“Damn,” I said. “Shit must be hip-deep for both’a y’all to be here.”
“We need resolution on this Bel-Air thing,” Melvin admitted. “The chief is callin’ me five times a day.”
It was maybe 3:00 a.m. by then, a long day.
“You know I’m too old for this, don’t you, Melvin?”
My friend cracked a grin, but Anatole was serious as an undertaker.
“At least you’re gettin’ older,” Melvin’s number two informed him.
“I don’t know who did it,” I said. “That’s the truth. I think I might find out before it’s all over, but as it stands, I can’t tell ya what I don’t know.”
“What can you tell us?” Anatole pressed.
“The guy they arrested me for maybe shootin’ is named Santangelo Burris. He hired me to find his aunt, Lutisha James, like I already told Melvin. He said it was because her mother, his grandmother, who he said lives down in a town that don’t exist, wanted to talk to her. After lookin’ into it I think maybe she got hold of a deed or somethin’ like that, that some rich man prob’ly wants.”
“What rich man?” Mel asked.
“I’m not sure.” I put a spin on these words because Melvin was a living polygraph machine.
“What does that mean?”
“Deeds make you think of somethin’ legal. I mean, ain’t no bank robber gonna wanna steal a deed.”
“You don’t think it’s some crazies did this?” Anatole asked.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I think whoever did it was there lookin’ for Lutisha James. That’s all I know about right now. If you want more, you got to gimme a couple’a more days.”
“We don’t have days,” Anatole complained.
“Then tell the chief and newspapers that the crime happened but you’re sure that it was a robbery. Mel said that they took a safe. The man was rich. Makes sense that someone’d break in his house and steal and kill.”
Anatole got to his feet, exhibiting his disfavor. I didn’t show the right kind of respect he thought a senior officer of the law deserved.
I half expected him to take my bitter cup of coffee and pour it over my head.
Melvin sat back in his chair, pondering the value of my suggestion.
After a minute or two the senior officer said, “You need a ride home?”
“Not all that way,” I said. “But maybe to my office.”
“How you doin’ with that other thing, Easy?” Mel asked on the ride out to West LA.
“The way I hear it, the two BNDD agents that are after my boy are in business for themselves.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
“Around.”
“From your son?”
“No.”
“No?” asked the living polygraph.
“No.”
Over the years since we’d met, Mel and I had become close. We both had secrets and, even though the police captain wanted to stay on the straight and narrow, he also understood the love of family. So he dropped the discussion about Jesus, and we rode in silence until he stopped in front of WRENS-L headquarters.
“I think I’ll take you up on the advice, Easy,” he said before I disembarked. “It don’t feel like a hippie thing.”
“No,” I agreed.
Hitting the couch in my office at around five in the morning, I slept fitfully but long.
“Mr. Rawlins,” she said, shaking my shoulder. “Easy.”
“Hey, Niska. I thought you were takin’ the day off.”
“I did too. But Clemmie called me and said that when she went back to the bathroom, she saw that you were here asleep. I came in and told her she could go home, and that she’d still get paid for today instead’a me.”
That was enough to get me to a seated position.
“What time is it?”
“About two fifteen.”
“In the afternoon?”
She nodded.
“Whoa. I must’a been tired.”
“I know. I told Clemmie to turn off the ringer and just use the light to answer. I only woke you up because I know you’re on a job.”
“What happened with Doreen?”
“I called her, and she said she was dropping out of school and that her and that boyfriend’a hers was leavin’ town.”
“That was a great lesson for you. ’Cause ya know you can’t always trust that you and the client gonna be on the same page.”
“I can see that now,” Niska agreed. “You know, if you had asked me, I would have said that Doreen would have been thinking exactly like me. But then I realized that if I fell in love with somebody, I might do the same damned thing.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Understanding people’s flaws instead’a what we think is right and wrong is the only way to go.”
“So, I’m doin’ pretty good?” she asked.
“Mostly.”
“Mostly? What have I done wrong?”
“Goin’ to that cigar store, goin’ to meet Delroy Whatever at that restaurant, comin’ out back after Fearless hit him upside his head. Then, after all that, you find out that the boyfriend has robbed a bank robber.”
“Yeah?” she questioned, showing that she still didn’t see anything wrong.
“Lookin’ at all that, are you frightened?”
Taking my question in, she considered and then said, “I guess not.”
“That’s what’s wrong.”
After that Niska went back to the front office and I took a shower. That woke me half the way up. I made coffee in my office percolator and drank it, wondering when the fright of my night in jail would descend.
The interoffice buzzer on my phone sounded and I answered, “Yes, Niska?”
“Amy’s on line two.”
I pressed the button for line number two and said, “Hey.”
“Hi.”
“Where are you?”
“At your place.”
“I thought you were gonna wait till I called you.”
“You didn’t come home last night,” was her reply.
“Yeah. I got arrested.”
“What? Why?”
“I made the mistake of trying and probably failing to save a man’s life.”
“Well, why are you at work? You should come home.”
Home. That word in her mouth seemed to brush over me like the tongue of some bestial mother.
“I got work to do and no time to lose. You gonna be there this evening?”
“Are you comin’ home?”
“I sure the hell hope so.”
“Okay, then. I’ll be here.”
More than a long rest, better than coffee, even outdoing a brisk shower, talking to Amethystine exhilarated me, brought me back to life.
Dressed in my best dark suit, I came out to the front office and pulled up a visitor’s chair to Niska’s desk.
“You look nice,” she said. “You goin’ t’see Amy?”
“If only,” I lamented. “How you doin’?”
“Okay. I understand what you mean about me not bein’ scared. If I had come across those men that were, I mean are, after what’s-his-name, I don’t know what I woulda done.”
“Or,” I said, holding up an educating finger. “If Delroy was the paranoid sort, he could have shot or stabbed you because you might’a been workin’ with the men after him.”
“I didn’t even think of that.”
“Don’t worry, girl, in this business a healthy sense of distrust and fear builds up over time.”
“I hope my next job will be more clear-cut.”
“That reminds me. You speak Spanish, right?”
“I do.”
“Fluently?”
“Near about. Why?”
“I met a guy in jail name of Carlos Ortega. He’s probably some kind of gang leader but we didn’t really talk about that. Carlos has an elderly father name of Rafael Ortega who lives at this address on Hamel Street out in the barrio.” I put the slip of paper with all the information on her desk. “Rafael went out for a walk three days ago and lost his way or something. He’s a friendly old man, so stores, gas stations, maybe ladies who hang out on their porches might have said hello to him.”