The hearse had already left, and most of the mourners had followed the motorcade to Sunnyslope Cemetery. A red-eyed but composed Raziya and Yusef Bell stood in the parking lot talking to Aubrey and Sandra Douglass, while Peyton stood with Jamilla Brown and Donnie Watson, staring at their shoes and otherwise avoiding each other’s eyes as only teenagers can.
“You think we’re doing the right thing waiting until Monday to talk to the Bells?” Billie asked.
“I think so. Raziya Bell is too dedicated to her family and TAGOUT to cut and run. Plus she’s got to be smart enough to know that if she doesn’t show up with the boy, it’ll cast even more doubt on him. I don’t think she’d do that to a kid with so much promise.”
“You believe her story?”
“I do, and I don’t. The part about what happened within the Black Freedom Militia and Cinque being on the run sounds plausible. But who was this guy who offered to help Lewis to create a new identity? And did this man also give him forty thousand dollars for that arm? That story may have worked on Raziya, but I’m not lining up to buy that wolf ticket.”
“I’m hip,” Billie agreed. “But what about the boy? Do you think he’s involved with Lewis’s murder?”
“I don’t think so.” I dug out my notebook. “Cortez interviewed Underwood yesterday and pulled the phone records from the gallery for that Friday afternoon. Underwood claimed he and Peyton were at the gallery all afternoon. And the phone records show that between three and four they placed two calls to other kids in TAGOUT, three to CalArts, and another one to a party supply store on Melrose. The boys were definitely there.”
Cortez had also confirmed with the other kids in the group that they had talked to Underwood and Peyton that afternoon, and the school’s admissions and art department offices had confirmed that Gregory Underwood called the school about his scholarship. “And a clerk at the supply store remembered Peyton calling at five to confirm his mother’s order for the reception, just about the time we were rolling down King Boulevard toward that taco stand. The gap in between the calls wasn’t enough for either Peyton or Underwood to slip out, kill Lewis, and be back by the time Raziya returned.”
We watched as the Bells and Peyton got into their car and pulled away. Before Jamilla and Donnie could do the same, I made a beeline over there to introduce them to Billie as the lead investigator in Mitchell’s death. “We came by the hospital on Friday to see you, but you were both out sick,” I explained. “Do you have a minute to talk now?”
Donnie Watson seemed uncomfortable. “Does it have to be right here?” he said, glancing around.
“You could always come to the station, if you’d prefer,” Billie replied.
Their fear about going to a police station hovered in the air like pollen floating from the neighborhood trees. I put my arm around the young man. “It won’t take long. Why don’t you come inside the chapel with us?” I suggested. “Jamilla can wait in the lobby until we’re ready for her.”
Donnie reentered the chapel with us, which was fully lit now and quite ordinary-looking. He warily adjusted his large frame into the wooden pew in the back while Billie asked him how long he’d known Mitchell.
“ ’Bout two years.” The curved ceiling of the chapel made his voice echo and boom. “Ever since he patched me up over at California and convinced me to give up tagging and go back to school. He even helped me get a job at the hospital as a pharmacy technician. I owe . . . owed Dr. M a lot.”
“You said that at the gallery the other night,” I said. “What do you mean, ‘owed Dr. M a lot’?”
Donnie raised his face up to the ceiling, a trick I’d used many times to keep people from seeing my tears. It didn’t work any better for him than it did for me. “I woulda been just another dead nigger if Dr. Mitchell hadna been there for me. He saved my ass, more than my own blood woulda done. I had three brothers and an uncle who rolled with the Lucky Ones. I’da never have gotten outta that set alive if it hadna been for Dr. M.”
“Did Dr. Mitchell ever hit you up for any favors after you started working at the hospital?” Billie asked.
Although he didn’t move his head, I saw a sinew pop out in Donnie’s neck. “Like what?” he asked.
“Like filling special prescriptions for patients,” I said, keeping my eyes on his upturned face.
He looked dead at me, his eyes were still fighting tears. “Only that one time, during the uprisin’. He needed a prescription filled for some Cardura for an old lady that come into the ER. Because of the problem we was havin’ gettin’ medication, we wasn’t supposed to dispense medicines to any more outpatients, but he asked me to hook her up.”
