A Red Death (5 page)

But I was guilty, so I just sat there counting the toes of my right foot as I pressed them, one by one, into the sole of my shoe. It took great concentration for the middle toes.

I had reached sixty-four before he said, “You’ve got a big problem, son.”

The way he called me
son
instead of my name returned me to southern Texas in the days before World War Two; days when the slightest error in words could hold dire consequences for a black man.

But I smiled as confidently as I could. “It must be some mistake, Mr. Lawrence. I read your note and I don’t own nuthin’, ’cept fo’ that li’l house I done had since ’forty-six.”

“No, that’s not right. I have it, from reliable sources, that you purchased apartment buildings on Sixty-fourth Place, McKinley Drive, and Magnolia Street in the last five years. They were all auctioned by the city for back taxes.”

He wasn’t even reading from notes, just rattling off my life as if he had my whole history submitted to memory.

“What sources you talkin’ ’bout?”

“Where the government gets its information is none of your concern,” he said. “At least not until this case goes to court.”

“Court? You mean like a trial?”

“Tax evasion is a felony,” he said, and then he hesitated.

“Do you understand the severity of a felony charge?”

“Yeah, but I ain’t done nuthin’ like that. I’m just a maintenance man for Mofass.”

“Who?”

“Mofass, he’s the guy I work for.”

“How do you spell that?”

I made up something, and he pulled out the card with my information on it and jotted it down.

“Did you bring the documents I asked for in the letter?” he asked.

He could see I didn’t have anything.

“No, sir,” I said. “I thought that it was all a mistake and that you didn’t have to be bothered with it.”

“I’m going to need all your financial information for the past five years. A record of all your income, all of it.”

“Well,” I said, smiling and hating myself for smiling, “that might take a few days. You know I got some shoe boxes in the closet, and then again, some of it might be in the garage if it goes all that far back. Five years is a long time.”

“Some people make an awful lot of noise about equality and freedom, but when it comes to paying their debt they sing a different song.”

“I ain’t singin’ nuthin’, man,” I said. I would have said more but he cut me off.

“Let’s get this straight, Rawlins. I’m just a government agent. My job is to find out tax fraud if it exists. I don’t have any feeling about you. I’ve asked you here because I have reason to believe that you cheated the government. If I’m right you’re going to trial. It’s not personal. I’m just doing my job.”

There was nothing for me to say.

He looked at his watch and said, “I have a lot of business to see to today and tomorrow. You’ve served in the army, haven’t you, son?”

“Say what?”

He stroked the lower half of his face and regarded me. I noticed a small, L-shaped scab on the forefinger knuckle of his right hand.

“I’m going to call you this afternoon at three sharp,” he said. “Three. And then I’m going to tell you when I can meet with you to go over your income statements. I want all your tax returns, and I want to see bank statements too. Now, it might not be regular office hours, because I’m doing a lot of work this month. There’s a lot of bigger fish than you trying to cheat Uncle Sam, and I’m going to catch them all.”

If there was something wrong at home for Agent Lawrence, he was going to make sure that the whole world paid for it.

“So it may not be until tomorrow evening that I can see you.” He stood up with that.

“Tomorrow! I can’t have all that by tomorrow!”

“I have an appointment at the federal courthouse in half an hour. So if you’ll excuse me.” He held his open hand toward the door.

“Mr. Lawrence …”

“I’ll call you at three. An army man will know how to be at that phone.”

— 6 —

T
HE FIRST THING I DID after leaving the tax man was to go to a phone. I called Mofass and told him to have somebody get the empty apartment at the Sixty-fourth Street building ready for two tenants. Then I called Alfred Bontemps at his mother’s house.

She answered sweetly, “Yes?”

“Mrs. Bontemps?”

“Is that you, Easy Rawlins?”

“Uh-huh, yeah. How you been, ma’am?”

“Just fine,” she said. There was gratitude in her voice. “You know Alfred’s come back home ’cause of you.”

“I know that. I went up there an’ got ’im. I could see how you missed him.”

Mrs. Bontemps’ son, Alfred, stole three hundred dollars from Slydell, a neighborhood bookie, and then he ran out to Compton because he was afraid that Slydell wanted him dead—which he did. Alfred stole the money because his mother was sick and needed a doctor. Slydell hired me to find the boy and his money. I went straight to Mrs. Bontemps and told her that if she didn’t tell me about Alfred, Slydell would kill him.

She gave me the address after I told her how Slydell had once torn off a man’s ear for stealing the hubcaps from his car.

“But you workin’ fo’ that man,” she’d told me. Tears were in her eyes.

“That’s just business though, ma’am. If I could get what Slydell wants I could maybe cut a deal with him.”

She was so scared that she told me the address. Woman’s love has killed many a man that way.

I found Alfred, threw him in the back of my Ford, and drove him to a hotel on Grand Street in L.A. Then I drove over to the bookie shop; that was the back room of a barbershop on Avalon.

I gave Slydell the forty-two dollars Alfred had left and told him, “Alfred’s gonna give you fifteen dollars a month until that money is paid, Slydell.”

“The hell he is!”

I had no intention of letting that boy get killed after I’d found him, so I brought out my pistol and held it to the bookie’s silver-capped tooth.

“I said I’d bring you yo’ money, man. You know Alfred cain’t pay you if he’s dead.”

“I cain’t let that boy get away wit’ stealin’ from me. I got a reputation t’think of, Easy.”

Slydell was only tough with a man who cowered at threats of violence. And he knew I wasn’t the kind of man who bowed down.

“Then it’s either you or him, man,” I said. “You know I don’t look kindly on killin’ boys.”

