A Red Death (29 page)

“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 —

A
T 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.”

“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.

“Evenin’, Reggie,” I called out from behind a scraggly pine. I walked out of the trees to meet him with both hands in my pockets.

He made a gesture toward his breast, but I brought my right hand out to show him the little pistol I held, then I shoved it back in my jacket pocket.

He gave me a lopsided smile and hunched his shoulders. His big, bruising hands hung peacefully at his side.

“You got the money?” I asked.

He leaned forward slightly, indicating a brown paper parcel he held in his jacket.

“But if I give you this money, what guarantee do I have that you’ll let me be?” he asked.

“I know you a killer, man. I’ma run wit’ this here money. Run someplace you cain’t find me.”

He smiled at me, and we both froze in time. I could see that he didn’t plan to move until I said something else, so I asked, “Why, man?”

He jumped slightly from a tremor running through his body.

“Hey! Fuck you!” he said, twisting his neck from side to side. I could smell the gin.

“Uh-uh, really. I gotta know, man. Why you do all this shit?” I asked. I knew he was crazy, but I just wanted to have some reason.

There was a fever in Agent Lawrence’s eyes.

“Niggers and Jews,” he said. It was a toss-up whether or not he was talking to me.

“Like your wife an’ child?”

He looked me in the eye then. But he was quiet.

“I mean, why Towne? Why Poinsettia?”

“I told the nigger minister about you. You know what he did?”

Lawrence brought his fists to his shoulders, so I said, “Cool it, man.”

“Yeah.” Lawrence sputtered a laugh. “He threw me out. But I went back there. Yes sir, I did.”

He giggled again. I took the pistol from my pocket.

“And the bitch lived like a pig.” Agent Lawrence was breathing hard. “Filthy. And she acted like I could, could ever be like that … All you had to do was pay. All you had to do was follow the program. I didn’t want to kill them. But it was my ass out there on the line.”

“Chaim Wenzler wasn’t nuthin’ to you, man.”

“He was something to the FBI. If he was out of the way then they wouldn’t need you.”

“But then you tried t’kill me!”

Lawrence giggled again, and bit his thumb.

Twilight was falling. Actually it felt as if the darkness was rising out of the trees. It was time for me to collect my money and leave.

“Okay,” I said. I had my hand on the pistol like another time. “Gimme the money.”

I’d planned to act nervous when I took his money; but I didn’t need to act.

“I thought you might be a nigger with nuts,” he said, suddenly somber.

I felt my gorge rise, but I didn’t give in. The night was coming on faster, soon we’d just be shadows.

“You don’t really think that I’m going to let you get away with blackmailing me, do you?”

“Do somethin’ stupid an’ you’ll see what kinda nuts I got.”

Suddenly he made his decision. He took the package from the recess of his jacket and handed it to me.

I said, “Nice to do business with ya. You could go now.”

The moment I touched the envelope he lunged forward and shouldered me in the chest, hard. Because we were on a hill I had the feeling of flight again, but this time I landed on my backside, my hands shooting out behind.

I tried to bring my gun around but couldn’t. Lawrence ran down and kicked my shoulder. He grinned at me as he yanked awkwardly at the pistol in his pocket.

“Don’t do it, man!” I shouted in warning. But he had the pistol out.

He said the word, nigger, and then he flew backward about six feet. When he was in the air I heard the cannonlike pistol shot from down among the trees. I was running before the echoes were through shouting my name.

As fast as I ran, Mouse was already in the car by the time I got there.