White butterfly, p.24
White Butterfly, page 24
I walked out of the front door of the municipal building next to city hall with my shoulders hunched and my head down.
“Easy!” he yelled.
I looked up, ready to go down fighting, only to see Raymond Alexander in all his splendor. He wore a close-fitting bright checkered jacket and flared black slacks. His shoes were ivory and his hat close-brimmed. Mouse smiled for miles.
“You look terrible,” he said.
“What you doin’ here, Raymond?”
“I done made yo’ bail, Easy. I got you out.”
“What?”
“Com’on, man, let’s get outta here. Them cops prob’ly take us in fo’loiterin’ fo’long.”
In the car we went past the squat buildings of fifties L.A. down into Watts.
“Where you wanna go, Easy?” Mouse asked after a while.
“You came up with my bail?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Twenty-five hundred dollars?”
“Uh-uh. Twenty-five thousand. Bail bondsman wouldn’t touch it.”
“Where you come up wit’ money like that? You go to Mofass?”
“Tried to but he’s in the hospital.”
“Hospital?”
“Yeah. Some white boys tore him up. He told me to tell you that them men you been doin’ business wit’ is mad in the worst way.”
“Shit. So where’d you get the money?”
“You sure you wanna know?” He was smiling.
“Where?”
“There’s this private poker game out in Gardena. I robbed it.”
“An’ they had that much money?”
“An’ some to boot.”
“You kill anybody?”
“Shot this one guy but I don’t think he gonna die. Maybe just walk funny fo’awhile.”
CHAPTER
38
Bull Horker was found in an alley in San Pedro. He’d been shot seven times in the chest. The police believed that he was killed somewhere else and dumped in that alley. He was found at eight P.M. on the day I was supposed to meet Sylvia and Vernor on the library steps.
The article said that there were signs of a struggle but there was no explanation of what the signs were.
PRIMO AND FLOWER were glad to see us. Jesus was so happy I thought he might even talk. He ran up and put his arms around me and he just wouldn’t let go. I had to walk with his embrace and sit with him on my lap.
MOFASS LOOKED PRETTY GOOD in his hospital bed. The rest gave him a little strength and they wouldn’t let him smoke in the ward. His only problems were a busted hand and three fractures in his left leg.
“They th’owed me down the steps, Mr. Rawlins. They didn’t care if I was dead. They told me that if I lived I should tell my partners that they ain’t playin’.”
Mouse grinned.
“I’ll take care of it, William. You just rest here and try to give up them cigars. You know they gonna kill you faster than DeCampo.”
“It’s killin’ me not to smoke.”
I GAVE MOUSE the names of DeCampo and his associates. I told him their Culver City office address and asked him to visit each and every one of them, on the most private terms.
“I want them to understand that killing Mofass won’t save their lives,” I said. “And, Raymond,” I pointed in his face, “I don’t want nobody dead or even wounded.”
I’ve read many a novel that extolled the virtues of capitalism. Not one of them ever came within a mile of the truth.
I WAS SITTING AT MY DESK in the early evening going over the accounts of the killing of Bull Horker. I was looking for something that might lead me to Vernor. But there was nothing I could see.
I was already used to the silence. The silence we’d lived with before Regina, and then Edna. Jesus was reading a red storybook. And I was still alive.
Then the screech of the gate brought me to the window. There was Quinten Naylor again. He was wearing the same suit he wore the day he brought me to see Bonita Edwards’s body.
I blamed him for Regina leaving me. I blamed him but I knew I was wrong.
He wasn’t surprised to see me open the door before he could knock. I nodded at a chair that stood where the crib had been and he sat down.
I lit a cigarette. He brushed his hand over the top of his head.
“The charges against you have been dropped,” Naylor said.
“Oh? How come?”
“They got the wife in custody.”
“What about Milo?” That little boy was the first one I thought of.
“Juvenile Hall.”
“Yeah. Take it out on the kid. Put him in jail ’cause’a what his old man did.”
“His mother was in on it. She confessed.”
“What? Naw, I don’t believe it. I saw how she acted when I showed her the pictures.”
“She didn’t know then. But after that she began to put things together. Garnett had told her something about the killings before their daughter was killed. She didn’t think anything until after he told her about their granddaughter. He’d been in touch with Robin even after she’d left school. He had to know that she was pregnant.”
“So she found out when he was planning to go after Sylvia?”
“He was scared over the diary. Robin had threatened to come to his office dressed like a whore and with a baby in her arms if he didn’t give her enough money to care for her child.”
“Killed his own child.” I was saddened by even the possibility.
“She drove him to it,” Quinten said. “She was a whore and she just wouldn’t straighten out. Then she threatened him.”
“She drove him to it,” I said. “Well then, what drove her?”
