you this money. I told him you were just about to get evicted and offered to deliver it.”
“Did you read his letter?” she asked, ignoring my subtle lies.
“No.”
“It says he don’t love me no mo’.”
I had no reply.
“Was he with a woman, Mr. Rawlins?”
“Not that I could see. There was a woman in the house, but she was very definitely with another man.”
“What am I supposed to do now?”
I had been thinking about that question on the ride over.
“First I need to know something,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“Do you believe that Perry wrote this note?”
“Yes.”
“Why don’t you think that I wrote it and that I brought you this money to hush you up?”
“Because Leafa just got that raincoat from the Anders across the street four days ago, but that ain’t all.”
“What else?”
“Hanley didn’t vomit on that newspaper, Henry did.” She smiled. “Perry was always confusin’ Hanley with Henry. He had to be alive to write this note. And it sounds just like him and this is his writin’.
“Why didn’t you just steal this money, Mr. Rawlins?”
“Because of Leafa,” I said.
“Leafa?”
“She’s a special child, Mrs. Tarr. She deserves better than she has.”
“She does.” Tears rolled down Meredith Tarr’s face, but she didn’t sob or moan.
“Mrs. Tarr.”
“Yes, Mr. Rawlins?”
“I’m going to give you some advice. So please listen.”
Meredith Tarr’s destroyed eyes became clear and focused.
“Do you have a good friend or a sister somewhere?”
“Melinda. She my half sister from Arkansas.”
“Call her. Have her come and live with you to help with these kids. If not her then someone else. Take the money and get a safe-deposit box. Don’t let anybody know you got this money, not even your half sister. I’m gonna have a friend call you, a woman named Jewelle. She will help you buy a house for ten thousand dollars or less. Buy the house and use the money you got left to pay for your sister and these kids. Rest up for a while and then get you a job. Perry told me that he’ll get in touch and send you more money when you need it.
“Are you listening to me?”
She nodded in a sentient manner.
“Where’d he get this money, Mr. Rawlins?”
“I don’t know and I didn’t ask.”
Meredith nodded again, this time sternly.
We went over my advice four or five times. I drilled it into her and I believe that she listened. When I was sure that she at least understood the way to go about taking care of all that cash, I headed for the door. I was half the way out of the back room when Meredith shouted, “Bastard!”
I turned to see if she was talking to me, but Meredith was staring at the wall again. Her healing had finally begun.
40
By the time I’d made it back to the Ariba, Meredith and Pericles Tarr were out of my mind. I turned on the news and lit up a cigarette, kicked off my shoes, and sat there while Jerry Dunphy lectured me on a wide range of unconnected stories. A boy had been kidnapped and then released for a quarter million in ransom. The confessions of two captured American pilots shown on a North Vietnamese film release were denied by American lip-readers. The Oscars might be postponed due to a strike. And Governor Ronald Reagan was slashing jobs in California’s mental-health system. There were no black people in the news that night; no Mexicans or Indians or Africans either. But eleven students in Germany were arrested for a plot to assassinate Hubert H. Humphrey.
None of what I saw meant anything to me. I didn’t believe or disbelieve. Watching the news was just a way to pass the time. If I were a child, I would have been watching cartoons.
After a while I turned down the volume on the TV, picked up the phone, and dialed.
“Hello?” Peter Rhone said in his sad and cultured tenor.
