A Red Death

by Mosley, Walter

  I WAS JOLTED AWAKE by Mouse’s call.

  “Got’im, man,” he said. There was pride in his voice. The kind of pride a man has when he’s paid off a bank note or brought a paycheck home to his wife.

  “Where is he?”

  “Right here in front’a me. You know, this boy sure is ugly.”

  I heard Mofass’s gruff voice in the background, but I couldn’t make out what he said.

  “Shut up, fool!” Mouse shouted in my ear. “We don’t need to hear from you.”

  “Where are you, Raymond?”

  “On Alameda, at that warehouse you said. I come in a window an’ fount his stuff. You know all I hadda do was wait an’ he come grubbin’ up the slide.”

  The entrance to the building was in the alley off the main street. Two tall doors held together through the handles with a chain and padlock. When I rattled the door a window opened above and Mouse stuck his head out.

  “Hey, Easy. Go on down the alley a little ways and they’s a chute for loadin’. It’s open.”

  It was a two-foot-square aluminum slat, reinforced by a wooden frame, that lifted away from the wall. It opened on a metal slide, leading up into the building. That slide was slick from all the merchandise they dropped down into delivery trucks.

  When I made it up to the second floor I dusted off and released the safety on my pistol. There were aisles formed by huge stacks of cardboard boxes and wooden crates. There was some light, but the long rows melted into darkness, giving the place the feeling of great depth. I could have been in Solomon’s mines.

  “Over here, Easy,” Mouse called.

  I followed the sound of his voice until I came to a little square kiosk. From inside that office the light came. Thick and yellow electric light, and cigarette smoke. There was a large gray metal desk with a thick green blotter. Mofass was behind the desk, sweating and looking generally undignified. Mouse was leaning against a wall, smiling at me.

  “Here he is, Easy. I put a apple in his mouth if you want it.”

  “What’s the idea, Mr. Rawlins?” Mofass started up. “Why you got this man to kidnap me? What I do to you?”

  I simply lifted the pistol and pointed it at his head. Mouse flashed his friendliest smile at no one in particular. Mofass’s jaw started to quiver because of the spasm going through his neck and shoulders.

  “You got this wrong, Mr. Rawlins. You pointin’ that peacemaker at the wrong man.”

  “Go on, Easy, kill’im,” Mouse whispered.

  That’s what saved Mofass’s life. Mouse didn’t even know why I had that man there, he didn’t care either. All he knew was that killing satisfied some nerve he had somewhere. I was growing the same nerve, and I didn’t like that idea at all.

  “What you mean, wrong man?” I asked.

  Instead of answering, Mofass broke wind.

  Then he said, “It’s that tax man, Easy, it’s Lawrence.”

  “What?” I hadn’t thought anything he could say would surprise me. “Com’on, man. You could do better than that.”

  “You don’t lie to no loaded gun at your head, Mr. Rawlins.

  It was Lawrence sure as I’m sitting here.”

  The smell of Mofass’s flatulence filled the room. Mouse was waving his hand under his nose.

  “You better come up with somethin’ better than that, Mofass. This is your life right here in my hand.”

  I moved the muzzle of the gun closer to Mofass’s sweaty brow. He opened his eyes a little wider.

  “It’s the truth, Mr. Rawlins. He pulled me down on a tax charge ovah a year ago.”

  Mouse kicked a chair around so that he could sit on it. Mofass leaped up out of his seat.

  “Sit down,” I said. “An’ go on.”

  “Yeah.” A smile appeared on Mofass’s lips and vanished just as fast. “I ain’t paid no tax, not ever. I filed it but I always lied like I didn’t make nuthin’. Lawrence caught on, though. He had me by the nuts.”

  “Uh-huh, yeah, I know what you mean.”

  “He told me that he was goin’ t’court wit’ what he had. So I ast’im could we talk it over, over a drink.” Mofass smiled again. “You see, Mr. Rawlins, if he let me buy him a drink then I knowed I could buy him. I got to a phone an’ called Poinsettia. She hadn’t paid no rent even way back then. She told me she’d be nice t’me if I let’er slide, but you know I don’t play it like that.”

  For no reason Mouse grabbed Mofass by his wrist, roughly, and then let him go. The surprise made the fat man yelp like a dog.