Quinten didn’t understand the question. There was right and wrong for him. He dealt with morality the way Mofass went after money. There is no such thing as a long-term investment, there’s money right now, there’s sin right now. Mofass didn’t see past the money those crooks blinded him with and Quinten Naylor couldn’t see that maybe Vernor Garnett had sown the seeds of his own destruction.
“Where is the father?” I asked.
“He ran after going to meet Sylvia. He killed Bull Horker, we’re pretty sure of that. Then he disappeared with the girl. We found his car in West Hollywood yesterday. Bull’s blood was all over the front seat.”
“What happened to the girl?”
“Nothing yet. All we know is what I said. His name and picture are out there. We’ll get him.”
“I’m sure of that.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re good at gettin’ people, Quinten. You got J. T. Saunders good. When Violette thought I mighta done somethin’ he had me set up faster than you could spit.”
“What are you talking about, Rawlins? When a prosecutor says that someone is extorting him we believe it. Especially when… ”
“When it’s a nigger. Especially then. Yeah. What are you doing here anyway, man? You gonna send me down to jail again?”
Naylor studied a few fingernails before he answered. “I wanted to say I’m sorry.” The words seemed to stick in his mouth. “I always thought that… I don’t know. I just always thought that I could work inside the police and keep my hands clean. I put myself above you. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that I think you live right. But maybe I’m not so much better.”
Maybe Naylor wasn’t so bad either. I didn’t tell him that, though. I didn’t tell him a thing.
CHAPTER
39
OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS things came back into order, after a fashion. Anybody who asked me was told that Regina had gone to visit her sick aunt in Arkansas.
Jack DeCampo came to Mofass’s hospital room—to apologize. He blamed the attack on silent partners and said that he didn’t know about the mayhem until it was already too late.
Mofass didn’t want to let him off at first but he remembered the kind of fear that Mouse could throw into a man.
“You know, Mr. Rawlins,” Mofass told me on the phone, “that man was so pale that he coulda been two white men.”
It was rare that Mofass and I laughed at the same joke.
“When I told’im that our friend was on the payroll and that he didn’t have to be scared I thought he mighta kissed me.”
“Okay, William,” I said. “Maybe next time you’ll fly right.”
“Uh-huh. But you know there is this one thing.”
“What?”
“They still wanna be partners. They say they’ll give a hunnert an’ twenty-five thousand just to be twenty-five percent.” He was making deals from what might have been his deathbed.
“Man… ”
“They got good connections, Mr. Rawlins. They could get us deals that no bank ever gonna give a Negro.”
The thought of DeCampo working for me sounded good. And I could use the cash for development.
“You tell’im eighteen percent and he’s got a deal.”
“Okay, man.” I could hear his grin over the phone.
THE TELEPHONE RANG four days after Quinten Naylor’s visit. I still got butterflies whenever I had to answer a phone. I still thought, What can I say to her?
“Hello?”
“Is this a Mr. Rawlins?” a young man’s voice said.
“Yeah.”
“Well… I don’t know, sir. This is kinda weird.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, you see this couple… have been eating here at the Chicken Pit for about a week now.”
The butterflies were beating up a storm.
“And a couple of days ago the woman, just a girl really, comes up from the table to ask me for a glass of water. But when she reaches for the glass she grabs my finger and passes this note. I think she was worried… ”
“What did this note say?”
“It was a corner of a newspaper, a racing form with your name and phone number in one margin and a note saying, ‘Call the police, we’re at the Seacrest,’ and it’s signed ‘Sylvia.’ ”
“Why’d you wait two days, man?”
“I don’t know. It was just so weird. I don’t want any trouble. You see… I can’t talk to the police.”
“Where’s this Seacrest place?”
“It’s a motel at the corner of Adams and La Brea. Do you think… ”
“Have they been in your place since then?”
“The next day I had off. I went to San Diego and really forgot about… ”
“Was she in there today?”
“No. Just the man, I mean. That’s why I called.”
I hung up the phone and rushed to the closet to get my gun.
Jesus followed me around the house and kept grabbing me. Finally I stopped and asked him, “What?”
He just stared at the pistol in my hand.
“It’s not Regina,” I told him. “She’s gone. It’s not her.”
At first Jesus didn’t believe me. But I sat down and convinced him after a while. I told him that I’d be back soon. Then I drove off in the direction of the Seacrest.
At every red light I tried to persuade myself to call the cops. On every straightaway I imagined killing Vernor Garnett. He was everything I hated. He’d killed his own child and his wife still stayed behind him. He’d got me in jail by just telling a lie. A white man.
THE SEACREST was a single-story motel facing a large parking lot with the entrances to all of the rooms facing out. I parked across the street at three in the afternoon and waited.
I sat there for three hours. And the whole time all I thought about was Regina. I’d tried to think about her before but all I encountered was pain. But somehow, waiting for that evil man, I didn’t feel the pain. I only felt cold rage.
