“Is it Leema or Lyema?” I asked in my most pleasant voice.
“What the hell you say?” was her answer.
“The last name,” I said, gesturing at the nameplate that hung from two nails driven into the front side of that plinth.
“You don’t need to know my name or ask me questions. This is a place for women only and you are not a girl.”
“I know that, and I will be gone just as soon as I can ask a question.”
“You already asked a question,” she barked, just before slapping a vicious-looking hunting knife down on the podium.
I was a little shocked that walking into a building and making a simple request could turn into a life-and-death situation just that quickly.
“Aw, come on now, lady,” I pleaded. “I’m not lookin’ for any trouble.”
“You gonna get some, you don’t walk yo’ old Black ass outta here.”
I was very aware that my two years off the streets, up on my mountain, had slowed me down. Boxers call it ring rust. Whatever you call it, I needed a good oiling.
Her hand was laid across the hilt of that Bowie blade. Any smart man would have backed away ten steps and then run. But I had a question, and it made no sense that I couldn’t get an answer.
“Ezekiel Porterhouse Rawlins,” somebody said in a contralto tone that was juicy and deep.
Without turning away from Ms. Lima, I said, “Stella Voorhes.”
“Baby, what you doin’ flirtin’ with li’l girls like Gina?”
“He ain’t flirtin’ wit’ me,” Gina complained. “Bettah not if he don’t wanna lose whatever little he got.”
Gina lifted her blade as Stella sashayed into view. Peroxide-haired, black-skinned, of a mature age, and with a generous figure, Miss Voorhes was a pinup of the mind.
“Gina,” she said in as stern a timbre as her diva voice could muster.
“What?” the younger woman complained.
“What I tell you about that knife?”
“I told him to leave, and he didn’t,” the younger woman said by way of explanation.
“Do you like your job?”
“Yeah,” Gina replied in a much softer tone.
“Because if I see that mothahfuckin’ blade again I’ma fire your butt and take away your room. You know I don’t need the city comin’ in here threatenin’ my license because you hate every man you see.”
“But—”
“But what?”
“Nuthin’. I’m sorry.”
“Okay. Now, go on upstairs and bury that knife away in that trunk’a yours.”
Gina Lima walked past me carrying the knife in her left hand. I made sure not to make eye contact with her, just in case.
When the young woman started walking up the stairs, Stella turned to me and said, “Easy Rawlins. You know sometimes I wake up at night with your name on my lips. You evah think about me like that?”
“Every chance I get.”
“You got your chance right here, right now.”
“Honey, I’m on the job right now.”
After giving me a contemplative stare, she said, “I heard tell you live in a castle on a glass mountain like that princess in the fairy tale.”
“Not a castle, just a big house. And it’s a mountain all right, but one made outta soil and stone, not glass,” I confessed, “but... yeah.”
“Could I come up there and see you one day, maybe?”
“Just as soon as this job is over,” I lied.
“Yeah. I bet.”
“C’mon, Stella, gimme a break.”
“You got good shoulders, Easy Rawlins. Strong but not sharp like some’a these fools out here today. I could ride them bones all day long.”
Her smile was a thing out of mythology. I was resisting temptation, but if a conversation like the one we were having went on too long... there was only one place it could go. So I decided to cut it short.
“Lutisha James,” I said with a ring of finality to the words.
Amazingly, seemingly without a muscle moving on her face, Stella’s broad grin turned into a grimace.
“What about her?”
“I’ve been hired to find her.”
“She lost?”
“Her mama wants to hear from her.”
“I’m surprised a bitch on wheels like her even got a mama.”
“Why you say that?” I wondered mildly.
“Lutisha is old-school. She got a knife longer than Gina’s in her handbag and dynamite in both feet and hands. I once seen her knock a full-grown man to his knees. She is serious business.”
“She gave you a hard time?”
“Naw, uh-uh. She was quiet enough, and civil too. The only problem I evah had wit’ Lutie was that she liked to play poker in her room, and she wanted to have men in the game. I couldn’t allow that. You know, once you let men in, they hang around like dogs, beggin’ for whatever scraps you got.”
I liked talking with Stella. She brought the best of the old days to mind.
“The guy hired me said that he was her nephew,” I said.
“Fireplug of a man look like one’a those men clean out chimneys?”
“That’s him to a T.”
“An’ he the one payin’ your fee?”
“He is.”
“And he said he was her blood?”
“He did.”
“I hope you ain’t takin’ to believin’ just anything that some fool tells ya,” Stella challenged. “When that man came here all I tole ’im was that Lutie was gone, and I didn’t have no idea where she went to.”
“I can understand that, but in my business, I try and give everybody the benefit of the doubt.”
“That’s what they call castin’ pearls before swine.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “I know. What I’m doin’ is lookin’ for her to ask if she wants to be found.”
“And you had to climb down from your glass mountain ’cause you couldn’t see her from up there?”
“Can you help me, girl?” I asked in faux exasperation.
She gave me a leery look and then reached out to take me by the hand.
“You know I really do like you,” she said.
“And I like you too, Stella.”
“My mama, God rest her soul, used to tell me that it was better to hook up with a man you liked instead’a one that you loved. She said that like lasts a lot longer’n love.”
There was nothing to say to that.
“If I help you,” she said, “will you return the favor someday, if I should happen to need it?”
“Absolutely.”
We both smiled on my oath. That was better than shaking hands.
“A white man come by one day in one’a them fancy limos. I think he was a professional driver ’cause he wore a suit and that kinda military hat with the brim only in the front. He took her and her suitcase outta here.”
“Where’d he take her?”
“Up to some rich people house, on a fancy street in LA somewhere.”
“Did she know ’em? Was she gonna work for ’em?”
“Work, yeah. To take care of some old lady. Andit, Ortit, sumpin’.”
It was good to go down to the Orchid. Being there reminded me of things that most of my people would rather forget. We’d rather forget, all the time knowing that the only way to survive is to remember.
4
Dave Kleiger, the Russian grocer across the street from the Orchid, could not remember meeting a man matching the description of Santangelo Burris, and he had never heard of an Easy Rawlins. So I left the wide swath of Black LA for an address John had given me. That was on Cherokee Avenue in Hollywood. I didn’t want to go there, where Brother Forest was supposed to have set up shop, but seeing him would be like a crash course for ring-rusted instincts.