“In thirty-six hours unless we come up with something solid.”
“You know he didn’t do it.”
“I’m comfortable letting the courts decide that.”
40
Suggs opened the driver’s side door but I just stood there on the patch of grass at the curb.
“You getting in?” he asked me.
“No.” I chewed on the word, drawing it out.
“You gonna walk over that hill?”
“They got buses out around here, Detective. I wanna stretch my legs, think a bit.”
“You’re not about to find a Negro hobo around here, Rawlins. But you might find trouble.”
“Why’s that?”
“Don’t you see where you are?”
“Los Angeles,” I said. “That’s the city I live in, the city where I work and pay taxes.”
Suggs shook his head, dropped into the driver’s seat, and took off. I liked him more all the time.
I STARTED AT the far end of the opposite side of the block. Nobody was home at the first house. The lady at the second home looked out between the blinds of a side window at me but never came to the door. There were another few homes where the people were not at home or didn’t answer. Finally one door came open. The man standing there was thick around the middle but slender in the shoulders and neck. He wore white pants and a green shirt and so resembled a leek or some other bulb plant.
“What do you want?” he asked, none too friendly.
“I’m looking for my wife’s second cousin Harold,” I said easily.
“None’a your people livin’ around here,” he said.
He had green eyes and a pale face.
“He used to use an address around here,” I explained, “and my wife was worried about him —”
“Didn’t you hear me?” the study in green and white asked.
“So you don’t know a black Harold?” I replied.
“I told you —,” he said.
I didn’t hear the rest because I turned away from him. While I walked down the concrete path toward the sidewalk he shouted at my back.
“You better get out of here, mister. We don’t want you or your relatives causing problems here. You aren’t welcome here.”
On my way to the house next door, I counted the three times he used the word “here.” I quickened my pace because it was a toss-up whether his next move would be to get his gun or call the police.
The next three places turned me away too. And then I came to a pink house edged in red toward the other end of the block. A tallish and older white woman in a banana-colored housecoat came to the door. She looked at me with no apparent fear. Maybe she had no radio or TV and no paperboy either. Maybe no one told her that Los Angeles had just been through a small-scale civil war or maybe she didn’t care.
“Yes?”
“Hello, ma’am,” I said. “I’m looking for a man, a Negro named Harold. I think he used to live on this block.”
“That boy from the Ostenberg home,” she said.
“You mean Jocelyn Ostenberg across the street?” I asked.
“Yes sir. That’s the one. And it was a shame too.”
Out of the corner of my eye I could see a police cruiser turn onto the far end of the block.
“May I come in, ma’am?” I asked.
“Oh yes. Please do,” she said.
She moved away from the door and I took a long step into her home, hoping that the cops hadn’t seen me.
The house smelled of cat piss and air freshener but that didn’t bother me. If the police didn’t come to the door within two minutes I was home free. I still had Jordan’s letter in my pocket but after my arrest at the gas station I didn’t know if it still held any official power.
“Come sit down,” the woman said. “My name is Dottie, Dottie Mathers. What’s yours?”
“Ezekiel, Miss Mathers,” I said. “Ezekiel Rawlins.”
The woman turned to me with awe on her face.
“Named after the Bible,” I added so that she wouldn’t mistake me for an agent of the Lord.
The room she ushered me into had flowers everywhere. In vases and stitched into the fabric on the couch and stuffed chairs. There was a floral pattern on the wallpaper and little knickknacks on the shelves, coffee table, and
