White Butterfly

by Mosley, Walter

  He formed his long fingers into a tent that met at its apex between his eyes and looked at Mofass for a long time.

  Then he looked at me. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir.”

  I nodded shyly and ducked my head in reverence. It was the way I used to grease white men in the South.

  “We represent an investment syndicate interested in real estate.”

  The rest of the men, including Mofass, were like hungry jays eyeing a newly seeded lawn.

  “Mr. Rawlins owns less than five percent of the property you’re interested in, gentlemen. But since he and I work together I figured that he’d do well to hear what we had to say here.” Mofass could talk like a white man when he had to.

  DeCampo smiled at me.

  “We’re glad to have you here.”

  I grinned as foolishly as I could.

  “We think we can help you, Mr. Wharton,” Bernard Seavers said. The focus left me as soon as they knew how worthless I was. Five percent wouldn’t stand in their way. If Mofass wanted to impress his hired hand they didn’t mind.

  “We want to make you money,” Mr. Vie chirped.

  “You’ll have to pardon me if I don’t believe you,” Mofass said. He knew what I wanted. He knew how to squeeze.

  “I know it sounds strange, Mr. Wharton,” DeCampo said. “But our interests have crossed here.”

  “You mean about that property I got over on Willoughby?”

  “You have the land. We have the capital.” He put his hands together and pressed.

  “What do you get out of this? Interest on a loan?”

  His laugh was the sizzle of acid on skin. “Well, maybe a little more than that.”

  “How much more?”

  “We get seventy-five percent of the corporation we make here. You sit back and let the money roll in.”

  “Seventy-five percent?”

  “Yes, Mr. Wharton,” Mr. Vie put in. “We’re bringing in the capital and also the information that will make that investment most lucrative.”

  I could see the swans flirting. They stirred up the water so that it threw off powerful flashes of the afternoon sun.

  “What is this information?”

  Mr. DeCampo smiled. “The county is going to make Willoughby into a main street. Five lanes wide. And almost all of your nine acres will still be intact after the construction.”

  “So the value of the property will go up then?” Mofass asked. I could tell by the way he asked that he understood why I didn’t want to sell before.

  “In ten years it will be worth more than all of us here in this room could raise. We’re talking supermarkets and department stores, Mr. Wharton. Maybe an office building in the future. Who knows?”

  “But if we just wait, wouldn’t the property be its own collateral?” Mofass asked innocently.

  The jays started fidgeting. There was suddenly danger in the room.

  “I mean,” Mofass continued, “why should we take this kind of deal when we could own everything ourselves?”

  “The truth is,” Fargo Baer said, “we’re letting you in on the ground floor with this information. The land is unzoned now. As soon as the county planner lays out the new construction, the council is going to limit what you can do. I mean, you could push something through if you wanted, but it will cost you a prime penny then.”

  “And,” Bernard Seavers put in, “letting the banks know about the plans would cause other development projects. Right now we have the jump on everybody. Whatever we build will make us the business center of the neighborhood.”

  “So you wouldn’t want us to tell anybody about this here meeting?” Mofass asked.

  “Our partners wouldn’t like that,” DeCampo said as pleasantly as he could.

  “And just who is that?”

  The acid hiss issued from his mouth again. Then, “Men who know about land sales and new roads. Men who don’t like to be cheated.”

  “But it’s cheating to use this information to make a profit, ain’t it? It’s my taxes building that road?”

  “In five years your twenty-five percent will be worth a million dollars,” DeCampo said.

  Mofass started to wheeze.

  I imagined Edna and Regina playing in the grass with the swans stroking them. I even worried for a moment that a swan might hurt my baby girl.

  “So you want me to give you three-quarters of what I own?”

  “That’s one way of looking at it.” DeCampo shrugged. “But a better way is to say that we are going increase your current wealth twentyfold.”

  The room was pretty quiet for a while. The only sound was Mofass’s harsh breath.

  I once thought that businessmen had some kind of honor or code. But I was straightened out about that long before I met Mr. DeCampo and his friends. I knew that there was something shady going on, and I had Mofass set up that meeting to find out exactly what it was. The next step I’d planned would give us a little time to look into their claims.

  Mofass cleared his throat.

  “Well, gentlemen,” he said as we both rose. “I will have to discuss this with my board.”

  “What?” Mr. Vie asked.

  “I represent a syndicate of my own, sir. Mr. Rawlins here owns a small part of that organization, and there are others. Businessmen down in our own community.”

  “But you led us to believe that you owned that property?” Fargo’s question sounded more like a threat.

  “I’m sorry if I misrepresented myself. You see, my partners like their privacy too.”

  “How soon will you have an answer, Mr. Wharton?” DeCampo asked, though his mouth didn’t seem to move.

  “Two days at the outside. I might know by this afternoon.”

  With that Mofass and I went to the door.

  DeCampo followed us there. He shook my hand and beamed his cold smile into my eyes. Then he took Mofass’s hand and held on to it.

  “This information is to be held in confidence, Mr. Wharton. Nobody who doesn’t need to know should be told.”

