Read the Excerpt: Farewell, Amethystine by Walter Mosley
1
“Naw, naw, man. Shit no. They wanna kick her outta that school because she a Black woman want the Constitution to practice what it preach. All kindsa white revolutionaries and, and, and activist teachers up there at UCLA and they don’t make a peep about them.”
“But, Raymond,” Tinsford “Whisper” Natley rumbled, “they say she’s a Marxist, a communist.”
“So? It’s a free country, ain’t it?” my friend challenged.
Raymond Alexander, Saul Lynx, Whisper, and I were sitting around the conference table in my office at the back of WRENS‑L Detective Agency.
Mostly on Monday mornings we got together to discuss events in the news. Monday was a good day because the rest of the week you couldn’t trust that we’d all be around. At the top of the week around 9:30, 10:00, my partners would migrate back with paper cups of bitter coffee in hand.
For the past couple of months, Ray, also known as Mouse, had shown up for this informal meeting every other week or so.
This was an unexpected wrinkle. Saul and Tinsford had once asked me to keep him away from our workplace, because Raymond was a career criminal who practiced everything from
racketeering to first‑degree murder. But that request changed on a Wednesday morning in the late fall of ’69.
I was out, going around a few SROs in Inglewood, looking for a missing husband, while Saul was at Canfield Elementary School because his son, Mo, had gotten into a fight. That morning, as every morning, Niska Redman occupied the reception desk and Whisper was in his office.
Somewhere around 11:00 my friend Mouse dropped by. Niska brought Raymond to LA’s best detective’s cubbyhole of an office. There she introduced the man who needed no introduction.
Weeks later Whisper told me that he said, “Easy’s not here, Mr. Alexander.”
“I’m not here for him, brother,” was the heist man’s reply. “It’s you need to hear what I got to say.”
Without even sitting down, Raymond told Whisper that a man named Desmond Devereaux was planning to kill Natley because he got DD’s brother arrested for a killing in Oxnard.
“And how would you know about that?” Whisper was a small man, even smaller than Ray, but he was someone you knew to take seriously.
“He sent a guy ovah to ask me about you.” “Why would he ask you?”
“Because e’rybody knows I know Easy and that’s just one step away from you.”
Tinsford sent Niska home, left messages for me and Saul, and then went out with the deadliest man I knew, to take care of business.
They were gone for two and a half days, after which they never spoke about DD again. I hadn’t heard another word about the man anywhere.
Ever since then Raymond has been welcomed into our Monday morning talks.
As usual it was a rollicking conversation. Each of us had a favorite story in the day’s newspaper. We laughed at the rumor coming from the Turkish countryside: some people there thought that the newest flu epidemic was somehow caused by the moon expedition. The U.S. had similar issues with Russian spy satellites. White parents in Mississippi had a sit‑in complaining about even just the word integration. But it was Angela Davis and UCLA’s attempt to oust her from her teaching position that got Raymond and Tinsford riled.
“But,” Tinsford complained, “the communists want revolution.”
“So did Thomas Jefferson.” Raymond wielded the name as if it was a weapon. For the past few months, he’d been spending his spare time reading heavy tomes of history about politics and race.
But Tinsford had been reading his entire life.
“Jefferson was influenced by the French Revolution, not Karl Marx.”
“Angela was influenced by the Frankfurt School,” Raymond said. I knew right then that he was going to be a whole new kind of threat in the coming decade.
“What school is that?” Saul asked.
“It’s these college professor guys from Germany,” Mouse said. “This guy Herb Marcus, somethin’ like that, works with them. They want things to change, and Angela does too. That’s why the trustees tryin’ to fire her.”
“Mr. Rawlins?” Niska Redman, our office manager, was standing at the door.
“Yeah?”
“That woman, Miss Stoller, the one Mrs. Blue wanted you to talk to. She’s here.”
Niska was tallish for a woman at that time, maybe five nine, and brown like the lighter version of See’s caramel candy. She usually tried to be serious because of her job, but you could tell that she was always ready to laugh.
“Well, guys,” I said to my friends, “I guess it’s time to get back to work.”
And that was it. Saul and Whisper went to their offices. Mouse left for a world of bad men, bank robbers, and bloodletters.
Niska backed up into the hall, allowing the men to file by, then she returned followed by a woman two shades darker than her.
“Amy Stoller,” Niska announced.
The potential client was wearing an ivory‑colored dress that had a high collar and a knee‑level hem that flared just a bit as if maybe responding to an errant breeze.
Already standing to see my friends out, I took a step in the potential client’s direction and held out a hand.
“Easy Rawlins,” I said.
“Nice to meet you.” She obliged the gesture with a firm grip. “Have a seat,” I offered, motioning at the three chairs set
before my gargantuan desk.
I’d started WRENS‑L Detective Agency with a quasi‑legal windfall I’d come upon years before. Saul and Whisper came in as partners, but they made me take the big office. I’d accepted the allocation with only mild trepidation. I wasn’t humble among friends or clients. But as an orphan in Houston’s Fifth Ward, I’d learned that, in the world at large, if people knew you had something, they were liable to take it.
I made it behind the desk. Ms. Stoller waited for me to sit down before she settled in. This struck me along with something else about her, a subtle scent she wore that was reminiscent of the bouquet of some ancient forest, welcoming but having hardly any trace of sweetness.
