Little Green

by Walter Mosley

  Most men worried about sitting with their backs to a door, but that was usually just self-inflation and pretense. Mouse, however, truly was a man with enemies.

  “What’s up, Easy?” he asked, leaning his chair back into the recess.

  “Frank Green.”

  Mouse grinned and shook his head.

  “I used to have a girlfriend,” he said. “A woman who was a minister in a storefront Baptist church. She told me that she wanted to save my soul. I figured that was as close to God as I was ever likely to get.

  “Anyway, Reverend Antonia used to tell me that whatever goes around comes around. I thought that was just some Holy Roller hocus-pocus, but then here comes Evander, and damn if that fine young minister didn’t know her words.”

  “He’s Frank Green’s son?”

  “Frank was a wild man, Easy. He make me seem like some kinda angel. Back when you had all them problems with him and DeWitt Albright, he had falled in love with a fourteen-year-old girl.”

  “Timbale?”

  Mouse nodded. “Grabbed her right off the street and locked her in a room in his house. Made her into his woman like he was some kinda wild animal ruttin’ after a mate. Then I killed him and Timbale went home. When they found out she was pregnant they kicked her out, and I been givin’ her two hundred dollars a month evah since.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I killed Evander’s father and her parents wouldn’t stand up for what was right.”

  “Evander thinks he should kill you,” I said. “He feels that that’s his duty.”

  “I understand that. I murdered his father. What else he gonna do?”

  “Ray.”

  “What?”

  “Evander could no more kill a man like you than a fly could topple a lion.”

  “So? It only matter that he try.”

  “And if he does that?”

  Raymond tilted his head to the side. “He’ll die like a man.”

  “No.”

  “No? What else could he do?”

  “Not him, man, you,” I said.

  “Me? What can I do?”

  “I want you to deny killing Frank Green. If Evander asks you I want you to tell him that you didn’t do it.”

  The consternation on Mouse’s face was almost comical. He pulled his chin in and raised his hands in a confused gesture.

  I understood. He felt respect and responsibility for the boy. Mouse had killed his own stepfather and biological father at different times, in different conflicts. This was a way of life for him.

  I wondered how I could explain that it was more important to keep Evander alive than to duel with him in order to show respect for his manhood. It was going to be a difficult discussion and possibly even dangerous.

  It was almost a relief when the heavy thud came against my office door.

  It wasn’t a knock but a strike meant to break the door in. There were a couple of extra bolts that engaged whenever I closed the door, so it took two more blows for them to break in. By that time Mouse was on his feet, plastered into the recess with that terrible long-barreled .41 in his hand, pointed, for the moment, at the ceiling.

  For my part I grabbed the receiver of the telephone. There were two reasons for this: First, I thought that if the intruder had heard voices, the phone would be a good explanation for what he’d heard, and second, I wanted his attention on me and what I was doing.

  Three big white men rushed in. They all wore cheap suits in dark hues: green and blue and gray.

  Fear hit my heart like an electric jolt, and suddenly I was alive again for the first time since going over that cliff. It was a miracle that I had no time to contemplate.

  I wasn’t worried for myself. It was these foolish men with their numbers and confidence, their last mistake if I, the living Easy Rawlins, didn’t think fast.

  “Where is he?” the man on my right said.

  “Who?”

  “Evander.”

  Just mentioning that name brought the white hoodlum closer to death.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Don’t try to shit us, brother man,” he said. “We talked to a girl named Vixie. She told us that she brought him out to a place in the woods up north.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. “I never go anywhere near the country.”

  Incredibly the men hadn’t looked behind them. If they did Mouse would kill them. If they drew on me Mouse would kill them. If they mentioned Evander’s last name he’d do the same.

  “Vixie took us to a house we know, and this guy named Yancy told us all about you. Black dick name of Easy Rawlins who went around asking people where this Evander was.”

  The options for a living solution were diminishing. Mouse was slowly bringing the muzzle of the pistol down in line with the middle man’s head.

  The good thing about my telephone is that I’m a restless talker. I like to wander around the room, looking out the window and then back to see who might be in the hall while I talked. That meant the curled wire to the receiver was very long. I threw the thing with all my might at the guy on the right. It hit him in the forehead, dead center.

  It was my next action that surprised me. I climbed up on the desk and jumped at the guy in the middle. While I wrestled him backward, Mouse clocked the guy to the left with the heavy barrel of his gun. The man I’d jumped pushed me against the desk and was reaching for his gun when Mouse struck him.

  I turned toward the guy I hit with the phone and hit him with an upthrust elbow to the chin. His head hit the wall and when he bounced back I elbowed him again.

  The fight was over just that quickly. The men were down if not completely out. They floundered like stunned fish out of water while Mouse went from one to another, relieving them of their weapons and tapping them more or less lightly if they seemed about to rise.

  Since getting my PI’s ticket I kept various law enforcement paraphernalia in my file cabinet. Mouse and I handcuffed the dazed men wrist to wrist in a circle with their backs facing one another. That way they had no real ability to escape.

