Black Betty (8 page)

I used the pause to turn the ignition and take off.

We’d been driving for a few minutes before either of us spoke again.

“How you doin’, Raymond?” I asked lamely.

“How you think? They got me locked up in a pen like a pig wit’ a whole buncha other pigs. Make me wear that shit. Make me eat shit. An’ every motherfuckah there think he could mess wit’ me ’cause I’m little.”

I imagined the hard lessons brought about by that mistake. Mouse wasn’t a large man. I could have picked him up and thrown him across a room. But he was a killer. If he had any chance to put out your eye or sever a tendon, he did it.

HE TOLD ME ONCE that a white sheriff in west Texas had taken him in for vagrancy.

“You hear that shit?” Mouse said. “Vagrancy! I told him I was lookin’ for a job!”

But the sheriff took Mouse to jail and chained his hands behind his back. That night, when they were alone, the sheriff came into the cell.

“He was gonna kill me,” Mouse said. “Go upside my head an’ get me up an’ hit me again. I knew I had ta do sumpin’, so when he hit me one time I pretend like I’m out.…” Mouse closed his eyes as in a swoon and fell forward on the street corner where he was telling his tale. I grabbed him almost like an embrace and he bit me! Bit me right on the big muscle of my shoulder.

Mouse threw his arms around my neck and chortled in my ear, “Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh. That’s just what he did, man. Stooped down a little an’ grab me. It’s what you call a reflex. But I didn’t bite his arm. Uh-uh.” Mouse showed me his big teeth. “I clamped down on his windpipe an’ I didn’t pull back until my teefs was touchin’.”

Mouse ripped out the sheriff’s throat and then took his keys. I always thought of him stopping at the sink to wash the blood from his mouth and clothes. He didn’t tell me about that, but I knew Mouse better than any brother I could have ever had. He was closer than a friend and he’d saved my life more times than a man should need saving.

He was the darkness on the other side of the moon.

“I’MA KILL ME somebody, Easy,” he said.

“Who?”

“I don’t know yet. But I do know that somebody give me up to the cops and that somebody was at John’s bar the night I cut Bruno down. Somebody got to die behind that shit.”

The police were waiting for Raymond when he got home from killing Bruno Ingram. That’s why he was wearing the same suit. They knew he’d done the killing and were laying for him; he still had the murder gun hooked in his belt. It sure seemed that he was set up. As a matter of fact, if he’d known that I was in that doorway, I was the most likely candidate.

“How you gonna kill somebody if you don’t know who did it? You don’t, right?”

“No. But I remember who was there. You and John an’ three other men: Malcolm Reeves, Clinton Davis, and Melvin Quick.” He recited the names as if in a trance.

“But if you don’t know now how you gonna know?”

“Either I find out or I’ma kill all three of ’em. But one way or another I’ma get the man who did it.”

MOUSE’S EX-WIFE, EttaMae, lived in a small white house surrounded by lemon groves, in the city of Compton. It was a tall single-story house that had a latticed skirt of crisscrossed green slats. The yard was big and unruly. Long shaggy grass grew around a rusty old slide left out there to remind Etta of when their son, LaMarque, was still a small child. In the center of the yard stood a half-dead crab-apple tree that was covered with some kind of splotchy blue-and-white fungus. Around the dying tree grew a garden full of eggplant, snap beans, and bushy tomatoes. Etta liked to be surrounded by things that were bountiful, but she didn’t turn away from hard times. When Etta was only a child, barely sixteen, she nursed her bedridden grandmother until the suffering old woman began to hate her.

EttaMae was standing in the yard when we drove up to her solitary home.

I never minded seeing EttaMae Harris. She would have been Rodin’s model if he were a black man and lived in the South. She was big and strong like a man but still womanly—very womanly. Her face wasn’t beautiful so much as it was handsome and proud. “Noble” is too weak a word to use to describe her looks and her bearing.

Mouse and I walked up to the fence. Etta wore a simple cotton dress to do her work around the house.

“Easy,” she said in greeting to me, but I could tell her full attention was on him.

“Hey, Etta. House looks good. You painted it?”

“I’m’onna start payin’ you back for the loan just as soon as I could get ahead on this here mortgage,” she answered.

