“That’s right,” I said, taking a step backward so I could see his face and move out of range.
His brown face, which clashed with his suit, was smallish, perfectly round, childlike and mean.
“I want you t’take me to yo’ boss.”
“And why is that?” I asked.
“I got business with’im.”
“This is Sunday, son. On today we s’posed t’rest.”
“Listen, man,” he threatened. His voice cracked. “I know all about you …”
“Yeah?”
“You di’n’t lift a finger.” He was quoting someone. “She tole me ’bout how he used her, how he took her fo’ money an’ then he just let her slide when she got sick. She could just die an’ all you care ’bout was yo’self.”
“What’s your name, man?”
“I’m Willie Sacks.” He puffed up his shoulders. “Now let’s go.” He put his hand on my shoulder but I brushed it off.
“You Poinsettia’s boyfriend?” I asked. I wasn’t going anywhere.
He threw a punch at me that would have put a hole in a brick wall. I crouched down under it though, grabbing his wrist as I did, and came up behind him twisting his arm and wrenching his giant thumb.
Willie said, “Oh!” and knelt on the stair.
“I don’t wanna hurt ya, boy,” I whispered in Willie’s ear. “But you make me damage this suit an’ I’m a do some damage on you.”
“I kill you!” he shouted. “I kill all’a you!”
I let him go and moved down a few stairs.
“What’s your problem, Willie?”
“Take me t’Mofass!”
He stood up. In that shade I felt like David without his slingshot.
It’s hard for a big man to throw a punch downward. I let his fist snap somewhere off to the west and then I gave him one and two in the lower gut. Willie folded like a peel bug and rolled down the stairs.
He got right up though, so I ran down and hit him again, on the side of his head that time. I hit him hard enough to hurt a normal man, but Willie was more like a buffalo. I hit him as hard as I could and all he did was sit down.
“I don’t wanna hurt you, Willie,” I said, more to distract me from the pain in my hand than to worry him.
“When I get up from here we gonna see who gonna be hurt.” There were patches of bloody flesh on his face, scrapes from the granite stairs.
“Poinsettia ain’t nobody’s fault, Willie,” I said. “Let it go.”
But he lurched to his feet and came shambling up the stair. I lost patience and broke his nose. I could feel the bone give under my knuckle. I was considering his left ear when I felt a blow to my back. It wasn’t hard, but I was tensed for a fight, so I swung around, only to be hit in the face with something like a pillow. A tiny woman in a frilly pink dress was swinging her woven string purse at my head. She didn’t say a word, saving all of her energy for the fight.
She might have kept it up, but when Willie yelled, “Momma!” she forgot about me and ran to his side.
He was cupping his hands under the bloody faucet of his nose.
“Willie! Willie!”
“Momma!”
“Willie!”
She pushed him until he was up off his knees and then dragged him away, down the street.
Twice the pink-and-brown woman glared at me. She was tiny and wore white-rimmed glasses. Her lips caved inward where teeth once held them firm. Mrs. Sacks couldn’t lift her son’s arm, but I was more frightened of those killer stares than I would have been of a whole platoon of Willies.
“SIT DOWN ON THE COUCH here next to me, honey, not way over there.” Etta patted the green fabric next to her.
We were in her new apartment on Sixty-fourth Street. It was a nice six-unit apartment building. Her place had two bedrooms, a shower, and blue wall-to-wall shag carpets. LaMarque was with Lucy Rideau and her two girls. They had all gone to Bible school and now they were having Sunday supper.
“I should really get on to work, Etta.”
“On Sunday?”
“I’ma be doin’ some extra work fo’ the church so I gotta make up my time on the weekend.”
“Now what you gonna be doin’ fo’ the Lord, Easy Rawlins?”
“We all do our li’l piece, Etta. We all do our li’l piece.”
“Like you makin’ so LaMarque an’ me ain’t gotta pay no rent to that terrible man?”
