The Best American Mystery Stories 2003

  “And he sees the problem as what?”

  Etta held up her point finger. “One is Sinestra bein’ gone from home, and two,” Etta held up the next finger, “is Willis Longtree breathing the same air as him.”

  “Oh.”

  “Is that all you got to say? Oh?”

  “No,” I replied. “I could also say, what’s it to you? Boys run away with girls every day. Daddies get mad when they do. Sometimes somebody ends up dead. Most of the time she comes home cryin’ and it’s all over. That’s the way it was in Fifth Ward when we were kids. I remember more than one time that Mouse got jealous’ayou. Usually we got the poor fool outta sight before Ray’s .41 could thunder.”

  “Grow up, Easy Rawlins. We ain’t in Houston no more, and this ain’t no joke I’m tellin’ you.” There was that catch in her throat again.

  “What’s wrong, Etta?”

  “Willis ain’t no more than nineteen. He thinks he’s a man but he barely older than LaMarque. And Abel Snow is death in a blue suit.”

  “You like the boy, huh?”

  “He’d come around the kitchen in the afternoon and play for me, tellin’ me all the great things he was gonna do. If you just closed your eyes and listened to him, you might believe it’d all come true.”

  “Like what?”

  “All kindsa things. One minute he was gonna be in a singin’ band and then he talked about bein’ in the movies. He said that he looked like Sidney Poitier and maybe he could play his son in some film. He wanted to be a star. And then Sinestra got her hooks in him. She couldn’t help it. It was just kinda like her nature. Girl like that see a man-child beautiful as Willis and she cain’t think straight. She just wanna make him crazy, make him run like a dog with her scent in his nose. I saw it happen, Easy. I tried to talk sense to him.”

  “Maybe you worried about nuthin’, Etta,” I said. “L.A.’s a big town. The police hardly catch anybody unless they committin’ a crime or they just turn themselves in.”

  “Abel Snow ain’t no cop. He’s a stone killer. And he got Merchant’s money behind him.”

  “That don’t mean he’s gonna find Willis. Where would he look?”

  “Same place I would if I was him. Jukes and nightclubs on Central. Movie studios and record studios and any place a fool like Willis would look for his dreams. He told everybody his plans, not just me.”

  “You know I’m still just a janitor, Etta.”

  “Easy Rawlins, you owe me this.”

  “If he’s big a fool as you say, it’s really only a matter of time. You know no matter how hard he try, a fool cain’t outrun his shadow.”

  “All I know is that I got to try,” she said.

  “Yeah. Yeah,” I said. “I know.”

  I was thinking about Bonnie and her African prince. It still hurt, but the pain was dulled in the face of Etta’s maternal desperation. And she seemed to be offering me absolution over the death of her husband.

  “I don’t even know what the boy looks like,” I said. “I don’t know the girl. It’s a slim chance that I’ll even catch a glimpse of them before this Snow man comes on the scene.”

  “I know that.”

  “So this is just some kinda blind hope?”

  “No. I can help you.”

  “How?”

  “Drive me up to the Merchant ranch outside of Santa Barbara.”

  I grinned then. I don’t know why. Maybe it was the idea of a long drive in the country.

  ~ * ~

  Lymon Merchant was known as the Strawberry King, that’s what EttaMae told me. But there wasn’t a strawberry field within ten miles of his ranch. Lymon lived up in the mountains east of Santa Barbara. The dirt road that snaked up the mountain looked down on the blue Pacific. We strained and bounced and even slid a time or two, but finally made it to the wide lane at the top. The dirt boulevard was flanked by tall eucalyptus trees. I rolled down my window to let in their scent.

  “This the place?” I asked when we came to a three-story wood house.

  “No,” Etta said. “That’s the foreman’s house.”

  The foreman’s house was larger and finer than many a home in Beverly Hills. The big front door was oak and the windows were huge. The cultivated rosebushes around the lawn reminded me of Bonnie. I felt the pang in my stomach and drove on, hoping I could leave my heartache on the road behind.

  ~ * ~

  The Merchant mansion was only two floors, but it dwarfed the foreman’s house just the same. It was constructed from twelve- and eighteen-foot pine logs, hundreds of them. It was a fantastic structure looking like the abode of a fairy tale giant — not for normal mortals at all.

  The double front doors were twelve feet high. The bronze handles must have weighed ten pounds apiece.

  Before we could knock or ring a bell the front door swung open. I realized that there must have been some kind of private camera system that monitored our approach.

  A tall white man in a tuxedo appeared before us.

  “Miss Harris,” the man said in a soft, condescending voice.

  “Lawrence,” she said, walking past him.

  “And who are you?” Larry asked me.