I nodded. I didn’t care. One of the reasons that I was broke is that I gave my money away to friends who had less than I did. That’s a poor man’s insurance: Give when you got it and hope that they remember and give back when you’re in need.

“Hey, Etta,” Mouse said. His grin was a caged laugh.

“What?”

I could have been the twin to that dying tree for all they knew. Mouse was standing straighter by the moment, his smile getting deeper. I noticed then, for the first time, that Raymond was aging. You could see it around his eyes, a network of wrinkles that shivered with his grinning.

Etta didn’t exhibit feelings like he did. But her silence and solemnity showed that she had been thinking about this man for her whole life. He was down in the core of her. Mouse had once told me that he was drawn to Etta because, as he said, “She’s a hungry woman.” I could see the hunger in her.

I don’t know what might have happened if the door to the house hadn’t come open.

“LaMarque,” Etta said, not taking her eyes off of Mouse.

Mouse gave a whoop and let the laugh come out. “LaMarque!”

I looked up and saw the shy boy, dressed all in farmer’s green, coming down the stair. He had inherited his mother’s big bones and her sepia hue. He was sullen and bowed as he came near to us. But Raymond didn’t notice. He grabbed LaMarque in a rough hug around the neck and said aloud, “I missed you, son. I missed you.”

Raymond kept his arm around the boy’s neck, almost like he had him in a headlock. He jerked him sideways so that they were both facing me.

“That’s my boy,” he declared.

And you could see it when they were side by side. Something in the eyes. In LaMarque it was a kind of softness, a childhood that Mouse never knew.

Etta touched my arm. “Stay for supper, baby.”

“Naw, Etta,” I said. “I got a job t’do. Anyway, you three should spend some time.”

She didn’t argue. I shook LaMarque’s hand. He was twelve then and wanted to be treated like a man.

I was all the way to the car when Mouse yelled, “Easy!” and ran to me. He came up with a big smile on his face.

“Thanks, man,” he said. “You know, I got pretty sour in there. They try an’ keep a brother down.”

I smiled. “Nuthin’, man. We friends, right?”

“Yeah… sure.” Mouse’s glassy gray eyes went cold even though he was smiling.

“JOHN’S.”

“Hey, man,” I said.

“Easy.”

I’d known John for over twenty-five years, from Texas to L.A.; from speakeasy to legitimate bar.

“Mouse is out.”

“Yeah?”

“He’s lookin’ for the men was in the bar that night. Thinks one’a them put the finger on him. There was three men there,” I said. “Melvin Quick—”

He cut me off. “I know who was there, Easy.”

“Well, maybe you should tell’em to lay low awhile.”

“Uh-huh.”

“In the meantime I’ll try to set it right.”

“Somebody better do somethin’, ’cause I ain’t gonna take no shit outta Mouse.”

We both knew that Mouse wouldn’t stop just because those men hid from him.

THE NEXT MORNING I was on the road to Beverly Hills. Loma Vista Drive was clear and beautiful. I couldn’t even imagine being rich enough to live in any of the mansions I passed. I mean, even if I was white and they would have let me stay up there I didn’t know where so much money could come from. All the houses had more room than anybody needed, with lawns big enough to raise livestock in. As I went on and on the houses got bigger, making the drive seem even more like a ride in Fantasyland.

When I got to the gate that said “Beverly Estates,” a uniformed guard came out. I stopped and rolled down my window.

“Can I help you?” the half-bald man with spectacles asked. He didn’t mean it. His job was to keep out those who had no business in the land of the rich. He was a white nigger hired to keep other niggers, both black and white, out.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said slow and easy. “I got to see a woman called…” I hesitated while I went into the glove compartment and pulled out an old grocery list. “Let’s see now, um, uh, yeah, here it is. Sarah Clarice Cain. Lives at number two Meadowbrook Circle.”

“Let me see that.” The white nigger reached for my list, but I shoved it back into the glove compartment.

“Sorry,” I said. “Confidential.” I loved using that line on white men.

“I can’t just let you in just because—”

“You cain’t stop me,” I interrupted. “This road here is public access. So stand aside.”

I revved my engine and zoomed past. In the mirror I watched the guard go to his little kiosk. That was okay by me. I didn’t care who knew I was coming.

