“Would you rather I let her start up the riots again?”
“Where is she?”
“Down the hall,” Fleck said. “She won’t be awake until the morning.”
“We need to know what happened down there, Mr. Rawlins,” Jordan said, pretending to care.
“Why?”
“Because we want L.A. to get back to normal.”
“You mean you want businessmen back at their desks, the shoppers to go back to the stores, and tourists buying mouse ears at Disneyland.”
“This is no joke, Rawlins.” That was Fleck. “The LAPD needs your help and if you know what’s good for you you will cooperate.”
“What is it you want me to do exactly?”
“Talk to Miss Landry when she awakens,” Jordan said. “Go down to Grape Street and find out the circumstances of Miss Payne’s death if you can.”
“I don’t get it. Why are you so worried about a dead black woman? You’re not doin’ this for every Negro killed.”
The captain and his boss shared glances. Jordan shrugged.
“On the second day of the riots we had a report that a white man was dragged from his car down on Grape Street. He was harassed and beaten but finally managed to escape. No one has heard about him since. Under any other circumstance we could ignore the report. Maybe the man got away and went home. But a story about a black woman being murdered by a white man across the street from where a white man fled could cause rumors that might flare up into something ugly.”
Like Nola Payne, I thought.
“So you want me to find the white man?” I asked.
“We want you to find out anything you can,” Jordan said.
“And what will you do with what I find?”
“Try to keep a lid on the flow of information.”
“What if a white man did kill her?”
Jordan and Fleck shared glances again.
“We don’t want a murderer going free,” Jordan said. “No matter his color. In this case if it came out that a white man killed Miss Payne and we put that man up on trial, then the people will see that we mean to maintain the balance of justice.”
His words might have been an ad for cigarettes or whiskey. He didn’t care about justice. He didn’t care about a dead black woman or her killer. The only way that either one of them could ever bother him was if someone came around and held him accountable for the consequences of their actions.
“Okay,” I said.
“What does that mean?” Captain Fleck asked.
“I’ll do it. I’ll go down there and ask around. I’ll try and see what happened.”
Jordan might have been smiling. I couldn’t quite tell. His lips moved about an eighth of an inch and the flesh around his eyes eased up a bit.
“Thank you,” he said.
“But I’m going to need something in order to get this done.”
“And what is that?”
“There’s a white man in this someplace. That might mean that I’ll have to go around in white neighborhoods. In order to do that I’ll need some kind of identification from the police department.”
“Once you find out anything you come to me,” Captain Fleck said. “You don’t have any business in a white neighborhood.”
“Then forget it,” I said.
I stood up from the comfortable doctor’s chair and took three steps toward the door.
“Wait outside, will you, Mr. Rawlins?” Jordan asked. “I’ll see about what you need.”
I passed through the door and waited around for a few moments. But I didn’t like that, so I wandered down the hallway, pretending that I wasn’t waiting on the policemen’s whims.
5
The corridors of the clinic were a maze. I turned a few times before passing a wide white door that had a glass portal. Inside I could see a black woman in bed under a thin white sheet. From where I stood she seemed to have no arms.
When I pushed the door open I could hear her moans. She was in a straitjacket, saying things I didn’t understand. Her head was flailing back and forth. Drool covered her jaw. When I reached out to touch her face, her eyes came open and fastened onto me just like the women used to do down in New Iberia when I was a child doing something wrong.
“Where am I, Roger?” she asked me.