“Mofass ain’t so bad. He lettin’ you stay here, ain’t he?”
“He give me this furniture too?”
“We had an eviction last year an’ this stuff been in my garage. I tole’im I’d haul it off to the dump.”
“You coulda sold this stuff, Easy. That bed in there is mahogany.”
When I didn’t answer she said, “Come here, baby, sit down.”
I did.
“What’s wrong, Easy?”
“Nuthin’, Etta, nuthin’.”
“Then why you ain’t come by. You got me a house an’ furniture. You must like us t’do all that.”
“Sure I like you.”
“Then why’ont you come over an’ show me how much?”
Her hand was on my neck. She was much warmer than I was.
Etta’s dress was silken and flimsy under her jacket. The bodice was low-cut and her breasts bulged upward when she leaned toward me.
“I thought you didn’t wanna see me no mo’,” I said.
“I’s jus’ mad, honey,” she said as she leaned toward me. “Thas all.”
For some reason I imagined what Wendell Boggs must have looked like on his deathbed. There was fresh blood on his half-face and a whitish scab where one of his eyes should have been.
“Easy?”
“Yeah, Etta?”
“I got the papers to my divorce in the other room.”
She shifted slightly to bring her left knee over her right one, nudging my leg. Her dress looked very tight, like it wanted to burst.
“I don’t need to see ’em,” I said.
“Yes you do.”
“No.”
“Yes, Easy. You need to see that I’m a free woman and that I can have what I want.”
“It ain’t you, Etta, it’s me,” I said, but I kissed her anyway.
“You got me all riled up though, honey.” She kissed me back. “Gettin’ my house an’ my bed, takin’ me t’ church, mmm, I love that.”
We didn’t talk for a little while then.
When she leaned back, and I got a moment to breathe, I asked, “But what about Raymond?”
Etta took my hand and put it on her chest, then she gazed at me with eyes that I dream about to this very day.
“Do you want me?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
She pressed a finger against my shirt, where my nipple was.
“Then I tell you what,” she whispered.
“What?” Just that one word drained all the breath out of me.
“You don’t talk about him now an’ I won’t say nuthin’ ’bout him when we wake up.”
— 14 —
I GOT HOME IN THE EARLY EVENING. The phone was ringing as I got to the door. I tried to get the key into the lock but I was too much in a hurry and dropped it in a pile of fallen passion-fruit leaves. The phone kept ringing, though, and it rang until I rummaged around, found the key, and made it inside the door. But I tripped on the doormat and by the time I got off the floor and limped to the coffee table the ringing had finally ceased.
Then I massaged my bruised knee and went to the bathroom. Just as I began to relieve myself the phone started ringing again. But I had learned my lesson. The phone rang while I rinsed my hands and dried them. It rang until I had made it back to the coffee table and then it stopped again.
I was in the kitchen with a quart bottle of vodka in one hand and a tray of ice in the other when he called again. I considered yanking the line out of the wall, thought better of it, and finally I answered the phone.
The first thing I heard was
a child screaming. “No! No!” he, or she, yelled. And then, “No,” still a yell but muted as if someone had closed a door on a torture room.
“Mr. Rawlins?” IRS Agent Reginald Lawrence asked.
“Yeah?”
“I wanted to ask you a couple of questions and to give you some advice.”
“What questions?”
“What was the deal that Agent Craxton offered you?”
“I don’t know if I can really say, sir. I mean, he said that it was government business and that I had to be quiet on that.”
“We all work for the same government. I’m a government man too.”
“But he’s the FBI. He’s the law.”
“He just represents another branch of the government. And his branch doesn’t have anything to do with mine.”
“Then why you askin’ ’bout what he wants?”
“I want to know what he’s offered you, because he cannot offer anything on behalf of the Internal Revenue. Once our office commits itself we have to see an investigation through. We have no other choice. You see, I have to follow this investigation or my records”—he paused for a moment, looking for the right words”—my records will be incomplete. So you see, no matter what anyone says, I will have to draw up papers for the court case tomorrow morning.”
