covers. Both were immaculately neat. The floor was swept, the dishes washed and stacked away, the small coffee table in front of the couch didn’t have one ring on it from a water glass or a coffee cup.
The trash can was empty — and even washed.
Not a hair was to be seen on the white porcelain sink in the bathroom. There was a tiny bar of pink soap in the shape of a smiling fish in the dish next to the tub. I was wrapping the soap in a few sheets of toilet paper when I had an inspiration.
I went back into the main room and pulled the couch away from the wall. I remembered that when Jesus was a child he often hid his treasures and mistakes behind the couch, figuring that only he was small enough to fit in that crawl space.
There were a few candy wrappers, a headless doll, and a framed photograph back there. It was the picture of a maybe-beautiful white woman wearing a black skirt, a pink sweater, a red scarf that completely covered her head, and dark, dark sunglasses. The woman was leaning against the rail of a good-sized yacht, looking out over the side. The name of the boat was below her:
The glass had been cracked as if from a fall. Maybe, I thought, Easter had set it up on top of the cushions to study the woman who was a friend of her father’s, a woman who looked like a movie star and had also earned the right to be framed and set up in their home. After a while, Easter began horsing around and the couch came away from the wall, allowing the picture to fall and the glass to break.
All of this was very important to me. Christmas Black was an immaculate and obsessive man. All other things being equal, he would have checked behind the sofa before decamping. This meant that he was in a hurry when he left. That hidden picture told me that the placid and clean apartment had been the scene of fear and maybe even violence.
I removed the picture from its broken frame and put it in my pocket. I put the frame back where I found it and pressed the sofa against the wall in keeping with the order of the Black home.
I looked around again, hoping that there was something else that might help me discover more about Christmas and his sudden disappearance. It was hard to concentrate because there was a sense of delight that kept interfering. I was almost unconsciously overjoyed at being distracted from Bonnie and her upcoming marriage.
Thinking about Christmas demanded that I keep focused, because if he got spooked there was definitely death somewhere in the vicinity.
6
I was sitting on that tan couch, wavering between giddiness and the heavy sense of impending violence, when the door came open. Three uniformed men entered. Soldiers. A captain followed by two MPs. The military policemen wore holsters that carried .45-caliber pistols. They were white and massive. The captain was smaller, black, and, after a moment of surprise, smiling. It wasn’t a friendly smile, but it seemed to be a natural expression for this man.
I thought about grabbing my gun, but I couldn’t find an excuse for such an action. In my heart I was desperate and confused, but it was my mind that I chose to follow.
“Hello,” the black captain said. “Who are you?”
“Is this your house, man?” I asked as I stood up.
The captain’s empty grin grew larger.
“Is it yours?” he asked.
“I’m a private detective,” I said. It always gave me a little thrill to say that; made me feel like I was on a movie set and Humphrey Bogart was about to make an entrance. “I’ve been hired to find a man named Christmas Black.”
I wondered if there were women who were fooled by that officer’s smile. He was dark skinned like me and deadly handsome. But his bright eyes, I was sure, had never seen into another human being’s heart. He hoarded the coldness of a natural predator behind those deep brown eyes.
“And have you found him?”
“Who’s askin’?”
The MPs fanned out on either side of their commanding officer. I wasn’t going to get out of there by force of arms.
“Excuse my rudeness,” the smiling predator said. “Clarence Miles. Captain Clarence Miles.”
“And what are you doing here, Captain?” I asked, wondering what Mouse or Christmas might have done if they were in my situation.
“I asked you a question first,” he said.
“I’m on the job, Captain, and my military years are far behind me. I don’t have to answer to you and I sure don’t have to tell you my client’s business.”
“Once a soldier, always a soldier,” he said, glancing at the man to his right.
I noticed that this MP had three medals over his left breast. They were red, red, and bronze. He was a younger white man with shocking gray eyes.
“They say that about niggers too,” I said, to see if I could get a rise.
But Captain Miles had only smiles for me.
“What’s your name, Detective?”
“Easy Rawlins. I work out of an office down on Central. A woman hired me to find Mr. Black. Paid me three hundred dollars for a week’s worth of walking.”
