knew she was dead. “When can we cut ’er down an’ get outta here?”
He was not my favorite kind of white man.
“Hold up on that,” Naylor said. “We got an investigation going here and we can’t have the evidence disturbed. I want someone to photograph the room first.”
“Aw, geez,” Reedy sighed.
“Shit,” the fat man said. Then, “Okay, we go, but who signs for the call?”
“We didn’t call so you can’t charge us,” Naylor said.
“What about you, son?” the ambulance attendant asked me. He looked to be in his mid-twenties, almost ten years younger than I.
“Can’t say that I know. I just called the police.” I lied. It was a kind of warm-up lie. I was getting ready for the real lies I’d have to tell later.
The fat man glared at me but that’s all he could do.
When the ambulance men left I turned away and saw Poinsettia hanging there. She seemed to be swaying slightly and my stomach started to move with her, so I turned to leave.
Naylor touched my arm and asked, “Who did you say that Mr. Mofass represented?”
“It’s just Mofass. He don’t go by no other name.”
“Who does he represent?” Naylor insisted.
“Can’t say I know. I just clean fo’ him.”
“Geez, Quint,” Reedy said. He’d taken out a handkerchief and covered his mouth and nose. That seemed like a good idea, so I pulled out my own rag.
Reedy was an older man, past fifty. Naylor was young, the ambulance attendant’s age. He had probably been a noncommissioned officer in Korea. We got all kinds of things out of that war. Integration, advancement of some colored soldiers, and lots of dead boys.
“Don’t look right, Andy,” Naylor said. “Let’s give it a little bit more.”
“Who’s gonna care about this one girl, Quint?”
“I care,” was all the young policeman answered. And it made me proud. It was the first time I had ever seen civilian blacks and whites dealing with each other in an official capacity. I mean, the first time I’d seen them acting as equals. They were really working together.
“You need me for that?” I asked.
“No, Mr. Rawlins,” Reedy sighed. “Just give me your address and phone number and we’ll call you for a statement if we need to.”
I gave him my address and phone. He wrote them down in a leather-bound notepad that he took from his pocket.
Downstairs, I told Mrs. Trajillo what was happening with the police. She was not only the burglar alarm but she was also a kind of newsletter for the neighborhood.
11
I lamented Poinsettia’s death. She’d come down in the world, but that was no reason to wish her ill. It was a senseless and brutal death whether she killed herself or somebody else did it. But if it was suicide I dreaded the thought that she did herself in over the threat of eviction; an eviction I knew was wrong. I tried to put that thought out of my mind but it burrowed there, in the back of my thoughts, like a gopher tunneling under the ground.
But, no matter how I felt, life had to go on.
I picked EttaMae up on Sunday morning. She was wearing a royal-blue dress with giant white lilies stitched into it. Her hat was eggshell-white, just a layered cap on the side of her head. Her shoes were white too. Etta never wore high heels because she was a tall woman, just a few inches shorter than I.
On the way I asked her, “You talk to Mouse?”
“I called him yesterday, yeah.”
“An’ what he say?”
“Just like always. He start out fine, but then he get that funny sound in his voice. Then he talkin’ ’bout how he will not be denied, like I owe ’im sumpin’. Shit! I’ma have t’kill Raymond if he start comin’ ’round scarin’ LaMarque like he did in Texas.”
“He say anything to LaMarque?”
“Naw. He won’t even talk to the boy no more. Why you ask?”
“I dunno.”
First African Baptist Church was a big salmon-colored building, built on the model of an old Spanish monastery. There was a large mosaic that stood out high on the wall. Jesus hung there, bleeding red pebbles and suffering all over the congregation. Nobody seemed to notice, though. All the men and women, and children too, were dressed in their finest. Gowns and silk suits, patent-leather shoes and white gloves. The smiles and bows that passed between the sexes on Sunday would have been scandalous anywhere else.
But Sunday was a time to feel good and look good. The flock was decked out and bouncy, waiting for word from the Lord.
Rita Cook came with Jackson Blue. He probably sniffed after her and moved in when Mouse got bored. That’s the way most men do it, they let other men break the ice, then they have clear sailing.
Dupree and his new wife, Zaree, were there. She had once told me that her name was from Africa and I asked her from what part of Africa. She didn’t know and was angry at me for making her look foolish-after that we never got along too well.
I saw Oscar Jones, Odell’s older brother, on the stairs to the church. Etta was saying hello to all the people she hadn’t seen yet, so I moved toward where Oscar stood.
As I suspected, Odell was there standing in the shadow of a stucco pillar facade.
“Easy,” Oscar said.
“Howdy, Oscar. Odell.”
They were brothers, and closer than that. Two men with slightly different faces whose clothes hung on them the same way. They were both soft-spoken men. I’d seen them talking but I’d never heard a word that one said to the other.
“Odell,” I said. “I got to talk to you.”
“Why don’t you come over here.”
I waved at Oscar and he bowed to me, that was about a year of conversation for us.
Odell and I walked around the side of the church, down a narrow cement path.
When we were alone I told him, “Listen, man, I got some business with a white man work here.”
“Chaim Wenzler?”
“How you know ’bout it?”
“He the only white man here, Easy. I don’t mean here today, ’cause he a Jew an’ they worship on Saturday-or so I hear.”
“I need to get next to ’im.”
“What do you mean, Easy?”
“I gotta find out about him fo’ the law. Tax man got me by the nuts on this income tax thing an’ if I don’t do this he gonna bust me.”
“So what you want?”
“A li’l introduction is all. Maybe something like workin’ fo’ the church. I could take it from there.”
He didn’t answer right away. I know that he was uncomfortable with me nosing around his church. But Odell was a good friend and he proved it by nodding and saying, “Okay,” when he had thought it out.
But then he said, “I heard about Poinsettia Jackson.”
We stood before a small green door. Odell had his hand on the knob but he was waiting for my reply before he’d open up.
