White Butterfly (22 page)

“Did he ask you for money?”

“I’m not a fool, Rawlins.”

“That don’t answer my question.”

“He said that he’d tell us about her for twenty dollars and I told him that I’d hear what he had to say before I gave him a dime.”

“An’ he said she was with child?”

“He gave me the name of the hospital she went to. He took her there.”

“Uh-huh.” I stifled a yawn.

“We went to the hospital. They hadn’t heard of her, but… ” He hesitated. “…but they had done a test on a Cyndi Starr.”

“No jive?”

“It was three months ago. She delivered there. I saw the birth certificate. My granddaughter’s name is Feather Starr.”

I felt the alcohol evaporating out of my pores. A chill climbed my shoulders, and for the first time that I could remember I was completely sober.

“You got this certificate?”

“Right here. Right here in my hand.”

“Why you call me?”

“I don’t know what to do, Mr. Rawlins. The police say that they’ll look into it. We went to see that man Voss. But he told us that the chances are slim. He said that we should keep up hope but that the chances are slim. Hope for this baby is all that my wife has, Mr. Rawlins.”

“An’ you think I could help where the police cain’t?”

“You found us. They say you found the man who killed our daughter.”

“Cops tell you that?”

“Yes.”

“They tell you to call me?”

“No. We talked it over. We want to hire you if that’s okay.”

“Hire me for what?”

“Find our granddaughter, Mr. Rawlins. She’s all that’s left of Robin.”

I tried to think about it. But I couldn’t. I just opened my mouth and said something. I decided that whatever came out would be what I should do. “I’ll be by at around ten, Mr. Garnett. I cain’t promise you nuthin’. I cain’t promise you a thing, but I’ll come on by.”

I WAS AT MOFASS’S OFFICE AT EIGHT. He was eating jelly doughnuts and sweating even though it wasn’t that warm.

He skipped any pleasantries and asked, “You ready fo’ me to go to that meetin’, Mr. Rawlins?”

“Oh yeah, I’m ready.”

“It’s set for three-thirty.”

“I’ll tell ya what, Mofass.”

“Yeah?”

“You go tell them boys that we don’t need’em.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Tell’em I don’t give a shit what they want. If we make somethin’ outta my places then it’s gonna be us to do it.”

“Mr. Rawlins, I cain’t tell ya what to do with yo’ own property, but… ”

“That’s right, man. You ain’t got nuthin’ t’say about it. It’s my money and my life.”

“But I promised’em, Mr. Rawlins. I told’em that I could get the partners t’say yeah. You told me you would.”

“I never said nuthin’ of the kind.”

Mofass bit his lower lip, something he hadn’t even done when I’d once held a pistol to his head.

“They give me five thousand dollars,” he said.

“So?”

“I ain’t got it, Mr. Rawlins. I spent it. I thought you was gonna go ’long with’em.”

His breathing was getting worse.

“That ain’t my problem, William.”

“But I took it on your behalf. I took it for our company.”

“Shit,” was all I had to say.

I left him gagging and coughing in his swivel chair.

The house looked almost the same. The Caddies were still in the driveway but the bicycles were gone. I didn’t get a chance to use the buzzer—they had the door open before I was halfway up the walk.

They both came out to meet me. Mr. Garnett shook my hand. He even smiled.

“I’m sorry about the other day, Rawlins. But when I came home Sarah couldn’t even talk. Milo was sitting holding her hand and crying.”

“Then I guess it’s me who should be sorry.” I looked at her when I said that.

“Coffee, Mr. Rawlins?” Mrs. Garnett asked.

“Sure, sure,” I said.

We sat in the living room again. The couple sat side by side holding hands on the couch. I tried to remember the last time I had been with Regina like that.

“Would you prefer cream?” Mrs. Garnett asked.

“Naw.” I looked at them for a few moments more. The man was big and powerful but he was uncertain. He stared at the floor while he patted his wife’s hand. She was strength on the verge of collapse. Her brown hair was fading into gray. Her steely blue eyes were in mine, but somewhere else at the same time.

“Can you help us?” she asked.

“Let’s see what you got.”

The husband had the certificate in an official-looking envelope. It had a cellophane window that revealed a black page that had been scrawled over by a harried hand.

