“So you came to Jean-Paul?” I said.
“I woulda come to you, Easy, but you were in a coma and Portia give me a deadline.”
“What was the plan before me?”
“We were looking for countries where Jackson could go that did not ’ave extradition treaties with America,” Jean-Paul said.
“Makes sense. So now what?”
“I haven’t been able to find Rumor,” Jackson said. “You know I been off the streets too long. Nobody is where they were when I was at large. But you could find him, Easy.”
“That’s all?”
“Non,” Jean-Paul said. “The president of TexOk is a man named Merkan. ’E will not believe this of his top man, not without proof. I want this proof … without paying for it, of course. I also want to find out who it is in my company that would betray me. I cannot allow people to do to me like this.”
“And you’ll hold my money?”
“I would if you ’elped us or not.”
I gazed into the Frenchman’s eyes. There was nothing for me to consider. “Okay, then. Let me try and come up with somethin’.”
Jean-Paul gave a satisfied nod and Jackson grinned like a coyote.
“I don’t care if you are Mama Jo’s zombie, Easy,” Jackson said. “I’m gonna shake your hand.”
I stuck out my hand to test Jackson’s mettle. He licked his lips and, with obvious gumption, he grabbed on. I smiled and held his eyes with mine.
“That’s a good thing, Jackson,” I said. “Because you know you got to get out there with me to make sure we get it right.”
34
Jean-Paul was stuffing money back into the laundry bag when Jackson and I left Proxy Nine. I offered to help, but he said that he liked doing manual jobs, said that he used to have to cook his own food and then bus the table back when he was in the underground looking for Nazis to maim, blow up, and kill.
I was glad to leave the CEO to it, because Mama Jo’s Gator’s Blood was thinning out in my veins.
We reached my Genesee house at a little after six p.m. I said that I was going to take a nap and told Jackson to call Raymond.
“Tell him we need to find Charles Rumor and that he should drop by at midnight.”
“Okay, Easy. You want me to wake you up when he gets here?”
“No. Let me wake up on my own.”
“What should I tell Jewelle I’m doin’?”
“Anything but the truth, Jackson. Anything but that. And one more thing,” I said.
“What’s that, Easy?”
I stared at him, wondering what his question meant. My mind had begun its now familiar slow spiral downward.
“Um, uh, oh, yeah … call over to the Presidio Arms and tell Nan … I mean, ask Nan Mann to tell the man in J that I’ll be there in the morning.”
“Done.”
I couldn’t have uttered another word. Staggering to my bedroom I fell a thousand miles into sleep so complete that it felt … final. During the next five or six hours I had monumental dreams, but luckily, when I awoke they receded into the void of unconsciousness.
My alarm clock said 12:07. I smiled at the timing and rose up from the shroud of sleep.
Mouse had only recently arrived. He and Jackson were sitting at the dinette table drinking beers and laughing. Mouse was a great storyteller, mainly because he spoke the whole truth.
I stumped past the men to the back pantry, where I grabbed the bottle of Gator’s Blood.
Swallowing the stuff in a single gulp, I returned to the kitchen with the empty bottle in my hand.
“Gator’s Blood,” Mouse said with a grin. “Jo forced that foul shit down my gullet for eight days after I got shot that time.”
“Did it work?” I asked.
“I’m here, ain’t I?”
Jackson was looking back and forth between us. His expression contained equal parts fear and awe.
“You find Chuck?” I asked Mouse.
“Oh, yeah. I know a guy know a girl know a guy who knew where he was at. Before I came here I checked it out. He’s there.”
The warmth was returning to my limbs. A feeling of nascent hilarity rose in my chest.
“You armed, Ray?” I asked.
“For Mr. Bear and his brothers.”
“Good.”
Out at the car Raymond said, “Why’ont you let me drive, Easy?”
“Why?” I was almost angry.
“That shit’a Mama Jo’s make you lose control sometimes, especially when it’s been in your system for a few days. I should know.”
