“That’s a dangerous piece of business, isn’t it?”
I knew what he was talking about.
“I was raised as a youngster in Houston,” I said. “One of my best friends was a skinny boy with a big mouth named Raymond Alexander.”
It’s hard for a walrus to look surprised, but Porter managed it.
“I’m a private detective, Jeff,” I said. “I’m one of Ray’s closest friends, but I’m looking for Perry because his daughter Leafa told me that she doesn’t think her daddy is dead.”
“Leafa’s a child.”
“She’s the clearest mind I’ve met in the Tarr household,” I said.
Jeff laughed and then nodded.
“You might be right about that,” he said. “And who knows, maybe the girl makes some sense.”
“Why you say that?”
“You know Perry was not happy in that house full’a ugly, unruly kids. He used to go ovah my place to take a nap because he said that every time he heard footsteps in his house he’d start to shakin’. Meredith wasn’t nuthin’ but a dishrag up in the bed, an’ Perry was workin’ harder than three slaves in master’s cotton field. I don’t know if Mouse killed him or not, but you know if he did it woulda been a blessin’, not a crime.”
“He ever say that he wanted to run?” I asked.
“Not too much. Only every day for five years.”
“You say Meredith wasn’t satisfying him. He have some other woman for that?”
“Perry’s my friend, man. You know that’s not how you talk about your friends.”
“Every man and woman I talked to so far has said Perry is dead. How’s tellin’ me how I might find out why gonna hurt?”
The walrus scratched his mustachios and pondered. Finally he shrugged and said, “Pretty Smart.”
“What is?”
“That’s her name. Her mama named her that.”
“You know where she lives?”
“I don’t even know what she looks like. All I know is that Perry would call her from my house sometimes. Maybe she come by there and took a nap with him if I wasn’t home.”
32
Driving away from the fish market, I had the feeling that I’d done something right. More than that, I felt good about my life . . . for a passing moment. I liked Lineman and the men and women who worked the fish trade, but I didn’t want my life to be like that: to go every day to the same place, do the same things, and say the same words to the same people.
My dalliance with Faith Laneer had put Bonnie in a box in a corner of my mind. She wasn’t gone, but she wasn’t in plain sight either. This was, I believed, the first step out of the sadness that had enveloped me.
I got to my office and went straight to the phone book. There was only one Pretty Smart listed in the Negro neighborhood; actually in any neighborhood.
I leaned back in my swivel chair and took the time to breathe deeply and enjoy the leisure that the moment provided. I even considered picking up a book I’d gotten at the Aquarian Bookshop,
I didn’t pick up the book, but at least I thought about it. This was another milestone in my recovery. I lit a cigarette and gazed at my white ceiling. There were no faux bumblebees or even a water mark to betoken the poverty of my neighborhood. I was all right, on the road to a better tomorrow, free, or almost so, the best the scion of slaves could hope for.
Someone knocked at my door.
All that comfort and hope drained out at my feet. The cold reality of murder and grim retribution filled me more quickly than I could gauge the change. It was as if there had been no change at all; I had always been desperate and frightened, vengeful and ready to run.
I patted my right pocket to make sure my gun was there.
I went over to the far right corner away from the door and shouted, “Who is it?”
“Colonel Timothy Bunting,” a young man said in a practiced commanding tone.
I took a step to my left just in case the man decided to fire in the direction of my voice. All the regular questions went through my mind. Was he alone? Had he come to kill me? How many drug smugglers were there? It did not occur to me immediately to question whether he really was a military man come to see me for some valid purpose. Why would I think that? All I had met so far were victims and killers, and the killers were all in uniform — or at least once were.
“Mr. Rawlins?” the man called.
For a moment I considered shooting him through the door. After all, wasn’t he there to kill me? That’s when I knew that my bout with insanity was not yet over. I was prepared to murder a man I had never even seen. I had become those white men chasing me up the stairs in Bellflower — that was just not acceptable, not at all.
I went to the door and pulled it open, the gun in my pocket and my hands not in fists.
