“Where we going to, Mr. Rawlins?” Evander asked as we drove away from Alcott Court. The mostly cleaned burlap sacks and sheets were in my trunk, destined to be burned in the days that followed.
“To drop by a friend’s office,” I said, “Jewelle MacDonald.”
“How come?”
“I own some apartment buildings around the city. Her office is the managing agency. If any unit is free she can set you up in one to wait until I figure out how to make sure those men will leave you alone.”
“How you gonna do that?”
“Maybe a little conversation,” I speculated. “You might have to return some or all of that money.”
“But I need that money for my mama.”
“What you and your mother need is for you not to get killed.”
“It’s gonna be my own apartment?” he asked, his mind as flighty and intense as the hummingbirds Feather’s dog, Frenchie, chased around the backyard.
“For a few days.”
“Will it have a telephone?”
I laughed at that. “We’ll see. But at any rate, I’ll give you a few dollars for food and phone calls in case you need to talk to some girl.”
“It ain’t like that, Mr. Rawlins.”
“As you get older, Evander, you come to learn that it’s always like that—if you’re nine or ninety.”
At that time Jewelle’s rental management operation was on Avalon. Evander and I walked into the storefront office: two men traveling under a whole sky of troubled clouds. A wide counter formed a small foyerlike area as you entered the long room. This counter blocked entrance into the greater part of the office, where there were six desks set up for agents who helped people find places to live.
A young colored woman with curly blond hair and thick red lips stood pouting behind the counter. Two men and one woman were working at three of the desks.
I remember that there was a burly-looking fly hovering near the wall to my right. It was humming peacefully, almost as if it was flying in its sleep.
“May I help you?” the receptionist asked, insincerely, I thought.
“Easy Rawlins,” I said.
“Nobody here with that name.”
“That’s my name. You manage my properties.”
“Say what?” She was amber-skinned and quite pretty. But the sneer on her face told of an unattractive life that she’d survived, just barely.
“Can I speak to the office manager?” I asked.
“Easy, you said?”
“Yes.”
We watched her turn from the blockade and wander to the very back of the room, where a slim, dark-skinned man sat behind a blond desk. He wore a black suit, white shirt, and powder blue tie. He was prim and also discontent, the male counterpart to the receptionist’s scornful visage.
He asked the young woman to repeat my request and then, with great reluctance, he stood and walked to the front. The young woman followed him.
“Yes?” he said. “Can I help you?” He was in his forties, but the weight of those years had yet to settle on him.
“Do you have proof?” He accented the question by shifting his left shoulder and holding out his left palm.
The Gator’s Blood told me to sock him, but I reached for my wallet instead.
He studied the driver’s license like it was a ten-page rental agreement and then handed it back.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“I need to put up my friend Evander here in an apartment for a few days, maybe a week,” I said.
“And?” the prissy real estate agent asked.
“I’d like you to make that happen.”
“Sorry,” he said.
“About what?”
“I’m busy. You can’t expect to walk in here and have us do something just like that. We represent over eighteen hundred units.”
“And twenty-seven of them are mine.”
He answered that statement with a twist of his lips. This reminded me of the gestural disdain cultivated by churchgoers I’d known.
“May I speak to Miss MacDonald, please?” I asked.
“I don’t know where she is.”
“I do,” I said. “May I use a phone?”
Our eyes met and he gleaned something from the tone in my voice. He wasn’t sure what that something was, but it leavened his demeanor from scorn to suspicion.
Reaching under the counter, he came out with a big black telephone that was probably older than the disdainful receptionist.
“I’ll have to dial,” he said. “We don’t allow toll calls.”
“Sure,” I agreed. “Tell the switchboard operator that it’s Easy Rawlins for Jewelle MacDonald. She’ll transfer the call to Jewelle wherever she is. You can talk to her yourself.”
I recited the number and he dialed with equal parts precision and wariness.
We waited while a phone in some other part of town rang.
“Yes,” the thus far nameless office manager said. “I’d like to speak to Jewelle MacDonald. What? … Oh, it’s for …” He looked at me.
“Easy Rawlins,” I said.
“Easy Rawlins,” he repeated. “Yes, yes, I’ll hold.”
The man looked at me with different eyes. I was a sudden surprise in a landscape he felt that he knew inside and out.
After a few moments he said, “Yes, yes, Miss MacDonald? This is Clive Chester at the Avalon office. No, no, he’s here. I was just dialing for him. Sure, right away.”
He handed me the phone like a baton at an intermediary leg of the relay race.
“Jewelle?”
“Easy,” she said with great relief in her mature voice. I always thought of Jewelle as a child. It was a constant surprise when I was reminded that she had turned into a powerful businesswoman. “Jackson told me that you had come out of that coma. He said some crazy stuff about voodoo, but I told him he was nuts. I’m so happy to hear your voice.”
“How you doin’, girl?”
“Great. Business is good and I’m building a little empire around me and Blue. Are you okay?”
“You know me, got to keep on movin’.”
“What do you need to help you on your way?”
“Can you direct Mr. Chester here to find and open a unit in one of my places or elsewhere and to install my friend Evander in it today?”
“Of course,” she said. “Is that all?”
“Yeah.”
“Did Clive give you a problem?”
“In his defense I must tell you that me and the boy look like we just got back from trench warfare.”
“Okay, Easy.” She giggled, sounding once more like the child I’d once known. “Give Mr. Chester the phone and I will make it happen.”
It was a pleasure to watch the office manager sputter and try to explain himself. In the end he just started nodding and grunting his agreement.
When the call was over he cradled the phone and said, “I’ll just clear up some things here and then drive the young man over to our Colby Street apartments. There aren’t any units available in your places, and Colby is partly furnished.”
“Will you also get your people to put in a phone for him to use and then give that number to Jewelle’s secretary for the answering service?”
“She didn’t mention anything about a phone.”
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s call her back.”
I held out my hand for the phone again. Clive Chester did not move. He was looking for a place where he didn’t have to seem like he was losing the contest. But he was losing, had already lost.
“We can manage a phone connection. The jack’s already in the apartment, and there’s a phone company number we can call.…”
I left Evander on the sidewalk outside the real estate office.
“We will answer all of your questions,” I said to the boy. “Everything from the money to your father’s death. I promise you that. But keep your head down until I tell you it’s safe. And if you call Esther, remind her, if she doesn’t already know, not to tell her mother where you’re staying.”
Three blocks away I stopped at a phone booth and called EttaMae Harris’s home.
“Hello?” she said on the eighth or ninth ring.
“Hey, Etta, how you doin’?”
“Easy Rawlins, oh, Lord, am I glad to hear your voice. You know Raymond brought me up to your place after the accident. It broke my heart to see you like that, baby. I been prayin’ for you.”
“Thanks, Etta. I hear you sent LaMarque down Texas for the summer.”
“Got him on my brother’s farm. You know he needs to get some country in his bones. He got mixed up with the gangs around here and I had to send him away or Raymond was gonna start a war. You know he don’t have the patience of a rabid dog.”
“Yes, ma’am. Holdin’ Mouse back is like trying to put your arms around a tornado.”
“It’s good to hear your voice, Easy. What do you need?”
“Peter.”
“Yes, Mr. Rawlins?” Etta’s manservant said after a short wait.
“Jackson call you, Pete?”
“They’re at the Biltmore downtown,” he said, “suite twenty-one thirty-five. You’re supposed to meet him at seven thirty at a restaurant called Angelo’s. He said you knew where that was.”