She was in her mid‑to-late twenties with satin brown skin and amber eyes on a face that was wide and unusually sensual. Her mouth was also wide, promising a beautiful smile. Stoller’s eyes being lighter than her skin meant something that I couldn’t put my finger on. But that wasn’t a bother, not at all.
“It’s a very nice office,” she said. “Kind of like the master bedroom in an apartment, or even a house.”
“The whole building used to be a rich man’s home till the furniture store downstairs bought it.”
She let her head tilt to the left and gave up half a grin.
I knew that this was a very important moment but had no idea if it would be for the good or not.
2
“How do you know Jewelle, Ms. Stoller?”
“I work for her and, you know, she treats all the women in the office kinda like they’re family.”
There was an aura of unconscious elegance surrounding her.
This brought a question to mind.
“Is Amy your given name or is it short for something else?
Amanda? Amelia?”
Smiling she said, “Amethystine.”
I was, unexpectedly, enchanted by the name. It seemed somehow. . . perfect. For a moment I didn’t know what to say and she had nothing to add. This quietude didn’t bother either one of us. We sat comfortably in the expanding silence.
“So, um,” I stammered. “How’d you come to work for Jewelle? You study business or real estate at school?”
Showing more of her left cheek than the right she said, a little shyly, “I was working for her husband at the insurance company P9, and she told him that she wanted to meet me.”
“What you do for Jackson?” “You know Mr. Blue?”
“I knew Jackson back in the biblical days when he robbed Peter and then robbed Paul too.”
That got me the broad grin I’d been searching for.
“I went to P9 to apply for a job in statistics and they gave me a test. I guess I did pretty good on it because the human resources lady sent me to Mr. Blue’s office.”
My eyebrows rose a bit. “What?” she asked.
“Jackson’s the highest‑ranking vice president of P9. I can’t even think of a reason why he’d want to meet an entry‑level applicant. Did he know you or somethin’?”
“We had met. He’s the one told me about the kind of jobs they had. But I didn’t tell him that I was applying.”
“Then why would they send you all the way up to the thirty-first floor?”
“I asked him that very same question,” she said. “You know what he told me?”
“What?”
“He said that those white people in personnel don’t never hire Black people and so he asked the president . . . ummmm.” She snapped her fingers a few times trying to remember the name.
“Jean‑Paul Villard,” I said, filling in the blank.
“Yeah. Jackson asked Mr. Villard to tell human resources to send the colored applicants to Mr. Blue if they did well on the written test. And it was a good thing they did.”
“Because he hired you?”
“Not only that. You see, they ask you about your education before getting the transcripts, and I lied, sayin’ that I graduated from USC with a business degree.”
“That must’a tickled Jackson.”
“Yeah. He said that he didn’t make it past the fifth grade in school.”
“And he failed the fourth grade.” We were having an excellent time.
“But then Jewelle got involved,” I prompted. “Yeah.” She seemed a little bit shy again.
“You don’t have to explain that one. Jackson is a genius by nature and a dog by nurture. He’s been kicked more times than he’s been kissed. I know exactly what happened.”
“There was never anything inappropriate between us.” Amethystine’s words bordered on anger.
“I believe ya. What happened was one night Jackson probably said at the dinner table that he had a Black woman working in mathematical predictions, what he calls statistics. And in that moment Jewelle heard that little twang of excitement Jackson gets when a girl strikes his fancy.”
“Mmm,” was her reply. She nodded, signaling, maybe unconsciously, that we should get down to business.
“So,” I said. “What can I do for you, Ms. Stoller? “Miss Stoller.”
With a smile I said, “What can I do for you, Miss Stoller?”
“I used to be Mrs. Fields, wife of Curt Fields. That’s why I’m here.”
I waited patiently.
Then, a bit hesitantly, but with no discernible shyness, she said, “Curt and I were married soon after we met. When he proposed to me, I thought that I’d never meet a man as good again. I said yes and we were doing really well, really happy, you know?”
“I’ve been there,” I said. Our eyes met and connected.
“I was very happy,” Amethystine Stoller averred, “and then, well, I got bored. So I left him.”
“You got divorced?” Maybe there was a hopeful little quiver in my chest.
“Yes. But . . . we’re still friends. I liked him and, I think, he was hoping we’d get back together again. I told him that I wouldn’t do that; I wouldn’t do that to him. I mean, he deserves somebody who would love him like a woman does a man, you know?”
“Yes, I do.”
“But even with all that, when I got into a kind of a jam, he helped me without askin’ for nuthin’. So I feel like I owe him.”
“What kind of jam?”
“That doesn’t have anything to do with why I’m here.” “Okay. Why are you here?”
It was work getting at what she wanted, but less like pulling teeth and more like plucking apples from the upper tiers of a golden tree. There I sat, in the gilt‑green dome of my imagination.
“You’re very patient,” the young woman observed.
“I don’t have all the time in the world, but you got an hour penciled in on the calendar.”
Amethystine studied these words a moment or two and then said, “I still feel very kindly toward Curt, and so when his parents called me yesterday I knew I had to do something.”
“What did your ex‑in‑laws want?”
“The Sunday before last he told them that he was going out with some friends.”
“He lives with his parents?”
