A Red Death: Featuring an Original Easy Rawlins Short Story "Si (Easy Rawlins Mysteries) (5 page)

“Well I guess that’s it,” JJ said when I was through explaining.

I
TOOK
M
ISTY
back down to Compton and dropped her off about six blocks from her hogtied cowboy.

On the way home I thought about JJ. She must have been brokenhearted over her sister’s betrayal. Money, I thought, is a harsh master in poor people’s lives. It warps us and makes us so hungry that we turn feral and evil. If Misty and JJ had stayed back home in their poor shacks, they would have been friends for fifty years baking pies and raising children side by side.

J
ESUS HAD BOUGHT
a sleeping bag with money he’d saved from work. We sat up late into the night talking about my experiences camping out in France and Germany with the small troop I belonged to.

“Did you kill a lotta Germans?” the bright-eyed boy asked.

“Yes I did.”

“Did you hate ’em?”

“I thought I did—at first. But after a while I began to realize that the German soldiers and the white American soldiers felt the same about me. I used my rifle a little less after that.”

“How come?”

“Because I didn’t really know who it was I wanted to shoot.”

“So you didn’t kill any more?”

“I didn’t kill except if I absolutely had to.”

I showed Jesus how to camp so that nobody could see you. I cautioned him to stay low when he heard something in the bushes.

“Be careful out there, son,” I said to him. “You know I love you more than anything.”

T
HE PHONE RANG
at two thirty-five.

“Yes,” I said, expecting it to be Bonnie.

“Easy,” she cried. “Easy, come quick. They’re dead. They’re all dead.”

I filled an empty mayonnaise jar with water and then drove the car I’d borrowed from Primo toward the canyons. At the base of the hills I got out and made mud from the dirt at the side of the road. I smeared the mud on Primo’s license plates.

T
HE DOOR TO THE HOUSE
was open. The large living room was strewn with bodies and blood. Clovis was thrown back on the couch so that she was hanging over the backrest. Fitts and Clavell were lying one in front of the other. It seemed as if they had been running at someone but were cut down—first Clavell and then his brother—in the middle of their rush.

Mofass was leaning up against the wall that the brothers had rushed. The .22 caliber pistol was in his hand. JJ was kneeling next to him, trying to pull him up by the arm.

“Damn criminals,” Mofass said. I could barely hear him.

“Get up, Uncle Willy,” JJ pleaded. “Get up.”

“Take her outta here, Mr. Rawlins,” he said. His eyes were so blurry and yellow that they seemed to be melting right out of his head.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Ain’t no time for questions. Take her outta here.”

When I tried to pull JJ to her feet she clutched Mofass’s arm. Her grip was brittle though and I manged to pull her away.

“Get his oxygen tank,” I told her.

While she ran into the other room I interrogated my real estate manager.

“What happened?”

“They wanted to steal my property,” he said. “They wanted to hurt my girl. Fuck that. Fuck that.”

“We got to get you outta here, William,” I said.

“No, Mr. Rawlins. I got to stay here an’ cover up for the cops. They cain’t know JJ was in on this.”

I didn’t know for a fact what he meant. But I had my suspicions.

JJ returned with the oxygen tank and mask. When she held the mask to Mofass’s nose and mouth he sighed. He smiled at his child lover and then shook his head for us to go.

I dragged JJ to the car.

“We can’t leave him,” she said as we were driving away.

“We have to call the police, JJ.”

“No. He killed them.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“I called Clovis after you left. I told her that I decided against lettin’ her in the business. She said sumpin’ but I just hung up. Then, about two hours ago, they all came over with the contracts for me and Uncle Willy to sign. I told ’em no an’ Uncle Willy pretended that he was ’sleep.”

“Then what.”

“Fitts started twistin’ my arm like he used to when I was a kid. I guess I screamed and he slapped me. I fell down and heard this sound like a cap gun. I thought maybe it was my nose bone or sumpin’ but then Clovis made this squeakin’ sound. I looked up and seen her holdin’ her chest and then the crackin’ sound happened again and she fell back on the couch. Uncle Willy was standin’ at the do’ with his pistol in
his hand. Fitts and Clavell run at him but Uncle Willy cut ’em down. He used one hand to hold himself up on the wall and the other to shoot.”