We settled it without bloodshed. Alfred got a good job with the Parks Department, paid Slydell, and got his mother on his health insurance.

Mrs. Bontemps kind of took me on as her foster son after that.

“You ever gonna get married, Easy?” she asked.

“If I ever find somebody t’take me.”

“Oh, you’d be a good catch, honey,” she said. “I know lotsa good women give they eyeteeth fo’you.”

But all I was interested in was Alfred at that moment. He was a small boy, barely out of his teens, and skitterish, but he felt he owed me a debt of honor for standing up against Slydell. And I think he might have been happy to get back home to his mother too.

“Could I talk with Alfred, ma’am?”

“Sure, Easy, an’ maybe you could come over fo’ dinner sometimes.”

“Love it,” I said.

After a few moments Alfred came on the line.

“Mr. Rawlins?”

“Listen up, Alfred. I gotta move somebody t’day an’ I need a helper ain’t gonna go runnin’ his mouth after it.”

“You got it, Mr., um, Easy. When you need the help?”

“You know my house on 116th Street?”

“Not really.”

I gave him the address and told him to be there at about one-thirty.

“But first go over to Mofass’s office an’ tell ’im that you gonna use his truck fo’ the move,” I said.

A
LL THE TIME I was on the phone the idea of the government taking my money and my freedom was gnawing at me. But I didn’t even let that become a thought. I was afraid of what might happen if I did.

So instead I went to Targets Bar after my phone calls. It was still early in the day, but I needed some liquor and some peace.

John McKenzie was the bartender at Targets. He was also the cook and the bouncer, and, though his name wasn’t on the deed, John was also the owner. He used to own a speakeasy down around Watts but the police finally closed that down. An honest police captain moved into the precinct, and because of the differences between honest cops and honest Negro entrepreneurs, he put all our best businessmen out of trade.

John couldn’t get a liquor license because he had been a bootlegger in his youth, so he took an empty storefront and set out a plank of mahogany and eighteen round maple tables. Then he gave nine thousand dollars to Odell Jones, who in turn made a down payment to the bank. But it was John’s bar. He managed it, collected the money, and paid the mortgage. What Odell got was that he could come in there anytime he wanted and drink to his heart’s content.

It was John who gave me the idea of how to buy my own buildings through a dummy corporation.

Odell worked at the First African Baptist Day School, which was around the corner from his bar. He was the custodian there.

Odell was at his special table the day I came from the IRS. He was eating his regular egg-and-bacon sandwich for lunch before going back to work. John was standing at the far end of the bar, leaning against it and staring off into the old days when he was an important man.

“Easy.”

“Mo’nin’, John.”

We shook hands.

John’s face looked like it was chiseled in ebony. He was tall and hard. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on John, but he was a big man, still and all. He was the kind of man who could run a bar or speakeasy, because violence came to him naturally, but he preferred to take it easy.

He put a drink down in front of me and touched my big knuckle. When I looked up into his stark white-and-brown eyes he said, “Mouse been here t’day, Easy.”

“Yeah?”

“He askin’ fo’ EttaMae, an’ when that failed he asted ’bout you.”

“Like what?”

“Where you been, who you been wit’. Like that. He was wit’ Rita Cook. They was goin’ t’ her house fo’a afternoon nap.”

“Yeah?”

“I just thought you wanna know ’bout yo’ ole friend bein’ up here, Easy.”

“Thanks, John,” I said, and then, “By the way …”

“Yeah?” He looked at me with the same dead-ahead look that he had for a customer ordering whiskey or an armed robber demanding what was in the till.

“Some people been talkin’ ’bout them buildin’s I bought a while back.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You tell anybody ’bout them papers we did?”

At first he moved his shoulders, as if he were going to turn away without a word. But then he straightened up and said, “Easy, if I wanted to get you I could put sumpin’ in yo’ drink. Or I could get one’a these niggahs in here t’cut yo’ th’oat. But now you know better than that, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I know, John. But you know that I had t’ask.”

We shook hands again, still friends, and I moved away from the bar.

I said hello to Odell. We made plans to get together in the next couple of days. It felt like I was back in the war again. Back then I’d see somebody and make plans, just a few hours away, but I wondered if I’d be alive to make the date.

“H
I, EASY,” ETTA SAID in a cool voice when I got to the door. The potatoes were replanted and the flower beds were tended. My house smelled cleaner than it ever had, and I was sorry, so sorry that I wanted to cry.

“Hi, Unca Easy,” LaMarque yelled. He was jumping up and down on my couch. Up and down, over and over, like a little madman, or a little boy.

“Mouse went to John McKenzie’s bar t’day. He was lookin’ fo’ you an’ askin’ ’bout me,” I told Etta.

“He be here tomorrow then, an’ me an’ LaMarque be gone.”

“How you know he ain’t on his way here right now?”

“You say he was in John McKenzie’s bar just today?”

“Yeah.”

“So he had t’ be either wit’ a girl or after one.”

I didn’t say anything to that, so Etta went on, “Raymond always gotta get his thing wet when he get to a new place. So he be here tomorrah, after he get that pussy.”

I was ashamed to hear her talk like that and looked around to see where LaMarque was. But something about her bold talk excited me too. I didn’t like to feel anything about Mouse’s woman, but things were going so poorly in my life that I was feeling a little reckless.

Luckily Alfred drove up then. He was a tiny young man, hardly larger than a punk kid, but he could work. We put Etta’s bags and a bed from my garage in the truck. I also gave her a chair and a table from my store of abandoned furniture.

Etta softened a little before she left.

“You gonna come an’ see us, Easy?” she asked. “You know LaMarque likes you.”