“No. He makes a good living and has his own place. He’s just a good son. Tells his mother everything. You know . . . boring.”
“So,” I encouraged. “He called and said he was going out.” “And nobody’s heard from him since.”
“Black kid.” “White . . . man.”
There was nothing this woman said that I did not like. Her sentences were pithy, like a combat general’s orders in the heat of battle.
But she didn’t look military. The dark skin under her pale dress made her seem, somehow, vulnerable.
“Okay,” I said. “A missing person. Gone a week. Tell me about him.”
Amethystine Stoller smiled at me like a refugee seeking passage at a foreign border. The emigrant had shown her papers and now she was being ushered through.
“Curt’s a forensic accountant. He works mostly for courts and lawyers, prosecutors and, if they can afford it, the defense. He uses computer files, libraries, three part‑time research assistants, and a newspaper clipping service that works out of Chicago. He goes after hidden wealth, the movement of money, and what Curt calls false fronts.”
I was finding it hard to concentrate on the words she was saying. This because she reminded me of a woman named Anger. Anger’s mother was a Black woman named Angel, her father a high‑yellow killer called Shadow Lee. A dark‑skinned, sharp-eyed young woman, Anger worked the back rooms of whatever job she was hired for. And she only did jobs that were in opposition to whatever law there was. For a long time, she worked for a small warehouse that bought and sold stolen goods off Black dockworkers employed at the Galveston port.
When I was fifteen, and nearly a full‑grown man, Anger was seventeen and had been on her own at least half a dozen years.
* * *
“I feel guilty,” Amethystine said, shocking me back to the present.
“Guilty about what?”
“About leaving him. He was pretty useless when it came to dealing with anything but numbers. Numbers and long hours at work.”
Also boring, I thought.
In a bizarre turn of mind, I got the urge to ask her if she was going to get me killed. But instead I said, “I’m gonna need his parents’ information, and his.”
“You mean like their names and addresses?” “Yes.”
“I don’t know Curt’s new address. I mean, I don’t see him very often because, because he needs to get over me.”
Nodding, I pushed a yellow legal pad and yellow No. 2 pencil across the desk.
While writing she said, “Mrs. Blue told me to come see you, but she didn’t tell me what it would cost.”
“Jewelle and I work on an old‑school monetary system.” Looking up, Amethystine asked, “What’s that?”
“We trade in favors.” “Trade?”
“Back and forth like two tennis players in hell.” “Is there some favor you need from me?”
“No, at this point all I need is information.”
She worked the pencil across the blue‑lined yellow sheet with intensity. It was then that I noticed she was left‑handed.
“Do you have any idea of where Curt might be?” “No.”
It was the first lie she uttered. That’s when I decided, for sure, to kick the tires on her missing person case.
“Does he have any enemies?” I asked, as PI protocol demanded. “I couldn’t say. I mean, he doesn’t run around with a bad crowd or anything, but he’s kind of innocent, know what I mean?”
“Maybe, but why don’t you explain?”
“He’s a soft touch, gives away money on the street to anybody who says they need it. He believes that people mostly tell the truth and keep their promises. He’s a white man but I don’t think that ever, even once, he thought there was anything unusual about us being together.”
“You don’t share his beliefs?” I teased, mildly. “Do you?”
“Your number on that paper?” I asked in reply. She took up the pencil once more.
3
For quite a while after Amethystine had departed, I stared out the window at our backyard neighbor’s picnic table.
Not long before, a quintet of hippies lived there, growing marijuana in a jury‑rigged greenhouse. They escaped capture by the LAPD because I had warned them of the threat, and now a young couple lived there with their toddler son.
Anger Lee and I were walking down a dark Galveston alley late one Wednesday night. I was smitten with her even though she treated me like a little brother.
I’d just gotten off from my job as a dishwasher at an upscale bordello on Rent Street. Halfway down the alley a big Black man jumped out, slapped me, and then pulled out a jagged-looking black‑bladed knife.
“Bitch! You comin’ wit’ me!” the attacker yelled at Anger.
Fifteen‑year‑old man that I was, I jumped up and tried my best to demolish our attacker. Instead, I was laid on my back with a knife wound in my left shoulder and a concussion that lasted nine days. Even though I was outmanned, my attack was a success because it gave Anger the chance to pull out her long-barreled .41‑caliber pistol.
“Back it up, suckah!” she yelled. Then there was a shot.
“Mr. Rawlins?”
Niska was standing at the door, her words a beacon set on leading me out of a nightmare.
“Yeah, baby?” I said, speaking words in the language of a long‑ago life.
“Can we talk?” “Come on in.”
She crossed the threshold.
One of the many things I liked about our office manager was that, whenever she was nervous, it showed in her gait.
Stiffly she moved to the central visitor’s chair. We then sat in unison.
“What can I do for you, Niska?”
The differences between our office manager and Amethystine were many.
Niska was open and aboveboard, a churchgoer, and careless about things that did not matter.
“I’ve been here over two years,” she began. “Before that I worked for Mr. Natley.”
I nodded.
“That’s a long time,” she added. “Since I was sixteen.” “It is.”
“I like this job and, and I’m pretty good at it.”
“And now you want a raise,” I said with absolute certainty. “No. You pay me more than most kids my age get. It’s just that
I don’t want to be an office manager forever.” “That’s why you’re going to college, right?”
