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 damn thing in the world about me or Cathy you could be after. And that’s how it is.”