Easy Rawlins 3: White Butterfly by Walter Mosley

Author:Walter Mosley [Mosley, Walter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Los Angeles (Calif.), Detectives, Mystery & Detective, Political, Rawlins; Easy (Fictitious character), Hard-Boiled, General, African American, Fiction
ISBN: 9780671867874
Publisher: Pocket Books
Published: 1993-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

— 18 —

THE NIGHT SERGEANT didn’t believe that I worked for Quinten Naylor. But he didn’t mind making an early-morning call to his superior officer either. So I waited while he tried to get through.

It was a quiet night at the station.

An old man nodded in and out of sleep on the long wooden bench where we both sat. He was a white wino, not uncommon in our neighborhood. His coat had once been brown but now it was worn to gray at places. He smelled of sweat and that made me like him. Across from us sat a middle-aged black woman. She was weeping into a blue handkerchief. Her cheeks and nose were bright black plums. I never knew why either one of them was there. I’ve spent my whole life passing by little tragedies like that and ignoring them.

“Mr. Rawlins,” the desk sergeant called.

“Yeah?”

“Lieutenant Naylor said to let you see the man. Just fill this out and I’ll get somebody to bring you back.” He held out a clipboard with a mimeographed sheet of paper on it.

I put down my name and address and relationship with the incarcerated. I put down my social security number and my telephone number and the reason for my visit. I signed at the bottom and returned the clipboard to the sergeant.

He didn’t even read it, just folded the page into quarters and pushed it down a slot behind him. Then he picked up the phone and pushed a button on the desk.

“Come on out here, Rivers,” was all he said into the receiver.

A moment later a small white man in a short-sleeved khaki police shirt came out of a door behind the sergeant’s desk. The man had a gaunt and pitted face. He was probably in his mid-thirties but he could have been sixty with a ravaged face like that.

“This the guy?”

The sergeant nodded.

“Come on,” the ravaged man said. “I’m in a goddamned rush.”

First he took me down a long gray-plaster hall. We came to a white wooden door that the policeman had a key for. Just beyond that door was another one, an iron door with evil-looking bolts all around it. He had a key for this door too. Then we were in another hall made of steel-grated floors, walls, and ceilings.

We came to a big room made all out of metal and glass. There was a table in the middle of the floor with a chair on either side. The table and chairs were all bolted to the floor.

I heard the gruff voice of one man talking and the pathetic sobs of another man.

“Sit down. Wait here,” the little policeman said. Then he went through a door on the other side.

“I ain’t tellin’ you again!” It was the gruff voice.

In answer a man moaned. Then there was a loud crash and more crying. I heard the voice again but I couldn’t make out what was being said.

The noise was coming from behind an iron door to my right.

The door behind me opened and Mouse, manacled hand and foot, shuffled in, followed by the warder.

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