Six Easy Pieces by Walter Mosley Page A

they’d come over and I’d become the prime suspect. No matter how innocent or law-abiding I was, they’d take me to jail and beat me until I confessed. That was a foregone conclusion—at least in my mind.
    My other choice was to drive home and go to bed. If the police called me, I’d tell them that I didn’t know a thing. If someone saw my license plate parked out in front of her house, I could say I dropped by but no one answered the door.
    The first way was the honest, law-abiding way, the kind of life I craved. But the second way was smarter. Leaving that poor dead girl was the wise choice for a black man down at the bottom of the food chain. I walked out of that front door, wiped the doorknob clean, and, though I didn’t realize it at the time, drove off into a new period in my life.
     
     
    THE POLICE DIDN’T CALL me the next day or the day after that. I read about the murder in the
Sentinel,
L.A.’s black newspaper. They reported that Etheline AnnaMaria Teaman was found dead in her foyer by a neighbor who came by to drive her to work at her new job at Douglas Aircraft. The murder weapon was found at the scene. Theft seemed to be the motive. As of yet, there were no suspects in the crime.
    It seemed a strange coincidence that she was murdered between the time she called me and the time I arrived. If Raymond was alive, maybe he had something to do with her, more than she let on. After all, why would she have had a photograph of a man that she’d only seen a couple of times in a bar?
    I didn’t think that Mouse would have killed that girl. It isn’t that he was above killing women. But in the times I knew him, he would more likely seduce a girl or threaten her. He got no pleasure out of killing people who couldn’t fight back.
    But maybe he’d changed. Or maybe he was in trouble.
    I pulled out the phone book and began looking for Cedric or C. Boughman. I was lucky that day. The only Cedric Boughman lived on 101st Street.
    The address took me to a small house at the far end of a deep lot in the heart of Watts. Instead of a lawn, Boughman’s yard had corn and tomatoes, huge fans of collard greens, and rows of carrots. Near the house there was a wire enclosure where eight hens clucked and pecked. They set up a loud din of protest as I reached the front door.
    A small woman, somewhere near fifty, appeared in the shadowy screen. Caramel-colored and delicate, she wore glasses with very thick lenses. She stared at me for a moment before saying anything.
    “Yes?” she asked.
    “Hi. My name is Rawlins. I’m lookin’ for Cedric.”
    “He ain’t doin’ too well today, Mr. Rawlins,” the woman said sadly. “Been sittin’ back there for almost a week just shakin’ his head and sobbin’.”
    “What’s wrong?”
    “He won’t say,” she replied. “But it must be some girl. Young men pour their whole heart and soul out for just one kiss. It takes a while to get back on your feet after somethin’ like that.”
    “He’s been like that a whole week?” I asked.
    “Just about. He ain’t eat hardly a thing, and you know, he won’t even put on his pants.”
    “He don’t even go to work?”
    The woman smiled when I mentioned work. “You know he work for the church,” she said happily. “Stay home with his mother and make her proud down at Winter Baptist. He’s the youngest deacon they ever had.”
    “And the church don’t mind him stayin’ home?” I asked.
    “God bless Minister Winters,” she said, closing her eyes in reverence. “He sent a man down here to tell us that Cedric could take off all the time he needed to.”
    “He’s a good man,” I said. “Almost a saint.”
    The woman took in a deep breath and smiled as if she had just inhaled God. “He was me and Mr. Boughman’s savior when we come out here from Arkansas. Every Sunday we’d go to that little chapel and hear about how the Lord was testin’ us, makin’ us stronger and better for our kids.” The feeling in her face, the