A Red Death: Featuring an Original Easy Rawlins Short Story "Si (Easy Rawlins Mysteries) (25 page)

“Melvin.”

“Could I come in, Easy?”

There was an occasional twitch in his right cheek—a large nerve that connected his bloodshot eye with his ear.

I offered him coffee instead of liquor. After I’d served it we sat opposite each other in the living room, white porcelain cups cradled in our laps.

Then, instead of talking, we lit cigarettes.

After a long while Melvin asked, “How long you been living here?”

“Eight years.”

Melvin and I were both serious men. We stared each other in the eye.

“Do you want something from me, Melvin?” I asked.

“I don’t know, Brother Rawlins. I don’t know.”

“Must be somethin’. I’m surprised that you even knew my address.”

Melvin took a deep draw on his cigarette and held it for a good five seconds. When he finally spoke, wisps of smoke escaped his nostrils, making his craggy face resemble a dragon.

“We do a lot of good work at First African,” he said. “But there’s lotsa pressure behind that good work. And you know all men don’t act the same under pressure.”

I nodded while gauging Melvin’s size and strength.

“Who you been talkin’ to, Melvin?” I asked. A spasm ran through the right side of his face.

“I don’t need to be talkin’ t’nobody, Easy Rawlins. I know
you.
Fo’ years you been stickin’ yo’ nose in people’s business. They say you got Junior Fornay sent up to prison. They say you’n Raymond Alexander done left a trail’a death from Pariah, Texas, right up here to Watts.”

Even though what he said was true I acted like it wasn’t. I said, “You don’t know what you talkin’ ’bout, man. All I do is take care’a some sweepin’ here and there.”

“You smart.” Melvin smiled and winced at the same
time. “I give ya that. I seen you cock your ear when me an’ Jackie was talkin’ on the church stair. Then I see you gettin’ tight wit’ Chaim Wenzler. You don’t be givin’ stuff away, Easy. Ev’rybody knows you a horse trader, man. So whatever you doin’ up there I know it ain’t gotta do wit’ no Christian love. An’ this time somebody talked. This time I
know
it’s you.”

“Who said?”

“Ain’t no need fo’me t’tell you nothin’, man. I know, and that’s all gotta be said.”

“There’s a name fo’the shit you talkin’, Melvin,” I said. “I learned it at LACC. They call it paranoid. You see, a man wit’ paranoia be scared’a things ain’t even there.”

Melvin’s cheek jumped and he smiled again.

“Yeah,” he said. “I be scared all right. An’ you know it’s the scared animal you gotta watch out for. Scared animals do things you don’t expect. One minute he be runnin’ scared an’ the nex’ he scratchin’ at yo’ windpipe.”

“That’s what you gonna do?”

Melvin stood up quickly, setting his cup on the arm of his chair. I matched him, move for move.

“Let it be, Easy. Let it be.”

“What?”

“We both know what I’m talkin’ ’bout. Maybe we made some mistakes but you know we did some good too.”

“Well,” I said, trying to sound reasonable. “Let’s just lay it out so we both know what’s happening.”

“You heard all I got to say.”

Melvin was finished talking. He didn’t have a hat so he just turned around and walked away.

I went after him to the door and watched as he went between the potato and strawberry patches. His gait was
grim and deliberate. After he’d gone I went to the closet, got my gun, and put it in my pocket. An hour later I was pulling up to a house on Seventy-sixth Street. The house belonged to Gator Wade, a plumber from east Texas. Gator always parked his car in the driveway, next to his house, so he had no use for the little garage in the backyard. He floored the little shack, wired and plumbed it, and let it out for twenty-five dollars a month.

Jackie Orr, the head deacon at First African, had been living there for over three years.

Gator was at work. I parked out front and made my way back to Jackie’s house. Nobody answered my knock, so I pried open the lock and let myself in. Jackie worked during the daytime as a street sweeper for the city. I was fairly sure that he wouldn’t interrupt me. And even if he did I doubted if he’d be armed.

The place was a mess but I couldn’t be sure if someone had searched it or if Jackie was just a poor housekeeper, like most bachelors.

Next to his bed was a thick sheaf of purple-printed mimeographed papers. The title line read, “Reasons for the African Migration.” It was a long rambling essay about Marcus Garvey and slavery and our ancestors back home in Africa. It wasn’t the kind of literature I expected Jackie to read.