By the time Garnett walked out of the last room on the end I hadn’t figured out a thing. I couldn’t say for a fact why she left me. I couldn’t say that I would have been different.
Garnett had grown some facial hair and wore a trench coat with the lapels turned up. He walked down the street to the Chicken Pit with his head down.
I jimmied his door and went in.
Sylvia was dead. He’d laid her out on the floor of the closet and closed the door. But she was already starting to smell. Her temple was caved in. The room was a shambles. Clothes and bags of food were thrown around. A newspaper spread on the bed was open to the travel section. Three special fares to Mexico were circled.
I turned out the light and stood behind the door. I just waited there forever. The gray forms of the bed and dresser got fainter. The pistol was cold on my fingers.
When Garnett came back he opened the door and closed it before flicking on the light. I hadn’t expected to be blinded by the sudden light.
“What?” Vernor called out loudly as if maybe he was with somebody. But he was alone.
Maybe if he had jumped me in that second I would have been keeping Sylvia company. But instead he clawed at the doorknob for two seconds, three.
I flat-handed him with the pistol. He shook his head as if assailed by a sudden and unpleasant memory. I hit him again and he went down to his knees like J. T. Saunders had done for the police assassin.
“Please,” he said in a small voice.
A voice was screaming in my head, “Kill him!” Over and over. My neck quivered. I honestly felt that if I didn’t pull the trigger I would die. The tears came from my eyes, a guttural cry escaped my lips. My diaphragm undulated so that it was hard to keep the pistol steady.
Garnett cowered against the door. He held his hands up before his face. We were both madmen at the end of our lives. We were madmen but only he was a lawyer.
He started talking. At first I was too upset to hear him but then after a while his gibbering began to make sense. He told me that he didn’t mean it. He hadn’t planned to kill his daughter. But after he had, he faked Saunders’s MO, because he’d heard about it down at the courthouse.
He had killed her in his car also.
“What about Sylvia?”
“I just wanted the diary,” he pleaded. “They didn’t bring it with them.”
“Why’d you kill her?”
“It was too late,” he said. “She wouldn’t give me. She wanted… wanted… ”
I hog-tied Garnett and gagged him; put him in the closet with Sylvia Bride.
“Hello?” Quinten Naylor said.
I gave him the address and told him that somebody had called. I didn’t know who.
Maybe to some people revenge is sweet. All I know is that I had to stop my car five blocks away and vomit for a full minute before I could breathe again.
BULL HORKER’S COOK, Bailey, was more than happy to tell me where Cyndi stayed in Redondo Beach. For another fifty dollars he would have shed blood for me.
The house on Exeter was inhabited by an old woman named Charla Fine. She was holding the baby for Bull Horker and she was none too happy that the Bull had died. But Feather seemed hale and more or less happy. When I first saw her she was sucking her toe. I looked down and she smiled at me and said something in baby talk that I thought meant “Tickle my stomach and push my nose.”
Five hundred dollars and the baby was mine.
THE PAPERS THE NEXT DAY detailed the crime. The dead stripper Sylvia Bride (her real name was Phyllis Weinstein) had her picture on the front page all over California.
The trial was front-page news for weeks. Everything the prosecutor wanted to avoid came out in public. His daughter’s wild life, and death. The father’s crime, the mother’s cover-up.
Nobody cared much about the baby. Most of the speculation was that the child had probably been killed by the mother. This was substantiated by the fact that no one had seen the baby after she was born.
Anyway, the birth certificate had the baby listed as white. Feather was safe with me.
Vernor Garnett died in prison two years after he was sentenced. His wife moved back east somewhere after she was found innocent of conspiracy.
There wasn’t much written about Milo.
CHAPTER
40
WE MOVED THREE MONTHS LATER. I bought a small house in an area near West Los Angeles called View Park. Middle-class black families had started colonizing that neighborhood, and I wanted to get away from people who knew me and Regina.
Jesus liked his new school, and all the work of moving got my mind off the trouble in my life. Regina still lived in my dreams. Sometimes I’d wake up in the middle of the night in despair.
But when I’d wake up, little Feather needed her bottle and a change of diapers. She wasn’t my little Edna but she was beautiful and happy almost all of the time. I’d lost Regina and Gabby Lee, but Jackson Blue would baby-sit at least once a week and I didn’t mind caring for her.
Jesus never got tired of playing with Feather. He’d take her everywhere once she started to walk.
And I decided to let Dupree and Regina leave for good. Mouse found out where they had gone. He offered to go down to kill Dupree, and Regina, and bring Edna back. But I told him to give me the address and let it lie.
Enough people had died. I would have been happy if not one more person in the world ever had to face that fate.
Walter Mosley, White Butterfly
