A Red Death: Featuring an Original Easy Rawlins Short Story "Si (Easy Rawlins Mysteries) (14 page)

“That all depends,” Etta said, and then she stole a quick glance at me.

Winona stepped up and said something to Towne, I couldn’t make out what, then Etta asked, “How is that boy’s folks? You think I could he’p ’em?”

I had to laugh at those women fighting over the minister. I think Etta was doing it just because she didn’t like to see Winona flirting there in front of her own husband.

I saw Jackie and Melvin move to the bottom of the stairway. There they began to argue. Jackie was waving his hands in the air and Melvin was making placating gestures, holding his palms toward the handsome man as if he were trying to press Jackie’s anger down.

I would have liked to know what they were fighting about, but that was merely curiosity, so I turned back to EttaMae.

She had linked arms with the minister and they were walking away. Etta was saying, “Why don’t you introduce me to the poor woman, I could maybe do the cooking on some days.”

I got to look over my shoulder to see Melvin and Jackie still arguing at the bottom of the stair. Melvin was stealing glances up at me.

“Go get the car, Shep,” Winona said, casual and cruel.

“Okay,” he answered. Then little brown Shep, in his rayon red-brown suit, went away to the parking lot.

“Etta with you, Easy?” Winona asked before Shep disappeared around the building.

“Say what?”

“You heard me, Easy Rawlins. Is EttaMae your woman?”

“Etta ain’t rightly nobody’s, Winona. She don’t hardly even like t’think she belongs t’Jesus.”

“Don’t fool with me,” she warned. “That bitch is givin’ the minister the eye, an’ if she free it’s gonna have t’stop.”

“He married?” I asked, shocked.

“ ’Course not!”

“Well, Etta ain’t neither.”

I shrugged and Winona gnashed her teeth. She went down the stairway in a huff.

I looked down at the bottom of the stairs, but Jackie and Melvin were gone, so I turned to enter the church. I found myself at about chest level with a brown suit that had goldenrod stripes. He was standing on a higher stair but even if we stood toe to toe he would have towered over me.

“You Rawlins, ain’t you?” he asked in a voice that was either naturally rough or husky with emotion.

“That’s right,” I said, taking a step backward so I could see his face and move out of range.

His brown face, which clashed with his suit, was smallish, perfectly round, childlike and mean.

“I want you t’take me to yo’ boss.”

“And why is that?” I asked.

“I got business with’im.”

“This is Sunday, son. On today we s’posed t’rest.”

“Listen, man,” he threatened. His voice cracked. “I know all about you …”

“Yeah?”

“You di’n’t lift a finger.” He was quoting someone. “She tole me ’bout how he used her, how he took her fo’ money an’ then he just let her slide when she got sick. She could just die an’ all you care ’bout was yo’self.”

“What’s your name, man?”

“I’m Willie Sacks.” He puffed up his shoulders. “Now let’s go.” He put his hand on my shoulder but I brushed it off.

“You Poinsettia’s boyfriend?” I asked. I wasn’t going anywhere.

He threw a punch at me that would have put a hole in a brick wall. I crouched down under it though, grabbing his wrist as I did, and came up behind him twisting his arm and wrenching his giant thumb.

Willie said, “Oh!” and knelt on the stair.

“I don’t wanna hurt ya, boy,” I whispered in Willie’s ear. “But you make me damage this suit an’ I’m a do some damage on you.”

“I kill you!” he shouted. “I kill all’a you!”

I let him go and moved down a few stairs.

“What’s your problem, Willie?”

“Take me t’Mofass!”

He stood up. In that shade I felt like David without his slingshot.

It’s hard for a big man to throw a punch downward. I let his fist snap somewhere off to the west and then I gave him one and two in the lower gut. Willie folded like a peel bug and rolled down the stairs.

He got right up though, so I ran down and hit him again, on the side of his head that time. I hit him hard enough to hurt a normal man, but Willie was more like a buffalo. I hit him as hard as I could and all he did was sit down.

“I don’t wanna hurt you, Willie,” I said, more to distract me from the pain in my hand than to worry him.

“When I get up from here we gonna see who gonna be hurt.” There were patches of bloody flesh on his face, scrapes from the granite stairs.

“Poinsettia ain’t nobody’s fault, Willie,” I said. “Let it go.”