“I want to be a PI like you.”
These words created a vacuum in my mind. I didn’t see Niska as a detective. As a matter of fact, I had never met a woman PI. In my experience, back then, women only did men’s jobs if they worked on a farm or if the men had gone off to war.
“What do you think about that?” Niska wanted to know.
Searching for the right words, I asked, “You talk to Whisper ’bout this?”
“Tinsford treats me like he my uncle or sumpin’. He always comes and picks me up if I ever work after nightfall and if he’s out of town he gets somebody else to do it.”
“But you drive your own car,” I argued against the man not there.
“They walk me to my car.”
Her look was plaintive, and I could understand why.
“I can see why a man like Tinsford would think he had to protect a young woman,” I said. “That’s just the world we come from.” “But it’s not the world we live in, Mr. Rawlins,” she com‑ plained. “Just as much as a man, a woman has to follow her
dreams. She has to be able to take care of herself too.” “And your dream is to be a private detective?” “Uh‑huh.”
“But why? I thought you were studyin’ business or somethin’.” “You remember when I told you about the guy I met at the TM retreat a few months ago?” “Yeah.”
“He’s a patrol cop and wants to be an investigator one day. When he found out that I worked for two Black detectives he was so excited. It made me realize how good and important your job is.”
“You’re a big part of this job, N.”
“I know. I mean I know that I help. But you’re out there in the world making sense out of things that are hidden, secrets. Reggie wants to do that, and while he was saying it, I realized that I did too.”
“Reggie’s a Black man?” I asked, realizing how often that kind of question came to mind.
“Yeah. And he wants to be like you and Whisper.” “And you do too?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Because this work makes more sense than book learning does. Human sense.”
I was impressed.
“What do you think?” Niska insisted.
“The first thing is you have to talk to Tinsford. You can tell him that I support you and that I’ll be part of your education. But he has to agree. I won’t go against a partner like that.”
Niska gave me a long, soulful look and then nodded.
“You’re right,” she said. “If I want something like this, I have to stand up for myself. Thank you, Mr. Rawlins.”
She stood up, held out a hand for me to shake, and then walked out with confidence and aplomb.
After Niska was back at her desk, my mind wandered for a while. There were many thoughts swimming around up there. Mouse talking revolution, Niska wanting to put her life on the line. And, most important, Amethystine Stoller, who somehow reminded me of a woman named Anger with a smoking gun in her hand.
I nodded to myself and picked up the phone.
* * *
“Commander Suggs’s line,” informed a woman’s voice that was weathered by age.
“You sound sad, Myra.”
“Oh. It’s you, Mr. Rawlins.” Her words seemed to be coming up off some dismal memory like mist from a stagnant lake. “Can I help you?”
“He in?”
Without Myra Lawless saying another word, the phone made three loud clicks and then another line began to ring.
“Captain McCourt.” The answering voice was not only deep but also musical.
“Anatole?” “Who is this?” “Easy Rawlins.”
“What do you want?” I was not Mr. McCourt’s favorite per‑ son.
“I was trying to call Melvin, got Myra, and she passed me along to you, I guess.”
There was silence for a beat.
“Commander Suggs is away on vacation,” Anatole McCourt said as if reading the words off a cue card. “He’ll be back in a couple of weeks.”
I’d seen Mel only five days earlier. He’d told me then that he was going on vacation to Paris with Mary Donovan — his live‑in girlfriend who was born and breastfed on the other side of the tracks.
Mel and I were having breakfast at Tony’s Bistro Diner on Flower Street. We liked going there for our now‑and‑again
morning meetings because Mary had him on a forever diet and I’d always get the strawberry waffles.
“Last time I was in Paris was during the Allied occupation,” I’d said. “When you goin’?”
“May, before it gets too hot.”
Mel took a four‑week vacation once every two years; that was a hard‑and‑fast rule. So Anatole was lying, but that didn’t matter. Conversing with liars was my bread and butter.
“Well then, maybe you could help me, Captain.” “What do you need?”
“I’ve been asked to look for a missing person. A man named Curt Fields.”
“Negro?”
“White.”
“What’s he done?” “Disappeared.”
“And who is the client?” “His wife. Mrs. Fields.”
The cop went silent, but my mind did not wander. I was trying to read his thoughts over the phone.
“Okay,” he said at last. “I’ll look into it. Why don’t we meet at Clifton’s around one?”
I knew then that whatever was going on with Mel, there was something wrong with it. McCourt saw me as the Element and himself as the Cure. We’d traded information from time to time, but never had he asked for a meet.
I called Mel’s home phone but there was no answer. This was strange because Mel was one of the few people I knew who had an answering machine.
Next I flipped through my Rolodex looking for the card containing the number for Pink Hippo #3. After eight rings, an answering machine did engage.
“Nobody’s here right now,” a man’s deep voice proclaimed. “If you want somethin’ then leave a message and somebody might get back to you.”
When the beep sounded, I said, “Easy Rawlins,” and then hung up.
4
Clifton’s downtown cafeteria was replete with twelve‑foot‑high grotesque tiki sculptures carved from redwood tree trunks, bamboo‑themed furniture, and women servers in tight‑fitting, calf‑length, white silk dresses that had bright‑green blades of grass emblazoned on them.
