconies at theaters. I had been arrested for walking in the wrong part of town and threatened for looking a man in the eye. And when I went to war to fight for freedom, I found myself in a segregated army, treated with less respect than they treated German POWs. I had seen people who looked like me jeered on TV and in the movies. I had had enough and I wasn’t about to turn back, even though I wanted to.
The door opened and the wind blew me through.
The room we came into was bright. Three men were standing around a silver table that held the nude corpse of a Negro woman.
The men had on white smocks. Almost everything in this room was white. The walls and floor, the counters and the ceiling. Two of the men had on white shoes.
Just one pair of black dress shoes and Nola Payne brought any color into that lifeless room. And the shoes and Nola were just so much dead flesh.
“Yes, Detective Suggs,” a bald white man with a trim gray mustache said.
“This is the man I told you about, sir. Ezekiel Rawlins.”
“Why did you bring him here?”
“I thought he should see what we saw, Captain. I mean he
The bald man turned his eyes to me. He started at the floor and worked his way up. I knew what he saw. I had on brown-red leather shoes, gray slacks, and a square-cut charcoal shirt. I had gone casual down into SouthCentral, not expecting an interview with a white man standing in a black man’s hell.
“Investigate?” he said to me.
“And your name is?” I replied.
The captain looked over at Suggs. The detective had no response.
“I’m the one in charge here,” the captain said.
I made the mistake then of glancing at the corpse. She wasn’t young—thirty-three or -four. I couldn’t tell if she’d been pretty. Her hair had a reddish tint that some midwestern Negroes were prone to. One of her eyes was gone, probably due to a gunshot, and her tongue was sticking out of her mouth from her having been strangled, no doubt. The thing that caught my eye was the trickle of red blood that had started from somewhere above her lip, crossed over her teeth, and dribbled down her cheek. It was as if she died with her lips whispering vermilion secrets.
“Well if you’re in charge, then may I be excused?” I asked the arrogant white man.
“What is this, Melvin?” the captain asked. “A joke?”
“No sir,” Suggs said.
“What’s your name again?” the captain asked me.
“I haven’t got yours the first time yet.”
“Enough of this, Lee,” the other as yet unnamed white man said.
He was a head taller than the captain or Suggs, my height. He looked familiar but I didn’t remember where it was that I had seen him. His face was slender and hard. He had tight black eyes and black hair, no lips to speak of, and a tiny red mark under his right eye.
“I’m Captain Fleck,” the bald cop said. “And I asked you a question.”
“No sir, Captain, you did not. You said the word ‘investigate’ in an interrogative tone. But tone alone does not a question make.”
The third white man snickered. I appreciated the audience.
“Let’s get out of here,” the tall white man who was really in charge said.
I had no argument with that.
4
The tall man led Captain Fleck and me into an office that had a sign on it saying DR. TURNER, M.D. We left the third white man and Suggs in the colorless hallway.
Turner’s office was a welcome relief. There was an orange-and-blue carpet, a brown desk, and four splashy landscapes on the wall.
And there was a test there for us. The room had three chairs: one behind the desk and two in front. The tall man went to the guest chair on the left. Captain Fleck turned toward the doctor’s chair, but I was closer. I cut him off, taking the padded swivel chair for myself.