  “It’s the t-t-truth, man. I called’er an’ told’er that if she was nice to my friend I’d let her slip by the summer.”

  “So you put ’em together?”

  “Yeah. Lawrence couldn’t hold his liquor worth a damn.

  An’ you know when Poinsettia got there, an’ started strokin’ ’im, he was drinkin’ it like water an’ swaggerin’ in his chair. I took ’em down to a hotel that night.”

  “So?”

  “What could I do?” Mofass hunched his sloped shoulders.

  “He had me run her out to’im much as three times a week. They always be drinkin’. Sometimes I didn’t even take ’em nowhere but they just do it in the car.”

  “While you drivin’, man?” Mouse asked.

  “Yeah!”

  “Shit! Thas some white boy you got there, Easy.”

  “I don’t believe a word of this shit,” I said. “I seen Agent Lawrence, he straight as a pin.”

  Mofass put his hands up to placate me. Mouse, as usual, smiled at the sign of surrender.

  “You ain’t seen ’im when he gets to drinkin’, Mr. Rawlins. He get crazy-like. An’ you know Poinsettia be gettin’ him so high on love. Then sometimes he’d get mean an’ beat her till she stayed inside fo’a week.”

  I remembered seeing Poinsettia in sunglasses on cloudy days.

  “All right, Mofass. You got a story here but I still don’t see what it gotta do wit’ me.”

  “ ’Bout six months ago they was shackin’ up in a house I was brokerin’ down on Clark. Lawrence got drunk an’ th’ew Miss Jackson down the stairs. She was hurt pretty bad an’ we hadda take her to a doctor I know.”

  “She didn’t have no accident?”

  Mofass shook his head, swallowed to wet his throat, and continued. “At first he was guilty an’ wanted t’pay fo’her. Thas when he set up Rufus Johnson.”

  “I know him. He’s one’a the men on that list in yo’ desk.”

  “Yeah, a colored man. Live in Venice Beach. Lawrence set him up for tax fraud, and then I snuck in and tole Mr. Johnson that I could free him up fo’ some cash.”

  “An’ you split the money?” I asked.

  “Lawrence took most of it, I swear.”

  “An’ now he’s after me.”

  “We worked that job on five other people. Never nobody I knew. An’ he was okay for a while but then he got like he needed money fo’ him. He started complainin’ ’bout how Poinsettia an’ his own wife an’ child were anchors on his neck. He started on me about findin’ one rich Negro an’ then he could leave for good.”

  “An’ you give’im me?”

  Mofass’s eyes filled with tears but he didn’t say a word.

  “How did he think he could get my money?”

  “We was gonna get you t’sign yo’ property ovah t’me an’ then we’d play like he got the tax law on me, but really we’d sell off the property and he’d get the money on the sly. He was gonna take it all. He knowed how black people don’t hardly ever fight with the law.”

  “But if that’s true, why didn’t you let me sign my money over when I asked?”

  “You ain’t no fool, I should know that, right? I figured that if I jumped at yo’ idea you’d know sumpin’ was up. So I told Lawrence t’ sweat ya. Make you scared and you’d beg me t’take what you got. Then when I had tax troubles later on an’ the IRS took my money you’d know what it was like an’ jus’ be happy it wasn’t you.”

  “But you
lyin’, man. Even if this tax shit is true, why would he kill anybody?”

  “Why’d I kill’em, man?” he yelled.

  Mouse, holding up a solitary finger, said, “Keep cool, brother.” Then he slapped Mofass across his face with the pistol. Mofass’s head whipped around hard and his big body followed it down to the floor. He got up holding his bloody cheek with both hands.

  “What you hit me fo’?” he screamed like a child.

  Mouse held his finger up again, and Mofass was silent.

  “Answer me, Mofass,” I warned.

  “I don’t know. All I know is that he called me to his house right after that FBI man cut you loose. He told me he wanted to know ev’rything you did. So I tole’im ’bout you workin’ fo’ the church. You know how you said you was keepin’ tabs on Towne?”

  “An’ how come you didn’t come t’me wit’ none’a this?”