“We got to get outta here,” I said.

“Not without him,” JJ said.

“He got his oxygen mask,” I reasoned. “When the cops come they’ll call it self-defense. But if you’re here you might get in trouble.”

I
CALLED THE POLICE
from a phone booth, telling them that I had heard shots from Mofass’s home. Then I took JJ down near Jackson Blue’s apartment on Ozone Street in Venice.

I parked down the street and called him from a booth.

“JJ’s in trouble,” I said to the sleepy con man. “If you got a woman in there with you send her away. Take JJ in and make her feel comfortable. If the police ask, you tell ’em she was with you for the night.”

“Ain’t no woman up in here, Easy. Send her on.”

I watched as JJ walked down the block to Jackson’s house and then I went home to bed—if not to sleep.

T
HE MORNING
E
XAMINER
had the triple murder and suicide on the front page. The police, tipped off by an anonymous call, went to the secluded Laurel Canyon home where they found the four corpses. Mofass had given his life for Jewelle.

She returned home that morning and told the police that she’d left early to see her boyfriend. She also informed them that Clovis had been pressing to get back into business with them. The contracts Clovis wanted them to sign seemed to prove the story.

My name was not mentioned. And I have no idea where Misty and Crawford went. Jewelle stayed in her home. Jackson didn’t move in but they still see each other.

I went back to work the next day wondering how long it would be before my past showed up and put me into an early grave.

A RED DEATH

I
ALWAYS STARTED SWEEPING
on the top floor of the Magnolia Street apartments. It was a three-story pink stucco building between Ninety-first Street and Ninety-first Place, just about a mile outside of Watts proper. Twelve units. All occupied for that month. I had just gathered the dirt into a neat pile when I heard Mofass drive up in his new ’53 Pontiac. I knew it was him because there was something wrong with the transmission, you could hear its high singing from a block away. I heard his door slam and his loud hello to Mrs. Trajillo, who always sat at her window on the first floor—best burglar alarm you could have.

I knew that Mofass collected the late rent on the second Thursday of the month; that’s why I chose that particular Thursday to clean. I had money and the law on my mind, and Mofass was the only man I knew who might be able to set me straight.

I wasn’t the only one to hear the Pontiac.

The doorknob to Apartment J jiggled and the door came open showing Poinsettia Jackson’s sallow, sorry face.

She was a tall young woman with yellowish eyes and thick, slack lips.

“Hi, Easy,” she drawled in the saddest high voice. She was a natural tenor but she screwed her voice higher to make me feel sorry for her.

All I felt was sick. The open door let the stink of incense from her prayer altar flow out across my newly swept hall.

“Poinsettia,” I replied, then I turned quickly away as if my sweeping might escape if I didn’t move to catch it.

“I heard Mofass down there,” she said. “You hear him?”

“I just been workin’. That’s all.”

She opened the door and draped her emaciated body against the jamb. The nightcoat was stretched taut across her chest. Even though Poinsettia had gotten terribly thin after her accident, she still had a large frame.

“I gotta talk to him, Easy. You know I been so sick that I cain’t even walk down there. Maybe you could go on down an tell’im that I need t’talk.”

“He collectin’ the late rent, Poinsettia. If you ain’t paid him all you gotta do is wait. He’ll be up here soon enough to talk to you.”

“But I don’t have it,” she cried.

“You better tell’im that,” I said. It didn’t mean anything, I just wanted to say the last word and get down to work on the second floor.

“Could you talk to him, Easy? Couldn’t you tell’im how sick I am?”

“He know how sick you are, Poinsettia. All he gotta do is look at you and he could tell that. But you know Mofass is business. He wants that rent.”

“But maybe you could tell him about me, Easy.”

She smiled at me. It was the kind of smile that once made men want to go out of their way. But Poinsettia’s fine skin had slackened and she smelled like an old woman, even with the incense and perfume. Instead of wanting to help her I just wanted to get away.

“Sure, I’ll ask ’im. But you know he don’t work for me,” I lied. “It’s the other way around.”