I piled into the backseat of the Barracuda while Mouse drove and Jackson explained the point of bracing Rumor. He didn’t mention the fact that he was an officer of the company or that he had partial power to loan out millions; there was no need to let a man like Mouse know where he could wangle that kind of money.
“Damn,” Raymond said. “He got a whole sack full’a guns with fingerprints not his on ’em? That shit is some long-range plannin’ right there.”
“Yeah,” Jackson agreed. “Plannin’ to damn me.”
“Why didn’t you call me in the first place, Blue?” Raymond asked. He almost sounded hurt.
“I … I guess I should have. But you know, Ray, I didn’t wanna, wanna …”
Mouse laughed and said, “Don’t worry, man. You got me now.”
Charles Rumor lived on the sixth floor of an apartment building that had one unit per floor.
“There’s a indoor stairway up in front,” Mouse said. “And a fire escape door out the back. You go up the front way and ring the bell, but gimme eleven minutes before you do.”
When he was gone I asked Jackson for a cigarette. He handed a Kool over the seat and lit a match.
After my third drag he said, “I went into the bedroom to ask you a question, Ease. It was only about a minute after you went in there. But you were dead to the world.”
“The aftermath of the accident. I get really tired.”
“I know, but …”
“But what?”
“Easy, you looked like you really was dead, man. I mean, most’a the time when people are at rest that’s what it is—rest. But your mouth was hangin’ open and slack just like my uncle George when he died in his bed.”
“Is there some point to this, Jackson?” I didn’t like the menthol taste but kept on smoking.
“What does it feel like, man? What does it feel like to come back from sumpin’ like that?”
I took in a lungful of smoke and held it. The question tickled me. It brought me to a place I had not considered before—at least, not directly.
“It was like,” I said. “No … It is like there’s no yesterday and no tomorrow, like time comes together right where I’m standing. It’s … it’s magnificent, almost too beautiful to bear.”
“Damn,” Jackson said, and I felt I had imparted some kind of vital knowledge that I didn’t even understand.
“We better be goin’, Blue,” I said. “It wouldn’t be good to keep Ray waitin’.”
We went through the unlocked entrance of the dirt-streaked salmon-colored building. The walk up to the top floor winded Jackson, but I was running on superior fuel. When we got to Rumor’s door I knocked loudly, like a cop might do.
I could see at the crack of the door when the light came on. The two little shadows that appeared indicated that someone was standing there, looking through the peephole.
I knocked again and the shadows went away. Maybe three minutes went by and the door came open. Charles Rumor was standing there with mortal fear in his eyes. Gun in hand, Raymond loomed behind with a big smile on his face.
Rumor’s apartment was a study in contradictions. He had a fancy sofa. The multicolored upholstering was made from and stitched in raw silk. In front of this sat a fruit crate for a coffee table flanked by three brown metal folding chairs for any overflow of guests. A fancy Nikon camera was on the pitted pine floor, and the walls were all bare. One wall had been recently painted bright ora
nge, but the other three were base white and stained.
A door opened and Mouse swung around, his pistol up and ready to fire. The young woman who came through gasped and brought her hands to her mouth.
“Hello,” Raymond said instead of shooting. “What’s your name?”
“Fiona.”
“Nice name. Pretty girl. Do me a favor, honey. Sit down in one’a them chairs there and we’ll be through with our business in a minute.”
Fiona was pretty. Maybe seventeen and dark-skinned. Her hairdo was a flip fashioned after Diana Ross of the Supremes. She wore a man’s threadbare white T-shirt, that’s all. You could see the darkness of her skin through the thinning weave of cotton.
For his part, Rumor had on jeans and a green T-shirt. He was in such a rush to get out the back that he hadn’t put on shoes. He was a buttery brown color, handsome except for his eyes, which seemed untrustworthy and a little jaundiced.
“You know why we’re here, man,” I said.
“Can I sit down?” he asked.
“No.”
