A Red Death (28 page)

“What about the girl, Easy? Does she know why he was killed?”

“She don’t know nuthin’. But I heard a thing or two down at First African.”

“What things?”

“You got your secrets, Mr. Craxton, and I got mines. I’ma look this thing down until I find out who killed Wenzler. When I find out I’m’a tell you, all right?”

“No.” I could almost hear him shaking his head. “That’s not all right at all. You’re working for me …”

I cut him off. “Uh-uh. You ain’t payin’ me an’ you ain’t done a damn thing fo’me neither. I will find your killer and I figure he will be the key to whatever it is you lookin’ for. At that time you an’ me will come to a deal.”

“I’m the law, Mr. Rawlins. You can’t bargain with the law.”

“The fuck I cain’t! Somebody put a bullet two inches from my head yesterday afternoon. This is my life we speakin’ on, so either you take my deal or we call it quits.”

For the most part I was blowing smoke. But I knew things that Craxton didn’t know. I had the papers and I knew who Chaim and Poinsettia’s killer was. One thing had nothing to do with the other, but when I was finished everything would be as neat as a buck private’s bunk bed.

I had Craxton over a barrel. He finally said, “When will you have something for me?”

“Six o’clock tomorrow. I got some irons in the fire right now. By six tomorrow I should know everything. If not then, then the day after.”

“Six tomorrow?”

“That’s the time.”

“All right. I’ll expect a call then.” He was trying to sound like he was still in charge.

“One more thing,” I blurted out before he could hang up.

“What?”

“You gotta make sure the police don’t mess wit’ me before then.”

“You got it.”

“Thanks.”

In the darkness of my house I spun plans. None of them seemed real. Mofass was all I had. He was the only one who connected everything. He had been up to something with Poinsettia, and I was the one who told him about the taxes and First African. He was the only one I could suspect. If I was guessing right he told Jackie and Melvin about me nosing around First African. So he was really to blame for Reverend Towne and Tania Lee, or maybe he killed them too. And Mofass was the only one with a reason. He wanted my money. He knew that the government would take my property and that he could buy it before it ever went to auction. He knew how to make payoffs. That’s why he didn’t want to sign, because he wanted it all.

I was going to kill Mofass, mainly because he had killed my tenant and I felt that I owed her something. But also because he had killed Chaim and I had come to like that man. He had destroyed my life, and I felt I owed him something for that.

All the things I’d told Craxton were half-truths and lies for him to follow down while I was on my way to Mexico.

Mexico. EttaMae and I and maybe even LaMarque. It was like a dream. It was better than what I had, at least that’s what I told myself.

I
SAT WAITING FOR A CALL. No radio and no television. I turned a single light on in the bedroom and then went to the living room to sit in shadows. I had been reading a book on the history of Rome, but I didn’t have any heart for it that night. The history of Rome didn’t move me the way it usually did. I didn’t care about the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths sacking the Empire; I didn’t even care about the Vandals, how they were so terrible that the Romans made a word out of their name.

I didn’t even believe in history, really. Real was what was happening to me right then. Real was a toothache and a man you trusted who did you dirt. Real was an empty stomach or a woman saying yes, or a woman saying no. Real was what you could feel. History was like TV for me, it wasn’t the great wave of mankind moving through an ocean of minutes and hours. It wasn’t mankind getting better either; I had seen enough murder in Europe to know that the Nazis were even worse than the barbarians at Rome’s gate. And even if I was in Rome they would have called me a barbarian; it was no different that day in Watts.

Chaim wanted to make it better for me and my people.

Chaim was a good man; better than a lot of people in Washington, and a lot of black people I knew. But he was dead. He was history, as they say, and I was holding my gun in the dark, being real.

— 36 —

I
WAS JOLTED AWAKE by Mouse’s call.

“Got’im, man,” he said. There was pride in his voice. The kind of pride a man has when he’s paid off a bank note or brought a paycheck home to his wife.

“Where is he?”

“Right here in front’a me. You know, this boy sure is ugly.”