It was a buffet‑style place with long cafeteria lines where you filled up your tray with whatever food you wanted. Cashiers awaited payment at the ends of the long aluminum tracks.
There were fifty or more patrons sitting at tables or walking down the line, pushing dark trays and studying the offerings — which were anything but Hawaiian.
“Can I help you, sir?” a woman asked.
She stood at the host’s podium. Her name tag read daisy but she was Asian, probably Chinese, slender, with a forlorn look in her eyes and a smile on her lips. She was in her mid‑thirties, an age that was kind of a DMZ dividing youth from adulthood. Her face was long; maybe that’s why I felt she was sad.
“I’m meeting someone for lunch,” I said. “Do you see them?”
She wasn’t being short or rude. Clifton’s was a busy place with three floors of dining space and no waitstaff except for drinks.
“No,” I said. “Maybe he left a note or something for me at your desk.”
“I don’t think—”
“His name is Anatole McCourt and he’s quite tall.”
Daisy’s head moved back maybe two inches, the kind of reaction any mammal might have when they catch the odor of something unexpected.
“Oh,” she said. “Yes. Follow me.”
She led me through the first‑floor dining room to a stairway that wound upward past the second level to the third. We walked down a slender hallway that had hanging framed oil paintings of flowers every four feet or so. Finally, we came to a curtained doorway. This she gestured for me to go through.
On the other side of the beaded green blind was a solitary balcony that looked down onto the second‑floor dining room. The table there could have seated four easily, but Anatole McCourt was there alone.
When I realized that he had arrived before me I considered walking away and taking my own unplanned vacation.
Anatole McCourt was tall and beautiful by masculine standards. He followed the law to the letter and was chivalrous to women. All that and he’d never so much as shaken my hand. Now I was invited into his private booth. And he was early, which meant that he was hungry for something other than teriyaki chicken thighs.
“Private balcony, huh?” I said, taking the seat across from him. “You want a drink?”
“Do I need one?”
“Up to you.” He was almost chipper. “Maybe later.”
“You hungry?” the cop offered. “Sure. Wanna go down to the line?” “No.”
He pressed a black button set on the balcony’s upper banister shelf. Immediately, a short mustachioed man came in through the beaded curtain.
“Yes, Captain?” the swarthy Caucasian inquired. “Bring us out some appetizers and two of the regular.”
After the waiter was gone, I wondered aloud, “I didn’t know they had table service at Clifton’s?”
“They do for me.”
It’s funny how we, men in America and probably around the world, can compete over anything at all.
“So,” I said, “why we got to meet here instead of your office?” “The man you’re looking for has been identified as a possible part of a numbers scheme being run by a man named Shadrach.”
“What part of the scheme is Fields?”
“We don’t know. He is almost certainly helping them hide the proceeds, but he may also have something to do with planning.”
“Racketeering?”
“They aren’t sure. But they’d like any information you have.” “I don’t know anything. Woman, sayin’ she was his wife, came
to my office and said he was missing, that his parents went to the police, but they didn’t find anything.”
“And what have you found out?” “Mel was the first person I called.”
The curtain parted and the mustachioed man came in with a
tall Black waiter carrying a pupu platter that was overflowing with skewers of teriyaki beef, stewed chicken, and butterflied shrimp, along with sweet pork ribs, chicken wings, fried rice balls, and cracked cold crab claws.
After the platter was installed at the center of the table, they brought in two meat‑loaf plates with side dishes of mashed potatoes and short‑cut wax beans.
“Anything else?” the head waiter asked Anatole. “Yeah, bring me a Laphroaig.”
“Right away, Captain.”
He departed, leaving us to feast.
I could feel my heart working. Anatole McCourt was not the kind to share police information, not to mention their resources, with a man like me. A Black man, a fake cop, a friend of the notorious Raymond “Mouse” Alexander — I was everything a man like McCourt despised.
The waiter must have had the drink waiting because he returned with it just that fast. He put the peaty liquor down in front of McCourt and bowed his way out again.
“Okay,” I said. “I give.”
“What do you mean?” Anatole savored the first sip.
“Look, man, you don’t like me. You never did. You wouldn’t even talk to me if it wasn’t for Mel. So, you got me here to talk about somethin’ specific.”
“Yes. Of course. I was asked by the men investigating Fields to get you to share what you know and what you find.”
“No.”
“No, you won’t share?”
“No, that’s not why we’re here. You never work with people like me. It’s against your nature. You’d rather let killers and rapists get away than be in debt to me. You think that you’ll catch the bad guys later, on some other beef. No. What is it we really doin’ here, Anatole?”
The beautiful Irishman downed the rest of his double shot. He’d savored the sip but needed that gulp to keep him from throwing me off the balcony. He could probably count on one hand the number of times he’d had to come clean with someone like me.
“We’re looking for Mary Donovan,” he admitted. The tops of his perfectly sculpted earlobes were tinting red.
“What for?”
“That’s police business.”
“Mel’s a friend’a mine. I thought he was your rabbi.” “We’re not asking you about Commander Suggs.”
“I once asked Mel how he explains his relationship with Ms.
Donovan. You know what he told me?”
Anatole didn’t say anything, but I could feel his attention mag‑ nify.
“He said that she was his one external organ.” “So, you refuse to help?”
“What’s goin’ on with Mel, man?”
