Six Easy Pieces (18 page)

“No. You see, when Ross was younger he was arrested for assault and robbery. They even convicted him but all he did was six months.”

“Why?”

“It was a dispute he had with a bartender on Central. He had fixed up a TV on a platform so they could play the baseball games at the bar. Ross told the bartender, a man named Grey, that he’d do it for thirty-five dollars, which was his rent at that time. Grey said okay, but when it came time to pay up he said that he had agreed on twenty-five…”

There was real feeling in Lynx’s words. I could see that he and Mr. Henry were close.

“Ross fought with Grey, knocked him out and took his thirty-five from the till.”

“And they arraigned him for felony assault and robbery but then argued it down because of extenuating circumstances,” I said, finishing the all-too-common tale.

“There was a woman in the bar, the waitress. She heard the deal and the judge was feeling merciful that day,” Saul said, wrapping up the story.

“So? What he needs is a lawyer. What do you want with me?”

“We got him representation,” Saul said. “But she’s gonna need some help if we want to prove he’s innocent. The problem is if Ross didn’t do it, then somebody else had to.”

“What else they have on him?”

“He was the only one to use the torch. And he was the only one who had access to all the keys except for Gator and his cousin.”

“Why didn’t they take his keys when they fired him?”

“He’d left them at home that morning because it wasn’t his day to lock up.”

“It sure is a mess,” I said. “But what could I do about it that you can’t?”

“That’s just it, Easy. I made the mistake of going over there when Ross got in trouble. I went up against Oliphant and he called me a kike. I didn’t do anything, but let’s just say that there’s no love lost between us.”

“And so you want me to what?”

“He likes people from down around where he comes from,” Saul explained. “Southerners, especially from Louisiana. They got a machinist opening now that Ross is gone…”

“I got a job, man,” I complained.

“Yeah, I know. For a favor, Easy.”

It never hurt to have a white man owe you a favor, that’s what I believed. And Saul was a good guy. Even the fact that he was there giving a bad-tempered black man the benefit of the doubt made me want to help him.

And then there was Bonnie and Mouse. Him dead and her—a dead place in my heart.

“Where is this Ross Henry now?”

“We got him out on bail. His mother put up every cent she has for the bond. He’s down in Watts, at his mother’s place.”

SOMEBODY IN ROSS HENRY’S apartment building had a very bad cough. We heard it from the bottom of the stairs. It was one of those deep, wet, rolling coughs that, in my childhood days, almost always preceded a funeral.

They lived on the third floor of the building, which had been constructed from wood some time before the First World War. The stairs sighed with each step. The colorless paint had separated with the grain of the drying wood planks. The screen door we stopped at was divided into two equal panes. The top screen was as old as the house, rusted and crumbling. The bottom one was brand new, gray, and supple.

The cough was coming from inside the apartment.

Saul knocked but I didn’t think anyone could hear it over that rheumy hacking, so I tried pulling the door open. It was latched from the inside.

I was glancing over to the right, looking for a button or something harder than knuckles to knock with, when Saul said, “Um, Easy.”

Behind the ancient haze of the upper screen I saw a sour-faced black woman with staring yellow eyes.

She coughed.

“I thought you might not have heard us knocking,” I said lamely. “I mean—”

“I’m sick, not deaf,” the woman said and then she suppressed a cough.

“Hello, Clara,” Saul said. “This is Easy Rawlins. He’s a specialist that I’m using to help Ross. Is your son in?”

Clara Henry was tall and dark. She had manly shoulders and hands that had seen so much work that they seemed too large for her body. She looked me up and down and curled her lip.

“I guess,” she said, and unlatched the door for us to enter. Then she called, “Ross, it’s that white man and somebody for ya.”

The entryway of the apartment was bisected by a wall that separated two parallel halls. Clara Henry went coughing down the hall to the right. I was about to follow her when a man’s voice called out from the other way.

“Send ’em on down.”

After about twelve feet the hallway veered off to the left depositing us into a room that had no one particular purpose. There was a green couch that doubled as a bed, and a card table used for dining. In one corner there was a sink set upon a small patch of tiles. The rest of the floor was wood so deeply rutted and splintered that a mop would have been torn to shreds in any attempt to wash it.