I heard Mofass’s gruff voice in the background, but I couldn’t make out what he said.

“Shut up, fool!” Mouse shouted in my ear. “We don’t need to hear from you.”

“Where are you, Raymond?”

“On Alameda, at that warehouse you said. I come in a window an’ fount his stuff. You know all I hadda do was wait an’ he come grubbin’ up the slide.”

The entrance to the building was in the alley off the main street. Two tall doors held together through the handles with a chain and padlock. When I rattled the door a window opened above and Mouse stuck his head out.

“Hey, Easy. Go on down the alley a little ways and they’s a chute for loadin’. It’s open.”

It was a two-foot-square aluminum slat, reinforced by a wooden frame, that lifted away from the wall. It opened on a metal slide, leading up into the building. That slide was slick from all the merchandise they dropped down into delivery trucks.

When I made it up to the second floor I dusted off and released the safety on my pistol. There were aisles formed by huge stacks of cardboard boxes and wooden crates. There was some light, but the long rows melted into darkness, giving the place the feeling of great depth. I could have been in Solomon’s mines.

“Over here, Easy,” Mouse called.

I followed the sound of his voice until I came to a little square kiosk. From inside that office the light came. Thick and yellow electric light, and cigarette smoke. There was a large gray metal desk with a thick green blotter. Mofass was behind the desk, sweating and looking generally undignified. Mouse was leaning against a wall, smiling at me.

“Here he is, Easy. I put a apple in his mouth if you want it.”

“What’s the idea, Mr. Rawlins?” Mofass started up. “Why you got this man to kidnap me? What I do to you?”

I simply lifted the pistol and pointed it at his head. Mouse flashed his friendliest smile at no one in particular. Mofass’s jaw started to quiver because of the spasm going through his neck and shoulders.

“You got this wrong, Mr. Rawlins. You pointin’ that peacemaker at the wrong man.”

“Go on, Easy, kill’im,” Mouse whispered.

That’s what saved Mofass’s life. Mouse didn’t even know why I had that man there, he didn’t care either. All he knew was that killing satisfied some nerve he had somewhere. I was growing the same nerve, and I didn’t like that idea at all.

“What you mean, wrong man?” I asked.

Instead of answering, Mofass broke wind.

Then he said, “It’s that tax man, Easy, it’s Lawrence.”

“What?” I hadn’t thought anything he could say would surprise me. “Com’on, man. You could do better than that.”

“You don’t lie to no loaded gun at your head, Mr. Rawlins.

It was Lawrence sure as I’m sitting here.”

The smell of Mofass’s flatulence filled the room. Mouse was waving his hand under his nose.

“You better come up with somethin’ better than that, Mofass. This is your life right here in my hand.”

I moved the muzzle of the gun closer to Mofass’s sweaty brow. He opened his eyes a little wider.

“It’s the truth, Mr. Rawlins. He pulled me down on a tax charge ovah a year ago.”

Mouse kicked a chair around so that he could sit on it. Mofass leaped up out of his seat.

“Sit down,” I said. “An’ go on.”

“Yeah.” A smile appeared on Mofass’s lips and vanished just as fast. “I ain’t paid no tax, not ever. I filed it but I always lied like I didn’t make nuthin’. Lawrence caught on, though. He had me by the nuts.”

“Uh-huh, yeah, I know what you mean.”

“He told me that he was goin’ t’court wit’ what he had. So I ast’im could we talk it over, over a drink.” Mofass smiled again. “You see, Mr. Rawlins, if he let me buy him a drink then I knowed I could buy him. I got to a phone an’ called Poinsettia. She hadn’t paid no rent even way back then. She told me she’d be nice t’me if I let’er slide, but you know I don’t play it like that.”

For no reason Mouse grabbed Mofass by his wrist, roughly, and then let him go. The surprise made the fat man yelp like a dog.

“It’s the t-t-truth, man. I called’er an’ told’er that if she was nice to my friend I’d let her slip by the summer.”

“So you put ’em together?”

“Yeah. Lawrence couldn’t hold his liquor worth a damn.