“I ain’t done nuthin’ to you, Easy. Not to Mr. Alexander neither.”
“Cough it up,” I said.
“What?”
Mouse leveled his long-barreled pistol at Chuck’s forehead.
“Oh, no,” Fiona said.
“I … I give it to … to the white man,” Rumor suggested. “Um, he bought it.”
“No,” I said. “No. You wouldn’t give him the gun, because it’s too valuable, and he didn’t buy it, because you could have been lying about Jackson’s fingerprints.”
Mouse grinned to show his appreciation of my logic.
I turned to see what Jackson thought. He was so scared that he had his back up against the recently painted wall.
“Now, Charles,” I commanded. “Because you know, and I do too, that it’s either the gun or your life.”
“Oh, my God,” Fiona said.
“Sh,” Mouse told her.
Charles’s handsome face disappeared behind the fear bubbling up from his soul. He actually shivered and panted.
“We got to go, man,” I warned.
He went to the big fancy sofa and pulled off the center cushion, then ripped out the tan nylon netting that covered the frame. He reached inside and came out with an army surplus duffel bag.
“That’s it!” Jackson said. “That’s it. That’s the bag with the guns.”
“Step aside, Charlie,” Mouse said. He moved in and grabbed the sack, handing it to Jackson. Squatting down next to the crate, Blue took out revolvers one at a time until he came upon a .22 target pistol. It had a fake pearl handle.
“This is it,” he said.
“Take it,” Charles told us. “Take it and go.”
Fiona was mumbling a prayer to God.
I took the gun from Jackson, cracked it open, and saw that three shells had been fired. I clacked the chamber back into place and aimed at Charles’s left thigh. He bent over and fell trying to avoid being shot.
“I’m just gonna shoot you in the leg, man,” someone said with my voice. “That way you will have paid for shootin’ that cop and framin’ Jackson with one wound. But if you move I might hit you someplace vital.”
Rumor froze with a terrified grimace on his face. I shifted the gun muzzle, fully intending to fire.
Mouse laid a hand on my wrist.
“Somebody gonna hear a shot in the dead’a night, Easy,” he said. “And you know that gun is too hot to be caught with.”
My breath was coming fast.
“You could stab him,” Mouse offered.
“Please, no,” Rumor said.
“Please,” his teenage girlfriend echoed.
The rage subsided in me, but Charles didn’t know that.
“If you answer one question and don’t lie,” I said.
“Anything, man. Anything.”
“How’d Portia and his man Huggins get to you?”
“I don’t know no Portia, but … but … but this cop named Brady come here with a big white dude in a gray suit so rumpled it looked like it haven’t never been ironed. Brady had my police file. Five, six years ago me and Jackson got busted nine times on gamblin’…. You remembah, Jackson … when we run that floatin’ blackjack game?”
“That’s true, Easy,” Jackson said willingly. He hated the sight of blood. “You remember I told you that.”
“Brady left us alone and the big white dude, his name were Huggins, wanted sumpin’ on Jackson. I used the pistol when a cop almost busted me one time when I was stealin’. I always wear gloves on a job, so I had the right shit.”
I was still staring.
“They didn’t pay me right off, but I told ’em that if I didn’t get five thousand in a week I’d give the gun to Jackson. I told ’em if they wanted to buy it, it would cost twice that.” His rheumy eyes were pleading with me.
“Why didn’t you go to Jackson and try to get paid twice?”
“Because’a you.”
“Me?”
“Everybody knows you and Jackson’s tight. On the one hand a man had five thousand dollars; on the other side there was you. I was gonna go down to Houston with the five grand, but I waited too long.”
I was still pointing the gun at his leg. It came to me that part of my mind was still considering the karmic shot.
“Let’s get outta here,” I said to my friends.
In the Barracuda, now sitting in the passenger’s seat, I was smoking again. This time Jackson was driving.
“I told you, Easy,” Mouse said after a few miles. He was using a blue oil rag from the trunk to wipe down the pistols and their bullets.