His clothes surprised me too. He had at least thirty suits hanging in the closet, and a different-color pair of shoes to match each one. I noticed a nice ring on his nightstand and a good watch too. I knew his salary wouldn’t have covered the payments, and a woman would have to hear wedding bells to lay that kind of cash on a man’s back.

Underneath the bottom drawer of his bureau was a thick envelope that contained more than a thousand dollars in
denominations of twenty or less. There was also another list of names. This one included amounts of cash:

There was money changing hands. And in Jackie’s case the money turned into clothes. I didn’t know who S.A. was but I had it in mind to find out.

I left the money but I took the list with me. Sometimes words are worth more than money, especially if your ass is on the line.

J
OHN’S PLACE WAS EMPTY
except for Odell sitting in his corner, eating a sandwich. He wouldn’t even return my nod. It was hard to lose a friend like that, but things were so twisted that I couldn’t really feel it, except as a pang in my lower gut.

As John served me whiskey I asked him, “You seen Jackson t’day?”

“No,” John answered. “But he be here. Jackson need to be in a bar where they don’t allow no fightin’.”

“You gotta save his butt a lot?”

John shrugged. “Lotta people cain’t stand the man. He smart but he stupid too.”

I took the drink to the far end of his bar and waited.

John always had his share of drunks and a few businessmen plying their various trades. Every once in a while there’d be a woman doing business, but that was rare, as John didn’t want trouble with the police.

Jackson Blue came through the door at about four-thirty.

“Hey, Easy,” he squealed in his high, crackly voice.

“Jackson. Come on over here and have a seat.”

He was wearing a loose and silvery sharkskin suit. His coal-black skin against the light but shadowy fabric made him look like the negative of a photograph of a white man.

“S’appenin’, Ease?” Jackson greeted me like I was his best friend.

Once, five years earlier, I came close to being murdered by a hijacker named Frank Green. I was never sure if Jackson was the one who told Frank Green, now deceased, that I was on his trail. All I know is that one day I was talking to Jackson about it and that night Frank had a knife to my throat. It really didn’t matter if it was Jackson, because he didn’t have anything against me personally. He was just trading in the only real business he knew—information.

“It’s bad, Jack, bad as it could be. You wanna drink?”

“Yeah.”

“Bring Jackson his milk, John.”

While John served the triple shot of scotch, Jackson smiled and said, “Whas the problem?”

“You know what happened at First African, right?”

“Yeah, yeah, sure. You know Rita dragged me there Sunday ’fore last. Said she’d keep me company on Saturday if I took her t’church.”

This satisfied look came over Jackson’s face and I knew that he was about to start bragging on the acts of love Rita had performed. I interrupted his reverie, saying, “You hear anything ’bout them killin’s?”

“How come?”

“Poinsettia got herself hung a while back and I found the body.”

“Yeah, I heard,” he said. Then a light went on in his yellowy eyes. “An’ you fount the minister too. They think it was you?”

“Yeah, and the cops don’t even know who the girl was. They’d like to say it was me.”

“Shit,” Jackson snorted. “Mothahfuckahs couldn’t fines no clue if it was nailed to they ass.”

“You know sumpin’ ’bout it, Jackson?”

Jackson looked over his shoulder, at the door. That meant he knew something and he was wondering if he should tell it. He rubbed his chin and acted cagey for a half a minute or so.

Finally he said, “What you doin’ at City College, man?”

“What?”

“You go there, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So what you takin’?”

“Basic like, remedial courses. Gettin’ some basic history an’ English I missed in night school. I got a couple’a advanced classes too.”

“Yeah? What kinda history?”

“European. From the Magna Carta on.”

“War,” he stated simply.

“What’s that you say?”

“Whatever it is I read about Europe is war. Them white men is always fightin’. War’a the Roses, the Crew-sades, the Revolution, the Kaiser, Hitler, the com’unists. Shit! All they care ’bout, war an’ money, money an’ land.”

He was right, of course. Jackson Blue was always right.

“You wanna go to school there?”

“Maybe you wanna take me t’class one night. Maybe I see.”

“What about the church, Jackson?”

“You say the cops don’t even know who that girl is?”

