A Red Death: Featuring an Original Easy Rawlins Short Story "Si (Easy Rawlins Mysteries) (26 page)

Melvin had finished his business anyway; he headed for the exit.

“… Sonja Achebe,” the speaker said. The crowd applauded again and the young woman headed for a doorway at the back of the room.

“M
ISS
A
CHEBE
?”

“Yes?”

She smiled at me.

“Excuse me, ma’am, but my name is Easy, Easy Rawlins.”

She frowned a bit as if the name meant something to her but she couldn’t quite remember why.

“Yes, Brother Rawlins.”

The mood of the Migration, like that of so many other black organizations, was basically religious.

“I need to talk to you ’bout Tania Lee.”

She knew who I was then. She didn’t say anything, just pointed at a doorway. We walked toward it as another speaker began to preach.

“W
HAT IS IT YOU WANTED
to know about Sister Lee?” she asked. We were in a large storeroom that was cut into tiny aisles by rows of slender, empty shelves. It was like a rat’s maze, dimly lit by sparse forty-watt bulbs.

“I need to know who killed her, and why.”

“She’s dead?” Miss Achebe made a lame attempt at surprise. “Com’on, lady, you know what happened. She’s one’a you people.” I was reaching but I thought I might be right.

“You tell the police that?”

I stuck out my bottom lip and shook my head. “No reason. Least not yet.”

Miss Achebe didn’t look like a little girl anymore. The lines of an older woman etched her face.

“What do you want with me?” she asked.

“Who killed your friend and my minister?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t have anything to do with killings.”

“I saw you with Melvin and I seen him with Tania and Reverend Towne. Somethin’s goin’ on wit’ you and the church. I know they gave you at least thirty-six hundred dollars, honey, but you see I don’t care about that. The police lookin’ at me for murder an’ I cain’t be worried ’bout you-all’s li’l thing.”

“We didn’t kill Towne.”

“Why’m I gonna believe that?”

“I don’t care what you believe, Mr. Rawlins. I didn’t kill anyone—nobody I know killed anyone.”

“Maybe not.” I nodded at her. “But all I gotta do is whisper a word to the man and he might just wanna prove that you did.”

She snorted in place of a laugh. “We live with danger here, Mr. Rawlins. The police and the FBI make weekly visits. They don’t scare me and you don’t either.”

“I don’t wanna scare ya, Miss Achebe. What you got here looks good to me, but I was in the wrong place at the wrong time an’ I gotta have some answers.”

“I can’t help you. I know nothing.”

“Didn’t Melvin say anything?”

“Nothing.” She shrugged and glanced over my shoulder.

“Okay. But I gotta know …” I was interrupted by a heavy hand on my shoulder.

I turned to look up into the face of the man who took my money at the door.

“Anything wrong?” he asked.

“Yes, Bexel,” Sonja said. “Mr. Rawlins here thinks that we’re somehow involved with the murder of Reverend Towne.”

“He do?” You could see how it hurt the big man that I could think such a thing.

Sonja smiled. “He wants to tell the police that.”

“Naw?” When Bexel balled his hands into fists the knuckles of his fingers did an impression of popping corn.

I guess that my fights with Willie and Agent Lawrence had made me a little cocky. I made like I was going to step away from the sergeant-at-arms and then I dropped my right shoulder to deliver an uppercut to his lower gut.

It was a perfectly executed blow that I followed with an overhand left just below Bexel’s heart. I danced backward until I felt a row of shelves behind me. It wasn’t far but I didn’t expect my quarry to be in any shape to trap me.

Then I looked up into his placid, smiling face.

Bexel leaned forward and pushed me with his great padded paw. My hurtling body shattered the shelves behind and the shelves behind them. My lungs collapsed in my chest and I felt pain in places that I’d never felt before.

Still smiling, the big man grabbed me roughly by both shoulders and lifted me until our faces almost touched.

I kicked him. Hard. And, to give myself a little credit, his left eye winced for a split second. But then he let go of my shoulders and grabbed me by the head.

“Bexel!” Sonja Achebe shouted. “Release him!”

I hit the floor certain, at least for that moment, that these were not the killers. I was fool enough to go into their den and blame them for the crime of murder. They could have killed me. Should have done.

I was on the floor thinking about cooked spaghetti and wondering if I was bleeding when Sonja asked, “Are you all right, Mr. Rawlins?”