“Go on down there now, Easy,” she begged. “Go ask ’im to let me slide a month or two.”

She hadn’t paid a penny in four months already, but it wouldn’t have been smart for me to say that to her.

“Lemme talk to ’im later, Poinsettia. He’d just get mad if I stopped him on the steps.”

“Go to ’im now, Easy. I hear him coming.” She pulled at her robe with frantic fingers.

I could hear him too. Three loud knocks on a door, probably unit B, and then, in his deep voice, “Rent!”

“I’ll go on down,” I said to Poinsettia’s ashen toes.

I pushed the dirt into my long-handled dustpan and made my way down to the second floor, sweeping off each stair as I went. I had just started gathering the dirt into a pile when Mofass came struggling up the stairs.

He’d lean forward to grab the railing, then pull himself up the stairs, hugging and wheezing like an old bulldog.

Mofass looked like an old bulldog too; a bulldog in a three-piece brown suit. He was fat but powerfully built, with low sloping shoulders and thick arms. He always had a cigar in his mouth or between his broad fingers. His color was dark brown but bright, as if a powerful lamp shone just below his skin.

“Mr. Rawlins,” Mofass said to me. He made sure to be respectful when talking to anyone. Even if I actually had been his cleanup man he would have called me mister.

“Mofass,” I said back. That was the only name he let anyone call him. “I need to discuss something with you after I finish here. Maybe we could go somewhere and have some lunch.”

“Suits me,” he said, clamping down on his cigar.

He grabbed the rail to the third floor and began to pull himself up there.

I went back to my work and worry.

Each floor of the Magnolia Street building had a short hallway with two apartments on either side. At the far end was a large window that let in the morning sun. That’s why I fell in love with the place. The morning sun shone in, warming up the cold concrete floors and brightening the first part of your day. Sometimes I’d go there even when there was no work to be done. Mrs. Trajillo would stop me at the front door and ask, “Something wrong with the plumbing, Mr. Rawlins?” And I’d tell her that Mofass had me checking on the roof or that Lily Brown had seen a mouse a few weeks back and I was checking the traps. It was always best if I said something about a rodent or bugs, because Mrs. Trajillo was a sensitive woman who couldn’t stand the idea of anything crawling down around the level of her feet.

Then I’d go upstairs and stand in the window, looking down into the street. Sometimes I’d stand there for an hour and more, watching the cars and clouds making their ways. There was a peaceful feeling about the streets of Los Angeles in those days.

Everybody on the second floor had a job, so I could sit around the halls all morning and nobody would bother me.

But that was all over. Just one letter from the government had ended my good life.

Everybody thought I was the handyman and that Mofass collected the rent for some white lady downtown. I owned three
buildings, the Magnolia Street place being the largest, and a small house on 116th Street. All I had to do was the maintenance work, which I liked because whenever you hired somebody to work for you they always took too long and charged too much. And when I wasn’t doing that I could do my little private job.

On top of real estate I was in the business of favors. I’d do something for somebody, like find a missing husband or figure out who’s been breaking into so-and-so’s store, and then maybe they could do me a good turn one day. It was a real country way of doing business. At that time almost everybody in my neighborhood had come from the country around southern Texas and Louisiana.

People would come to me if they had serious trouble but couldn’t go to the police. Maybe somebody stole their money or their illegally registered car. Maybe they worried about their daughter’s company or a wayward son. I settled disputes that would have otherwise come to bloodshed. I had a reputation for fairness and the strength of my convictions among the poor. Ninety-nine out of a hundred black folk were poor back then, so my reputation went quite a way.

I wasn’t on anybody’s payroll, and even though the rent was never steady, I still had enough money for food and liquor.

“W
HAT YOU MEAN, NOT TODAY
?” Mofass’s deep voice echoed down the stairs. After that came the strained cries of Poinsettia.

“Cryin’ ain’t gonna pay the rent, Miss Jackson.”

“I ain’t got it! You know I ain’t got it an’ you know why too!”

“I know you ain’t got it, that’s why I’m here. This ain’t my reg’lar collectin’ day, ya know. I come to tell you folks that don’t pay up, the gravy train is busted.”