THE CAIN MANSION, first seen through bars of wrought iron painted pink, looked like heaven. It was on top of a hill of sloping grasses, dotted now and then with various fruit trees. The structure rose high in the center with giant pillars that looked from the distance to be made of marble.

“May I help you?” an electronic female voice asked.

To the side of me at the gate there was a speaker box. My driving up must have set off some kind of alarm.

“May I help you?” the voice asked again.

“Um, I’m here to see Sarah Clarice Cain.”

“What is your business?”

“I have to talk to her,” I said. And when the robot woman didn’t answer I added, “About Marlon Eady.”

“What do you…” the voice started to ask. Then, “Come in.”

The gate rolled to the side and I drove up the long lane to the house. To the right was a tall evergreen hedge that was there to muffle the sound of traffic. To the left was the lawn leading down to a line of Greek statues that couldn’t be seen from outside.

The lane led to a circular drive wide enough that visitors could park there while other cars could drive past and let passengers off at the front door.

The building, you couldn’t call it a house really, was three tall stories high. The marble pillars flanked a front door that was at the center of a wall of glass. You could see the long staircase that led upward to floors above. The entrance hall was pink stone.

I wasn’t surprised that a Negro woman opened the front door. Her skin was definitely brown but on the lighter side. Freckles were scattered around her upturned nose. It’s always strange to see a black person’s nose turned up. Instead of me being put off by her arrogant stare I just wanted to get to know her better.

“Hi,” I said, smiling and hoping that she’d like me.

“Hello,” the pretty young woman said, devoid of any emotion. The black dress defined her as a maid, but she wore large gaudy earrings and the material of the dress was a fine cotton, maybe even silk. She might have been an employee but she was secure in that position.

“Can I talk to the lady?”

“It would be inconvenient at the moment for Miss Cain to receive anyone.” She sounded just like a white woman. There wasn’t a hint of down home in her voice. “So if you’d like to leave a message I’ll make sure that she gets it.”

I let my head loll forward while I leered. “No,” was all I said.

“Why not?” She was indignant.

“You go tell the lady that if she wants to talk to me about Marlon Eady and a certain check that she wrote to him then she could un-inconvenience herself and come on down here to see me. I don’t have to sit on her good chairs or nuthin’. I’ll be standin’ right here, waiting for her t’come on down.”

“Have you spoken to… to… Mr. Eady?” she asked instead of running my errand.

“That depends,” I answered.

“Depends on what?”

“Do you know him?”

“His sister worked for us. She left recently.”

“Us?”

“I mean here, at the house,” she answered, slightly flustered.

“We talkin’ ’bout Betty, right?”

A light went on in the maid’s eyes. “Do you know Elizabeth?”

“Can I talk to the lady?” I smiled.

The maid’s nostrils flared and her eyes widened. She was definitely a pretty woman. “Can’t you answer a question?”

“Can you?”

She was put off balance by my manner. It was as if nobody had ever refused her anything. I was some strange beast to her; and she was either going to cut my throat—or ride me.

“Wait here,” she commanded. Then she slammed the door in my face.

I waited about five minutes or so thinking about all the people who’ve slammed doors on me. I had counted up to twenty-three, with a couple of good chuckles, when the door opened again.

This time there was a real white woman. She was in her early forties, light-haired—blond going gray—and slight. Her expression gave you the impression that she was thinking about something very far away and very beautiful—if sad. All in all she seemed like one of those other-worldly heroines in the romantic novels of the Brontë sisters.

“Yes?” she asked as if to someone behind me.

“Mrs. Cain?” I was noticing the gold band on her finger.

“The Mrs. I am is Mrs. Hawkes,” she said. The name seemed to cause a bitter taste in her mouth.

“There must be some kind of mistake, ma’am. I’m here to see Sarah Cain.”

“Yes?”

“Is that you?”

“Hawkes is my married name. I don’t use it, but if you’re going to call me Mrs. that’s the name to use.”

“So… you’re Sarah Cain?”

“Her name is Mrs. Hawkes.” A pale young man came up beside the woman. He had a delicate build for a man and his chin looked as though it had never sprouted a hair.