An’ you know when Poinsettia got there, an’ started strokin’ ’im, he was drinkin’ it like water an’ swaggerin’ in his chair. I took ’em down to a hotel that night.”

“So?”

“What could I do?” Mofass hunched his sloped shoulders.

“He had me run her out to’im much as three times a week. They always be drinkin’. Sometimes I didn’t even take ’em nowhere but they just do it in the car.”

“While you drivin’, man?” Mouse asked.

“Yeah!”

“Shit! Thas some white boy you got there, Easy.”

“I don’t believe a word of this shit,” I said. “I seen Agent Lawrence, he straight as a pin.”

Mofass put his hands up to placate me. Mouse, as usual, smiled at the sign of surrender.

“You ain’t seen ’im when he gets to drinkin’, Mr. Rawlins. He get crazy-like. An’ you know Poinsettia be gettin’ him so high on love. Then sometimes he’d get mean an’ beat her till she stayed inside fo’a week.”

I remembered seeing Poinsettia in sunglasses on cloudy days.

“All right, Mofass. You got a story here but I still don’t see what it gotta do wit’ me.”

“ ’Bout six months ago they was shackin’ up in a house I was brokerin’ down on Clark. Lawrence got drunk an’ th’ew Miss Jackson down the stairs. She was hurt pretty bad an’ we hadda take her to a doctor I know.”

“She didn’t have no accident?”

Mofass shook his head, swallowed to wet his throat, and continued. “At first he was guilty an’ wanted t’pay fo’her. Thas when he set up Rufus Johnson.”

“I know him. He’s one’a the men on that list in yo’ desk.”

“Yeah, a colored man. Live in Venice Beach. Lawrence set him up for tax fraud, and then I snuck in and tole Mr. Johnson that I could free him up fo’ some cash.”

“An’ you split the money?” I asked.

“Lawrence took most of it, I swear.”

“An’ now he’s after me.”

“We worked that job on five other people. Never nobody I knew. An’ he was okay for a while but then he got like he needed money fo’ him. He started complainin’ ’bout how Poinsettia an’ his own wife an’ child were anchors on his neck. He started on me about findin’ one rich Negro an’ then he could leave for good.”

“An’ you give’im me?”

Mofass’s eyes filled with tears but he didn’t say a word.

“How did he think he could get my money?”

“We was gonna get you t’sign yo’ property ovah t’me an’ then we’d play like he got the tax law on me, but really we’d sell off the property and he’d get the money on the sly. He was gonna take it all. He knowed how black people don’t hardly ever fight with the law.”

“But if that’s true, why didn’t you let me sign my money over when I asked?”

“You ain’t no fool, I should know that, right? I figured that if I jumped at yo’ idea you’d know sumpin’ was up. So I told Lawrence t’ sweat ya. Make you scared and you’d beg me t’take what you got. Then when I had tax troubles later on an’ the IRS took my money you’d know what it was like an’ jus’ be happy it wasn’t you.”

“But you lyin’, man. Even if this tax shit is true, why would he kill anybody?”

“Why’d I kill’em, man?” he yelled.

Mouse, holding up a solitary finger, said, “Keep cool, brother.” Then he slapped Mofass across his face with the pistol. Mofass’s head whipped around hard and his big body followed it down to the floor. He got up holding his bloody cheek with both hands.

“What you hit me fo’?” he screamed like a child.

Mouse held his finger up again, and Mofass was silent.

“Answer me, Mofass,” I warned.

“I don’t know. All I know is that he called me to his house right after that FBI man cut you loose. He told me he wanted to know ev’rything you did. So I tole’im ’bout you workin’ fo’ the church. You know how you said you was keepin’ tabs on Towne?”

“An’ how come you didn’t come t’me wit’ none’a this?”

“He had me by my balls, Mr. Rawlins. I was a tax evader an’ I helped him rob them people. An’ you know he was crazy too.

“He tole me that if the FBI got hold of his files on you they would know what we were up to. That’s why he had me go to Jackie and Melvin. He went t’Towne hisself.”