Feather Starr was born on August 12. There was no father mentioned. Back in those days they included race on birth certificates. It was a little box labeled “Race.” In Feather’s little box there was written a small “w.”

“Looks right,” I said. “But I thought the paper said that Robin, or Cyndi or whatever you call her, was in Europe until about then?”

“She’d left home about six months ago,” Vernor said. “We didn’t want to admit it. We were ashamed.”

“Did you go to the police?” I asked.

“She was twenty-one, Mr. Rawlins. She told us that she was dropping out of school. The police couldn’t have done a thing. What’s important now is that we have a granddaughter somewhere.” Mr. Garnett had tears in his voice. “It means our baby isn’t completely gone.”

“Yeah, could be.”

“What do you mean?” Mrs. Garnett asked. Her tone of voice was telling me that she might not be able to take one more thing. But I still had things to say.

“Who knows what a girl like this is gonna do with a baby?”

“Girl like what?” the father said.

“You’re a prosecutor, man.” I looked him right in the eye. “You know what it’s like. Fo’them girls money is in their titties and in their legs.” I felt myself sneering. Each word hit the man like a haymaker. He winced and cowered in his chair. “A woman up in Hollywood Row be brushin’ out her hair for a man to wanna see. He’s gonna pay fo’that. One way or the other he gonna pay. Either he gonna buy whiskey while she dancin’ on a bar or he gonna hand it over before he walk through the door.”

As I spoke I moved toward the edge of my seat. Mr. Garnett folded backward—he even let go of his wife’s hand.

“Why are you doing this?” Mrs. Garnett said. “Why are you torturing him?”

She caught me up short. I sat back to clear my head.

“Just tryin’ t’make my point, that’s all.”

“What point?”

“Girls like the ones live down on the Row live by their bodies. Each piece got its purpose and each piece got its price.”

She didn’t know what I was talking about, but I was pretty sure that her husband did.

“Baby is just another piece,” I said.

“What?”

“Baby got a price tag too. Baby got a big price tag if you know the right market.”

“Are you saying that Robin might have sold her baby?” Mr. Garnett’s tone was threatening to break out into fists.

“I seen a man pay a woman five dollars so he could put his head on her shoulder.”

Garnett leaped to his feet. I didn’t flinch though. I didn’t flinch because I had a loaded .25 in my pocket.

“Get out of my house!” he yelled. “Get out!”

I stood as tall as I could but Vernor still had an inch or two on me.

“All right,” I said. “But this is just why I talked like that.”

Mrs. Garnett stood and asked, “What do you mean?”

“This thing with yo’ girl is ugly and you might not really wanna get into it. You might find out all kindsa things. You might find a dead baby someplace. You might find a pimp done sold your baby girl to some sex fiend in Las Vegas. You open up this can’a worms and you could find out anything. And if you cain’t take it then better find out right now.”

I felt for them. At least I knew that Regina would take care of my baby. They had one dead child and another one who could be dead or worse.

“You don’t have to worry about me, Rawlins,” Mr. Garnett said. “I can take whatever I have to.”

I believed him. Garnett was large and kind of rugged-looking. His eyes weren’t strong but they didn’t seem to have much fear either. Like a doctor’s eyes when he sees a man dying; just another day.

We were all standing and I didn’t want to sit down again. I was afraid to death of sitting down again. I felt that the sadness of that woman would drown me if I stayed any longer.

“Okay, okay,” I said. “I’ll find the baby if she’s there to be found.”

“How much?” Mr. Garnett asked.

“I’ll take five hundred dollars plus my expense on the day I deliver the baby to you.”

Mrs. Garnett saw me to the door. She put her hand on my forearm and looked into my eyes. Her eyes were blue-gray. They shifted back and forth between colors even while I stared into them.

“When should we get in touch with you?” she asked.

“Wait for me. When I know somethin’ you’ll know it too.”

“You’re my hope, Mr. Rawlins. I didn’t think I could go on until Vernor found out about the baby. If I could just have her.”

There was gratitude in her eyes. Gratitude and maybe the desire to go with me.

“I’ll call,” I said and walked on down the path.