  “He had me by my balls, Mr. Rawlins. I was a tax evader an’ I helped him rob them people. An’ you know he was crazy too.

  “He tole me that if the FBI got hold of his files on you they would know what we were up to. That’s why he had me go to Jackie and Melvin. He went t’Towne hisself.”

  “An’ killed him?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is that he went there and that Towne is dead.”

  I went on, “But you didn’t say nuthin’ when people started gettin’ killed, did you, Mofass?” The muscles in my arm twitched, and I shifted the pistol so as not to shoot him before I knew it all.

  “At first I didn’t know. I mean, why would I think that he gonna kill Poinsettia? An’ by the time Towne got it I was scared about me.”

  “Why’d Poinsettia get killed? What she have to do with this?”

  “He offered her money, money so that she would call the police an’ blame you for beatin’ her.”

  Mofass lifted his hands in a gesture of helplessness. The side of his face was swelling around the deep red welt on his cheek.

  “You know how that girl was. She said sumpin’ to’im. Like how she gonna go to you if he don’t pay her some more. She blamed him fo’ her bein’ sick an’ she wanted to be taken care of.”

  “Man, that don’t make no sense. Why he want her to blame me fo’ hittin’ her in the first place?”

  “If you was in jail the FBI would have to find somebody else and then he could still get your money and save his ass.”

  Mofass began to weep.

  “And you were going to let me give it to ’im, huh?”

  “What was you gonna do fo’ that FBI, man? Ain’t that what he had you doin’? He said he’d save yo’ money if you do somebody else dirt, ain’t that right? How come you any different than me?”

  Mofass hurt me with that.

  “Let’s get it over, Ease,” Mouse said. He waved his pistol in the general direction of Mofass. I wouldn’t have believed such a fat man could cower in his chair.

  “No, man.”

  “I thought you wanted this boy’s blood?” Mouse sounded indignant. “He fucked wit’ you, right?”

  “Yeah, he did do that.”

  “Then le’s kill the mothahfuckah.”

  “That’s all right. I got a better idea.”

  Mofass let another fart go.

  “Like what?” Mouse asked.

  “I want you to give me Lawrence’s address, Mofass.”

  “You got it.”

  “And I want his home phone number too.”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Rawlins, I got it right here,” he said, tapping his temple.

  “Don’t mistake me, Mofass,” I warned. “This ain’t no merry-go-round here. You go fast right to the grave if you make a bad step. My man Raymond here is death, yo’ death if you do sumpin’ wrong.”

  “You don’t have to warn me on that account,” Mofass said in his business voice. “But can I ask you what it is you plan to do?”

  “Same as you’d get if you play this wrong.”

  After he’d written the information I told him, “Go home, Mofass. Go somewhere. It will all be over by this time tomorrow.” After Mofass fled, Mouse said, “We shoulda killed’im.”

  “No reason,” I answered.

  “He tried to cheat you, man. Tried to steal yo’ money.”

  “Yeah, he did. But you know we wasn’t never friends. Uh-uh, Mofass an’ me was in business. Businessmen steal just to keep in practice fo’they legal work.”

  I was glad the big man had left. He was so gaseous that he’d smelled up the whole office.

  “Thank you, Raymond,” I said. We shook hands.

  “You my friend, Easy, you ain’t gotta thank me. Shit! You the one set my head straight about LaMarque. You my best friend, man.”

  As I drove for home I thought about how I intended to take Mouse’s wife and son and disappear in the Mexican hills. I couldn’t kill Mofass, because I was no better than he was. Once I got home I dialed the number Mofass had given me.

  “Hello?” a timid woman’s voice said.

  “May I speak to Reggie Lawrence, please?” I asked.

  “Who is this?” she asked. There was fear in her voice; fear so great that it shook me.

  But still I told her who I was and she went to fetch my nemesis.

  “Rawlins?”

  “I want twenty-five hundred dollars,” I said. “Don’t gimme no shit, ’cause I know you got it. I want it in tens and twenties and I want it tomorrow evening.”

  “What the hell …” he started.

  But I cut him off. “Listen, man, I ain’t got no time fo’ yo’ shit. I know what you been doin’ an’ I could prove it too. Mofass spilled his guts, an’ I know you cain’t afford no close look. So drop this shit an’ bring me the money or they gonna turn yo’ office into a jail cell.”

