Black Betty (28 page)

When I walked up near the reclining crucifix I noted that there was red paint splattered where the hands, head, and feet of Christ were supposed to be.

Plastered all over the front door were poor-quality color prints clipped from a cheap illustrated Bible. Calvary and its victims, Mary by the Cross, John the Baptist plying his trade, Jonah kneeling by the sea.

A nearly toothless old woman answered the front door. “Yes?”

“Mrs. Broadhawk?”

“Elma Jackson, mister.” She smiled. “But Alfred Broadhawk do live here. He’s my nephew. He live wit’ us.”

“Is Alfred home?”

“No, sir. Alfred out at church. He goes out every afternoon to help the Lord.” The old woman pointed out at the yard. “Alfred made all’a that out there. He wants the Lord to be in every minute of everybody’s day. Bobo don’t like it too much. He says that the manger is for Christmas and that the Cross is for Easter and that in the middle Alfred should take that stuff down. But Alfred says that we got to remember the joy and the sorrow every day.”

“Bobo’s Alfred’s uncle?”

“Not by blood,” she said. “I’m Alfred’s only blood in this world. Bobo’s my common-law hus’bun. He work at the junkyard down on Redondo. Bobo could take anything you got apart and then put it back together better’n it was in the first place. He’s kinda like a genius about machines I guess.

“You want me to tell Alfred somethin’, mister?”

“No, honey. No. Just say that Mr. Hall was here. I heard about his Christian art and just wanted to take a look. You tell him that it’s beautiful.”

Elma’s grateful smile shamed me. She took my hand and actually kissed it.

Maybe they would put a little statue of Judas out there to commemorate my visit.

I WAS A FREE MAN, more or less. I had done my errand. I’d found Betty and told her what they wanted. If she ever called them I’d ask for my money. If not, well, that part of my life, life in the street, was over. Betty was with her friend. Odell and Maudria were as good as they could be, considering.

I was going to lay low while the cops sorted out the murders.

Marlon was in the ground.

And Mouse… well, I didn’t know about Mouse. But at least I knew the answer to the question. I knew that the men he suspected were innocent. The truth has to mean something.

Truth and Freedom; two great things for a poor man, a son of slaves and ex-slaves.

My arm ached. I could feel the deep reach of infection in my veins. One thing was certain—there was no escaping Fate. Fate hauls back and laughs his ass off at Truth and Freedom. Those are minor deities compared to Fate and Death.

But I wasn’t dead yet. Marlon was dead. I didn’t know why but I was sure that it had something to do with Albert Cain and his demise. Everything about Cain stunk. He was a foul man and surrounded himself with his own stench. But that wasn’t my business.

SAUL LYNX WAS STANDING out on the curb in front of my house. He was leaning against the thirty-foot carob tree that had grown there, staring at the ground with his big nose hanging down. When I parked he looked up at me and smiled. It was a real smile this time.

“What the fuck you doin’ here, man?”

“Turnabout is fair play, Mr. Rawlins. At least you didn’t find me inside your house.” His breath was fragrant with gin.

“We done already turned this around once, man. Now I’ma walk on into my house and you gonna climb into that brown piece’a shit you drivin’ and that’s gonna be it.”

“You got my pistol?” he asked.

“You want it?” I threatened.

“They’re ready to kill your girl, Mr. Rawlins.”

I didn’t want to hear it. I turned away from him and went toward my house. But he was right there behind me.

“It’s the will,” he said in a whisper.

I spun around quickly, making him slip in the grass.

“Don’t you be fuckin’ wit’ me, man.”

Mr. Lynx was a master of mildness. He hoisted his pathetic nose up at me, his eyes glistening like two cicadas. “Five minutes,” he said, pointing at my front door.

“Come on then. Let’s make it quick.”

IT GAVE ME A THRILL to pour the little detective a juice glass full of whiskey.

“Aren’t you going to join me?” he asked.

“Not right yet. What you got to say?”

He leaned forward on the kitchen chair, massaging his knee with a cupped palm. “The cops dropped by a couple of days after you did. They wanted to know about Hodge and some guy called Terry Tyler, a boxer they said. They mentioned Elizabeth Eady, so I knew that it had something to do with you.”