  “Damn, Easy,” Mouse said when this operation was complete. “You gonna make me into a mothahfuckin’ saint.”

  “You go on, man. Leave the stooges with me.”

  Mouse shrugged his pink shoulders and made his exit. On the way out he stepped on one man’s hand. The intruder yelled and Raymond slapped him with his pistol, as if to prove that his sainthood was only a temporary aberration.

  I placed chairs over the chains that held them. The weight kept them on the floor and unbalanced. I also produced a pistol, which calmed their desire to complain.

  Then I called the one policeman I trusted, Melvin Suggs, and told him that I had a surprise.

  43

  Detective Melvin Suggs had taken up permanent residence at the 77th Street precinct, and so he and four uniformed police were at my office in less than ten minutes.

  In that time the guy I’d hit with the telephone, who wore the green suit, told me, “Nigger, if you want to live you better take off these cuffs and let us go. You have no idea who you’re messin’ with.”

  “I’d like to, man,” I said. “I really would, but I’m already scared. And if I undid those cuffs who’s to say you wouldn’t try to get even with me for hittin’ on you like I did?”

  “You got the gun.”

  “And the police are coming. I have never seen nor have I heard of a black man shooting a white man and not going to prison. Only during the war, and even there you had to be careful. I knew one guy got tried for attempted manslaughter when a German officer blamed him for shooting him when he said that he was unarmed and trying to surrender.”

  The man in the green suit tried to rise and I pushed him down with my foot. He was a large specimen, younger, taller, and bulkier than I. The fact that I had saved his life only served to earn his eternal ire.

  “Easy.” The voice came from my destroyed doorway.

  Melvin Suggs was four inch
es shorter than I, about five-nine, with beautiful fawn-colored eyes and thick, gnarled hands. His body was bulky too. I was used to seeing him in shabby suits and wrinkled shirts with at least three or four grease spots here and there. But that day his tan suit was pressed and his white shirt bright enough to be new. His usually dull shoes were shined, and he might have even lost a pound or two.

  “What’s her name?” were my first words in the delicate situation.

  Melvin stared at me while his uniformed minions piled into the room around him.

  “What’s going on here, Rawlins?” a sergeant, I’d forgotten his name, said.

  “Office invasion,” I replied. “These men broke down my door and accosted me. I’m pretty sure they meant me physical harm.”

  Suggs looked at the trapped white men.

  “And you subdued the three of them all by yourself?” the sergeant asked.

  “I was with a friend. He and I caught ’em off guard. I guess they weren’t expecting any kind of resistance.”

  “Who was the friend?”

  “Guy named Navrochet,” I said. That was one of Raymond’s stepfather’s sons who got it in mind to revenge himself on my friend. He’d been dead for a very long time.

  “Where is he?”

  “There was a church meeting that he couldn’t miss. Deacon, you know.”

  “What church?”

  “I forget the name, but it’s the big pink Baptist one on Hooper.”

  The uniforms didn’t like me, but I had too much juice with their superiors for them to treat me like they did the rest of my brothers. It wasn’t that I was loved by the upper echelons of the LAPD; it’s just that I was useful when they needed a window on the communities of color.

  “This man attacked us,” the green suit protested. “He pulled a gun on us and beat us with five of his friends.”

  I could see that at least two of the officers were inclined to consider this alternative explanation.

  “Really, Keith?” Suggs said. “You think that I’m gonna believe that Haman Rose’s top lieutenant was bushwhacked by a black man? Did he break down his own door too?”

  “You know this man, Lieutenant?” the sergeant asked.

  “This is Keith Handel. He works for the Mickey Cohen of West L.A., Haman Rose.”

  “I disarmed them, Melvin,” I said. “Their guns are on the desk.”

  “He attacked us!” one of the other goons shouted.

  “And how did that happen? You got lost on your way to the beach and then he just decided to beat on you,” Melvin asked, “and then he called the cops for a joke?”

  “Yeah,” the seated felon said, looking as stupid as he felt.

  “Andrews,” Suggs said.

  “Yes, Lieutenant?” replied the sergeant.

  “Take these men down to the precinct. Book them on assault, breaking and entering, illegal possession of firearms, and throw in extortion for good measure.”

  “After we search the premises, sir?”

  “Search for what?”

  “We’re here,” Andrews said as if this was self-explanatory.

  “Mr. Rawlins is the victim here, not a suspect.”

  “But, Lieutenant.”

  “Easy, when can you come down to press charges?” Melvin asked me, effectively cutting off any debate with his man.

  “I got some business right now, but tomorrow will be fine.”

  “Take these men in,” Suggs said to Andrews. “I’ll be around a little later to sign the preliminary paperwork.”

  Two of the cops had taken up positions at the entrance to keep gawkers away from my gaping doorway. They came in and helped the three thugs to their feet.

  “You got the keys to these cuffs?” one cop asked me.

  I patted my pocket and then looked dumb.

  “I guess Navrochet took it with him. Sorry about that.”

