Little Scarlet
Chapter One
The morning air still smelled of smoke. Wood ash mainly but there
was also the acrid stench of burnt plastic and paint. And even
though I knew it couldn't be true, I thought I caught a whiff of
putrid flesh from under the rubble across the street. The hardware
store and Bernard's Stationery Store were both completely gutted.
The Gonzalez Market had been looted but only a part of its roof had
been scorched. The corner building, however, Lucky Dime Liquors, had
been burned to the ground. Manny Massman was down in the rubble with
his two sons, kicking the metal fixtures. At one point the
middle-aged store owner lowered his head and cried. His sons put
their hands on his shoulders.
I understood how he felt. He had everything in that liquor store.
His whole life. And now, after a five-day eruption of rage that had
been simmering for centuries, he was penniless and destitute.
In his mind he hadn't done a thing wrong to anyone down in Watts. He
had never even thought about calling someone a nigger or boy. But
the men and women down around Central and Eighty-sixth Place took
everything of Manny's that they could carry, then smas ... read full excerpt from: Little Scarlet: An Easy Rawlins Mystery ebook