The juggernaut cop’s face twisted. He wanted to hurt me. After maybe half a minute he stood up from his chair and said, “Finish your food, Rawlins, it might be your last meal as a free man.”
That was an exit line, but McCourt paused, thinking that maybe I’d be afraid enough to fold.
I looked up at him, considering the threat. Anatole was a brawler, a bad man with his fists. There was no question that he could have beaten me to death right there and then.
But I had just turned fifty. The average life span of Negro men in that year was sixty. He had more to lose than I did, and besides, Melvin Suggs was my friend.
When he saw that I wasn’t going to cave, the cop stormed out of our meeting place.
I devoured two wings and one rice ball, then made my way down the stairs to the basement toilets. Between the men’s and women’s doors was an old‑fashioned phone booth with an upholstered seat.
My adopted son, Jesus, pronounced Hey Zeus by those who knew him, answered, “Hello?” on the first ring.
“Hey, Juice,” I hailed. “Hi, Dad.”
He’d been sexually molested before his third birthday and had no idea of where he was from or who his people were. He had the features of Native Americans mixed in with a touch of Spanish blood. Raised till the age of five with a Mexican family, Jesus then came to finish off the sentence of childhood with me.
Deep‑sea fisherman, long‑distance runner, husband, and the father of my granddaughter, Essie, Jesus was a better man than I at less than half my age.
For a few years he and his wife, Benita Flagg, had lived in northern Alaska. Jesus, whom we mostly called Juice, owned his own fishing boat and made good money. But a couple of days before Melvin Suggs went missing, he and his family came to stay with me and Feather in Brighthope Canyon. Essie had grown into a toddler and Juice had a fairly fresh wound on the right side of his jaw.
* * *
“How you doin’, son?” I asked from the basement of Clifton’s. “Good. It’s twenty below in Alaska and I’m in a T‑shirt.” “Thought you liked the cold.”
“I liked the people, the salmon when they ran. But the cold up there would kill you if you let it.”
“What you guys up to?”
“Feather and Benita makin’ dinner. A couple of Feather’s girlfriends comin’. You gonna be here?”
“I don’t think so. I got this job.”
“Okay. We’ll be around. Wanna talk to Feather?”
Over the few moments of silence that it took Feather to pick up the receiver, I ruminated on how lucky I was to have a family at all.
“Hi, Daddy,” Feather said with great exuberance. “Hi, honey, how are you?”
“Mr. Fenton, the English teacher, said that everyone should say exactly what they felt and Lonnie Laughton said that Mr. Fenton was a bastard for not lettin’ people study communists and stuff like that. And, and, and then Mr. Fenton kicked Lonnie out for usin’ foul language but that wasn’t fair because he said that we could say whatever we felt . . .”
She went on for two minutes or so, slowly shifting from one subject to another. She was going to be in a swimming competition and she kind of liked bad‑boy Laughton. She wanted to take the PSAT early and graduate a semester or two before schedule.
“How are you, Daddy?” she asked, surprising me some. “I’m gonna be kinda late tonight, baby girl.”
“What you doin’?”
“Looking for people who aren’t there.”
5
That was back in the last few years when Santa Monica was still almost a village. I drove to an address on Maritime Lane that sat across the street from a nameless garden park. If you had the inclination, you could walk through the park, descending past the lawns and shrubs across an asphalt bike path and, finally, to the beach.
Matchbook houses painted in pastel colors perched there on the rise looking out over the Pacific, the largest continuous expanse on the face of the earth.
Toward the center of the block there was a wood‑frame Cali‑ fornia bungalow painted pale pink behind the barest strip of lawn. The front porch was one step up and the two chairs on the deck were covered with windblown leaves under a thin crust of silt.
Approaching the front door, I stopped for a moment. It had been a big day and the sun hadn’t yet set. There I was, driven forward by just a name from a woman whose mere presence plowed up my earliest adolescent memories.
The front door of the house was eggshell white behind a green screen. I considered walking away from there. I might have done so if the muted door hadn’t swung inward.
“Can I help you?” asked a small woman.
She was white and stout like some elf or sprite from a German fairy tale. Her head was large, covered in coiffed gray, and her eyes, behind crystalline glasses, held on to a strong blue.
“Hi,” I said. “My name is Ezekiel Rawlins.” Those blue‑stained orbs asked, And?
“I’m a private detective. A woman named Amethystine Stoller retained me to help you with the disappearance of your son, Curt.” The little elf‑woman’s mouth opened slightly, and she took a step backward, becoming partially submerged in the shadows of the house.
Then a man, the same height as the woman, stepped forward — from nowhere, it seemed.
“What’s that again?” he asked me.
Where the woman was solidly built, her male counterpart looked as if life had eaten away much of the substance of his manhood. Once blue, his eyes were now gray, and his shoulders were sharp under the drab green T‑shirt.
I repeated word for word what I had said to the woman. “Amy?” he replied.
“Yeah.”
The three of us stood there for a moment, almost as if the conversation was over.
Then another man, shorter, older, and more slender still, emerged from the oblivion of the interior.
“What’s your name?” he asked in a stronger voice than either of the others.
“Ezekiel Rawlins. They call me Easy.”
