P. Parrish - Paint It Black

“Why not?” Louis asked.

She smiled wryly. “I’m good at compartmentalizing.”

“What do you mean?”

“Putting my feelings in neat little boxes.”

There was the sound of more cars and voices in the lot behind them.

“Why weren’t they married?” Louis asked.

The question had just popped out. He knew it was because his own parents hadn’t been married either. His own father hadn’t even stayed around long enough for his first birthday. And his alcoholic mother had lost all three of her kids to child services. He had grown up believing that white kids didn’t have such secrets. Sure, those guys on Bonanza didn’t have a mother. Neither did Opie or the kids on My Three Sons, unless you counted Uncle Charley. But white kids all had fathers, didn’t they?

Black kids didn’t. That’s what the other kids used to say to him in school. Where’s your father, Louis? Why do you live with that white guy ? Shit, even Diahann Carroll’s son didn’t have a father on that stupid Julia show. They killed him off in Vietnam.

Dear old Dad. . missing in action.

He waited for Emily to answer. He wanted to know.

“They didn’t believe in marriage,” she said. “It was the sixties, California, free love and all that crap. Me coming along wasn’t enough of a reason for them to change their minds.”

“But they stayed together,” Louis said.

Emily nodded. “They loved each other. They loved me. Thirty-five years. Like I told Roberta, that counts. But kids can be cruel, you know? I guess a little part of me never got over feeling ashamed.”

Louis looked out over the water. He was glad she didn’t ask him about his own childhood. He was pretty damn good at compartmentalizing, too, and right now, he wanted to stick his past back in its box. He realized suddenly Emily had been speaking in the past tense.

“Your parents. They’re dead?” Louis asked.

She nodded. “Car accident when I was a senior in college.”

Louis watched as she pulled her slicker tighter around herself. “No other family?” he asked.

She shook her head. She took off her glasses and held them up in the waning light. “Salt spray. Got a Kleenex?” she asked.

“Sorry.”

She slipped them back on. “I love the water,” she said after a moment. “It fogs up my glasses, frizzes my hair, and clogs up my sinuses, but I love it.”

“Does the ocean look like this?” Louis asked.

She looked at him. “You’ve never seen the Atlantic Ocean?”

“Nope.”

She looked back out at the gulf. “It’s similar. Biscayne Bay, near where I live, looks like this some. The ocean’s a little wilder.”

“I had a partner once who told me I should live near water,” Louis said. “He was into astrology.”

Emily nodded. “You’re probably a water sign. I’m a Virgo. That’s an air sign.”

“I knew there was a reason we don’t like each other.”

She laughed. She had a great contralto laugh.

“So,” she said after a moment, “where are you going when the case is over?”

Louis didn’t answer. Why was everyone asking him that? He thought about his conversation with Candy. Candy, who had lived all his life in one place and couldn’t wait to pull up his roots and get to the “real world.” Candy, who believed that cops-or anyone-really had any control over how their lives played out.

Louis stared out at the water. The wind-whipped sea oats were whispering. Something else was whispering, there in his brain. Where are you going, Louis?

“Miami. . you like it there?” Louis asked.

Emily smiled slightly. “I do now. It took a long time.”

“Why?”

“I went to Miami after I graduated because it was the farthest I could get away from California after my parents died,” she said. “Florida’s a big escape destination and I hated the place. Old people, humidity, cockroaches the size of small Cessnas flying across my kitchen.”

“But you stayed,” Louis said.

“Yeah. You can put down roots. Not an easy thing to do in sand, but it can be done.”

Louis waited a moment. “But you’re alone.”

She nodded slightly. “I have good friends, a few people who miss me when I’m gone. When you don’t have family, sometimes you have to just build one.”

She fell quiet again, burrowing into her rain slicker. Louis wanted to ask her more, though he wasn’t sure about what. He glanced at her profile, just her nose and those big black glasses poking out of the slicker’s collar. The moment was gone; she had retreated.

“Shitty sunset,” she said. “Let’s go eat.”

Queenie Avenue was a narrow street pulsating with neon and the sound of blues melting with the low rumble of the storm. It was raining lightly as Louis and Emily made their way down the slick sidewalk. Here, miles from the water, the street smelled only of city things. Dumpsters, car exhaust, vomit, piss, and the aroma of frying chicken.

They had been walking the street for an hour now, wandering in and out of the bars and take-out joints. So far, no one had recognized Walter Tatum’s picture. Louis wondered if anyone would admit it even if they did. Queenie Avenue seemed like the kind of place that hid its secrets well.

They drew stares as they walked. Louis ignored them. Emily seemed nervous. He felt her inch closer as they approached the last bar. It didn’t even have a sign, just a Budweiser sign glowing in the night.

“I guess you’re in charge here,” she said.

He looked down at her. Her hair was a wet helmet of curls around her small face. “Feeling a little out of place, Farentino?”

She gave a snort. “I went to high school in Santa Monica, California, where every girl is a blond Amazon and every guy is blinded by a C-cup. I was a short, freckled geek with braces, glasses, and no tits.”

“Yeah, but you can change all that. Can’t change your skin color. Come on, last stop, and then we’ll hit a McDonald’s for hot apple pie.”

“There’s something to look forward to,” Emily murmured.

The bar was a small cavern, dense with smoke and dominated by a long bar. A jukebox glowed in the corner, illuminating an old table shuffleboard heaped with beer cartons. The place was packed, laughter mixing with the clink of bottles and Etta James singing “Losers Weepers.”

Louis headed for the bar, Emily at his heels. Louis squeezed between two men seated on stools. He motioned to the bartender, a skinny guy in a lime-green tank top.

“Yo,” the bartender said, “I didn’t do it and I don’t know who did.”

“He ain’t no cop, Jackie,” piped up one customer.

“Sure he is.” The bartender smiled at Louis. “Ain’t you?”

Louis nodded. The bartender’s eyes drifted behind Louis to Emily. “That your lady?”

Louis ignored him and held out the photo. “Do you know this man? His name is Walter Tatum.”

The bartender looked at the photo. “That dude is dead.”

“You know him then?”

“Everybody know Walter.”

Louis felt Emily press in behind him. “He was a regular here?” Louis asked.

“Yup.”

“Was he here March first?”

“Shit, that was three weeks ago, man. .”

“It was a Tuesday.”

“Tuesday? Why didn’t you say so? Yeah, Walt was always here on Tuesdays.”

“Are you sure?” Louis asked.

The bartender turned to the far end of the bar. “Hey, Lucille! Ain’t Tuesday the night Walt Tatum always here?”

Louis looked to the end of the bar. Even in the gloom, he could see her, a large, tawny-skinned woman with an elaborate fountain of red braided hair and huge hoop earrings that glinted in the bar lights.