  “A guest of Miss Harris.”

  I followed her through the large foyer and down an extremely wide hall that was festooned with the heads and bodies of dead animals, birds, and fish. There were boar and swordfish, mountain lion and moose. Toward the center hall was a rhino head across from a hippopotamus. I kept looking around, wondering if maybe Lymon Merchant had the audacity to put a human trophy up on his wall.

  We then came into the family art gallery. The room was twenty feet square, floored with three-foot-wide planks of golden pine. Along the walls were paintings of gods and mortals, landscapes, and of course, dead animals. In one corner there stood a white grand piano.

  “Easy, come on,” Etta said when I wandered away from her lead.

  There was something off about the color of the piano. The creamy white seemed natural and I wondered what wood would give off that particular hue. Close up it was obvious that it was constructed completely from ivory. The broad lid and body were made from fitted planks, while the legs were formed from single tusks.

  “Easy,” Etta said again. She had come up behind me.

  “They must’a killed a dozen or more elephants to build this thing, Etta.”

  “So what? That’s not why I brought you here.”

  “Does anybody ever even play it?” I asked.

  “Willis did now and then when they had cocktail parties in here. “

  “He played piano too?”

  “Willis was as talented as he thought he was,” Etta said with motherly pride. “That’s why it broke my heart when he talked about his dreams.”

  “If he got the talent, maybe he’ll get the dream.”

  “What drug you takin’?” Etta said. “He’s a poor black child in a white man’s world.”

  “Louis Armstrong was a poor black boy. “

  “And for every one Armstrong you got a string of black boys’ graves goin’ around the block. You know how the streets eat up our men, especially if they got dreams.”

  She turned away from me then and made her way toward yet another door. I lagged back for a moment, thinking about a black woman’s love being so strong that she tried to protect her men from their own dreams. It was a powerful moment for me, bringing Bonnie once more to mind. She loved me and urged me to climb higher. And now that I was way up there, the only way to go was down.

  The next room was a stupendous kitchen. Three gas stoves, and a huge pit built into the wall like a fireplace. Cutting-board tables and sinks of porcelain and a dozen cooks, cooks’ helpers, and service personnel. The various workers stared at me, wondering, I supposed, if I was a new member of the hive. A man in a chef’s hat actually stopped me and asked, “Are you the new helper?”

  “Yes,” I said. “But I only work with one food.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The jam.?
??

  ~ * ~

  The next room was small and crowded with hampers overflowing with cloth. Even the walls were covered in fabric. The only furniture was a pedal-powered sewing machine built into its own table and two stools, all near a window that was flooded with sunlight.

  On one of the stools sat a white woman with long, thick brown hair. She was working her foot on the pedal, pulling a swath of royal-blue cloth under the driving needle.

  “Mrs. Merchant,” Etta said.

  The woman turned from her sewing to face us.

  She was in her forties, but young-looking. Etta was in her forties then too, though I always thought of her as being older. Etta’s skin was clear and wrinkle-free, but the years she’d lived had still left their mark. Etta was a matron, while the white woman was more like a child. Mrs. Merchant’s face was round and her eyes were gray. She’d been crying, was going to cry again.

  “Etta,” she said.

  She rose from her stool. Etta walked toward her and they embraced like sisters. EttaMae was much the larger woman. Mrs. Merchant was small-boned and frail.

  “This is the man I told you about, Brian Phillips,” Etta said, using a name I had suggested on the drive up.

  The white woman put on a smile and held out her hand to me. I took it.

  “Thank you for coming, Mr. Phillips,” she said.

  “I’m here for Etta, Mrs. Merchant.”

  “Sheila. Call me Sheila.”

  “What is it you need?” I asked.

  “Hasn’t Etta told you?”

  “Your daughter has run away with one of your employees. That’s really about all I know.”

  “Sin is a full-grown woman,” Sheila Merchant said. “She didn’t run away, she just left. But she also left a note behind for her father, informing him that she was leaving with Willis. That poor boy has no idea what game she’s playing with him.”

  “Now let me get this straight, Mrs. Merchant,” I said. “You’re worried about the black man? His well-being?”

  “Sin is like a cat, Mr. Phillips. She’ll always land on her feet, and on a pile of money too. This is just a game she’s playing with her father. She doesn’t believe he loves her unless she can make him mad.”

  “I guess shackin’ up with a poor black hobo is about as mad as he’s gonna get.”

  “He loves Sin more than any of the other children,” she said. “It’s really unhealthy. “

  I waited for her to say something else; maybe she wanted to, but at the last moment she held back. I noticed then the errant strands of gray in her hair.

  “When Etta told me about your daughter and Willis,” I said, “I told her that there wasn’t much I could do. I mean, L.A.’s a big town. People around there move from house to house like you might go from one room to another.”