The newest cast member of our improvised scene was smiling and friendly, wearing a sporty buff‑colored suit, dark‑brown
shirt, and true‑yellow silk tie. He pushed the screen door open and said, “Come on in, Easy. You need something to drink?”
The living room was twelve by twenty feet with a low, eight‑foot ceiling and a thin tan carpet made from some grainy, synthetic fabric.
There were two short burgundy couches that were set together to form an el. I took the settee facing the front door while my three hosts fit easily onto the other sofa.
We sat there for a moment. The front door was still open, the Pacific Ocean lounged under slowly darkening blue.
“I’m Harrison,” the oldest of the family piped. “Harrison Fields.”
“Curt’s father?”
“No,” the other man murmured as he shook his jowls. “I’m Curt’s father . . . Alastair. And this is Curt’s mother, my wife, Winsome.”
“Winsome Barker‑Fields,” the woman added. “You say that Amy hired you to look for Curt?”
“Amethystine works for a friend of mine, and she, my friend, suggested that your ex‑daughter‑in‑law call me. I do this kind of work for a living.”
“We don’t have any money,” Alastair claimed. He was leaning forward, elbows on knees and hands clasped.
“That’s all taken care of, sir.”
“Where’d Amy get money like that?” he demanded. “This is a favor for the woman she works for.”
“Are you a real detective?” Winsome asked.
Instead of trying to explain, I leaned over, dug out my wallet from a back pocket, and produced my detective’s license. She read it closely and then tried to hand it to her husband, but he waved it off. Harrison took it instead.
“You’ve already done more than the Santa Monica PD,” the elder Fields said, standing up and leaning over to hand back the ID. “We had to go down to the station and all they did was have us fill out a form like a fucking application for a job.”
“Harrison!” Winsome said sharply. “I’m just sayin’.”
“You don’t have to curse.”
“I’m sure the police are doing their job,” I said. “But it’s always good to have extra eyes on the lookout.”
“We don’t have any money,” Alastair said again.
“I understand that, sir. Amethystine and my friend have cov‑ ered all costs.”
Alastair nodded, but it didn’t feel like he understood. “Amethystine . . .” I began.
Winsome grunted when I said the name.
“She told me,” I continued, “that she’d heard from you that he was missing and wanted to help.”
“She could have helped by leaving him alone in the first place,” Winsome said.
“Don’t listen to them,” Harrison declared, somehow sounding friendly. “You know, we’re farming stock from rural Ohio. Peo‑ ple back home don’t trust anything new or different. But you’re right, an extra pair of eyes will see things that others don’t under‑ stand.”
I nodded slightly, accepting and agreeing with his words. “What I don’t understand is why you’re here in the first place,”
Alastair said.
“I went to talk to the police in Los Angeles . . .” I began.
“Why?” Alastair challenged.
“What do you mean why?” Harrison asked his younger brother. “Curt works in LA. He lives there.”
“I asked the man why he’s here,” was the younger brother’s answer.
“The LA police said that your son was doing some kind of business with guys that were, um, suspicious. Did he tell you about any of the people he was working with?”
Three little white faces turned toward me. They seemed like children then. I could almost understand why Amethystine got involved with her ex’s disappearance.
“No,” Winsome replied. “Curt never talked too much about his job.”
“Are the people he’s working with crooks?” Alastair wanted to know.
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
“What do you need from us, Mr. Rawlins?” Harrison asked. “Anything useful. Friends, clubs, sports he might play or go to watch.”
“When he was a kid he liked to play checkers,” Alastair pulled out of memory.
“He has a baseball card collection in his room,” Winsome added. “And, and, and he has a Japanese pen pal.”
“What’s his name?”
The parents thought really hard on this question. Every once in a while, they’d toy with a syllable or two, but with little progress.
“Damn,” Harrison said. “It’s Eiko Ishida. Don’t you two ever listen to Curt?”
“Where does this Eiko live?” I asked.
“In Japan,” Alastair said in a tone that called me fool. “Where else you gonna find a Jap?”
Raised on a steady diet of white mouths saying nigger‑this and nigger‑that, I was half‑ready to walk out of that matchbook of a house. I might have done it if Winsome hadn’t spoken up.
“Be quiet, Al,” she said. “Can’t you see the man wants to help?” “He wants my money, that’s what he wants,” her husband replied.
“Do you have Curt’s current address?” I asked anyone.
“He’s out in Culver City, but we don’t know the street address,” Winsome admitted.
“You don’t know where your son lives?”
“We never drive far, and he comes to see us. He only moved out a few months ago.”
“He moved here after divorcing Amethystine?” “Yes,” Winsome said. “Of course. Why wouldn’t he?” “House seems kinda small for four people.”
“The bedrooms are small but there’s four of ’em back in that rabbit warren,” Harrison said, pointing at a door at the back of the living room.
“We have his phone number,” Winsome added.
“That wouldn’t help me. But maybe you have the numbers of some of his friends.”
“No, no. We never called his friends. Maybe I could remember some of their last names.”
“What about Giselle?” Harrison suggested to his sister‑in‑law. “Who’s that?” I asked.
Looking both distressed and distracted, Winsome stood up from the red sofa and walked toward and then through the doorway that Harrison had said led to a warren.
There was silence among the men for a few moments, and then . . .
“How could you make a living doing work for nuthin’?” asked Alastair.
“I usually charge seventy‑five dollars a day.”