THE TOOTHLESS LAUNDRESS at Lin Chow remembered me right away. She smiled and pulled out a bundle wrapped in brown paper and tied by white string. I paid her a dollar seventy-five and she showed me her gums.

The dirge was plaintive and high, then guttural, an almost human groan. I listened while I went up the stairs and down the hall.

Lips was seated at his table, his chest was bare and his feet were too. He played his horn in a way that would teach any man to love jazz.

The music washed over me like the air at the end of the first battle after D-Day. There were no more bullets or shards of metal flying through the air. The dead lay around in pieces and whole but I couldn’t really mourn for them because I was alive. It was pure luck that I wasn’t stretched out. I lived a little longer so that I could hurt a little more.

It was a sweet pain.

I sat at the window and listened to him play for a long time. I watched the cars and pedestrians wander while Lips made sense of their lives.

A nice-looking young woman was walking across the street being followed by a pear-shaped man. He was talking loudly and gesturing with his hands. After half a block she stopped and then she smiled. He smiled too. They walked side by side after that. I wondered if they had ever met. Then I wondered if they’d get married.

“What you need now?” Lips asked. I hadn’t even realized that he had stopped playing.

“Did you know about her baby?”

“Who baby?”

“Cyndi’s.” I turned to meet his glassy stare.

“That’s why she was gone,” he said finally.

“You didn’t know?”

“Naw. Not me, man. People go in an’ outta here all the time. You know they mo’ likely be dead then pregnant.”

“Anybody else know her good enough that she might tell them?”

“Sylvia.”

“Who’s that?”

“I already told you ’bout her. ’Nother white girl. Actress too. Sylvia Bride’s what they calls her. I don’t know where she is now, though.”

“That all?”

“Boy live across the hall from her. Prancer.”

“Little guy with a mustache?”

“Uh-huh, they was good friends.”

I left twenty dollars on the table and made a note about it in this tiny spiral notepad I’d bought.

THE DOOR WAS UNADORNED. I knocked for a long time before I heard any sound whatever from inside.

He opened the door wearing crosshatched boxer shorts and brown slippers. His slick hair was tousled and his eyes were bloodshot. He looked at me for a long time trying to think who I might be.

“Yeah?” he said, giving up at last.

“You Prancer?”

“Who’re you?”

“Can I come in?”

He stood there for a few seconds and then backed up, letting me in the room.

I don’t know what I was expecting but the room surprised me. It was very neat, with conservative furnishings, except for the bed. The bed had a wooden headboard painted blue with the figures of little cherubs at the top corners. There was also a sofa and chair set before a coffee table. The coffee table had magazines of various kinds, mainly movie magazines, spread across it.

The only adornment on the wall was a movie poster of James Dean looking tortured and vulnerable.

I sat in the chair and Prancer stood there before me rubbing his eyes. He had the body of a teenaged boy but he must have been in his late twenties, maybe even thirty.

“Do I know you?” he asked.

“I was in Cyndi’s room the other day. You wanted me to leave.”

“You the cop,” he said, suddenly awake and none too pleased.

“Just a man,” I said as cool as I could manage. “Lookin’ fo’ somethin’.”

“Lookin’ fo’ what?”

“They say Cyndi had a baby.”

“Who says?”

“You told her father that.”

Prancer didn’t say anything. He just stared at me with his right hand cupped under where his left breast would have been if he were a woman.

“They went to the hospital where you sent them. They found out that Cyndi Starr delivered.”

He grinned defiantly and rocked back and forth. “I ain’t lied t’them.”

“You know where the child is?”

He shook his head like he was shaking water from his hair.

“You know anything could help me find her?”

“How come?”

“Grandparents want the child. It’s all they got left.”

For a moment Prancer’s oblivious child’s face showed feeling. “She had a girl?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Listen, man,” he said. His face was empty again. “I feel for them, mother and child, but you know I got the rent t’pay. If I got sumpin’ t’get you in here wit’ me then you know they gotta have some money somewheres.”

“I got thirty dollars in my pocket, boy. That’s it. Can we deal?”

Prancer actually licked his lips when I laid out the six five-dollar bills in his hand.

“Where?”

“You know Bull Horker?”