“Go on up to your lockers or somethin’,” I said to the children.
As they scuttled off I thought about the Mexican boy I had adopted. He’d been a man since the age of ten, taking care of me and Feather like a fierce and silent mama bear. Benita was a lost child and here my boy had a good job at a supermarket and a sailboat he’d made with his own hands.
Thinking of Feather dying in her bed, I couldn’t get angry with them for hurrying after love.
The rest of the campus was still empty. I recognized myself in the barren yards and halls and classrooms. Every step I took or door I closed was an exit and a farewell.
“ g o o d m o r n i n g ,
Mr. Rawlins,” Ada Masters said when I appeared at her door. “Come in. Come in.”
She was sitting on top of her desk, shoes off, rubbing her left foot.
“These damn new shoes hurt just on the walk from my car to the office.”
We never stood on ceremony or false manners. Though white and very wealthy, she was like many down-to-earth black women I’d known.
“I’m taking a leave of absence,” I said and the crease twisted my heart again.
“For how long?”
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“It might be a week or a month,” I said. But I was thinking that it might be ten years with good behavior.
“When?”
“Effective right now.”
I knew that Ada was hurt by my pronouncement. But she and I respected each other and we came from a generation that did not pry.
“I’ll get the paperwork,” she said. “And I’ll have Kathy send you whatever you have to sign.”
“Thanks.” I turned to leave.
“Can I be of any help, Mr. Rawlins?” she asked my profile.
She was a rich woman. A very rich woman if I knew my clothes and jewelry. Maybe if I was a different man I could have stayed there by borrowing from her. But at that time in my life I was unable to ask for help. I convinced myself that Ada wouldn’t be able to float me that kind of loan. And one more refusal would have sunk me.
“Thanks anyway,” I said. “This is somethin’ I got to take care of for myself.”
Life is such a knotty tangle that I don’t know even today whether I made the right decision turning away from her offer.
2 6
5
Ihad changed the sign on my office door from easy rawlins — research and delivery
to simply investiga-
tions. I made the switch after the Los Angeles Police Department had granted me a private detective’s license for my part in keeping the Watts riots from flaring up again by squelching the ugly rumor that a white man had murdered a black woman in the dark heart of our boiler-pot city.
I went to my fourth-floor office on Central and Eighty-sixth to check the answering machine that Jackson Blue had given me.
But I found little hope there. Bonnie had left a message saying that she’d called the clinic in Montreux and they would allow Feather’s admission with the understanding that the rest of the money would be forthcoming.
Forthcoming. The people in that neighborhood had heart disease and high blood pressure, cancer of every type, and deep 2 7
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self-loathing for being forced to their knees on a daily basis.
There was a war waging overseas, being fought in great part by young black men who had no quarrel with the Vietnamese people. All of that was happening but I didn’t have the time to worry about it. I was thinking about a lucky streak in Vegas or that maybe I should go out and rob a bank all on my own.
Forthcoming. The money would be forthcoming all right. Rayford would have a gun at the back of his neck and I’d be sure to have a fully loaded .44 in my sweating hand.
There was one hang-up on the tape. Back then, in 1966, most folks weren’t used to answering machines. Few people knew that Jackson Blue had invented that device to compete with the downtown mob’s control of the numbers business. The under-world still had a bounty on his head.
The row of buildings across the street were all boarded up —
every one of them. The riots had shut down SouthCentral L.A.
like a coffin. White businesses had fled and black-owned stores flickered in and out of existence on a weekly basis. All we had left were liquor stores for solace and check-cashing storefronts in place of banks. The few stores that had survived were gated with steel bars that protected armed clerks.
At least here the view matched my inner desolation. The economy of Watts was like Feather’s blood infection. Both futures seemed devoid of hope.
I couldn’t seem to pull myself from the window. That’s because I knew that the next thing I had to do was call Raymond and tell him that I was ready to take a drive down south.
The knock on the door startled me. I suppose that in my grief I felt alone and invisible. But when I looked at the frosted glass I knew who belonged to that silhouette. The big shapeless nose and the slight frame were a dead giveaway.
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“Come on in, Saul,” I called.
He hesitated. Saul Lynx was a cautious man. But that made sense. He was a Jewish private detective married to a black woman. They had three brown children and the enmity of at least one out of every two people they met.
But we were friends and so he opened the door.
Saul’s greatest professional asset was his face — it was almost totally nondescript even with his large nose. He squinted a lot but if he ever opened his eyes wide in surprise or appreciation you got a shot of emerald that can only be described as beautiful.
But Saul was rarely surprised.
“Hey, Easy,” he said, giving a quick grin and looking around for anything out of place.
“Saul.”
“How’s Feather?”
“Pretty bad. But there’s this clinic in Switzerland that’s had very good results with cases like hers.”
Saul made his way to my client’s chair. I went behind the desk, realizing as I sat that I could feel my heart beating.
Saul scratched the side of his mouth and moved his shoulder like a stretching cat.
