Little Scarlet by Walter Mosley Page B

Nola live over on the right over here on the third floor, apartment three. And it was Loverboy stoled that man’s car.”
    “Loverboy?”
    “Uh-huh. He famous around here. He steals cars for a livin’. One boy tried to set that white man’s car on fire but Loverboy an’ this other dude pushed him down an’ stoled that mothahfuckah.”
    “You know his real name?” I asked.
    Bobby Grant shook his head.
    I couldn’t think of anything else to ask so I left him with his train sets, work pants, and his stacks of empty dishes.
     
11
     
    When I got back out on the street the crowd on the corner was gone. That was either a good or a bad thing. Maybe Newell went home to lick his wounds or maybe to get his pistol. But either way, there was no turning back for me then. I went to the apartment building where Nola lived. It was next to a small grocery that had been gutted and torched.
    Across the street the Gaynor Furniture store was just a gaping hole flanked by three walls. There was devastation up and down the block and for miles around. For a moment the enormity of what had happened got to me. On TV they had aerial views of this part of the city. It looked like Germany did when we marched in at the end of the war.
    It was like a war, I thought. A war being fought under the skin of America. The soldiers were all unwilling conscripts who had no idea of why they were fighting or what victory might mean.
     
     
    NOLA’S DOOR WAS locked but I had a slender metal slat in a comb sleeve in my pocket. That slat could crack most simple locks and latches. I also had a letter in my pocket that would get me out of jail if it came to that.
    The apartment seemed together. There was no overturned furniture or open, tossed drawers. Nola Payne had been a neat woman. Her bed was made and the floors were swept. The dishes were stacked on the kitchen counter because there were no shelves installed. She had a two-burner black wrought-iron stove.
    In her bedroom there was a small photograph in a silver frame set upon a two-drawer cabinet. Nola was in the foreground backed up by a tall brown man with a grin on his lips and his arms wrapped around her waist.
    In the trash can in the bathroom there were three bloody rags torn from a sheet like the one Bobby used for a curtain.
    I couldn’t find another drop of blood anywhere. Then I remembered that she was shot after being murdered.
    Nola’s window looked down on Grape Street. The youth in the overalls was back on the corner with three or four others. Juanda wasn’t there. I was angry at myself for noticing her absence. I wasn’t looking for a woman to play around with. Bonnie was my woman. We nearly broke up over her African prince but then we’d decided to stay together.
    I intended to honor that decision.
    There was no address book among Nola’s things. That was odd. Such a neat and organized woman would have a place where she kept her phone numbers and addresses. I found her purse. She had a wallet with eight dollars and a silver chain with a broken clasp.
    I searched for an address book for ten minutes. No one, especially a stranger, would have taken it, so I thought that it must be someplace obvious — staring me in the face. Finally I gave up. Maybe Nola was a loner and didn’t have to jot down the few numbers she called regularly.
    As I walked out of Nola’s apartment I was thinking about Juanda’s yellow-and-white dress. It fit her figure perfectly. I speculated that she was in her early twenties and unmarried. Her skin was dark and she had big nostrils. Her face had an animal quality, like a fairy-tale fox.
    I shook my head, dislodging the image. But when I walked into the hallway, there she was.
    “Mr. Rawlins?”
    “Yes, Juanda, what is it?”
    “Um.” She was looking at me with hungry eyes. She expected me to embrace her. I was feeling it too but I didn’t give in.
    “Yeah?”
    “Newell went to get some’a his friends. They drivin’ around now lookin’ for