There was a big house on Isabella Street, at the end of a cul-de-sac. That was Vernie’s place. Lots of workingmen would drop by there now and then, to visit one of Vernie’s girls. It was a friendly place. The second and third floors had three bedrooms each and the first floor was a kitchen and living room where the guests could be entertained.
Vernie was a light-skinned woman whose hair was frosted gold. She weighed about three hundred pounds. Vernie would stay in the kitchen cooking all day and all night. Her daughter, Darcel, who was the same size as her mother, would welcome the men into the parlor and collect a few dollars for their food and drinks.
Some men, like Odell, would be happy to sit around and drink and listen to music on the phonograph. Vernie would come out now and then to shout hello at old friends and introduce herself to newcomers.
But if you were there for companionship there were girls upstairs who sat out in front of their doors if they weren’t occupied with a customer. Huey Barnes sat in the hall on the second floor. He was a wide-hipped, heavy-boned man who had the face of an innocent child. But Huey was fast and vicious despite his looks, and his presence caused all business at Vernie’s to run smoothly.
I went there in the early afternoon.
“Easy Rawlins.” Darcel reached her fat hands out to me. “I did believe that you had died and left us for heaven.”
“Uh-uh, Darcie. You know I just been savin’ it up for ya.”
“Well bring it on in here, baby. Bring it on in.”
She led me by the hand to the living room. A few men were sitting around drinking and listening to jazz records. There was a big bowl of dirty rice on the coffee table and white porcelain plates too.
“Easy Rawlins!” The voice came from the door to the kitchen.
“How you, baby?” Vernie asked as she ran up to me.
“Just fine, Vernie, just fine.”
The big woman hugged me so that I felt I was being rolled up in a feather mattress.
“Uh,” she groaned, almost lifting me from the floor. “It’s been too long, honey. Too long!”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said. I hugged her back and then lowered onto the couch.
Vernie smiled on me. “You stay put now, Easy. I want you to tell me how things is goin’ before you go wand’rin’ upstairs.” And with that she went back to the kitchen.
“Hey, Ronald, what’s goin’ on?” I said to the man next to me.
“Not much, Ease,” Ronald White answered. He was a plumber for the city. Ronald always wore his plumber’s overalls no matter where he was. He said that a man’s work clothes are the only real clothes he has.
“Takin’ a break from all them boys?” I liked to kid Ronald about his family. His wife dropped a son every twelve or fourteen months. She was a religious woman and didn’t believe in taking precautions. At the age of thirty-four Ronald had nine sons, and one on the way.
“They like to tear the place down, Easy. I swear.” Ronald shook his head. “They’d be climbin’ ’cross the ceilin’ if they could get a good hold. You know they got me afraid to go home.”
“Oh com’on now, man. It can’t be that bad.”
Ronald’s forehead wrinkled up like a prune, and he had pain in his face when he said, “No lie, Easy. I come on in and there’s a whole army of ’em, runnin’ right at me. First the big ones come leapin’. Then the ones can hardly walk. And while the little ones come crawlin’ Mary walks in, so weak that she’s like death, and she’s got two babies in her arms.”
“I tell ya, Easy. I spend fifty dollars on food and just watch them chirren destroy it. They eat every minute that they ain’t yellin’.” There were actually tears in Ronald’s eyes. “I swear I can’t take it, man. I swear.”
“Darcel!” I yelled. “Come bring Ronald a drink, quick. You know he needs it too.”
Darcel brought in a bottle of I. W. Harpers and poured all three of us a drink. I handed her three dollars for the bottle.
“Yeah,” Curtis Cross said. He was sitting in front of a plate of rice at the dining table. “Chirren is the most dangerous creatures on the earth, with the exception of young girls between the ages of fifteen and forty-two.”
That even got Ronald to smile.
“I don’t know,” Ronald said. “I love Mary but I think I’m’a have to run soon. Them kids a’kill me if I don’t.”
“Have another drink, man. Darcie, just keep ’em comin’, huh? This man needs to forget.”
“You already paid for this bottle, Easy. You can waste it any way you want.” Like most black women, Darcel wasn’t happy to hear about a man who wanted to abandon his wife and kids.
“Just three dollars and you still make some money?” I acted like I was surprised.
“We buy bulk, Easy.” Darcie smiled at me.
“Could I buy it like that too?” I asked, as if it were the first time I had ever heard of buying hijack.
“I don’t know, honey. You know Momma and me let Huey take care of the shoppin’.”
That was it for me. Huey wasn’t the kind of man to ask about Frank Green. Huey was like Junior Fornay — mean and spiteful. He was no one to tell my business.
I drove Ronald home at about nine. He was crying on my shoulder when I let him out at his house.
“Please don’t make me go in there, Easy. Take me with you, brother.”
I was trying to keep from laughing. I could see Mary at the door. She was thin except for her belly and there was a baby boy in each of her arms. All their children crowded around her in the doorway pushing each other back to get a look at their father coming home.
“Come on now, Ron. You made all them babies, now you got to sleep in your bed.”
I remember thinking that if I lived through the troubles I had then, my life would be pretty good. But Ronald didn’t have any chance to be happy, unless he broke his poor family’s heart.
During the next day I went to the bars that Frank sold hijack to and to the alley crap games that he frequented. I never brought up Frank’s name though. Frank was skitterish, like all gangsters, and if he felt that people were talking about him he got nervous; if Frank was nervous he might have killed me before I had time to make my pitch.
It was those two days more than any other time that made me a detective.
I felt a secret glee when I went into a bar and ordered a beer with money someone else had paid me. I’d ask the bartender his name and talk about anything, but, really, behind my friendly talk, I was working to find something. Nobody knew what I was up to and that made me sort of invisible; people thought that they saw me but what they really saw was an illusion of me, something that wasn’t real.
I never got bored or frustrated. I wasn’t even afraid of DeWitt Albright during those days. I felt, foolishly, safe from even his crazy violence.
Chapter 19
Zeppo could always be found on the corner of Forty-ninth and McKinley. He was half Negro, half Italian, and palsied. He stood there looking to the world like a skinny, knotted-up minister when the word of the Lord gets in him. He’d shake and writhe with all kinds of frowns on his face. Sometimes he’d bend all the way down to the ground and place both palms on the pavement as if the street were trying to swallow him and he was pushing it away.
Ernest, the barber, let Zeppo stand out in front of his shop to beg because he knew that the neighborhood children wouldn’t bother Zeppo as long as he stood in front of the barber’s pane.
“Hey, Zep, how you doin’?” I asked.
“J-j-ju-j-just fi-f-f-fi-f-fine, Ease.” Sometimes words would come easy to him and other times he couldn’t even finish a sentence.