“You knew that when they said about Hodge,” I said.

“No. I’ve done a lot of work for Mr. Hodge. It could have been anything.”

“Uh-huh. So? What about the will?”

Lynx slugged back the whole shot. I was there, ready with number two. He ran his hands over his eyes and then gripped the glass hard enough that I thought it might break. “I’m four hundred dollars in the hole over this one, Mr. Rawlins.”

That would have been a lot of money to Lynx. He wasn’t the kind of man to have property or money in the bank. Saul Lynx was one of those men who always drive their car a hair above empty and two quarts low.

“I know a woman who works in records down in San Diego,” he told me. “And she’s got a friend who does the same thing in Beverly Hills.”

I watched the whiskey slip down between his thin pink lips, imagining the burn in his throat.

He looked to the side as if to make sure that nobody had sneaked into the house and then said, “Mrs. Hawkes filed an injunction against the will through Hodge. The lawyer representing the will is a guy named Fresco. He’s an old-time friend of Cain. Cain left all his money to Elizabeth Eady. Everything. House, suits of armor from the sixteenth century, everything. Seems like Cain started feeling guilty toward the end of his life. He’d done some pretty bad things to Miss Eady and he wanted to make amends.”

“And so they wanna kill her.” It wasn’t a question.

“Not only her. I found out that this man, this Terry Tyler, is really Eady’s son, and there’s a brother out in the desert somewhere. For Christ’s sake, the maid is Eady’s daughter. If Elizabeth dies they’re next in line.”

“Nobody’s gonna do all that…” I started to say “just for money,” but I knew that was wrong.

“Terry Tyler’s already dead.” Lynx held out his glass for another drink.

I didn’t say anything about Marlon.

“So you figure Hodge knew about the will and he’s workin’ for the family?” I asked, gazing at the dregs in the bottom of his glass.

“Hodge isn’t the estate lawyer. The lawyer is an old business partner of Cain’s. Like I said, a man named Fresco.” The little man blinked and shook his head, the first sign of inebriation. “But we’re talkin’ fifty million here, at least. The money Hodge could get from that fortune would set him up for life. That’s why he had me looking for the girl.”

“Woman,” I said.

“What?”

“She’s almost fifty years old, man. She’s a woman.”

Lynx stared at me. He couldn’t quite figure out what I meant. When he gave up he reached for the bottle.

But I took it away.

“We gonna do somethin’?” I asked him.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that you didn’t come here just to tell me some stories. You must got some reason other than gettin’ pie-eyed for bein’ here.”

Lynx sat back in the kitchen chair. The way he looked around the room said that he was just realizing that he’d drunk too much. He brought his hands to his face and squinted.

“I want,” he said slowly, “you to back me up on this.”

“On what?”

He blinked again and squinted. Like most drunks he thought that if he took longer to think he’d come up with the thoughts of a sober man.

“It’s got to be the woman. Sarah Cain. She’s the one going to lose everything. And so she throws her big money around and people start dying.”

“Why not her son? He seems to get along with Hodge just fine. It could be him.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. But it’s got to be one or both of them. But all we got to do is go down there and face them. Try to figure out what’s going on.”

I was thinking about Marlon; about how he’d said that the cops had beaten him.

“Why not just go to the cops?” I asked.

“Do you know a cop you can trust?” he asked back. His brilliant eyes shone like some ignorant serpentine god’s. “There’s been two murders…”

“Two?”

“Albert Cain was killed too. The police made that plain. And now this Tyler-Eady boy. And when it comes to that much money, you and me are just a couple of grease spots. No. I want to know my P’s from my Q’s before I go to the police.”

“Why should I care?” I said. “You the one came to me. All I got to do is to tell the cops that.”

“How do you explain to the police that you were looking for Terry Tyler and then fighting with him just before he was found dead? Yeah. The cops told me about that.”

Saul wasn’t smiling. He wasn’t trying to rub my nose in it. And I appreciated that, even though I didn’t take the threat seriously. I didn’t think that the cops could take me down for anything. I was worried about Betty, though. I didn’t want to allow those rich white people to murder her.

“What you wanna do?” I asked Saul.