But he lurched to his feet and came shambling up the stair. I lost patience and broke his nose. I could feel the bone give
under my knuckle. I was considering his left ear when I felt a blow to my back. It wasn’t hard, but I was tensed for a fight, so I swung around, only to be hit in the face with something like a pillow. A tiny woman in a frilly pink dress was swinging her woven string purse at my head. She didn’t say a word, saving all of her energy for the fight.

She might have kept it up, but when Willie yelled, “Momma!” she forgot about me and ran to his side.

He was cupping his hands under the bloody faucet of his nose.

“Willie! Willie!”

“Momma!”

“Willie!”

She pushed him until he was up off his knees and then dragged him away, down the street.

Twice the pink-and-brown woman glared at me. She was tiny and wore white-rimmed glasses. Her lips caved inward where teeth once held them firm. Mrs. Sacks couldn’t lift her son’s arm, but I was more frightened of those killer stares than I would have been of a whole platoon of Willies.

“S
IT DOWN ON THE COUCH
here next to me, honey, not way over there.” Etta patted the green fabric next to her.

We were in her new apartment on Sixty-fourth Street. It was a nice six-unit apartment building. Her place had two bedrooms, a shower, and blue wall-to-wall shag carpets. LaMarque was with Lucy Rideau and her two girls. They had all gone to Bible school and now they were having Sunday supper.

“I should really get on to work, Etta.”

“On Sunday?”

“I’ma be doin’ some extra work fo’ the church so I gotta make up my time on the weekend.”

“Now what you gonna be doin’ fo’ the Lord, Easy Rawlins?”

“We all do our li’l piece, Etta. We all do our li’l piece.”

“Like you makin’ so LaMarque an’ me ain’t gotta pay no rent to that terrible man?”

“Mofass ain’t so bad. He lettin’ you stay here, ain’t he?”

“He give me this furniture too?”

“We had an eviction last year an’ this stuff been in my garage. I tole’im I’d haul it off to the dump.”

“You coulda sold this stuff, Easy. That bed in there is mahogany.”

When I didn’t answer she said, “Come here, baby, sit down.”

I did.

“What’s wrong, Easy?”

“Nuthin’, Etta, nuthin’.”

“Then why you ain’t come by. You got me a house an’ furniture. You must like us t’do all that.”

“Sure I like you.”

“Then why’ont you come over an’ show me how much?”

Her hand was on my neck. She was much warmer than I was.

Etta’s dress was silken and flimsy under her jacket. The bodice was low-cut and her breasts bulged upward when she leaned toward me.

“I thought you didn’t wanna see me no mo’,” I said.

“I’s jus’ mad, honey,” she said as she leaned toward me. “Thas all.”

For some reason I imagined what Wendell Boggs must have looked like on his deathbed. There was fresh blood on his half-face and a whitish scab where one of his eyes should have been.

“Easy?”

“Yeah, Etta?”

“I got the papers to my divorce in the other room.”

She shifted slightly to bring her left knee over her right one, nudging my leg. Her dress looked very tight, like it wanted to burst.

“I don’t need to see ’em,” I said.

“Yes you do.”

“No.”

“Yes, Easy. You need to see that I’m a free woman and that I can have what I want.”

“It ain’t you, Etta, it’s me,” I said, but I kissed her anyway.

“You got me all riled up though, honey.” She kissed me back. “Gettin’ my house an’ my bed, takin’ me t’ church, mmm, I love that.”

We didn’t talk for a little while then.

When she leaned back, and I got a moment to breathe, I asked, “But what about Raymond?”

Etta took my hand and put it on her chest, then she gazed at me with eyes that I dream about to this very day.

“Do you want me?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

She pressed a finger against my shirt, where my nipple was.

“Then I tell you what,” she whispered.

“What?” Just that one word drained all the breath out of me.

“You don’t talk about him now an’ I won’t say nuthin’ ’bout him when we wake up.”

I
GOT HOME IN THE EARLY EVENING.
The phone was ringing as I got to the door. I tried to get the key into the lock but I was too much in a hurry and dropped it in a pile of fallen passion-fruit leaves. The phone kept ringing, though, and it rang until I rummaged around, found the key, and made it inside the door. But I tripped on the doormat and by the time I got off the floor and limped to the coffee table the ringing had finally ceased.

