A Red Death (13 page)

“I’ll look after the baby while you fix my clothes,” I said. I tried to sound like a father and she played the obedient child. When I think on it now I realize that I must’ve been almost twice her age.

Little Andre and I had a good time. I let him walk on me and sleep on me, I even heated his bottle, letting Juanita check it to see that I wasn’t going to scald her baby’s tongue. She gave me a few shy smiles while I sat in her padded chair and she sat on the kitchen counter, working at my rags. But what really got her to glow was when I changed his diapers. I laid him out on the counter next to her and played with him so he didn’t even cry.

I showed her that I knew how you could put Vaseline on a baby to keep him from chafing. While I was rubbing the stuff on Andre’s buttocks Juanita uncrossed her legs, licked her sliver lips, and asked, “You hungry, Easy?” and before I could answer, “ ’Cause I’m starved.”

I couldn’t see where I was doing anything wrong.

Juanita didn’t have any close family, so she was alone with Andre Jr. most of the time. And everybody knows how a gabbling baby will drive the strongest will to distraction after a while. All I did was keep her company when she needed a man around.

I got steaks, cornbread mix, and greens from the Safeway and made dinner, because Juanita couldn’t really cook. After dinner she put Andre Jr. in a cardboard box on a table next to the couch, which she proceeded to unfold into a bed.

Then Juanita took the bottle of Vaseline and showed me some things she knew how to do. She might have been eighteen, and unacquainted with many ways of the world, but Juanita was full of love. Powerful love. And she had the ability to call forth the love in me.

She pushed me down in that bed and wrapped her arms around me and told me all the things she had dreamed since Andre Sr. had left.

In the middle of the night the baby cried and Juanita tended to him. Then she whispered something to me and before long I was on my knees begging and praying to her like she was a temple and a priestess rolled up into one.

A
T FOUR IN THE MORNING I woke again. I didn’t even know where I was. Every tender spot on my body was sore and when I looked at that little girl I felt a kind of awe that verged on fear.

The shades were torn. Light from the granite-columned streetlamp shone on Andre Jr. in his cardboard cradle. I could see his tiny lips pushing in and out.

I looked around the rest of the house. Even in the dark it felt dirty. Juanita never really cleaned the floors or walls. There was dirt in that house that had been there before her; it would be there after she had gone.

When I saw the drawers in the kitchen counter I remembered what I was doing there.

In the very bottom drawer, under a few rolls of wrapping paper, was a stack of envelopes held together with a wide rubber band. The postmark, which was all but impossible to make out in the dim light, was from Riverside, and Juanita’s name and address were written in a junior high school scrawl. But it was the return address that interested me. I tore off the upper left corner of one letter, shoved it back into the middle of the stack, and pushed the drawer closed.

“What you want, Easy?”

“Tryin’ t’get some water but I didn’t wanna turn on the light and wake ya,” I said, straightening up quickly.

“You lookin’ on the floor fo’some water?”

“I kicked my damn toe!” I tried to sound angry so that she’d let it go.

“Glasses in the cabinet right over your head, honey, get me some too.”

When I climbed back into bed Juanita reached for the jar of Vaseline again.

“I’m a little tired, baby,” I said.

“Don’t worry, Easy, I’ma get you up.”

A few hours later sunlight came in through the shade.

Juanita was sitting up against the head of the couch with a knowing look in her eye. She had the baby, suckling on his bottle, in her arms.

“How long Andre’s father been gone?” I asked.

“Too long,” she said.

I lit a cigarette and handed it to her.

“You hear from him at all?”

“Uh-uh. He just gone, thas all.” Then she smiled at me.

“Don’t worry, honey, he ain’t gonna come in here. He ain’t even in L.A.”

“I thought you didn’t even know where he was?”

“I heard he was gone.”

“From who?”

“I just heard it, thas all.”

Her mouth formed a little thin-lipped pout.

I took her foot and rubbed it until she smiled again. Then I asked, “You think you might want him back?”

She said no. But she didn’t say it right away. She looked at her baby first and she made like she wanted to pull her foot away from my hand.

I got up and put on my pants.

“Where you goin’?” asked Juanita.

“I gotta meet Mofass at one’a his places at eight,” I said.

I
WENT HOME and napped for a few hours, then I drove out to Riverside.

Riverside was mainly rural then. No sidewalks or street signs to speak of. I had to go to three gas stations before I found out how to get to Andre’s address.

I staked out their place until early evening, when I saw Winthrop’s Plymouth coming up the road. It was a turquoise job.

Linda was a big woman, heftier than EttaMae and looser in the flesh. Her skin color was high yellow, that’s why Shaker, that is to say Winthrop, took to her in the first place. Her face was lusty and sensual, and poor Andre didn’t seem as if he could bear the weight of her arm around his shoulders. His shirttails flapped behind him and I could see the lace string of his right shoe dancing freely. Andre Lavender was a bug-eyed, orange-skinned man. He wasn’t fat but he was meaty. He had a good-natured and nervous air about him; Andre would shake your hand three times at any one meeting.

I watched them stagger up the dirt driveway to the house.

Linda was singing and Andre sagged sloppily in the mud.

I could have gone up against him then, but I wanted him to talk to me. I needed Andre to be scared, but not of me, so I drove back to L.A., back to a little bar I knew.

— 16 —

T
HAT NIGHT I WENT TO the Cozy Room on Slauson. It was a small shack with plaster walls that were held together by tar paper, chicken wire, and nails. It stood in the middle of a big vacant lot, lopsided and ungainly. The only indication you got that it was inhabited was the raw pine plank over the door. It had the word
Entrance
painted on it in dripping black letters.