“No, I sure ain’t that.”

Bexel was still standing before me. I was looking at his bloated black brogans. They were the largest shoes I had ever seen. He grabbed me by my jacket and lifted me to my feet. That was the first time that night that I had the sensation of flight.

“You should go now,” Sonja Achebe said. “We didn’t do anything wrong, but I don’t expect you to believe that. It doesn’t matter what you think, however, because we are not afraid.”

I looked at Bexel. He wasn’t even breathing hard. I remember hoping that I had finally learned to be cautious. But somewhere in my heart I knew that I’d never learn.

“Sorry,” I said.

I shook Sonja Achebe’s hand. “I know you might not believe this, but I was moved by your speech. There’s a lotta people need what you have to offer.”

“Not you?” She smiled for the first time and became a young girl again.

“I got me a home already. It might be in enemy lands, but it’s mine still and all.”

I liked Sonja Achebe and what the Migration stood for. I didn’t want to see them come to harm. I found myself hoping that they hadn’t been involved in Towne’s death. I found myself wishing the same thing about Chaim Wenzler. It seemed to me that I was on everybody’s side but my own.

M
ELVIN
P
RIDE LIVED
on Alaford Street. A quiet block of one-family homes behind a row of well-kept lawns and trimmed bushes. There was a smell of smoke in the air. I wondered at that, because it was unusual for anyone to be burning trash at that time of night.

I had to knock for a full minute before Melvin came to the door.

“What you want, Easy?” he asked through the screen, as hushed and stony as the grim reaper.

“I wanna talk to you about Reverend Towne and Tania Lee and the African Migration.”

“Who?”

“I saw you there tonight, Melvin. I know you were siphoning off money to them ’cause you were all officers. Thing is, I cain’t see why you would do it. I mean, Towne’s got religion and a social conscience. But you just care about the church, and Winona an’ Jackie be happy with a mirror. But even if I
knew why they would do it I can’t figure why you’d wanna kill anybody.”

Melvin looked mean, but actually he was paralyzed. I pulled open the screen door and stepped past him into the house.

“You talkin’ crazy, Easy Rawlins.” Melvin moved to the side, and I took a step back from him. We were dancing like wary boxers in the first round of a title fight.

“That’s right. I’m talking murder, Melvin.”

“Murder who? I got someone t’say where I was fo’ when they was killed. The police already questioned me.”

“I bet that was Jackie, or one’a his girls.”

When I said “Jackie,” Melvin’s cheek jumped.

Then I said, “Come on, Melvin! You know all you people was stealin’ from the church.” It was just a guess but it was a good one. There weren’t many places where a man like Jackie Orr could lay his hands on a thousand dollars. “You was all takin’ money. Towne for the Migration, Winona and you for Towne, and Jackie … well, Jackie just caught on to a good thing.”

“You cain’t prove I killed nobody. And you cain’t prove I stole nuthin’.”

“You right ’bout the stealin’. I cain’t prove that, not wit’ you burnin’ the books out back I cain’t.”

Melvin gave me a twitchy smile.

“But it’s murder I can burn you on.”

“Hell no! I ain’t killed nobody! Never!”

“Maybe not, but all I gotta do is tell the cops an’ they will beat you till you confess. That’s how the game is played, Melvin.”

Melvin turned his head as if he wanted to look into the door behind him. That door probably led to a bedroom.

He licked his lips. “You think I killed Towne? That’s a laugh.”

“I ain’t laughin’, Melvin. What I wanna know is why. You workin’ with Wenzler or what?”

The look on Melvin’s face was either a perfect job of acting or he knew nothing.

“You the one most prob’ly killed Towne, Easy.” His tone was so certain that my sweat glands turned cold.

“Me?”

“Yeah, you. We got the lowdown on you, Easy.”

“You said that before, Melvin. What does that mean?”

“It means that somebody blabbed on you, man. They told.”

“Who?”

“I ain’t sayin’. But it ain’t just one, and I ain’t the onliest one who knows, so you better not be thinkin’ nuthin’ like you gonna get at me. I know and Jackie does and the white man know too.”

There was a righteous tone to Melvin’s voice. He actually thought that I was the killer.

It took me a couple of days to decide on what happened next.