“What can I do about that?” I asked. “He got me on a federal case an’ I’m doing’ it. If I tell you his business I’ll be in even more trouble than I am already.”
“I cannot speak for the FBI, all I can tell you is that if you attempt to avoid paying your taxes, even by working for the FBI, we will still be there when everything is over. I have spoken to my supervisor and he agrees with me on this point. You will have to submit your tax records to me by Wednesday of next week or we will have to subpoena you.”
“So you talked this over with Wadsworth, huh?” I asked when he’d run out of wind.
“Who told you …” he started to ask, but I guess the answer came to him.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t help you, Mr. Lawrence. I got my cards and you got yours. I guess we’ll just have to play it out.”
“I know that you think you’re helping yourself, Mr. Rawlins, but you’re wrong. You cannot escape your responsibilities to the government.” He sounded like a textbook.
“Mr. Lawrence, I don’t know about you, but I take Sundays off.”
“This problem won’t go away, son.”
“Okay, that’s it. I’m puttin’ the phone down now.”
Before I could Mr. Lawrence hung up in my ear.
I went back to the kitchen and put the vodka away. I got my bottle of thirty-year-old imported Armagnac from behind a loose board in the closet. There was a snifter sitting next to it. I learned how to drink good liquor from a rich white man I worked for once. I found that if you could savor the booze, I mean if you took longer to drink it, then the intoxication was more pleasurable. And I liked drinking alone when I wanted to be drunk. No loud stories or laughing; all I wanted was oblivion.
The tax man wanted to send me to jail, it was personal with him. And Craxton was lying, I was sure about that, so I had no idea what it was he really wanted. I might not find a thing on his communists, and then he’d just throw me back to the dogs, he might have done so anyway. I considered trying to sign my property over to someone in the meanwhile, just to cover my bases. But I didn’t like that idea because I wanted to put my name on the deeds. I wanted EttaMae. I wanted her with all my heart. If she was to be mine then I had to be a man of substance to buy her clothes and make her home.
Of course, that meant that either Mouse or I had to die, I knew that. I knew it but I didn’t want to admit it.
ON MONDAY I went to Mofass’s office. He was sitting behind the desk glowering at a plate of pork chops and eggs. A boy in the neighborhood brought up his breakfast every morning at about eleven. Mofass stared at the food for sometimes up to half an hour before eating. He never told me why, but I always imagined that he was afraid that the boy spat in it. That’s the kind of insult that Mofass always feared.
“Mornin’, Mofass.”
“Mr. Rawlins.”
He picked up a chop by its fatty bone and took a bite out of the eye.
“I ain’t gonna be ’round much for the next three or four weeks. I got business t’take care of.”
“I’m doin’ business ev’ry day, Mr. Rawlins. I cain’t take no vacation or you’d go broke,” he chided through a mass of mashed meat.
“That’s why you get paid, Mofass.”
“Yeah, I guess,” he said. He scooped a good half of the scrambled egg into his mouth.
“Anything happenin’ that I need to know about?” I asked.
“Not that I know of. The police come and asked about Poinsettia.” A brief shadow worked its way across Mofass’s face. I remember thinking that even a hard man like that could feel pain at a young woman’s demise. “I told’em that I only knew that she was five months behind on the rent. That Negro cop didn’t like my attitude, so I advised him to come back when he had a warrant.”
“I wanted to talk to you about her,” I said.
He looked at me with only mild interest.
“Her boyfriend, Willie Sacks, tried t’knock my head off in front of First African Sunday.”
“How come?” Mofass asked.
“He wanted you, and I didn’t wanna tell’im where you was.”
Mofass took a mouthful of egg and nodded. As soon as he got the mess down to the size of a golf ball he said, “Okay.”
“But he was sayin’ somethin’ like whatever happened to her, I mean like her accident, had sumpin’ t’do with you.”
