Little Green (22 page)

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 orange, 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.”

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 pressed 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.

“Hi, Daddy.”

“Hey, babe,” I hailed, sitting down at her side.

“How are you?”

“Happy to see your sleepy head.”

She grinned and sat up, holding the blue sheet up to her neck in the mature gesture of a much older woman.

“I miss you, Daddy.”

“I’m right here.”

“Are you finished with Uncle Ray’s case?”

“Not yet. I’m going down to Santa Monica in a little while to work out the last few kinks.”

“Then will you come home?”

“Yes.”

“And can we move back to Genesee?”

“Don’t you like it here?”

“It’s nice, but all my friends live down near school.”

Thinking about Jeffrey, I asked, “Would you mind if we moved somewhere around there?”

“How come?” But before I could answer, she said, “It doesn’t matter. If we’re close to Louis Pasteur that’s all I care about.”

“Then it’s done,” I said. “I have to get going. I just came over to kiss you good morning because I wasn’t here to kiss you good night.”

Feather proffered her light brown cheek and I kissed it.

“Ooh, Daddy! You need to shave.”

Changed, showered, shaved, and armed, I was sitting on a bench at the far end of the Santa Monica Pier at 7:47 in the morning. My only company was two old fishermen, one white and the other Mexican, or Mexican American, or maybe he was from some other colony of the conquistadores. Nine curious seagulls hovered around the old friends, hoping to get at the bait fish they were using.

“Mr. Rawlins?” a man said.

He was neither tall nor short: a white man with prematurely salt-and-pepper hair, slender, wearing dark blue trousers and a checkered red-and-black dress shirt. The shirttails were tucked in but he
wore no belt. His eyes were slate gray. I’ve always been partial to gray eyes—they remind me of the cat my mother once owned.

My visitor was carrying a large brown paper bag by twined brown paper handles.

“Yes?” I said.

“Tim Richards,” he replied, lowering into the empty space next to me.

“Really?”

He smiled and gave a little chuckle out from behind closed lips.

“I don’t care what your name is, man,” I said. “Did you bring me what I want?”

He reached into the bag and came out with single sheet of white typing paper.

“There are quite a few guys with that first name, but I finally decided that it had to be Maurice Potter that you were referring to. He’s mostly a pimp, but he’s been busted for lots of stuff, including the kind of crimes that you told Villard about.” He handed me the sheet. “That’s the address we have for him. It’s up in Cheviot Hills. That’s the Jew Beverly Hills.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I know where it is.”

The man calling himself Richards cocked his head, looking at me quizzically.

“What is it with Villard and Negroes?” he asked. “I mean, he’s got that little black dude with him half the time, and now he’s helping you.”

“If you don’t like black people and you don’t like Jews, the real question is, what are you doing here with me at eight in the morning?”