  I made it out of the door without having said a word.

  — 17 —

  WE WERE DRIVING DOWN Venice Boulevard, heading back toward Watts. The trolley had already been shut down but the tracks still ran down the center of the street. Everybody had to have a car without the trolley running.

  They were drinking champagne in Detroit.

  “What do you want me to tell them, Mr. Rawlins?”

  “When he calls ya tell’im that we’ll take a forty-sixty deal. We get the sixty.”

  “An’ what if he don’t buy that?”

  “Then he’s fucked. We go to Bank of America and lay it out to them the way DeCampo laid it out to us.”

  “I don’t know,” Mofass said tentatively.

  “You don’t know what?”

  “A million dollars is a lotta money. My broker’s fee of nine percent look pretty good. Why you wanna shake that up?”

  “If they could give me one million, then they could make three. If they can do that then I could do it.”

  “I guess,” Mofass said. But I’m not sure that he agreed with me.

  For the rest of the ride we were quiet. Mofass hacked a little. I dreamed about being one of the few black millionaires in America. It was a strange kind of daydream, because whenever I thought of some Beverly Hills shopkeeper smiling at me I also thought that he was lying, that he really hated me. Even in my dreams I was persecuted by race.

  When we were back in the office I asked, “How much money we got in the floor?”

  “Nine hunnert eighty-seven.”

  “Gimme it.”

  Ordinarily Mofass would have questioned me on that hefty withdrawal but after talking six and seven figures he didn’t bat an eye.

  He lifted the carpet that lay before the desk. Under that was a plain pine floor. But if you slid a screwdriver between two of the boards you could pop out the small trapdoor. Down there is where we kept a certain percentage of cash receipts. That was our expen
se money.

  Mofass pulled out the cash box and handed me what folding money there was.

  When I was halfway down the stairs Mofass’s phone rang. I figured it was Jack DeCampo checking to see if Mofass had an answer yet.

  “HEY, BABY!” I said out of the car window.

  Regina looked trim and neat in her orange-and-white dress. She was standing in front of Temple. It was five o’clock exactly.

  She didn’t smile, just ran across the street and jumped in. We both leaned into an awkward kiss and said hello.

  Her mood was nervous, jumpy.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “It’s just that I been workin’ all day an’ I wanna get away from here now.”

  So I pulled away from the curb and turned back toward home.

  “Did you find that boy?” she asked me.

  “Yeah.”

  “Did he know who the killer was?”

  “Maybe he knew somethin’, but we got to see yet. All he saw was a big man with a beard. Then all he saw was stars.”

  “You tell Quinten Naylor that?”

  “Sure did,” I said. Then, “Hey, honey, I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you tell Gabby Lee t’stay a couple’a days with Edna and Jesus?”

  “Why?”

  “Then we could go up to Frisco for two nights.”

  “Uh… not tomorrow, baby,” she said, looking for other words. “I can’t right now.”

  “Is it ’cause you want that money for your auntie?”

  “No, it ain’t that. I got a letter from my uncle Andrew. He said that her husband came up with what they needed anyway.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “Do you love me, Easy?”

  I felt the afternoon sun burning on my face. It was like a red-hot slap that lingers long after you’ve been hit.

  “Sure… I mean, yeah, of course I do.”

  “Maybe you don’t. Maybe you just think you do.”

  “Don’t do this, Regina. Don’t play with me.”

  “I ain’t playin’ with you. It’s just a feelin’ I got, that’s all.”

  “What feelin’?” I was sitting down but I might just as well have been on my knees.

  “You don’t talk to me. I mean, you don’t say nuthin’.”

  “What am I doin’ right now? Ain’t this talk?”

  “What’s my auntie’s name?”

  “What?”

  “You know that today is the first time you ever asked me to do anything for you, Easy? You never talk to me about what you be doin’. I mean, you say you work for Mofass but I don’t have no idea where you are most the time.”

  “So now I gotta sign in with you?”

  “You was readin’ a book the other day,” she said, ignoring my question.

  “Yeah… ”

  “I don’t know what it was. I don’t know what your mother’s name was or who your friends are, not really.”

  “You don’t wanna know them,” I said. I laughed a little and shook my head.

  “But I do wanna know. How can you know a man if you don’t know his friends?”

  “They ain’t really friends, Gina. They more like business partners,” I said. “I ain’t got what you call any real friends left. My mother is dead and there ain’t no more to say about that.”

  I turned on Ninety-sixth Street and parked. “… and I love you.”

  I don’t know how I expected her to take that. She sat as far away from me as she could, with her back against the door. She shook her fine head and said, “I know you feel about me, but I don’t know if it’s love.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Sometimes you look at me the same way a dog be lookin’ after raw meat. I get scared’a the way you look at me, scared’a what you might do.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like the other night.”

  I didn’t know what to say then. I thought about what she called rape. I didn’t think that it was like some of these men do to women, how they grab them off the street and brutalize them. But I knew that if she was unwilling then I made her against that will. I was wrong but I didn’t have the heart to admit it.

