Doug Allyn - The Best American Mystery Stories 2003

“Hi,” I said to the night clerk five minutes later. “Can you help me with a reservation?”

It was a carefully constructed sentence designed to keep him from getting too nervous about a six-foot black man coming into his office in the middle of the night. Thieves don’t ask for reservations. They rarely say hello.

“Um,” the white clerk said. He first looked at my hands and then over my shoulder to see if somebody else was coming in behind. “I can’t make reservations. I just rent out rooms for people when they come.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s what I thought. But you know, I work at a nightclub down the street here, and the only time I can really make it in is after work. Do the daytime people take reservations?”

“I don’t know,” the clerk said, relaxing a bit. “People usually just look at the sign. If there’s a vacancy they drive in, and if not they drive on.”

He smiled at me and the phone rang. He turned his back and lifted the receiver.

“Havelock’s Motel,” he said in a stronger tone than he’d used with me. “Who? Oh yes. Let me put you through.”

He pushed the plug into a slot labeled “Number Six.” I was smiling honestly when he turned back to me.

“That’s really all I can say,” he said. “Just look for the sign.”

“All right.”

I counted the doors on the north side of the building and then I went around the back, counting windows as I went. Number six’s curtains were open wide. The only light on in the room was coming from a partially closed door, the bathroom, I was sure. There were two double beds. One was neat, either stripped or made. The other one had something on it, a pair of shoes tilted at an uncomfortable angle.

The window was unlocked.

Big Art — his driver’s license said Arthur — Farman had been dead for some hours. The cause of death probably being a bullet through the eye. Before he’d been killed he was bound, gagged, and beaten. A pillow on the floor next to him had been used to stifle the shot.

There was no trace of the girl named Sinestra. But that didn’t mean she hadn’t been there at the time of Art’s death.

I climbed out of the window and made it back to my car. The dead man, who I’d never met in life, was the strongest presence in my mind.

It’s hard looking for a blue house at three in the morning. There’s white, black, and gray, and that’s it. But I saw the big apartment building. It was on a corner with only one house nearby. It helped that the lights were on.

I knocked on the door. Why not? They were just crazy kids. There was no answer so I turned the knob. The house was a mess. Pizza cartons and dirty dishes all over the living room and the kitchen. Half-gone sodas, a nearly full bottle of whiskey; it was the kind of filth that many youths lived in while waiting to grow up.

I couldn’t tell if the rooms had been searched. But there wasn’t any blood around.

I got home a few minutes before four.

Etta picked up the receiver after the first ring.

“Hello.”

I told her about Big Art and Sinestra’s games.

“Old Willis don’t have to worry about Abel Snow with that girl in his bed,” I said.

“She called her daddy,” Etta said. “She told him where she was and asked him to come and get her.”

“Then she lit out?”

“I don’t know. All I know is what Mrs. Merchant said. She told me that Mr. Merchant sent Abel down to get her.”

“Did he bring her back?”

“No.”

“Damn.”

“Do you think he’s found ’em, Easy?”

“I’m not sure, but I don’t think so. Mr. Snow don’t mind leavin’ blood and guts behind him.”

“Maybe you better leave it alone, Easy.”

“Can’t do that, Etta. I got to see it through now.”

“I don’t want you to get killed, baby,” she said.

“That’s the nicest thing I been told all day.”

I slept on the couch for the few hours left of the night.

When I opened my eyes, she was sitting right in front of me.

“We have to talk,” Bonnie said.

“I got to go.”

“No.”

“Bonnie.”

“His name is Jogaye Cham,” she said. “We, we talked on the plane when everybody else was asleep. He talked about Africa, our home, Easy. Where we came from.”

“I was born in southern Louisiana, and I still call myself a Texan ’cause Texas is where I grew into a man.”

“Africa,” she said again. “He was working for democracy. He worked all day and all night. He wanted a country where everyone would be free. A land our people here would be glad to migrate to. A land with black presidents and black professionals of all kinds.”

“Yeah.”

“He worked all the time. Day and night. But one time there was a break in the schedule. We took a flight to a beach town he knew in Madagascar.”

“You could’a come home,” I said, even though I didn’t want to say anything.

“No,” she said, and the pain in my chest grew worse. “I needed to be with him, with his dreams.”

“Would you be tellin’ me this if them flowers didn’t come?”

“No. No.” She was crying. I held back from slapping her face. “There was nothing to tell.”

“Five days on a beach with another man and there wasn’t somethin’ to say?”

“We, we had separate rooms.”

“But did you fuck him?”

“Don’t use that kind of language with me.”

“Okay,” I said. “All right. Excuse me for upsetting you with my street-nigger talk. Let me put it another way. Did you make love to him?”

The words cut much deeper than any profanity I could have used. I saw in her face the pain that I felt. Deep, grinding pain that only gets worse with time. And though it didn’t make me feel good, it at least seemed to create some kind of balance. At least she wouldn’t leave unscathed.

“No,” she whispered. “No. We didn’t make love. I couldn’t with you back here waiting for me.”

A thousand questions went through my mind. Did you kiss him? Did you hold hands in the sunset? Did you say that you loved him? But I knew I couldn’t ask. Did he touch your breast? Did he breathe in your breath on a blanket near the water? I knew that if I asked one question they would never stop coming.

I stood up. I was dizzy, light-headed, but didn’t let it show.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“I got a job to do for Etta. A woman already paid me, so I got to move it on.”

“What kind of job?”

“Nuthin’ you need to know about. It’s my business.” And with that I showered and shaved, powdered and dressed. I left her in the house with her confessions and her lies.

With no other information available to me, I went to see Etta at the Merchants’ seaside retreat. She only pulled the door open enough to see me.

“Go away, Easy,” she said.

“Open the door, Etta.”

“Go away.”

“No.”

Maybe I had gained some strength of will working for the city schools. Or maybe Etta was getting worn down between losing her husband and working for the rich. All I knew was that at another time she could have stared me down. Instead the door swung open.

Inside, sitting on the blue couch with golden clamshell feet, was a young black man and young white woman, both of them beautiful. They were holding hands and huddling like frightened children. They were frightened children. If it wasn’t for the broken heart driving me, I would have been scared too.

“They came after you called me, Easy,” Etta said.

“Why didn’t you call back?”

“You did what I asked you to already. You found them. That’s all I could ask.”

“I’m Easy,” I said to the couple.

“Willis,” the boy said. He made a waving gesture, and I noticed that his hands were bloody and bandaged.