Melvin pushed me backward, yelling, “You got him but you hain’t gonna get me!” My foot turned on the carpet. Melvin stepped over me and connected with a solid right against my jaw. I was already falling and so I twisted over trying to roll out of the way. I hit a chair though and fell with my head toward the ground. Then there was a dull thud against my left thigh and I realized that Melvin had kicked me and probably meant to stomp me into the floor. I let myself roll sideways and stuck my legs between Melvin’s so that when he tried to kick me again he fell forward, and I slammed my fist into the side of his head.

That’s when we fell together, wrestling. Melvin was biting and growling like a dog. His attack was ferocious but it was unplanned. I kept giving him rabbit punches to the back of the neck. I did that until he removed his teeth from my left shoulder. Then I got to my feet holding Melvin by the shirt. I was terribly angry, because his attack scared me and because my mouth was in tremendous pain. I hit Melvin with everything I had. He went backward across the room and I expected him to go down into a cold heap, but instead he kept on going and ran from the room.

At first I thought the fight was over. I had put all of my anger into that one blow and my violence was sated. But then, in the same moment, I remembered Melvin looking toward that door earlier.

By the time I burst through the doorway Melvin was turning from the night table next to his bed. There was a coal-colored pistol in his hand.

And for the second time that night I took flight; right into Melvin Pride.

The force of our bodies hitting the wall broke through the plaster. The sensation was the stutter effect of stepping on ice and then having that ice give way to free-fall. Melvin grunted, so did I. A timber sighed. Gravel slithered down my cheek and the pistol barked mutely, packed between the girth of our two bodies.

I felt the bite of the shot and automatically pushed away from Melvin to block up the hole in my chest.

I was covered with blood. I knew from my experiences in the war that I would soon lose consciousness. Melvin would murder me. Everything was over.

Then I heard Melvin slump down and I gave a wide grin in spite of the terrible pain in my jaw. It was Melvin who had taken the bullet; I had just felt the concussion of the shot.

Melvin’s face was contorted in pain. A dark patch was forming on his shirt.

He was sucking down air and groaning, but Melvin was still trying to lift the pistol to shoot me. I took the gun from his blood-streaked hand and threw it on the bed. The craggy man groaned in fear as I stood over him. My jaw hurt me so bad that I had no desire to quell his fear. I tore a pillowcase in half and shoved it under Melvin’s bloody shirt until it was directly over the wound.

“Hold this tight,” I said. I had to lift his other arm and show him what to do.

“Don’t kill me, man,” he whispered.

“Melvin, you gotta get a hold of yourself. If you don’t start thinkin’ straight you gonna go into shock an’ die.”

I held his hand down hard over the wound to cause a little pain for him to focus on and to show him what he should be doing. The pistol he had was a .25-caliber so the wound wasn’t too bad.

“Please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me,” Melvin chanted.

“I don’t want you dead, Melvin. I ain’t gonna kill you, even though I should after this shit.”

“Please,” Melvin said again.

I pocketed the pistol and went to the bathroom, where I washed the blood off my shoes and from the cuffs of my black pants. Then I took an overcoat from Melvin’s closet and used it to cover the rest of me.

In the backyard the incinerator was smoking away at various official papers from First African. Melvin had been trying to erase the accounting trail of the theft he and the others had perpetrated against the church. I hosed down what was left.

Back inside I found that Melvin had crawled into the
kitchen. He was holding himself erect at the kitchen counter. I figured that he was trying to get a weapon, so I helped him to a chair. Then I went to the phone on the kitchen table and dialed Jackie Orr. He answered on the seventh ring.

“Hello.”

“Hey, Jackie, this is Easy. Easy Rawlins.”

“Yeah?” he said warily.

“Melvin’s been shot.” There was silence on the other end of the line. “I didn’t shoot him, man. It was an accident. Anyway, he’s got a bullet in his shoulder and he needs a doctor.”

“You ain’t gettin’ me over there with that lie, Easy. I ain’t no fool.”

“What I want with you, man?”

“You want my money.”

“You got a thousand dollars in yo’ bottom drawer, right? If I didn’t take that then I don’t need no money you got.”

“I just call the cops, man.”

“You do an’ I hope you ready fo’jail, Jackie, ’cause I got all the proof I need that you been takin’ money out the church. But here, talk to Melvin.”