A breach in hospital policy, but hardly a criminal act. “Where did you and Jamilla go after the exhibit was over Tuesday night?” Billie asked.
“Over to Phillip’s in Leimert Park to get some rib tips and potato salad. We took it over to where she lives with her granny,” he explained. “She just got out of the hospital with a heart attack.”
I suppressed a smile. Although I was sure they meant well, the famous barbecue joint’s pork ribs and mayonnaise-laden potato salad was the last thing Granny needed for a heart condition.
Donnie said he dropped Jamilla at her grandmother’s house around ten and went to his apartment in the Jungle, where he lived alone: “ ’Cept for when Jamilla can sneak out to spend the night. Which is kinda easy, ’cause her granny cain’t hear shit.”
Donnie explained that, from the time he called her to come over, Jamilla could slip out the back door and be at Donnie’s apartment in the Jungle in less than ten minutes from where she lived in Windsor Hills.
When Billie caught my eye, I knew what she was thinking: Windsor Hills was the location from which somebody dropped a dime to 911 on Lance Mitchell’s murder.
“Why did Dr. Mitchell give Jamilla such a hard time Tuesday night?” I asked.
His thick neck disappeared in his shoulders. “Dr. M was fair, but he could be a mu’fuckah if he thought you was goofin’. Jamilla tole me Dr. M said she wasn’t livin’ up to her potential, said he was gonna ride her until she got it together or quit.”
“That’d make me mad, somebody ragging on my honey all the time,” Billie said.
Donnie did the turtle neck again. “It bothered me a little,” he admitted.
“Did it bother you a little Monday night?”
He shook his head. “Jamilla was the one who was gettin’ on my nerves. I tole her after the exhibit she was buggin’. It was embarrassin’ the way she was goin’ off on Dr. M. He didn’t do nuthin’ to deserve all that.”
Not surprisingly, Jamilla didn’t appreciate Donnie’s opinion and was pretty pissed off, he said, when he dropped her off at home. It was the first time in a week he spent the night alone.
Billie escorted Donnie outside and returned with the young woman. We spread ourselves out a little in one of the pews. Jamilla sat midway between us, fidgeting and licking her dark-colored lips.
Her account of her activities after she and Donnie left the gallery were consistent with the young man’s, even down to the order from the barbecue stand. A little too consistent for me. “And what did you do afterward, Jamilla?” I asked.
She edged away from me on the pew and licked her dark lips again. “I talked to my granny for a while, then I went to bed,” she said and looked at me sideways while she chomped on her gum.
“What time was that?” I asked.
She shifted and chomped again. “ ’Bout ten thirty.”
I moved with her. “Donnie tells us you’re real good at making those midnight creeps,” I said. “I was thinking maybe you slipped out.”
She moved a little farther away from me and started chewing furiously. “Not with my granny just out of the hospital. Besides, Donnie and I had a fight after the exhibit. I didn’t want to see him.”
“I was thinking about somebody else.”
“Like who?” She moved again.
“Like maybe Dr. Mitchell,” I suggested.
She moved farther away from me again, almost sitting on top of Billie. Jamilla looked from one to the other of us, her face all frowned up. “Don’t even try it, child,” Billie said irritably. “That lipstick you’re wearing is the same shade you left on that wine glass at Dr. Mitchell’s house.”
I knew she was guessing, but from the way Jamilla’s hand flew up to her mouth, Billie’s bluff had worked. “Why don’t you just tell us about you and Dr. Mitchell, honey,” I said, slipping into the nice-cop role.
Jamilla sat for a long time, her face working in several directions at once. “Come on, Jamilla, we don’t have all day!” Billie snapped.
“Give her a minute, Detective Truesdale.” It was a relief to be the nice cop this time. “Jamilla’s going to cooperate.”
“She better make it quick, before I charge her ass with murder!”
That did it. “I didn’t kill him!” she exclaimed. “I went to his house that night, but I didn’t kill him!”
I placed my hand over hers. “Why don’t you tell us what happened?”
“Me and him was tight,” she began. “But then he dissed me for this Filipina nurse in the ER. I was so upset I couldn’t concentrate at work or nuthin’. But instead of Dr. M cutting me some slack, he started gettin’ all up in my face about me not doin’ my job.”