The big man stood up and extended his hand when we entered.

“Hey, Saul,” he said.

“Ross.”

Ross had orange-brown skin and a thick mustache that didn’t stop at the corners of his mouth but went straight back and up until it blended with the hair just above his ears. He had a receding hairline and shoulders inherited from his mother.

Behind him there was a youngish white woman still seated on the couch. Her short hair was brown and styled into a flip. Her nose slanted toward the right which made her seem as if she was standing in profile even when she was looking straight at you.

She had obviously just put on her sweater. I imagined that her bra was under the couch somewhere.

She noticed me noticing her nipples under the thin pink cotton and turned away, smiling slightly.

“And this is Ross Henry,” Saul was saying to me.

My heart was doing a kind of double-knocking throb in my chest.

“Mr. Henry,” I said.

“Mr. Rawlins. This is Amiee,” he said. “She come by to visit.”

“Hello,” she said. Even her words were sexy. She added, “I better be going, baby.”

“No.” Ross put out a hand. “No, don’t go. I just got to tell these men somethin’ and then we can, we can…you know, visit.”

“Um,” Saul said delicately.

“Naw, man,” I said. “This business is only between us three. Maybe your friend would wanna wait with your mother.”

“Oh no,” Amiee said holding up her hands in a defensive pose. She stood up from the couch with a sinuous, snakelike motion. “Some other time, baby.”

Getting up on tiptoes she kissed Ross’s cheek. At the same time however, she managed to meet my eye with a smile.

She was slight and in her thirties but young-looking, dressed better than a secretary or waitress. She wore no ring.

I had been looking at women lately. Ever since I found out about Bonnie’s royal holiday. I’d been looking but I didn’t have the spirit to follow up. When I lost the desire to kiss Bonnie it seemed to extend to all other women too.

That’s what bothered me about Amiee. Her crooked glances managed to get under my skin. It was hard for me to think about anything more than her sidelong smiles. For that reason I was happy to see her pass out of the door.

“Man, why you wanna go an’ threaten her with my mama?”

On cue the hacking cough sounded through the walls.

“Wasn’t no threat,” I said. “I just needed her out of here so we could talk about keepin’ your ass outta prison.”

“I’m not goin’ to jail, man,” he said. “Shit. I’ll have my ass down on some Alabama farm ’fore I go to no jail.”

Saul met my gaze. He shrugged slightly.

“Your mother put up her life savings against a fifteen-thousand-dollar nut,” I said. “What you gonna do, make her work the rest of her life ’cause you a coward?”

“Motherfucker!” Ross yelled.

He threw a long looping right hand but it was useless because I hit him on the side of the jaw with a left that also blocked his punch.

Ross went down hard on the desiccated floor.

Someone cackled behind me.

Mrs. Clara Henry was standing in the doorway gleefully clasping her hands.

“That’s right, mister,” she said encouragingly. “Hit him again, hit him again. Maybe you hit him hard enough you might knock some sense into his thick skull.”

She even did a little jig. But all that laughing and capering was too much for her condition. She fell into a bout of coughing that brought her elbows down to her knees.

Saul was crouched down next to Ross, who seemed stunned by the mere fact he’d been hit. He was rubbing his jaw and watching his mother’s show.

“Mama, what you doin’ back here?” the full grown man said. “This my room.”

Mrs. Henry recovered enough to laugh once more.

“You show him, mister,” she said to me. “Knock some sense inta him.”

With that Ross’s mother went off down the hall.

“I’m gone, Saul,” I said.

“Hold up, man.” That was Ross. “Hold up.”

He stood and held out a hand.

“No hard feelings, brother,” he said. “It’s just that you caught me right in the middle’a the pussy, man. I was gettin’ it but when she heard you comin’ she jumped up off me and put on her clothes. Then when you made her leave—shit, I lost it.”

“Are you crazy, Ross?” Saul asked. “Why do you want to have a woman in here when you’re in so much trouble?”

I think I was the first one to laugh. But Ross and Saul followed soon after. We all knew the answer to that question.