“That boy’s jes’ grievin’, Mr. Rawlins. He done left’er when she got sick and now he wanna blame somebody else when she up and kills herself.” He shrugged slightly. Harder than diamonds is right.
Mofass was contemptuous but I still felt bad. I knew what it was to be the cause of another human being’s demise. I had felt that guilt myself.
“You want me to hire somebody to take care of the work ’round the places while you on vacation?” Mofass asked.
He knew I didn’t like to be called lazy.
“I’m just doin’ some extra work, man. Somethin’ gotta do with that tax thing.”
“What?”
He stopped eating and picked up a cigar that had been in a glass ashtray on his desk.
“They got me doin’ ’em a li’l favor. I do that right an’ the taxes get easier.”
“What could the IRS need from you?”
“Not them exactly.” I didn’t want to tell him that I was working for the FBI. “Anyway they want me t’ find a guy gotta do with the minister down at First African. Maybe he owes ’em mo’ taxes than me.”
Mofass just shook his head. I could tell he didn’t believe me.
“So you be at church the next couple of weeks?”
“More or less.”
“I guess you gonna be prayin’ off them taxes instead’a payin’ ’em.”
He made a sound like coughing. At first I thought he was choking but then as it got louder I realized that Mofass was laughing. He put his cigar down and pulled out the whitest pocket handkerchief I’d ever seen. He blew his nose and wiped tears from his eyes and he was still laughing.
“Mofass!” I yelled, but he just kept on laughing.
“Mofass!”
He added a little catch in his throat, sort of like a far-off goose calling her mate. The tears flowed.
Finally I gave up and walked out.
I stood outside for a few minutes, listening behind the closed door; he laughed the whole time I stood there.
IN THE LATE AFTERNOON, I went to First African.
The front of the church was on 112th Street and went all the way through the block to 112th Place. The back entrance was just a door in a rough stucco wall, like a small office building, maybe a dentist’s office. On the first floor there was an entrance and a short hall with a few plywood doors on
either side. At the end of the tan-carpeted hall was a stairwell that went up and down. Odell had told me that the minister had his office and apartment on the upper floor and that there was a kitchen and cafeteria space in the basement.
I went down to the basement.
There I saw a scene that had been a constant in my life since I was a small boy. Black women. Lots of them. Cooking in the industrial-size kitchen and talking loud, laughing and telling stories. But all I really saw was their hands. Working hands. Laying out plates, peeling yams, folding sheets and tablecloths into perfect squares, washing, drying, stacking, and pushing from here to there. Women who lived by working. Brushing the hair of their own children, or brushing the hair of some neighborhood child whose parents were gone, either for the night or for good. Cooking, yes, but there was lots of other work for a Negro woman. Dressing wounds of the men they started out being so proud of. Punishing children, white and black. And working for God in his house and at home.
My own mother, sick as she was, made sweet-potato pies for a church dinner on the night she died. She was twenty-five years old.
“Evenin’, Easy,” Parker Lamont said. He was one of the elder deacons. I hadn’t seen him when I walked in.
“Parker.”
“Odell and the others are out in the back,” he said and began to lead me through the crowd of working women.
Many of them said hello to me. I moved around the neighborhoods quite a bit in those days and if I saw that one of the ladies needed some help I was happy to oblige; there’s all kinds of truth and insight in gossip, and the only key you need is a helping hand.
Winona Fitzpatrick was there. She was bright and full of life even though she didn’t smile at me. She was wearing a flattering white dress that wasn’t made for the kind of work people were doing. But she wasn’t working either. The chairwoman of the church council, she was the power behind the throne, as it were.
“What’s goin’ on here?” I asked Parker.
“What?”
“All this cookin’ an’ stuff.”
“Gonna be a meetin’ of the N double-A C P. Ev’ry chapter in southern California.”
“Tonight?”
A Red Death Page 8