Six Easy Pieces by Walter Mosley Page A

supposed to come down here? I mean if she knew that she was supposed to come and didn’t, then she could feed you a story and there’d be no way you could find out the truth.”
    “She had Mr. Sunshine,” JJ said with trembling lips.
    “Who’s that?”
    “It’s a rag doll, a lion with jade-green eyes. Misty had that thing since before she could even talk. She always kept him with her.”
    “And Clovis give this doll to you?”
    “No. She sent it in the mail. I got it two days ago.”
    “Any letter?”
    “No. Just the doll in a cardboard box.”
    “You got the box?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “Let’s go see it.”
     
     
    MOFASS AND JEWELLE had a big house. The entrance was like a dais that stood high over a gigantic living room. The back wall of this room was all glass looking out onto the vista of L.A. There was a table and four high-back chairs next to this window. JJ left me in one of these while she went to look for the doll.
    I sat back and crossed my legs, appreciating the view in late afternoon. JJ was a real estate whiz kid. She bought and sold buildings around the county and turned a larger profit every year. She was able to lease that house, in a neighborhood most black people didn’t even know existed, because she was a valuable asset to the white men she dealt with.
    “Mr. Rawlins,” a faint but deep voice called.
    I turned my head slowly, not wanting to witness the demolition of one of my oldest L.A. friends. Mofass stood there leaning on two thick walking canes, one for each hand. He wore a heavy maroon-colored robe and had leather slippers on his ashen-black feet. He was breathing hard and looked like an old oil tanker that had been shipwrecked and washed up on land. He leaned to the side, sighed, and groaned. His breath was like the wind whistling through the rusted-out hull of the wrecked ship he resembled. His yellowy eyes were fog lamps in the deep night of his face.
    “Hey, William,” I hailed. “You up and around, huh?”
    “Not too much longer. Uh-uh, no.”
    “You been sayin’ that fo’ years, man. But I still see you every Christmas.”
    “It’s the tent,” he said.
    “Oxygen tent?”
    “Yeah. JJ got it hooked up over my bed. I gotta gas mask and’a oxygen tank too but I don’t use that too much. An hour under the tent and I can be almost normal for fifteen minutes. Then I got to get back there ‘fore I run outta air an’ cain’t walk no more.”
    The hulking wreck lowered himself in the chair opposite me.
    “Where JJ?” he asked suspiciously.
    “She went to get something to show me,” I said.
    Mofass leaned forward in his chair and made a motion that he wanted me to do the same.
    “I think she gotta boyfriend, Mr. Rawlins,” he whispered.
    “Why you say that?”
    “She got this pretty young thing named Rosa come up and take care’a me sometimes when she go out. She says she goin’ to do business. But I smell her perfume and see them high heels. You know JJ was runnin’ around in tennis shoes before Rosa.”
    “She was a child before, William. She growin’ up and wants to dress more like a woman, that’s all.”
    “Sometimes she out late at night, Mr. Rawlins.” There were tears in the old man’s eyes. “Late. She don’t think I know. She thinks I’m asleep, but I ain’t. I get up and wander around lookin’ for her an’ sometimes I cain’t find her.”
    “You ask her where she been?”
    “She says that she just run out to pick somethin’ up in Hollywood or that she just took a drive, but I know better. You know I got a long-barrel twenty-two pistol right under my pillow. When I get a good breath I’ma go out an’ find the motherfucker. Kill him too.”
    “Uncle Willy,” JJ called from across the football field of a living room. “What you doin’ up?”
    Mofass just stared at his girlfriend. He didn’t have enough breath to make himself heard that far away.
    She came up to us carrying a small walnut tray with two sodas on it. There was a