“Go up to the house. Talk to the lady. Then we’ll see.” Saul got to his feet as if that meant it was time to go.

But I held up my hand and said, “Hold on, man. I cain’t drive up there.”

“Why not?”

“’Cause of a man called Styles.”

“Commander Styles?”

“You know him?”

“He’s done a lot of work for Hodge. One time when I got into a fix up in the Hills he helped me out. When we shook he grabbed me so hard that he broke one of the bones in my hand.” Saul cradled his right hand. “What’s Styles got to do with you?”

“Hodge put him on me.”

“Oh.” Saul felt his liquor then. Without me having to argue he sat back in his chair.

“Coffee?”

“Yeah. Yeah.”

I went to the four-burner stove and heated some water. When the water boiled I took out a bottle of instant powder and a spoon and put them in front of him with one of my coffee mugs.

“Milk and sugar?”

“Like a good woman,” he answered.

“Say what?”

“Dark and sweet.”

SAUL DOWNED FOUR CUPS of the stuff, drinking it until he thought he should have been sober.

We decided that he would drive my car because there was more room in the back for my sore bones.

I took a cotton sheet from the hamper to use as a cover should Saul be pulled over for some innocent reason. I figured that if I lay down in the leg space covered with the sheet a sloppy cop might not notice.

“You been doin’ this kinda work a long time?” I wanted to talk in the car. Anything not to think about what I was doing.

“Long enough,” he answered. Then after a pause, “At least I don’t have to punch in and kiss butt. At least when I don’t like how something smells I can take it out to the ash can.”

“I didn’t say nuthin’,” I responded.

“No. But you can see I don’t have much. But at least I got a little bit of pride. My family eats and the rent is paid. And if I decide that something is wrong I can do something about it. I don’t belong to a paycheck.”

“You married?”

“Yep. Met her down in Georgia when I was in the service. She worked in the PX.”

I could hear his grin.

“You in the war?” I asked.

“Military police.”

Sunlight moved to and fro across the backseat. It struck me that I’d never been in the backseat of the car. I had them vacuum it out at the car wash so I didn’t even clean back there. Here was a part of my life and property and I’d never even looked at it.

“What about you?” Saul asked.

“What?”

“You married?”

“Used to be. I got a letter last year sayin’ that the state of Mississippi granted my wife a divorce.”

“Too bad.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” I was thinking about Sooky, Betty, and Martin. Which one of them had the perfect kind of life that Saul Lynx bragged about?

After quite a while Saul said, “Here comes the gate.”

I huddled down under my sheet and the car came to a stop.

“Private,” a voice said. I couldn’t tell if it was the man from the other day.

There was the rustling of papers then the voice said, “Security, huh?”

“Yeah,” Saul answered. “Nasdorfs up on Fischer want something. Probably a burglar alarm for the kennel.”

The men both laughed. Then there was silence for a minute.

“Hey, um,” the guard said. “Any openings down at your company?”

“Always room for a good man. You got a card?”

“Uh, well, uh, no, not on me.”

“Always have your card,” Saul chided. “That way the boss man knows you got the goods. But that’s okay this time. I’m not the boss. Write up your name, address, and position and I’ll pick it up on the way back down.”

“Hey, thanks.”

“No problem.”

When we’d driven far enough away I asked, “Why’d you go through the gate? We could have taken side streets in.”

“’Cause they got this unmarked car surveillance system up here. If they see a strange car they call it in to the gate. But now the gate knows we’re here. So it’s fine.”

I was a fish out of his bowl.

YES? WHO IS IT?” Gwendolyn Eady said through the speaker in the gate.

“It’s Easy, Gwen. Lemme in, willya?”

I sat up when we passed the gate, taking Saul’s .38 from my pocket.

“Here you go, man,” I said as I handed it over. There was a .32 in my other pocket. Small-sized death.

THERE WAS A FIRE-ENGINE-RED ’57 Thunderbird parked in front of the house.

“Oh!” Gwen said when she found two men at the door.

“We need to talk, Gwen.”

“Sarah’s very tired, Mr. Rawlins. I don’t think that it’s a good time to bring in people that she doesn’t know.” She came out of the door to keep us from going in.