Free A Red Death by Walter Mosley

hospital back home. Her bones and bruises healed, but something happened to her nerves. She couldn’t work anymore or even walk right. Somewhere in her late twenties, she had been a beautiful woman until that accident. It was a shame to see her come down so far. But what could I do about it? Mofass was hard but he was right when he said that I couldn’t pay her rent.
    The living room was a mess. The shades were drawn and the curtains pulled, so it was twilight in the musty rooms. Ghostly white cartons of Chinese food were open and moldering on the table, trash everywhere. I flicked the light switch, but the bulb had burned out. Against a far wall there sat an altar she had made from a small alcove. Inside she had glued a picture of Jesus. It was painted like a mosaic. He had a halo and held two fingers and a thumb above three saints who were bowing to receive his blessing. All around the painting there were old flowers wired to the walls. They were unidentifiable brown things that she’d probably brought home from mass or after a funeral.
    At the foot of the painting was the bronze dish that she also used to burn the incense. The sweet smell was much stronger there. Little ashes, like white maggots, were littered around the brimming dish. And there was a black, gummy substance on the ledge and down the wall to the floor.
    The bathroom was disgusting. All kinds of cosmetic bottles open and dried until the liquids had caked and cracked. Mildewed towels on the floor. A spider spun its web over the bathtub faucet.
    The worst smells came from the bedroom, and I hesitated to go in there. It’s a funny thing how smell is such an animal instinct. The first thing a dog will do is sniff. And if it doesn’t smell right there’s a natural reluctance to get any closer.
    Maybe I should have been a dog.
    Poinsettia was hanging from the light fixture in the middle of the ceiling. She was naked and her skin sagged so that it seemed as if it would come right off the bone any second. Directly under her was the cause of the worst smells. Even as I watched a thick drop of blood and excrement fell from her toe.
    I don’t remember going down to Mrs. Trajillo’s apartment. I have a feeling that I tried to use Poinsettia’s phone, but it had been disconnected.

    “S URE,” SAID OFFICER ANDREW REEDY, a rangy and towheaded policeman. “She kicks over the chair after tying the knot.” He was looking at the overturned chair that lay halfway across the room, then continued, “And bingo! She’s hung. You said she was despondent, right, Mr. Rawlins?”
    “Yeah,” I answered him. “She was being evicted by Mofass.”
    “Who’s that?” asked Quinten Naylor. He was Reedy’s partner and the only Negro policeman I’d ever seen, up to that time, in plainclothes. He was also looking at that chair.
    “He manages the place, collects the rent and the like.”
    “Who does he manage for?” Naylor asked me.
    While I was considering how to answer, Reedy said, “Who cares? This is a suicide. We just tell ’em that she killed herself and that’s that.”
    Naylor was of medium height but he was wide and so gave the feeling of largeness and strength. He was the opposite of his partner in every way, but they seemed to have a kind of rapport.
    Naylor walked up to, almost under, the hanging corpse. It seemed as if he were sniffing for something wrong.
    “Aw, com’on, Quint,” Reedy whined. “Who wants to murder this girl? I mean all sneaky-like, pretending she killed herself? Did she have any enemies, Mr. Rawlins?”
    “Not that I know of.”
    “Look at her face, though, Andy. Those could be fresh bruises,” Naylor said.
    “Sometimes strangulation from hanging does that, Quint,” Reedy pleaded.
    “Hey listen,” the fat ambulance attendant shouted from the hall. I’d called the hospital too, even though I knew she was dead. “When can we cut ’er down an’ get outta here?”
    He was not my favorite kind of white man.
    “Hold up on