“What is it, Saul?”
“You said that you needed work, right?”
“Yeah. I need it if it pays.”
Saul was wearing a dark brown jacket and light brown pants.
Brown was his color. He reached into the breast pocket and came out with a tan envelope. This he dropped on the desk.
“Fifteen hundred dollars.”
“For what?” I asked, not reaching for the money.
“I put out the word after you called me. Talked to anybody who might need somebody like you on a job.”
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Like you meant a black man. At one time it might have angered me to be referred to like that but I knew Saul, he was just trying to help.
“At first no one had anything worth your while but then I heard from this cat up in Frisco. He’s a strange guy but . . .” Saul hunched his shoulders to finish the sentence. “This fifteen hundred is a down payment on a possible ten grand.”
“I’ll take it.”
“I don’t even know what the job is, Easy.”
“And I don’t need to know,” I said. “Ten thousand dollars will put me in shootin’ range of what I need. I might even be able to borrow the rest if it comes down to it.”
“Might.”
“That’s all I got, Saul — might.”
Saul winced and nodded. He was a good guy.
“His name is Lee,” he said. “Robert E. Lee.”
“Like the Civil War general?”
Saul nodded. “His parents were Virginia patriots.”
“That’s okay. I’d meet with the grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan if this is how he says hello.” I picked up the envelope and fanned my face with it.
“I’ll be on the job too, Easy. He wa
nts to do it with you answering to me. It’s no problem. I won’t get in your way.”
I put the envelope down and extended that hand. For a moment Saul didn’t realize that I wanted to shake with him.
“You can ride on my back if you want to, Saul. All I care about is Feather.”
i w e n t h o m e late that afternoon. While Bonnie made dinner I sat by Feather’s side. She was dozing on and off and I wanted 3 0
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to be there whenever she opened her eyes. When she did come awake she always smiled for me.
Jesus and Benny came over and had dinner with Bonnie. I didn’t eat. I wasn’t hungry. All I thought about was doing a good job for the man named after one of my enemies by descendants of my enemies in the land of my people’s enslavement. But none of that mattered. I didn’t care if he hated me and my kind. I didn’t care if I made him a million dollars by working for him.
And if he wanted a black operative to undermine black people, well . . . I’d do that too — if I had to.
a t t h r e e i n t h e m o r n i n g I was still at Feather’s side. I sat there all night because Saul was coming at four to drive with me up the coast. I didn’t want to leave my little girl. I was afraid she might die in the time I was gone. The only thing I could do was sit there, hoping that my will would keep her breathing.
And it was lucky that I did stay because she started moaning and twisting around in her sleep. Her forehead was burning up. I hurried to the medicine cabinet to get one of Mama Jo’s tar balls.
When I got back Feather was sitting up and breathing hard.
“Daddy, you were gone,” she whimpered.
I sat beside her and put the tar ball in her mouth.
“Chew, baby,” I said. “You got fever.”
She hugged my arm and began to chew. She cried and chewed and tried to tell about the dream where I had disappeared. Remembering my own dream I kept from holding her too tightly.
In less than five minutes her fever was down and she was asleep again.
*
*
*
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a t f o u r
Bonnie came into the room and said, “It’s time, honey.”
Just when she said these words there was a knock at the front door. Feather sighed but did not awaken. Bonnie put her hand on my shoulder.
I felt as if every move and gesture had terrible importance. As things turned out I was right.
“I gave her some of Mama Jo’s tar,” I said. “There’s only two left.”
“It’s okay,” Bonnie assured me. “In three days we’ll be in Switzerland and Feather will be under a doctor’s care twenty-four hours a day.”
“She’s been sweating,” I said as if I had not heard Bonnie’s promise. “I haven’t changed the sheets because I didn’t want to leave her.”
Saul knocked again.
I went to the door and let him in. He was wearing brown pants and a russet sweater with a yellow shirt underneath. He had on a green cap made of sewn leather strips.
“You ready?” he asked me.
“Come on in.”
We went into the kitchen, where Saul and Bonnie kissed each other’s cheeks. Bonnie handed me my coat, a brown shopping bag filled with sandwiches, and a thermos full of coffee.
“I got some fruit in the car,” Saul said.
I looked around the house, not wanting to leave.
“Do you have any money, Easy?” Bonnie asked me.
I had given her the fifteen-hundred-dollar invitation.
“I could use a few bucks I guess.”
Bonnie took her purse from the back of the chair. She rum-maged around for a minute, but she had so much stuff in there 3 2
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that she couldn’t locate the cash. So she spilled out the contents on our dinette table.
There was a calfskin clasp-purse but she never kept money there. She had cosmetic cases and a jewelry bag, two paperback books, and a big key ring with almost as many keys as I carried at Truth. Then came a few small cloth bags and an enameled pin or stud. The pin was the size of a quarter, decorated with the image of a white-and-red bird in flight against a bronze background.
If I wasn’t already used to the pain I might have broken down and died right then.