“A day!” the penny‑pinching farmer complained. “A day?” “Plus expenses. That way I can afford to do work pro bono
now and again.”
“Seventy‑five a day. Most I ever made was two fifty a week.
And I’m a white man.”
You certainly are, I thought.
From the corner of my eye I could see Winsome coming through the rabbit door. She was holding a slip of paper in her left hand. She stared at the note until reaching me. Then she held it out away from her body as if she wanted to be free of it.
“Here,” she said.
“What’s this?” I asked, taking the offering. “Giselle’s number, of course.”
“Who is she?”
“Some woman Curt knows. He told us if he didn’t answer his home phone we were to call this one.”
“And did you call her?” “No.”
I wanted to ask why not, but there are some mysteries not worth solving.
Turning my attention to the phone number, I saw that Winsome’s handwriting was lovely. There was the first name and the number rendered in loving cursive.
“What’s Giselle’s last name?”
“I don’t know,” Winsome said. “We never met.”
Alastair’s wife was standing in front of me. I realized that she wanted me to leave.
“Is she a Black girl?” I asked, brandishing the paper. “I have no idea.”
I stood up then and the lady took three steps back, almost to the wall.
“I’ll walk you out, Mr. Rawlins,” Harrison offered. He levered himself up by putting one hand on his brother’s shoulder.
Alastair looked at me and said, in wonder, “Seventy‑five dollars.”
I was parked down the block from the Fieldses’ house. Harrison walked me all the way to the driver’s side. When I opened the door, he put a hand on my left biceps.
“Curt’s been doing some gambling out in Gardena,” he confided. “His parents don’t approve so they don’t know. I don’t know about the people he worked with, but there’s some guys he gambles with sometimes.”
“You know any of their names?”
“Just two. One’s named Shadrach. Shad works for a guy named Purlo, he manages the poker club.”
“What’s the name of the place?”
“I don’t really know. Might not even have one. It’s the kinda place you have to know to go there.”
“What do they look like?” I asked. “Shadrach and Purlo.” “You know, white guys. Tall like you. One a little less and the
other an inch or so more. Um, uh, yeah . . . Purlo has a little scar over the left side of his mouth.”
“A noticeable scar?”
After a few seconds’ consideration Harrison smiled and then nodded.
I liked him. He was a familiar type. “So, you’ve been to this place?” I asked.
“Yeah. Once or twice. Curt took me because he knew I wouldn’t criticize or tell his parents.”
“What’s the address?”
“It’s on South Normandie Avenue around 166th Street, but that won’t do you any good.”
“Why not?”
“Cops busted it some time ago and, and I don’t think it opened back up.”
“You know anyplace else Curt might be?” “Not really.”
I handed him my business card and said, “Thanks anyway. If you think of anything, you could reach me at this number. And tell your brother that I’ll never charge him a dime.”
“I’ll tell him,” the old man said on a laugh, “but he’ll never believe it.”
The nearest gas station was at the northeast corner of Lincoln and Pico. There I checked the oil and topped off the tank. After that I drove to the southeast corner of the lot and availed myself of the phone booth.
“Hello,” she answered on the fourth ring.
“Miss Giselle Simmons?” I asked in my most courteous neutral voice, what white southerners call a northern accent, while Black folk call it a white voice.
She was quiet for a moment.
“You must have the wrong number,” she said finally. “I’m Giselle Fitzpatrick.”
“Oh, Lord,” I improvised. “My name’s Jack Farmer. I offer magazine subscriptions over the phone. You know, they give me a list of names and numbers and I make cold calls to see if you ladies might like a cheap subscription to Redbook, Glamour, or Vanity Fair. They must have mixed up your first name with somebody else’s last.”
“Well,” she said clearly. “I don’t need any subscriptions.”
With that she hung up, leaving me standing there, receiver in hand, and looking at the rotary dial. I took out another dime and rolled out a number I hadn’t called in a very long time.
“Hello?” she answered.
“Hey.” The word was almost a grunt. “Mr. Rawlins?”
“Yes, it’s me, Karin.”
“Is everything all right?” “Can I come by?”
“Of course,” she replied without hesitation.
Exiting the booth, standing there in the late twilight, and feeling the chilly sea breeze — I realized that I was no longer just gathering information. I was now committed to the case of the missing ex.
About the Book
January 1970 finds Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins, LA’s premier Black detective, at 50 years of age despite all expectations. He has a loving family, a beautiful home, and a thriving investigation agency. All is right with the world… and then Amethystine Stoller, his own personal Helen of Troy, arrives. Her ex-husband is missing. A simple enough case. But even as Easy takes his first step in the investigation he trips. He falls into the memory of things past. Little things, like loss, love, a world war, and a hunger that has eaten at him since he was a Black boy on his own on the streets of Fifth Ward, Houston, Texas.
The missing ex, a young white man named Curt Fields, is found dead. Easy’s only real friend in the LAPD, Melvin Suggs, has gone into hiding rather than allow his femme fatale wife to go to the gas chamber. And that’s only the beginning.
Easy finds himself pressed into a reckoning. All of his success cannot succor his heart. The 1970’s have ushered in new expectations of men and women, Black and White, and Easy has to make a choice that will almost certainly hasten a permanent descent, one that might sunder his soul.
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