John MacDonald - The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper

I had to find my way past that black armor. Funny how it used to be easier. Suspicion used to be on an individual basis. Now each one of us, black or white, is a symbol. The war is out in the open and the skin color is a uniform. All the deep and basic similarities of the human condition are forgotten so that we can exaggerate the few differences that exist.

“What’s wrong with you?” I asked her.

“Nothin’ wrong.”

“You could talk to me before. Now you’ve slammed the door.”

“Door? What door, mister? I got to get back to work.”

Suddenly I realized what it might be. “Lorette, have you slammed the door because you know that this morning I stood out in front of this place talking to a couple of cops?”

There was a sidelong glance, quick, vivid with suspicion, before she dropped her eyes again. “Don’t matter who you talkin’ to.”

“Looked like a nice friendly little chat, I suppose.”

“Mister, I got to go to work.”

“That housekeeper here, Mrs. Imber? If she hadn’t happened to look into 109 on Saturday afternoon and saw me there sacked out, it wouldn’t have been any nice friendly conversation with the law. And it wouldn’t have happened out in front of this place. It would have been in one of their little rooms, with nobody smiling. They would have been trying to nail me for killing that nurse.”

She turned and leaned against the shady wall, arms folded, her face no longer slack with the defensive tactic of improvised imbecility. She wore a thoughtful frown, white teeth biting the fullness of her underlip. “Then it was that nurse girl with you in the room Friday night, Mr. McGee?”

“That’s how I got acquainted with the law, with Stanger and Nudenbarger.”

“The way I know you had a woman with you, Cathy she told me Stanger asked her if when she did the room she saw any sign you’d had a woman in there. That was before you helped her some. No reason to try to save any white from the law anytime. She said you surely had a party. So it was a lucky thing about Miz Imber checking the room, I guess.”

“Yes, indeed.”

Her brown-eyed stare was narrow and suspicious. “Then, what call have you got to fool around with those two law?”

“I liked the nurse. If I can help find out who killed her, I’d buddy up to a leper or a rattlesnake. It’s a personal matter.”

Her eyes softened. “I guess being with someone you like, being in the bed with them, and they’re dead the next day, it could be a sorrowful thing.”

It struck me that this was the first sympathetic and understanding response I’d had from anyone. “It’s a sorrowful thing.”

With a sudden thin smile she said, “Now, if she was so nice and all, how come she was giving it away to such a mean honk lawyer like that Mr. Holton? Surprised I know? Man, we keep good track of everybody like Holton.”

“What’s your beef with him?”

“When he was prosecutor, he got his kicks from busting every black that come to trial, busting him big as he could manage. Ever’time he could send a black to Raiford State Prison, it was a big holiday for him, grinning and struttin’ around and shaking hands. The ones like that, they can’t get anybody for yard work or housework, at least nobody worth a damn or a day’s pay.”

“She didn’t like Holton, Lorette. She was trying to break loose. Being with me was part of the try. Didn’t you ever hear of any woman with a hang-up on a sorry man?”

There had been antagonism toward me when she had talked of Holton. I was on Holton’s team because of my color. But by telling her how it was between Penny and Rick, I had swung it all back to that familiar lonely confusing country of the human heart, the shared thing rather than the difference.

“It happens. It surely happens,” she said. “And the other way around too. Well, yes, I heard you was with those two this morning. Lieutenant Stanger, he isn’t so bad. Fair as maybe they let him be. But the one called Lew, he likes to whip heads. Don’t care whose, long as it’s a black skull. Stanger don’t stop him, so the day they go down, they both go down like there was no difference at all.”

“I wanted to ask you how Cathy made out. I had no way of knowing how much she drank out of that bottle.”

Her stare was wise, timeless, sardonic. “Why, now, that big ol’ gal is just fine. Big strong healthy gal. On account of you didn’t get her fired, she might be real thankful to you. How thankful do you want she should be, man?”

“Dammit, why do you think that’s what I’ve got in mind?”

She laughed, a rich, raw little sound, full of derision. “Because what the hell else could you want from black motel maids? Sweepin’ and cleanin’ lessons? A walk in the park? A Bible lesson? Those women back in that room, now. I know exactly what they’re thinking. They got it all figured that finally, somehow a whitey got to me, and probably tomorrow I switch with Cathy, one of mine for her One-O-nine, because I decided to be motel tail and pick up some extra bread. Those women know there’s not another damned thing in the world about me or Cathy you could be after. And that’s how it is.”

“And that is exactly what you believe about me?”

“Mister, I don’t know what to believe about you, and that’s the truth.”

“I hunted you up because I wanted to see how Cathy made it. And I wanted to ask a favor.”

“Like what?”

“I’ve seen a lot of towns like this one. Enough to know that the black community knows everything that happens in the white community. Maids and cooks and yard men make one of the best intelligence apparatuses in the world.”

“Sneaky niggers listening to everything, huh?”

“If I happened to be black, you can damned well bet I’d keep track, Mrs. Walker. Just to keep from getting caught in the middle of anything. I would have to be just that much faster on my feet, just to get a job and keep a job. I’d listen and I’d know.”

She tilted her head as she looked up at me. “You almost know where it is, don’t you, man? If you were black, now, wouldn’t you be too smart to be a yard man?”

“Exactly the same way that if you were white, you’re too smart to be a motel maid.”

“So what makes you think I’m so stupid I’d get myself messed up in some white killing by coming to you with anything I hear about it?”

“Because I liked that nurse. Because without special help the cops might plumber this one. Because you can follow your hunch, which tells you I’d never make any attempt to bring you into it at all. But the big reason you’ll do it is because it’s one of the last things in the world you ever thought you’d do.”

She snickered. “My grandma kept telling me, she’d say, ‘Lorrie, when you got your hair in the lion’s mouth, just you lay quiet. You keep forgetting and it’s gone get you in bad trouble.’ ”

“So?”

“Mr. McGee, I got to do the late checkouts. Cathy wasn’t all as fine as I said. She said she felt far off. She worked slow and her tongue sounded thick and she said she felt like her skull was cracked open up on top. So Jase drove her on home, and I got two of her late rooms and three of my own to do up.”

“Will you think about it, at least?”

With an enigmatic smile she walked away slowly. She had her hands in the pockets of the uniform skirt. She scuffed her heels and went a dozen steps, then stopped and looked back at me over her shoulder, her smile merry and impudent.

“I might see if there’s a thing worth knowing. But if there was and I told you and you told somebody I told you, if they come to me about it, they’re going to come up onto the dumbest black girl south of George Wallace.”