“Nope.”

“Maybe I go t’school an’ be a cop.”

“You gotta be five-eight at least to be a cop, Jack.”

“Shit, man. If I ain’t a niggah I’m a midget. Shit. You wanna get me another one, Ease?”

He pointed a long ebony finger at his empty glass.

I signaled for John to bring another. After he’d moved away Jackson said, “Tania’s her name. Tania Lee.”

“Where she live?”

“I’ont know. I just got it from one’a the young deacon boys—Robert Williams.”

“He didn’t know where she from?”

“Uh-uh. She just always tellin’ him t’be proud’a his skin and to worship Africa.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Jackson grinned. “You know I ’preciate a girl like a dark-skinned man but you ain’t gonna find me in no Africa.”

“Why not, Jackson? You ’fraid’a the jungle?”

“Hell no, man. Africa ain’t got no mo’ wild than America gots. But you know I cain’t see how them Africans could take kindly t’no American Negro. We been away too long, man.” Jackson shook his head. He almost looked sorry. “Too long.”

Jackson could have lectured me on the cultural rift between the continents all night, but an idea came to me.

“You ever hear of a group called the African Migration, Blue?”

“Sure, ain’t you ever seen it? Down on Avalon, near White Horse Bar and Grill.”

I had seen the place. It used to be a hardware store, but the
owner died and the heirs sold it to a real estate broker who rented it out to storefront churches.

“I thought that was just another church.”

“Naw, Easy. These is Marcus Garvey people. Back to Africa. You know, like W.E.B. Du Bois.”

“Who?”

“Du Bois. He’s a famous Negro, Easy. Almost a hundred years old. He always writin’ ’bout gettin’ back t’Africa. You prob’ly ain’t never heard’a him ’cause he’s a com’unist. They don’t teach ya ’bout com’unists.”

“So how do you know, if they don’t teach it?”

“Lib’ary got its do’ open, man. Ain’t nobody tellin’ you not to go.”

There aren’t too many moments in your life when you really learn something. Jackson taught me something that night in John’s, something I’d never forget.

But I didn’t have time to discuss the political nature of information right then. I had to find out what was happening, and it was the African Migration that was my next stop.

“Thanks, Jackson. You gonna be ’round fo’a while?” I put a five-dollar bill on the counter; Jackson covered it with his long skinny hand. Then he tipped his drink at me.

“Sure, Ease, sure I be here. You prob’ly find ’em too. They got a meetin’ there just about ev’ry night.”

T
HERE WAS A MEETING
going on in the gutted hardware store that evening. About forty people were gathered around a platform toward the back of the room to listen to the speakers.

A big man stopped me at the front door.

“You comin’ to the meetin’?” he asked. He was tall, six-four or more, and fat. His big outstretched hand looked like the stuffed hand of a giant brown doll.

“Yeah.”

“We like a little donation,” the big man said, unconsciously rubbing the tips of his fingers together.

“… they don’t want us and we don’t want them,” I heard the female speaker in the back of the large room say.

“How little?” I asked.

“One dollar for one gentleman,” he smiled.

I gave him two Liberty half-dollars.

The people in the room were a serious sort on the whole. Most of the men wore glasses, and every other person had a book or papers under their arm. Nobody noticed me. I was just another brother looking for a way to hold my head up high.

Among the crowd I made out Melvin Pride. He was intent on the speaker and so didn’t notice me. I moved behind a pillar, where I could watch him without being seen.

The speaker was talking about home, Africa. A place where everybody looked like the people in that room. A place where the kings and presidents were black. I was moved to hear her.

But not so moved that I didn’t keep an eye on the deacon. Melvin kept looking around nervously and rubbing his hands.

After a while the crowd broke out into a kind of exultant applause. The woman speaker, who wore wraparound African robes, bowed her head in recognition of the adulation before giving up the podium to the man behind her. She was chubby and light brown and had the face of a precocious schoolgirl, serious but innocent. Melvin went up to her, whispering while the next speaker prepared to address the crowd.

What looked to be a wad of folded money changed hands.

The man on the platform spoke in glowing terms about a powerful Negro woman who had shown leadership beyond her years. I knew it had to be Melvin’s friend, because she
took out a moment from her transaction to make eye contact with the speaker.