  “I know something,” she said. “Something that neither Lymon or Abel are aware of.”

  “What’s that?”

  Sheila Merchant looked from side to side as if there might be spies in her sewing room.

  “There’s a big bush next to the left-hand post that marks the beginning of the eucalyptus drive. It bears red berries.”

  “I saw it.”

  “Under that bush is a basket. It’s in there.”

  “What is?”

  “A little journal that Willis carried with him. He could barely read or write, but there are some notes and lots of clippings.”

  “Excuse me, Sheila, but what are you doin’ with Willis’s diary?”

  “He asked me to hold it for him,” Sheila Merchant said. “He didn’t want somebody to steal it out of the bunkhouse. And we were always talking about music. In my house, when I was a child, we all played an instrument. All except for Father, who had a beautiful tenor voice. None of my children are musical, Mr. Phillips.”

  “What about that ivory piano I saw?”

  “That is an abomination. It cost thirty thousand dollars to build, and the only one who ever played it was Willis Longtree.”

  “I see,” I said. “So you said he was talkin’ to you one day . . .”

  “Yes. He was telling me about how much he loved music and performing. He showed me his journal, really it was just a ledger book like the accountants use. He had articles clipped about movie stars and L.A. nightclubs.”

  “If he couldn’t read, then how would he know what to clip?” I asked.

  “You not here to give nobody the third degree,” Etta warned.

  “No, I’m not. I’m here to help you. Now if you want me to do that, just button up and let me ask the questions I see fit.”

  EttaMae glared at me. I’d seen her strike men for less.

  “It’s all right, Etta,” Sheila said. And then to me, “Willis had people read to him. He’d go through the newspaper until he saw words he knew, like Hollywood, or pictures of performers, and then he’d have someone read the article to him.”

  I got the feeling that she had read to the young man once or twice.

  “What do you want from me, Mrs. Merchant?”

  “Find Willis before Abel does,” she said. “Tell him what Sin did. Try and get him somewhere safe.”

  Sheila Merchant reached into her apron and came out with a white envelope.

  “There’s a thousand dollars in here,” she said. “Take it and find Willis, make sure that he’s safe.”

  “What about your daughter?”

  “She’ll come home when she runs out of money.”

  Sheila Merchant looked away, out the window. I looked too. There was a beautiful pine forest under a pale blue and coral sky. It seemed impossible that someone with all that wealth, surrounded by such natural beauty, could be even slightly unhappy.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” I said.

  ~ * ~

  On the front porch Etta and I were confronted by a sandy-haired man with dead blue eyes.

  “Hello, Mr. Snow,” Etta said quickly. She seemed nervous, almost scared.

  “EttaMae,” he replied.

  He was wearing gray slacks and a square-cut aqua-colored shirt that was open at the collar. Folded over his left arm was a dark blue blazer. He wore a short-brimmed straw hat, tilted back on his head.

  His smile was malicious, but that’s not what scared me about him.

  EttaMae Harris had lived with Mouse most of her adult life; and Mouse was by far the deadliest man I ever knew. Not once had I seen fear in Etta’s face while dealing with Mouse’s irrational rages. I had never seen her afraid of anybody. Abel Snow therefore had a unique standing in my experience.

  “And who is this?” Abel asked.

  “Brian Phillips,” I said.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Seein’ how the other half lives.”

  I smiled and so did Abel.

  “You lookin’ for trouble, son?”

  “Now why I wanna be lookin’ for somethin’ when it’s standin’ right there in front’a me, pale as death?”

  Etta cleared her throat.

  “You here about Willis Longtree?” Abel Snow asked me.

  “Who?”

  Snow’s smile widened into a grin.

  “You got something I should know about in your pocket, Brian?”

  “Whatever it is, it’s mine.”

  Snow was having a good time. I wondered if his heart was beating as fast as mine was. We stared at each other for a moment. That instant might have stretched into an hour if Etta hadn’t said, “Excuse me, Mr. Snow, but Mr. Phillips is givin’ me a ride to L.A.”

  He nodded and stepped aside, grinning the whole time.

  ~ * ~

  The basket was where Sheila Merchant said it was. I flipped through the ledger for a minute or two and then put it in the trunk.

  ~ * ~

  Etta fell asleep on the long ride back to L.A. I asked her a few more questions about Mouse, but her story never wavered. Raymond was dead and buried by her own hand.

  I dropped her off at the mariner’s house in Malibu and then drove bac
k home. That was about nine o’clock.

  ~ * ~

  Bonnie was waiting for me at the front door wearing the same jeans and sweater.

  “Hi, baby,” she said.