Free Little Scarlet by Walter Mosley Page B

on a small blue sofa set against the wall directly across from her. They both eyed me with fear.
    “Miss Plump,” I said.
    “Good afternoon, Mr. Rawlins,” she said with certainty.
    She met my eye and even smiled. Overnight she had thought about our conversation and the morning brought on a resolution to live life the way she saw it.
    That’s what I surmised anyway.
    “May I see Miss Landry?” I asked.
    “She’s in H-twelve. Dr. Dommer said that it was fine.”
    As I moved toward the swinging door, the young man piped up.
    “Excuse me, miss, but we’ve been waiting here for over half an hour.”
    “The doctor is still with a patient,” Marianne said, not in an unfriendly tone.
    “Then why is he going in?” the young man replied.
    “Listen, friend,” I said. “You don’t want to go where I’m going. Believe that.”
    He looked away from me and I laughed.
    “You might turn your head, man, but I’ll still be here.”
    Marianne Plump covered her mouth to stifle her grin.
    I pushed open the door and never saw the young man or old woman again.
     
14
     
    Geneva Landry was staring at the wall in front of her, wrapped in a cotton robe, and seated in a chair beside the high hospital bed. Whatever it was she saw, it had nothing to do with that room. The chair was made from chrome and blue padding. Sparrows chattered in a tree outside the window. Sunlight flooded the room without heating it. That was because of the air-conditioning.
    Geneva hadn’t turned when I opened her door.
    “Miss Landry.”
    “Yes?” she asked, keeping her eye on the bare wall.
    “My name is Easy Rawlins,” I said, moving into her line of vision.
    When I blocked her view of the wall she winced.
    “Hello.”
    “I see they took you out of that straitjacket.”
    She nodded and crossed her chest with her arms, caressing her shoulders with weak, ashen fingers.
    “Why they got me in here, Mr. Rawlins?”
    “May I sit down, ma’am?”
    “Yes.”
    I sat at the foot of the mattress.
    “Do you remember what happened to Nola?”
    I regretted the question when grief knotted up in her face.
    “Yes.”
    “The police are worried that if a white man killed her, the riots will start up again.”
    “He did kill her,” she said. “And there’s nothin’ they can do about that.”
    She glanced at me and then looked away.
    “Did you see him do it, ma’am?”
    “Are you the law, Mr. Rawlins?”
    “No ma’am. I’m just tryin’ to find the man killed your niece.”
    “But you not a policeman?”
    “No. Why?”
    “Because that’s what that sloppy cop asked me this morning. He kept askin’ if I saw her get killed. I told him that if I did he wouldn’t have to be lookin’ for the man ’cause I woulda kilt him myself.”
    Her hands were pulling at the shiny arms of the chair.
    “That was Detective Suggs?” I asked.
    “I guess it was.”
    “He’s the one wanted me to talk to you and to ask around about who it was that hurt Nola.”
    “Killed her,” the distraught woman said. “He killed her. Shot Li’l Scarlet in her eye.”
    “What did you call her?” I asked.
    “Li’l Scarlet,” Geneva said. “Her daddy, my brother, called her that because’a her red hair. When she was a child she was just a peanut and so everybody called her Li’l Scarlet. Li’l Scarlet Payne.”
    I nodded and smiled. I placed my hand on hers but she pulled away.
    “Did Nola have a gun, Miss Landry?”
    “No. Of course not. She wasn’t that kind’a girl. She went to church and praised Jesus. It was a sin to kill her.”
    “Did she keep an address book?”
    “She had a small green tin I gave her when she came here from Mississippi. It was for a little holiday whiskey cake. It was just the right size for the note cards she kept. That way she said if somebody’s numbers changed she could just write up a new card and not have to scratch it out. She was very clean, Mr. Rawlins.”
    “I know she was.”
    “Are you gonna find that white