  My silence infuriated her.

  “Do you wanna fuck me right here?” she spat.

  “Com’on, baby. Don’t talk like that.”

  “Oh? I ain’t s’posed t’say it? I’m just s’posed to shut my mouf while you fuck me raw?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You sorry? Is that what you have to say? You want to apologize for raping me?”

  I was facing her. I flung backward with my elbow and shattered the glass in the door. There was a sharp pain in my upper arm; I was glad for the distraction.

  “What the hell you think you doin’, Easy?” Regina screamed. There was fear in her voice.

  “We gotta slow this down, Gina. We gotta stop before we go someplace we cain’t get down from.” My voice was small and careful.

  I started the car and drove off again. She gazed ahead. I looked out too, looked out for anything that would take my mind away from the anger in that car.

  The thing I struck on was the palm trees. Their silhouettes rose above the landscape like impossibly tall and skinny girls. Their hair a mess, their posture stooped. I tried to imagine what they might be thinking but failed.

  “You gotta talk to me,” Regina said. “You gotta hear me too.”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  She looked out the window but I don’t think she was seeing anything. “I raised thirteen hungry brothers and served my father eggs to go with his whiskey in the morning.”

  “I know that.”

  “NO YOU DON’T!”

  I’d never heard her shout like that.

  “I said, no you don’t,” Regina said again. I could hear the breath ripping from her nostrils. “I mean, you know it happened but you don’t know what it is to have fourteen men leanin’ on you and cryin’ to you. Beggin’ you all the time for everything, everything you got. Your last nickel, your Saturday night. An’ they never once asked about me. They come in hungry or beat up or drunk and needin’ me t’make it right.”

  I pulled up in front of our house. When I moved my left arm to open the door there came the sound of broken glass settling.

  “But they was better than you,” Regina said. “At least they needed me for somethin’. I mean, maybe you want some pussy. Maybe you even wanna make me crazy and make me come. But if I do that and fall in love with you, all you gonna do is walk outta the house in the mornin’ goin’ who knows where.”

  “Everybody goes to work, baby.”

  “You don’t understand. I want to be part of something. I ain’t just some girl to suck your dick an’ have your babies.”

  When Marla talked like that I got excited. But hearing it from my wife made me want to tear off her head. I held my temper, though. I knew I deserved her abuse.

  She stared dead ahead and I kept silent, watching the clock on the dashboard. After four minutes had gone by I said, “I got that money if you need it.”

  “I don’t want it.”

  “I’ll bring you down to the places I work at and show you what I do.”

  “Yeah… ” she said, waiting for more.

  “We could throw a party and invite the people I know.”

  She turned fifteen degrees and softened just a little. It was then that I caught the scent of fried okra. They had served fried okra at the wake for my mother. I was barely seven years old and I hated the minister’s eyes.

  I hadn’t eaten fried okra in twenty-nine years, but I smelled it sometimes. Usually when I was feeling strong emotions about a woman who was almost within my reach, just beyond touch.

  “I do love you, Easy.” It hurt her to say it.

  The glass fell out onto the ground when I got out of the car. I had to brush the shards away in order to close the door again.

  “You’re
bleeding,” Regina said.

  The blood had run down my arm, making a red seam all the way down to the tip of my baby finger.

  GABBY WAS WATCHING the evening news from the couch and Edna was examining the frills of a small pillow under the big woman’s head.

  “Give us a minute, Lee,” Regina said. Then she led me to the bathroom, where she made me take off my shirt.

  “There’s glass in this.” Her probing fingers made me jump. “Does it hurt?”

  “Only when you mash on it,” I whimpered.

  When she cleaned out the cut the blood flowed more easily.

  I watched Regina’s face in the cabinet mirror as she wrapped the bandage around my upper arm. The pain was welcome. So was her touching me.

  We made dinner together and played with the children. Jesus showed us his quizzes. A D in spelling but an A in math. Edna tore back and forth across the floor and screeched. Nobody talked much.

  AT ABOUT NINE O’CLOCK the phone rang.

  “Hello?”

  “Is this Mr. Rawlins?”

  “Who’s this?” I answered.

  “My name is Vernor Garnett. You nearly gave my wife a heart attack today.”

  “How did you get this number, Mr. Garnett?”

  “I work downtown, Rawlins. I can get just about anything I want.”

  “Okay, sir. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so hard on your wife. But I’ve been working with the police on this thing and I felt I needed to find out some things.”

  “The police say that you were to be helping them with problems in the colored community. You had no business at my house.”

  “Your daughter was in my community, Mr. Garnett. She worked down here.”

  “You leave my family alone, Rawlins. You keep out of my life. Do you understand that?”

  “Yessir. Right away, sir.”

  I cradled the phone and it started ringing in my hand. It was too fast to be Garnett calling back so I was civil.

  “Yes?”

  “What’s wrong with you, Rawlins?”

  “Who is this?” I asked for the second time in as many minutes.

  “This is Andrew Voss. Who gave you permission to go into that family’s house and to leave evidence with them?”