  It was a stumbly exit for the cops and their daisy chain of prisoners. The thugs complained while the people watching them from the various offices laughed.

  My full resurrection was less than an hour old and I’d already made enemies who would remember me, and my address, for the rest of their lives.

  “I heard that you were dead, Easy,” Melvin Suggs said after the parade had departed.

  “Yeah.”

  He wandered over to a visitor’s chair and I sat in one too.

  The Gator’s Blood had changed in its effect; instead of feeling wild I felt a sense of powerful optimism.

  “What do you have to do with Haman Rose?”

  “I’ve heard his name before, but I have no idea who he is.”

  “He’s based in West L.A. and Santa Monica, like I said,” the rough-hewn, lovely-eyed cop told me. “He supplies drug dealers and leases numbers operations.”

  “Prostitution?” I asked.

  “No. That’s a labor-intensive industry. He doesn’t like to have too many people in his employ.”

  Suggs had an abrasive disposition but we got along. He was tolerated by his bosses because he was so intelligent. This intelligence forced him to see the validity of many of my arguments.

  “Either somebody died and left you a fortune or you’re in love, Mel,” I said. It felt good to be of the world, talking as if I belonged among people.

  “You’re not worried about Rose?”

  “It’s like you said, Lieutenant.”

  “What?”

  “I’m already dead.”

  “A man like Rose wouldn’t hesitate to put a bullet in the back of a corpse’s skull.”

  I shrugged and shook my head.

  “What’s this got to do with prostitutes?” the cop asked.

  I smiled at my only real friend on the force. He was a good man but he was still a cop.

  “I really don’t know what any of this has to do with me, Lieutenant. Four days ago I was in a coma. A friend took me out from my deathbed and we went up to the Sunset Strip to meet this girl he knew, a prostitute named Mary.”

  “How biblical. Did she oil your feet?”

  “Something like that.”

  “You’re not going to tell me anything?”

  “Not a thing.”

  Suggs scowled at me a moment and then grinned. “My girl’s name is Mary too.”

  “Where’d you meet her?”

  “I busted her for buying a new Chanel dress with runny hundred-dollar bills.”

  We both went silent over that confession. It was a monumental revelation for a man like Suggs to make to a man like me—or to anyone else, for that matter.

  “Did she get off?”

  Suggs got to his feet and stared.

  “You have yourself a good life, Easy Rawlins.”

  “You call me if you want to keep havin’ yours,” I replied.

  I stood up and we shook hands as equals. He left my office headed sprightly for whatever Alamo or Titanic he was bound to.

  44

  I called Martin Martins and was lucky to find him in.

  “Hey, Mr. Rawlins,” he said. “I fixed the locks and put bars on all the windows. You could still break in if you really tried, but it won’t be no cakewalk. I left the keys in the light fixture above the front door.”

  “That’s great, Marty,” I said. “I need one more favor.”

  “Name it.”

  I told him about my office door. He didn’t ask how it got knocked in or why.

  “I’ll be right over. It’ll just be a jury-rigged job, but it’ll beat any new door just off the assembly line. I’ll drop the key in your mailbox downstairs.”

  I levered the door into place so that it looked like it was closed; with the exception of some fresh splinters along the hinges the illusion was pretty good.

  After that I got into my loaner red car and headed for the western part of town.

  On the way I had more on my mind than it could hold at any given moment.

  To begin with, I felt alive again. There was sensation in my fingers and toes. The breeze from the open window on
my skin was somehow related to the here and now, not some weird flow from a nearby afterlife.

  I was alive, and with life came a laundry list of worries. First there was Evander, a fatherless boy who wanted to kill my best friend because of a lifetime of brooding over the absence of his father. And then there was the shoulder wound on the dead man I found tortured in his very own chamber of horror. I doubted that Maurice Potter could have bled as much blood as I’d found on those burlap sacks and that money. He might have done, but he wouldn’t have been able to drive home afterward. There was a lot of money and now there were gangsters to go along with it—gangsters that knew my name.

  Flickering between these troubles was the image of Bonnie Shay. My near self-destruction had brought her almost back to me.

  I reached the temporary Rawlins mansion by early afternoon. Jesus was making a variety of tamales along with dirty rice and collard greens. Benita was perched on a high stool near her man with Essie drowsing on her lap.

  I could see Feather outside on a pool chair through the window wall.

  “Hey, boy,” I said.

  “Dad.”

  “Mr. Rawlins,” Benita added.

  Essie cooed and I gave her my finger to grab.

  “Thanks for staying here all this time,” I said to the new parents.

  “It’s okay,” Benita said. “But you know me and Juice got to get back soon.”

  Benita was often the mouthpiece for the couple.

  “We need to put our house together,” she added. “And we have friends that can look after Essie now that Antigone ain’t here for you.”

  “I thought Nurse Fowler said that she was going to keep coming for a while,” I said.

  “Doctor told her that if you were out and about you didn’t need her. Today was her last day.”

  “I was just making these tamales for you and Feather,” Jesus added. “I know you both like them, and I didn’t know if you were going to have the time to cook.”