Thrown-away Child

kettles are alike that way. “Do you suppose I might get one straight answer to one simple question before I leave?”
    “I suppose you could leave easy enough. Being just a little old colored woman, I don’t suppose too much otherwise.”
    “Godammit to hell—!”
    “Don’t be talking ugly. I’m a church woman.”
    “Sorry, ma’am.”
    Violet laughed at him. Mueller was smart enough to know he had been made a fool fair and square, so he said nothing more for the moment. I had a fleeting thought as to how a rabid cop like Mueller might express himself later that night, after some drinks. Maybe there was a Mrs. Mueller he could punch around.
    “All right,” Violet said. “You want it straight and simple? Perry ain’t here, and I ain’t got a clue to where he at now. Okay? But I know where Perry been. That I do know. You want me to tell you where he been?”
    “It’d be real nice.” Mueller smiled, not from friendliness. He reached into a sweaty shirt pocket and took out a Woolworth notebook and a ballpoint pen. He clicked the pen.
    “Been up to Angola a time or two.”
    “Ma’am, we already know that kind of thing. Perry Duclat’s a thief. Now, you said something about where Perry’d been?”
    My Perry been in a place much different than you er going to know about. Remember when you was a little boy?”
    ‘‘Ma’am?”
    “Probably you had nothing more to worry about than Mickey Mantle’s batting average. Probably you played in the street all night with your little white friends and the sound you dreaded most was your mama calling you home to supper. That’s not where my Perry been.”
    Violet stopped. She looked at me for a moment before turning back toward Mueller. What she had to say was meant for my ears, too.
    “Perry mama Rose left him, and his daddy Toby wouldn’t have him. My late husband, Willis, took a shine to Perry and looked after him some when he was little. Then Willis took sick from a snake bite and couldn’t even look after his ownself. I did what I could, but the street got hold of Perry. The street’s like quicksand, you know. Anyhow, all the little street boys he run with? They either dead or up to Angola, same as dead. All his life, Perry lie awake at night thinking on all this. Thinking on what he is—nothing but a thrown-away child. Understand me?”
    I doubted that. Detective Mueller had the dazed, stupid-looking face of a fat man whose own snoring had roused him from a nap. He closed his notebook, stuffed it back into his shirt pocket, and said to Eckles, “Come on, there’s nothing here but time to waste.” Mueller handed Violet an embossed New Orleans Police Department business card with his direct-dial phone number on it. “Now, ma’am, we got us two ways of catching Perry Duclat—with you, or without you. You want to give up Perry to me, I’ll see things go easy on him. But I don’t extend no such guarantee otherwise.” Mueller tossed a sneer in my direction “Ask your blue-eyed family boy if I ain’t talking fair and reasonable like.”
    “Neil... ?” Mama looked up at me.
    “Oh, I’d say the detective’s a fair man,” I said. “I picture his daddy before him—persuading a mob to give a man the sporting chance of a head start before they run him down for a lynching.”
    Violet ripped up Mueller’s police department card dropping the pieces to the floor.
    Mueller grunted at me, and said to Violet, “Just you remember, ma’am, we going to get that boy, one way or another.”
    He’s going to get you yet, my sweet Miss Ma’am — one way’r other.
    Violet glanced heavenward once again, then said to the back of Mueller’s sweat-streaked shirt as he stamped out her door, “First thing y’all do, you come steal our bread. Then you want us to butter it for y’all.”

    “What’d she say to you?”
    “Just get in the damn car.”
    Mueller eased himself behind the driver’s wheel but did not start the engine right away. He gazed up toward the row house instead and stared at Violet Flagg standing defiantly at her door, flanked by her daughter and her white son-in-law.
    “Now look it here—”
    “You want to worry some, Ricky Ray? Worry about that goddamn New York cop.”
    “Why?”
    “ ’Cause I been to New York is why. Only city in the world you can get run over on the sidewalk by Pedestrians.”
     

THIRTEEN

     
    Ever since that day in Harlem, Perry Duclat had drunk himself toward the sunshine of oblivion whenever the