Then I massaged my bruised knee and went to the bathroom. Just as I began to relieve myself the phone started ringing again. But I had learned my lesson. The phone rang while I rinsed my hands and dried them. It rang until I had made it back to the coffee table and then it stopped again.

I was in the kitchen with a quart bottle of vodka in one hand and a tray of ice in the other when he called again. I considered yanking the line out of the wall, thought better of it, and finally I answered the phone.

The first thing I heard was a child screaming. “No! No!” he, or she, yelled. And then, “No,” still a yell but muted as if someone had closed a door on a torture room.

“Mr. Rawlins?” IRS Agent Reginald Lawrence asked.

“Yeah?”

“I wanted to ask you a couple of questions and to give you some advice.”

“What questions?”

“What was the deal that Agent Craxton offered you?”

“I don’t know if I can really say, sir. I mean, he said that it was government business and that I had to be quiet on that.”

“We all work for the same government. I’m a government man too.”

“But he’s the FBI. He’s the law.”

“He just represents another
branch
of the government. And his branch doesn’t have anything to do with mine.”

“Then why you askin’ ’bout what he wants?”

“I want to know what he’s offered you, because he cannot offer anything on behalf of the Internal Revenue. Once our office commits itself we have to see an investigation through. We have no other choice. You see, I have to follow this investigation or my records”—he paused for a moment, looking for the right words”—my records will be incomplete. So you see, no matter what anyone says, I will have to draw up papers for the court case tomorrow morning.”

“What can I do about that?” I asked. “He got me on a federal case an’ I’m doing’ it. If I tell you his business I’ll be in even more trouble than I am already.”

“I cannot speak for the FBI, all I can tell you is that if you attempt to avoid paying your taxes, even by working for the FBI, we will still be there when everything is over. I have spoken to my supervisor and he agrees with me on this point. You
will have to submit your tax records to me by Wednesday of next week or we will have to subpoena you.”

“So you talked this over with Wadsworth, huh?” I asked when he’d run out of wind.

“Who told you …” he started to ask, but I guess the answer came to him.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t help you, Mr. Lawrence. I got my cards and you got yours. I guess we’ll just have to play it out.”

“I know that you think you’re helping yourself, Mr. Rawlins, but you’re wrong. You cannot escape your responsibilities to the government.” He sounded like a textbook.

“Mr. Lawrence, I don’t know about you, but I take Sundays off.”

“This problem won’t go away, son.”

“Okay, that’s it. I’m puttin’ the phone down now.”

Before I could Mr. Lawrence hung up in my ear.

I went back to the kitchen and put the vodka away. I got my bottle of thirty-year-old imported Armagnac from behind a loose board in the closet. There was a snifter sitting next to it. I learned how to drink good liquor from a rich white man I worked for once. I found that if you could savor the booze, I mean if you took longer to drink it, then the intoxication was more pleasurable. And I liked drinking alone when I wanted to be drunk. No loud stories or laughing; all I wanted was oblivion.

The tax man wanted to send me to jail, it was personal with him. And Craxton was lying, I was sure about that, so I had no idea what it was he really wanted. I might not find a thing on his communists, and then he’d just throw me back to the dogs, he might have done so anyway. I considered trying to sign my property over to someone in the meanwhile, just to cover my bases. But I didn’t like that idea because I wanted to put my name on the deeds. I wanted EttaMae. I wanted her
with all my heart. If she was to be mine then I had to be a man of substance to buy her clothes and make her home.

Of course, that meant that either Mouse or I had to die, I knew that. I knew it but I didn’t want to admit it.

O
N
M
ONDAY
I went to Mofass’s office. He was sitting behind the desk glowering at a plate of pork chops and eggs. A boy in the neighborhood brought up his breakfast every morning at about eleven. Mofass stared at the food for sometimes up to half an hour before eating. He never told me why, but I always imagined that he was afraid that the boy spat in it. That’s the kind of insult that Mofass always feared.

“Mornin’, Mofass.”

“Mr. Rawlins.”

He picked up a chop by its fatty bone and took a bite out of the eye.

“I ain’t gonna be ’round much for the next three or four weeks. I got business t’take care of.”

“I’m doin’ business ev’ry day, Mr. Rawlins. I cain’t take no vacation or you’d go broke,” he chided through a mass of mashed meat.