“You mean you had an affair with Dr. Mitchell?” Billie asked.
She nodded her head, sniffed a little, smacked her gum. “I’ve always vibed with men who was older’n me.”
Old enough to be her father, she should have said. Looking at Jamilla’s low-cut blouse, skirt that barely covered her crotch, and fishnet stockings, I could just about guess what Mitchell saw in her. “How did you two get together?” I asked.
“I met Dr. M at a career day my senior year in high school.” The young woman—whose nails were black, I guess in deference to the deceased—started to cry. “He got me interested in health care. He helped me to get a scholarship to Drew. I thought he was interested in me, and he was until that skanky-assed Santiago came along!”
Billie dropped her head as if she were speaking to the floor. “Girl, if I was your mama, I’d whip your butt! I bet you were the one who went to Dr. Holly’s radio station, bragging about your affair with her husband, weren’t you?”
She nodded and snuffled way in the back of her throat. “But he hated her! Tole me all the time about how she didn’t understand him, didn’t know how to sex him up right.”
And Jamilla clearly thought she did. As I observed her cocky posture, hot-to-trot drag, and too young eyes, I wondered where in the world this child’s parents were. A mother to show her there were other ways of getting attention and respect, a father to tell her she was valuable far beyond the size of her ta-tas or the tricks in her sexual repertoire. I was surprised she wasn’t pregnant with Mitchell’s child. Funny how some things hadn’t changed all that much since I was a teenager. Girls still trying to catch a man using their body as bait, just like Janet had done with Aubrey. And still ending up the same way—with no man and no self-esteem.
“If you had broken up, why did you go to Dr. Mitchell’s house that night?” I asked.
“I tole Dr. M at the gallery that night if he didn’t stop treatin’ me like shit I was gonna go to the hospital CEO and tell him how he had me up in the doctor’s sleepin’ room lickin’ the Reddi wip off of him. That made him real nervous, so he agreed to meet me at his house after the exhibit to talk.”
According to Jamilla, they had met at Mitchell’s house at eleven. “Did this ‘talk’ you had involve sex?” Billie asked.
She bobbed her head, snuffling back more tears. “I figured if I really rocked his world, he’d have to come back, y’know? So after Donnie took me home, I put on my leather and lace, y’know, and went over there to really try and turn him out. But afterward, he wanted to give me money, like I was a ’ho’ or somethin’. I was so mad, I threw it in his face and got the hell out of there. I started to buy some gasoline and burn his house down. But then I decided to slash his tires.”
“Now that’s original.”
Jamilla ignored Billie’s sarcasm and spoke to me. “But when I got to there, I decided to see if I could get inside and fuck with some of that fancy pottery he was so proud of.”
“What pottery?” I asked.
“Them big-ass jars he kept on them stands,” she replied. “He was always goin’ on and on about how expensive they was. So when I tried the front door and found it unlocked, I figured I’d tip on in and knock them over. But one of them was already broken . . . and Dr. M’s body was hangin’ offa that hallway door.”
After discovering Mitchell’s body about one, Jamilla “freaked,” drove around for a while, then headed for home, stopping along the way and asking a man coming out of La Louisiane’s to make the call to 911 and Dr. Mitchell’s exchange. Then she hightailed it back to her grandmother’s house, put on her pajamas, and woke up the old woman, complaining of a stomachache to give herself an alibi.
“Please don’t tell my granny about me and Dr. M,” she pleaded. “She’s a born-again, always on me about staying a virgin.”
Jamilla’s granny must have been deaf, dumb, and blind to have believed there was still a chance of that. Or maybe just too busy quoting Scripture to see how hard her granddaughter was struggling to be accepted, even if it meant giving away little bits of herself to men like Lance Mitchell. Sure, he helped Jamilla Brown with her career, but he helped himself to her body and warped her young mind in the process. And even though he was the victim of a murder, I could not forgive him for the crime he perpetrated against this girl.
“Your boy Mitchell sure got around,” Billie said as we watched Jamilla and Donnie get into his tricked-out black Maxima. “You believe her?”
“It’s a little too wild to be made up. Jamilla Brown doesn’t strike me as having that kind of imagination.”