“All right now,” I said. “It’s time to talk turkey.” The smiling stopped.

Ross rubbed his mustache and leaned against the sink. Saul sat in the sill of a small window.

“You didn’t rob your boss?” I asked.

“What kinda shit question is that?” Ross said, half rising from his perch.

“You swing on me again and I’ll break that jawbone.”

“No, man. No. I did not rob Gator.”

“Then who did?”

“How should I know?”

“I don’t know, but if the cops don’t have nobody else they gonna give you to the judge. And you and I both know what he’s gonna do.”

“Over twenty-five guys work for him,” Ross said. “They come and go all the time. Must be a hundred different people know about the safe and that torch.”

“How many of them have access to a key?” I asked.

Ross winced and turned his head away.

“How’d you come up with the money for Amiee?” I asked.

“What you mean?”

“She’s a prostitute, right?”

“Man,” Ross said. “You just wanna get your ass kicked, don’t you?”

“She’s your girlfriend?”

“Today,” Ross replied. “Maybe not tomorrow.”

“Lemme see your wallet.”

Ross turned to Saul but only got the shrug.

You could see around Ross’s eyes that he was in his thirties. But in his heart he was still a young man, barely out of his teens. That’s why I treated him like a child.

He took out a black wallet that was maybe ten percent leather and the rest paper. He had a driver’s license, a library card, and three dollars. Under the secret flap he had a two-dollar bill that had the upper right corner torn away to avoid the bad luck associated with that denomination. If he had robbed a safe of thousands of dollars his wallet would have been stuffed with cash—I was sure of that.

“You do much reading?” I asked him.

“So what?” he replied.

I handed him the wallet and asked, “What kind of job could I get if I go down there?”

OLIPHANT’S GARAGE was an ultramodern auto repair and body shop. Everything was chrome and concrete, glass and white paint. The gleaming cylinders for the hydraulic lifts were well oiled and flawless. There was no trash or built-up grease in the corners. The mechanics wore dark-blue coveralls.

There were white men and blacks working together. If I was unemployed this would be the first place I’d look for a job.

“Can I help you?” a red-headed kid asked. He was no more than fifteen, with a big friendly smile on his face. I felt that I’d met him before but put that down to his engaging manner.

“Lookin’ for a job’s all,” I said.

“What kind of job?”

“Mechanic.”

For a frown the young man smiled just a bit less brightly.

“You been a mechanic before?” he asked.

“Sure have.”

“I wanna be a mechanic on racing cars,” he said. “Those guys travel all over the world and make real money.”

“I guess they do,” I said.

“You ever work on race cars?”

“I was in a few drag races when I was a hothead down south. I worked on those cars but I’ve never been a professional.”

The kid was looking right at me but I had no idea what he saw.

“I’m learning everything I can here,” he said. “By the time I get out of high school I’ll know everything I need.”

“I wish you luck,” I said, wondering how to get to applying for the job.

“I’m gonna buy a dirt bike tomorrow,” he said. “That’ll be great. I can start to learn about bikes and bike racing. We don’t fix motorcycles here.”

“Do you know if there’s a job opening?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “But it’s not up to me. You see the main office over there?”

He pointed toward a room encased by glass walls. Three men in blue coveralls were sitting around smoking and laughing with a big white guy in a green suit.

“Yeah,” I said.

“That’s Gator’s office,” the boy said. “He’s the one in green.”

“Gator?”

“Mr. Oliphant if you want the job.”

I KNOCKED ON THE GLASS DOOR. Gator turned his head in my direction. He took me in for a moment and then gestured with his head and lips for me to enter.

It was a good-sized room with two tables and a desk. The mechanics sat at one table. The other one supported a partly deconstructed car engine.

“Mr. Oliphant,” I said as I stuck out my hand. “I’m Larry Burdon.”

It was one of many names that I typed in as dead or missing during my stint as a statistics sergeant during WWII.

“How can I help ya?” he replied.

The other men took this as their notice to leave. They filed out into the unnaturally clean garage and took up various posts.

“Lookin’ for a job,” I said as they were leaving.