The big man leaned back in his chair. This brought a whine from the straining wood joints. What emotion, I wondered, was hiding behind Pinklon’s intense gaze? The blue light made me doubt. He might have just been angry that I was there wasting his time.
“I’ont know who you talkin’ ’bout,” he complained.
The tone of that denial exposed the full range of his fear.
“Come on, man,” I said on a sneer. “Stop lyin’.”
“What you mean — lyin’?”
I learned many things from this reaction. One was that whatever it was Santangelo Burris wanted, it was more than just a call to his grandmother. I also understood that even a man as heartless and reckless as Pinklon was afraid of the woman I was looking for, or, at least, he was afraid of what she represented. Brother Forest had changed. He was older and he had something he didn’t want to lose. Maybe it was a wife and family. Maybe, as time encroached, he’d become aware of death. Whatever it was, Brother Forest had moved to Hollywood out of fear.
All that was a big deal, and I had to concentrate not to laugh in his face.
“What you want wit’ ’er?” the bad man asked.
“What do you care?”
“What you say to me?”
“You heard me. I come here lookin’ for Lutisha James and you tell me you don’t know ’er. If you don’t know, then my business is still mine.”
“Fuck you, Easy Rawlins.”
“Okay.” I made to stand.
“Wait a minute.”
“Okay.” I slumped back down into the chair.
“I might’a heard about a woman of that name.”
“What you hear?”
“Why you lookin’ for her?”
“C’mon, man. Do you know her or don’t you?”
“Who you in dis wit’?”
“Look here,” I said with supreme authority in my voice. “I’m lookin’ for Lutisha James, me, I’m lookin’ for her. If you know where she’s at I might let you in on what I’m doin’. If you don’t, then you don’t.”
The dialect coming off my tongue meant that I had shed most of the ring rust. I was ready to throw down with that man, then and there.
But Pinklon was not so brash. He sneered and gave me some hard looks, but that didn’t mean a thing.
“I didn’t do nuthin’ to that woman,” he testified. “Not a damn thing. She worked a desk just like everybody else and I paid what I promised to.”
That was about as much of an answer as Pinklon was liable to give. Realizing this, I stayed silent.
“So, is she?” he asked.
“Is she what?”
“Don’t you fuck with me, Easy Rawlins. Don’t you fuck with me. I ain’t afraid’a you or your friends.”
“That’s where you and me’s different, Pinky.”
Calling him Pinky was the most dangerous thing I did that year.
“Different how?”
“I’m afraid of banana peels and little girls in pigtails. I’m afraid of a car behind me with no headlights.” I was just talking by that time. He was free to make what he would out of what I said.
“So... so... so she want in?”
“I have no idea what she wants, man. I’m lookin’ for her, not workin’ for her.”
Pinklon was a smart man. Smarter than I am. But he was so scared that his brain was no longer available for logical conclusions. He stared at me in that blue haze like a wildebeest that had his haunches clamped onto by a crocodile.
“Then we ain’t got no business,” he finally realized.
I nodded and stood.
“Why you even come here?” the thug cried out.
“Because I knew that she worked the numbers and I been told that you the only game in town.”
If he wasn’t so relieved by whatever it meant that Lutie James wasn’t after him, I do believe that he would have tried to hurt me. I wasn’t worried, though. No. I wasn’t worried, I was a fool, believing I could make brash challenges against bad men without paying for it.
Luckily Brother Forest could see that impudence in the set of my shoulders, misinterpreting it as true confidence.
“Get the fuck outta here, niggah,” he said.
5
Back in the long aisle of operators, the Knockout was waiting for me. She seemed impressed that I made it out unscathed. Her skin was almost as dark as her boss’s hide, but this blackness was more satin at midnight than diseased misery.
“You get what you wanted?” she asked.
“Some.”
She seemed to like my tone — certainty edged with ambiguity.
“I’ll walk you to the door,” she offered.
Nineteen pair of eyes followed us to the door, which she opened.
The surprise came when she accompanied me into the hall.
“You need anything else?” she asked, closing the door behind.
“Yeah. Do you remember an operator workin’ here name of Lutisha James?”
“Yes, I do.”
“What was she like?”
The policy shop manager took a moment to consider the question and then said, “Lutisha was different.”
“Different how?”
“To begin with, she was extremely intelligent, could speak Spanish and French. She never made a mistake with her paperwork, and you only had to explain an operation to her once. After that she knew whatever it was well enough to teach it to anybody else.”
“Spanish and French you say?”
“She would talk to some of our Latin employees in Spanish and once she said something to me in French.”
“Why she do that?”
“I don’t know,” she said, rather wistfully. “I guess... I guess it felt like she was testing me.”
“Testin’ you for what?”
“Same reason that any house cat swivels its head. They’re always on the hunt, it’s in the blood.”
“You said ‘to begin with,’” I prompted.
“Huh?”
“‘To begin with, she was extremely intelligent,’” I said, repeating her words to me.
“Oh, right. Mr. Frost gives me all the names of the people he wants me to hire, but Miss James came in looking for a job. She was the only one who was ever invited back to his cave. She would go there, have lunch, and come out smelling like scotch.”
“A drinker, huh?”
“She always did her job impeccably.”
“Yeah, but I guess you wouldn’t want the other nineteen operators to start havin’ liquid lunches.”
“There’s no personnel department here, Mr. Rawlins. Here, if the boss wants his friend to have a drink with him, that doesn’t mean I have to let anybody else do so.”
I did like the way she talked.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Ida Lorris.” She held out a hand and I shook it, smiling into her dark auburn eyes.
“So,” she said, still holding my hand. “Who is Ezekiel Rawlins?”
“You mean what do I do for a living?”
“I mean who are you to barge in on Brother Forest and then walk out again without a bruise on your face?”
“I’m a man with many friends.”
“Mr. Frost doesn’t have any friends.”
“I’m not talkin’ about his people.”
“Who then?”
That was when I relaxed from the ordeal of interrogating Brother Forest. I’d been ready for a fight to the death with the numbers man, but now Ida’s talk had switched the dial.
I held my hands palms up to indicate helplessness and said, “I don’t know what to tell ya... People.”
“Anybody could get you in our back room is not just people.”
“Yeah, well, I guess some folks might think that a few of my friends are pretty scary.”
“Like whom?” She pursed her generous lips into a gesture that dared you to kiss them.
I was very impressed to hear her using the object form of who in a two-word sentence.