Billie jotted down the car’s plate number. “I’m going to see if one of the neighbors saw Donnie’s car at Mitchell’s that night. I’m still not ruling out Donnie knew more about Jamilla’s relationship with Dr. Mitchell than he’s letting on.”
I nodded, watched Donnie peel out of the parking lot. “Much as I dislike Dr. Holly, if she had to put up with that kind of shit in her marriage, I understand why she’s bitter.”
“Hmph,” Billie snorted, “but that shit usually cuts both ways. We just haven’t heard what dear Dr. Holly was up to all those years. Given how she was falling all over that young mortuary attendant, I bet it was plenty.”
“You think that’s important to the case?”
“It is if we find out she got some strong young thing to jack up her husband.” Billie flipped her notebook closed. “But I’m putting my money on the kids. I’ll try and get by Mitchell’s place tomorrow, do some more field interviews with the neighbors. Maybe they saw Jamilla or Donnie coming or going from the house. I just want to be sure she was alone or that Mr. Muscles didn’t follow her over there, peep their sex show, then kill Mitchell afterward.”
Aubrey’s car was still in the lot, but its owner was nowhere to be found. Maybe he rode out to the cemetery with Sandra Douglass. It was a thought that gave me a little pang of I wasn’t sure what.
“You want to go to the repast?” Billie asked.
“It’s your call, but I think we’ve gotten as much as we’re going to for now. Besides, I don’t want to have to arrest Lance’s mother or sisters on a 240 when they kick Dr. Holly’s ass later today.”
“Misdemeanor assault, my ass. Thick as it was in there, I’d bet a week’s salary it’d be an assault with intent to 187.”
“Let’s hope not,” I laughed.
Billie laughed, too, and shook her head. “I’ll see you downtown on Monday, then, for the Bell interviews.”
Billie got into her car, a black Maxima a lot like Donnie’s, and pulled away. I turned to go back into the mortuary to use the restroom and ran smack-dab into Aubrey.
“Hi,” he said. “You done for the day?”
“Yeah. I think I’ve seen enough.”
“That was some funeral, wasn’t it? I was surprised to see so many people turn out on such short notice. Lance’s family, friends, even some of the paramedics were here.”
“It seemed more like a three-ring circus to me.”
“Now you understand what I meant about Dr. Holly,” he said.
“She’s a real piece of work, that’s for sure, but I’ve found there’s always two sides to every story. Where’d Sandra go?”
“The cemetery, I think.” Aubrey looked up at the sky, which was layered with high, gauzy clouds meandering toward the ocean. I could see their reflection in his sunglasses when he looked back at me. “Where are you headed now?”
“Home to walk my dog, get some rest, maybe order a pizza.”
“How about a home-cooked meal?” the clouds in his eyes asked me.
“Offers of free meals always get my attention. You want to try out my KitchenAid?”
“Why don’t I cook dinner for you at my house?” he suggested. “Say about eight? You still have the address?”
I nodded. “Should I bring anything?”
“Just your appetite.” He leaned over and whispered in my ear. “Not unless you want to bring a toothbrush.”
It was my turn to stare at the clouds.
By the time I ran a few errands and got my nails done, it was six fifteen, just enough time to walk the dog around the block, take a bath, and change before heading up to Aubrey’s house.
Beast, however, had other ideas and wanted to engage me in a furious Frisbee session in the back yard. Fifteen minutes later, both of us exhausted, I trudged up the back stairs and into the kitchen. I gave Beast his kibble, went to the bathroom to fill the tub, then poured myself some good Chardonnay. I was just getting settled in the water when my pager went off. It was a number in Ladera Heights, another one of L.A.’s golden Negro ghettos.
“I just got off the phone with Sidney Hairston from the ER.” Billie was so excited, she had skipped the hellos. “He was calling from Leo’s Lair in Venice. Says he’s met somebody he thinks can help us. You want to meet me out there?”
“I was just getting dressed to go out. You think leggings and a sweater are dressy enough for Leo’s?”
Billie laughed for what seemed like a full minute. “Charlotte, I don’t think anyone in that crowd is gonna notice what either one of us is wearing. I’ll meet you there in a half an hour.”