Free Rose Gold by Walter Mosley Page B

it sound like
You’re not making any sense
.
    “Let’s say a man owns a house up the street from here but he lives in another house—owns that one too. Now somebody comes up to this man and says, ‘Look here, brother, I got this new wife and a three-month-old child. I know you got a empty house up the street. Why don’t you let us have that so we’ll have a place to live too?’ ”
    “I’m not askin’ you to give me a house, man,” Percy said, reverting into the defiant tone of our common upbringing.
    “No? So Jason Middleton isn’t worth nuthin’ to you?”
    “He is to me but what kinda job could he give you?”
    “Just the fact that you ask me that question tells me that you not ready to meet Middleton. Just the fact that you don’t see that if somethin’ is valuable to you then that thing has worth everywhere tells me that you wouldn’t know what to do with the introduction if I made it.”
    “You want me to pay you?” Percy asked, twisting his lips at the sour notion.
    “I’ll tell you what, Percy, you think about what I said, maybe talk it over with Jewelle, and then get back to me.” I took a step down.
    “Just spell it out,” he said.
    “Look,” I said. “I’m not your mother, your father, your friend, boss, or professor. I don’t owe you an answer or even one minute of my time. And if you don’t know how to spell, that’s not my problem.”
    I rushed down the stairs and onto Central before Percy could formulate any kind of reply.
    Once on the street I realized that I was still moving headlong into my work instead of with forethought and guile.
    I needed a phone book but I didn’t want to run into Percy again or to wake up Alana, for that matter. I turned south on Central, walked at double-speed two and half blocks to 79th, and turned left. There, in front of Jolly’s Liquor Store, I entered a phone booth that had survived from a previous era.
    The white pages told me that Mona Martin lived on South Denker. By the address I knew that her place was somewhere around 103rd. So I walked back up to 77th, got into my new-used Dodge, and left Etta, Alana, and Percy to do whatever they did when I wasn’t around.
    It was a small house built in the French Colonial style. The porch was a series of planks lifted up from the grassy lot and going around the entire house. The sloping roof raised high above the home, and the walls, which according to custom should have been white, were instead painted gray with red trim. A weather-worn picket fence surrounded the place. A flimsy chest-high barrier like that would supply little or no protection. The only thing it would have been good for would be to keep a small dog from running out into the street. But there was no dog.
    There was a For Rent sign nailed to one of the four front posts that pretended to hold up the eaves of the roof.
    I sat there, parked across the street in my Dodge, thinking not about Mona Martin and Alton or Percy Bidwell and his inexplicable hold over Jewelle, but instead concentrating on Rosemary Goldsmith and how I could get out of any serious involvement with her and Uhuru-Bob Mantle.
    I lived in L.A. and worked there as a kind of specialized investigator. I wouldn’t make it very long if the police turned against me. I could certainly fail at making any progress in the case, but after taking money I’d have to do at least enough to make a convincing report. I was thinking of how I might get away with doing the least amount of work when I saw the rooster.
    It was brown with orange and royal blue wattles and a bright red comb. The king fowl was strutting up and down the sidewalk in front of the Post house like Napoleon surveying the ocean surrounding his exile. The arrogance of that land-bound bird made me smile, putting my useless fears somewhere in the backseat of the musty car.
    A detective’s main job is sitting quietly and waiting. But that wait is not passive. The real detective is always aware and on guard, thinking