“Told me what?”
“That that Gator’s Blood will mess wit’ yo’ mind.”
35
We dropped off Mouse and the seven revolvers at EttaMae’s in Watts proper.
“I’ll get Peter to help me pick up the Caddy tomorrow,” Mouse promised from the curb, “after we use the smelter at Primo’s to get rid’a these here.”
“Peter Rhone still live here?” Jackson asked.
“Yep, he sure does. He Etta’s French maid and my man Friday.”
We were getting off the Santa Monica Freeway at Fairfax when Jackson said, “I never thought I’d see this day.”
“What you talkin’ ’bout, Blue?” I had been staring off into the night lights of my adopted city, thinking about how far I’d come and how little progress I’d made.
“The day when Raymond Alexander had to tell Easy Rawlins to hold back.”
I chuckled. The humor brought back the things Charles said to stave off my wrath. This led to another train of thought.
“Does Jean-Paul have a contact with the police like Portia does?”
“Um …”
“Come on, Jackson. I just saved your ass, man.”
“Yeah,” he said reluctantly, “but we couldn’t use ’im. A fingerprint on a pistol woulda been too much for a cover-up.”
We got to Genesee at a little past three.
“I want you to call Jean-Paul,” I said to Jackson while handing him a bottle of beer.
“Now?”
I nodded. “Tell him that I wanna meet with his police contact down at the far end of the Santa Monica Pier at eight a.m.”
“It’s late, Easy,” Jackson whined.
“And I don’t need it gettin’ any later.”
After sharing the particulars of what I needed from his boss, I told Jackson that he could sleep in my bed or on the couch.
“What you gonna do?”
“Go out for a drive. I’ll be back to take you to work by ten.”
I drove up to our Bel-Air squat and waited until almost six. Sitting in the car, concealed by the deep driveway, I smoked a few menthols that I’d borrowed from Jackson and planned how to execute the rest of Jean-Paul’s revenge.
It felt good plotting, the way a spider must feel when spreading his web.
When the sky was light but the sun not yet risen, I p
ressed the button on the outer gate of the mansion.
It took a few minutes for someone to answer.
“Yes?” a soft but masculine voice said on the intercom speaker.
“It’s me, Juice.”
The gate swung slowly inward and I drove my gaudy red car toward the family I loved.
Jesus answered the door with the caramel-colored Essie sitting in the crook of his left arm.
The baby smiled, holding her hand out to me. I kissed her fingers and she giggled, pulling the hand quickly away.
“I think your little girl is telling me I need a shave.”
“How are you, Dad?”
“Keepin’ on, son. Keepin’ on.”
“You want some coffee?”
“Maybe a quick one. I got to be down in Santa Monica by eight.”
He boiled water and made me a cup of instant in the kitchen. We stood at the counter while the baby cooed and pawed his chin, a look of infinite wonder on her face.
“How’s everything?” I asked.
“Fine,” he replied. “Are you still drinking?”
“Not much for small talk, huh?”
“Are you?”
“Not a drop.”
When Jesus smiled it was like a little blessing or an unexpected moment of charity from a stranger. I sipped my coffee. Jesus held his daughter with intimacy and understanding that had no words and needed none. He and I had been together for many years. At the beginning he never spoke at all, and when he finally found his tongue, he was very conservative with its use.
We stood there for seven or eight minutes in deep silence.
“Where’s Feather’s bedroom?” I said at last.
“Across the hall from yours,” he said. “She wanted to be close in case you needed her.”
Feather’s room was the color of a half-rainy day, dominated by mild blues and soft grays. She had a short cherrywood bookshelf and a maple writing desk, both set upon a swept pine floor. There was a casement window, the doors of which opened out onto greenery so deep that it might have been a forest.
Her head was on a sea green pillow, and her bare leg stuck out from under the ash gray blanket. When I pulled the cover over her leg she woke up.
Little Green Page 17