“Easy,” Bonnie was saying.
She proffered a fold of twenties.
I took the money and headed for the door.
“Easy,” Bonnie said again. “Aren’t you going to kiss me good-bye?”
I turned back and kissed her, my lips tingling as they had in the dream where the hornet was hiding in Feather’s grassy grave.
3 3
6
Athin coating of freshly fallen snow hid the ruts in the road and softened the bombed-out buildings on the out-skirts of Düsseldorf. The M1 rifle cradled in my arms was fully loaded and my frozen finger was on the trigger. At my right marched Jeremy Wills and Terry Bogaman, two white men that I’d only met that morning.
“Don’t get ahead, son,” Bogaman said.
Son.
“Yeah, Boots,” Wills added. “Try and keep up.”
Boots.
General Charles Bitterman had ordered forty-one small groups of men out that morning. Among them were thirteen Negroes.
Bitterman didn’t want black men forming into groups together.
He’d said that we didn’t have enough experience, but we all 3 4
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thought that he didn’t trust us among the German women we might come across.
“I’m a sergeant, Corporal,” I said to Wills.
“Sergeant Boots,” he said with a grin.
Jeremy Wills was a fair-looking lad. He had corn-fed features and blond hair, amber-colored eyes, and big white teeth. To some lucky farm girl he might have been a good catch but to me he was repulsive, uglier than the corpses we ran across on the road to America’s victory. My numb finger tightened and I gauged my chances of killing both soldiers before Bogaman, who was silently laughing at his friend’s joke, could turn and fire.
I hadn’t quite decided to let them live when a bullet lifted Wills’s helmet and split his skull in two. I saw into his brain before he hit the ground. It was only then that I became aware of the machine-gun reports. When I started firing back Bogaman screamed. He had been hit in the shoulder, chest, and stomach.
I fell to the ground and rolled off the road into a ditch. Then I was scuttling on all fours, like a lizard, into the meager shelter of the leafless woods.
Machine-gun fire ripped the bark and the frozen turf around me. I had gone more than fifty yards before I realized that somewhere along the way I’d dropped my rifle. In my mind at the time (and in the dream I was having) I imagined that my hatred for those white men had brought on the German attack.
The rattling roar of their fire proved to me that the Germans were desperate. I didn’t think they could see me but they kept firing anyway.
Kids, I thought.
I took out my government-issue .45 and crawled around to the place where I had seen the flashes from their gun. I moved 3 5
W a lt e r M o s l e y
through the sound-softening snow hardly feeling the cold along my belly. I had no hatred for the Germans who tried to kill me out there on the road. I didn’t feel that I had to avenge the deaths of the men who had so recently despised and disrespected me. But I knew that if I let the machine gunners live, sooner or later they might get the drop on me.
The Nazis wanted to kill me. That’s because the Nazis knew that I was an American even if Bogaman and Wills did not.
I went maybe four hundred yards more through the woods and then I slithered across the road, making it back to the clump of branches that camouflaged the nest. I jumped up without thinking and began firing my pistol, holding it with both hands. I hit the first man in the eye and the second in the gut. They were completely surprised by the
attack. I noticed, even in the two short seconds it took me to kill them, that their uniforms were makeshift and their hands were wrapped in rags.
The third soldier in the nest leaped at me with a bayonet in his hand. The impact of his attack knocked the pistol from my grasp. We fell to the ground, each committed to the other’s death. I grabbed his wrist with one hand and pressed with all my might. The milky-skinned, gray-eyed youth grimaced and used all of his Aryan strength in an attempt to overwhelm me. But I was a few years older and that much more used to the logic of senseless violence. I grabbed the haft of his bayonet with my other hand while he wasted time hitting me with his free fist. By the time he realized that the tide was turning against him it was too late. He now used both hands to keep the blade from his chest but still it moved unerringly downward. As the seconds crept by, real fear appeared in the teenage soldier’s eyes. I wanted to stop but there was no stopping. There we were, two men who had never known each other, working toward that 3 6
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young man’s death. He spoke no English, could not beg in words I might understand. After maybe a quarter of a minute the blade passed through his coat and into his flesh, but then it got caught on one of his breastbones. I almost lost heart then but what could I do? It was him or me. I leaned forward with all my weight and the German steel broke the German’s bone and plunged deep into his heart.
The most terrible thing was his last gasp, a sudden hot gust of breath into my face. His eyes opened wide as if to see some way out of the finality in his body — and then he was dead.
I jumped up from my sleep in Saul’s Rambler. A sign at the side of the road read the artichoke capital of the world.
“Bad dream?” Saul asked me.
It was a dream, but everything in it had happened more than twenty years before. It was real. That German boy had died and there wasn’t a thing either one of us could do to stop it.
“Yeah,” I said. “Just a dream.”
“I guess I should tell you a little about this guy Lee,” Saul said. “He’s not known to the public at large but in certain circles he’s the most renowned private detective in the world.”
“The world?”
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