It was a small room and very dark. The bar was a simple dictionary podium with a row of metal shelves behind it. The bartender was a stout woman named Ula Hines. She served gin or whiskey, with or without water, and unshelled peanuts by the bag. There were twelve small tables hardly big enough for two. The Cozy Room wasn’t a place for large parties, it was there for men who wanted to get drunk.

Because it wasn’t a social atmosphere, Ula didn’t invest in a jukebox or live music. She had a radio that played cowboy music and a TV, set on a chair, that only went on for boxing.

Winthrop was at a far table drinking, smoking, and looking mean.

“Evenin’, Shaker,” I said. Shaker Jones was the name he went by when we were children in Houston. It was only when he became an insurance man that he decided he needed a fancy name like Winthrop Hughes.

Shaker didn’t feel very fancy that night.

“What you want, Easy?”

I was surprised that he even recognized me, drunk as he was.

“Mofass sent me.”

“Wha’ fo’?”

“He need some coverage down on the Magnolia Street apartments.”

Shaker laughed like a dying man who gets in the last joke.

“He got them naked gas heaters, he could go to hell,” Shaker said.

“He got sumpin’ you want though, man.”

“He ain’t got nuthin’ fo’me. Nuthin’.”

“How ’bout Linda an’ Andre?”

My aunt Vel hated drunks. She did because she claimed that they didn’t have to act all sloppy and stupid the way they did. “It’s all in they minds,” she’d say.

Shaker proved her point by straightening up and asking, in a very clear voice, “Where are they, Easy?”

“Mofass told me t’get them papers from you, Shaker. He told me t’drive you out almost to ’em an’ then you give me the papers an’ I take you the whole way.”

“I pay you three hundred dollars right now and we cut Mofass out of it.”

I laughed and shook my head.

“I’ll see ya tomorrow, Shaker.” I knew he was sober because he bridled when I called him that. “Front’a Vigilance Insurance at eight-fifteen.”

I turned back to look at him before I went out of the door. He was sitting up and breathing deeply. I knew when I saw him that I was all that stood between Andre and an early grave.

I
WAS IN FRONT OF HIS OFFICE at the time I said. He was right out there waiting for me. He wore a double-breasted pearl-gray suit with a white shirt and a maroon tie that had dozens of little yellow diamonds printed on it. His left pinky glittered with gold and diamonds and his fedora had a bright red feather in its band. The only shabby thing about Shaker was his briefcase, it was frayed and cracked across the middle. That was Shaker to a T: he worried about his appearance but he didn’t give a damn about his work.

“Where we headed, Easy?” he asked before he could slam the door shut.

“I tell ya when we get there.” I smiled at his consternation. It did me good to see an arrogant man like Shaker Jones go with an empty glass.

I drove north to Pasadena, where I picked up Route 66, called Foothill Boulevard in those days. That took us through the citrus-growing areas of Arcadia, Monrovia, and all the way down to Pomona and Ontario. The foothills were wild back then. White stone and sandy soil knotted with low shrubs and wild grasses. The citrus orchards were bright green and heavy with orange and yellow fruit. In the hills beyond roamed coyotes and wildcats.

The address for Linda and Andre was on a small dirt road called Turkel, just about four blocks off the main drag, Alessandro Boulevard. I stopped a few blocks away.

“Here we are,” I said in a cheery voice.

“Where are they?”

“Where them papers Mofass wanted?”

Shaker stared death at me for a minute, but then, when I didn’t keel over, he put his hand into the worn brown briefcase and came out with a sheaf of about fifteen sheets of paper. He shoved the papers into my lap, turning a few pages back so he could point out a line that said “Premiums.”

“That’s what he wanted when we talked last December. Now where’s Linda and Andre?”

I ignored him and started flipping through the documents.

Shaker was huffing but I took my time. Legal documents need a close perusal; I’d seen enough of them in my day.

“Man, what you doin’?” Shaker squealed at me. “You cain’t read that kinda document. You need to have law trainin’ for that.”

Shaker was no lawyer. As a matter of fact, he hadn’t finished the eighth grade. I had two part-time years of Los Angeles City College under my belt. But I scratched my head to show that I agreed with him.

I said, “Maybe so, Shaker. Maybe. But I jus’ got a question t’ask you here.”

“Don’t you be callin me Shaker, Easy,” he warned. “That ain’t my name no mo’. Now what is it you wanna know?”

I turned to the second-to-the-last sheet and pointed to a blank line near the bottom of the page.

“Whas this here?”

“Nuthin’,” he said quickly. Too quickly. “The president of Vigilance gotta sign that.”

“It says, ‘the insurer or the insurer’s agent.’ Thas you, ain’t it?”

Shaker stared death at me a little more, then he snatched the papers and signed them.

“Where is she?” he demanded.

I didn’t answer but I pulled back into the road and drove toward Andre and Linda’s address.

Shaker’s Plymouth was in the yard, hubcap-deep in mud.

“There you go,” I said, looking at the house.

“All right,” Shaker said. He got out of the car and so did I.

“Where you goin’, Easy?”

“With you, Shaker.”

He bristled when I called him that again.

Then he said, “You got what you want. It’s my business here on out.”

I noticed that his jacket pocket hung low on the right side. That didn’t bother me, though. I had a .25 hooked behind my back.

“I ain’t gonna leave you t’kill nobody, Shaker. I ain’t no lawyer, like you said, but I know that the police love what they call accessory before the fact.”

“Just stay outta my way,” he said. Then he turned toward the house, striding through the mud.

I stayed behind him, walking a little slower.

When he pushed through the front door I was seven, maybe eight, steps behind. I heard Linda scream and Andre make a noise something like a hydraulic lift engaging. The next thing I heard was crashing furniture. By that time I was going through the door myself.