  “If this is some trick to get out of your taxes …” he said. He was trying to sound like he was still the boss, but I could hear the sweat on his tongue.

  “Griffith Park, Reggie. Down below the observatory just inside the woods. Eight P.M. An army man will know how to be on time.”

  I told him how to get there, and before he could say another word, I hung up on him.

  And you know that felt sweet.

  — 37 —

  AT ABOUT SEVEN A.M. I was parked down the street from 1135 1/2 Stanley Street. It was a block or so north of Olympic Boulevard, and a solidly white neighborhood, but I took the chance that the police wouldn’t see me. I had most of the plans wrapped up in an envelope, his name lightly taped in the center, next to me in the front seat. I wore black gloves, a porter’s cap, and a uniform from a hotel Dupree once worked for in Houston.

  At eight-fifteen Lawrence walked out his front door. I scooted down, squinted, and jammed my tongue into the socket Primo and Flower had created in my jaw. He went to his car and drove off, leaving his wife and child at home.

  I waited another half an hour so she wouldn’t be suspicious, and then I knocked at the door. There was crying in the background. It got louder when the door opened.

  Mrs. Lawrence was small and redheaded, though there was lots of gray in the red. She seemed to be young, but her head hung forward as though it were weighed down. She had to lift her head and screw up her eyes to look at me. The stitched scar coming down the left side of her mouth was jagged, the flesh around her right eye puffy and discolored. There was bright red blood in the white of her eye.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  “Delivery, ma’am,” I said in the crisp tone I used to address officers in WWII.

  “Delivery for whom?”

  “I got it here for a Reginald A. Lawrence,” I said. “It’s from a law firm in Washington.”

  She tried to smile, but the child started hollering. She turned away and then back to me, quickly. She put her hand out and said, “I’m his wife, I’ll take it.”

  “I don’t know …” I stalled.

  “Hurry, please, my baby’s sick.”

  “Well … okay, but I still need one ninety-five for the COD.”<
br />
  “Hold on,” she sighed on an exasperated note. She went back into the house, running in the direction of the crying.

  I slipped in the front door, taking out a sheet of government secrets that I’d folded into eighths. The door opened into a little entrance hall that was designed to make the house seem larger. There was a coat rack and a lacquered ornamental desk in the hall. I opened the drawer to the desk and shoved the little slip of evidence under a pile of maps.

  I moved into the living room, where the lady was fretting over a folding bed. The bed wasn’t big, but the child in it was so slight that you could have gotten four or five children his width to lie there. He was almost as long as the bed, but his arms and legs were so skinny that they could have belonged to an infant. His wrists were torn and scabrous; his naked chest was covered with sharp, blue-green bruises. One of his eyes drifted around and the other fastened onto me as he moaned.

  “Ma’am?” I said.

  “Yes?” She didn’t even turn to me, just cried as she wilted next to the child, who was weeping softly now that his mother was near.

  I helped her to her feet.

  “What happened to him?” I asked.

  “Polio,” she replied.

  Who knows? Maybe she believed it.

  She shot a quick glance at the child and stood up.

  “He needs me,” she said. “I have to be here. He needs me, he needs me.”

  I folded my arms around her, thinking of how her husband tried to shoot me the last time I’d held a woman. I helped her to a chair.

  I removed Lawrence’s name from the envelope and put the evidence in her lap.

  “This ain’t nuthin’ important,” I whispered. “Just give it to him when you got the chance.”

  I WAS AT GRIFFITH PARK by seven P.M. I stopped my car on a fire trail below the observatory and hiked up through the trees behind the great domed building. It was a long hike, but I thought that it was worth the extra insurance to have a vantage point before the government man showed. There was a rustling of branches in the trees behind me as I made my way, but that didn’t worry me.

  It was almost eight-fifteen before Lawrence showed. He walked right down the grassy hill behind the lower wall and walked almost to the line of trees. He stretched out his left arm and snapped his wrist to his face to look at his watch. He was still gawky and awkward, but there was a new kind of aggressiveness in his gait. He strutted like a rooster, cocking his head from side to side as if he were spoiling for a fight.