A Red Death (7 page)

It was strange talk, I thought, a white man lecturing me about slavery.

“Yeah, some folks learn how to love their chains, I guess.”

Craxton gave me a quick smile. In that brief second a shine of admiration flashed across his walnut eyes.

He said, “I knew we’d understand each other, Easy. Soon as I saw your police file I knew you were the kind of man for us.”

“What kinda man is that?”

The pianist was playing “Two Sleepy People” on a bright and lively note.

“Man who wants to serve his country. Man who knows what it is to fight and maybe take a couple of chances. Man who doesn’t give in to some foreign power saying that they have a better deal.”

I had the feeling that Craxton didn’t see the man sitting before him, but I’d seen pictures of Leavenworth in
Life
magazine so I pretended to be the man he described.

“Chaim Wenzler,” Craxton said.

“Who?”

“One of those communist kind of Jews. Union persuasion. Calls himself a
worker.
Building chains is what he’s doing. He’s been organizing unions from Alameda County on down the line to Champion Aircraft. You know Champion, don’t you, Easy.”

The last real job I had was at Champion.

“I worked production there,” I said. “Five years ago.”

“I know,” Craxton said. He pulled a manila folder from his jacket pocket. The folder was soiled, creased, and pleated down the center. He smoothed it out in front of me. The block red letters across the top said: “LAPD Special Subject.” And below that: “subj—Ezekiel P. Rawlins, aka—Easy Rawlins.”

“Everything we need to know in here, Easy. War record, criminal associations, job history. One police detective wrote a letter in 1949 saying that he suspected you of being involved in a series of homicides the previous year. Then in 1950 you turn around and help the police find a rapist working the Watts community.

“I’d been looking for a Negro to work for us. Somebody who might have a little trouble but nothing so bad that we couldn’t smooth it over if somebody showed a little initiative and some patriotism. Then Clyde Wadsworth called about you.”

“Who?”

“Wadsworth, he’s Lawrence’s head. Clyde saw an inquiry for your file go across his desk a few weeks back. He knew the neighborhood you lived in and gave me a call. Lucky for everybody.”

He tapped the folder with a clean, evenly manicured fingernail.

“We need you to get to know this Wenzler, Easy. We need to know if it’s the left or right leg he puts into his pants first in the morning.”

“How could I do that and the whole FBI cain’t do it?”

“This is a sly Jew. We know that he’s up to his shoulders in something bad, but damned if we can do anything about it. You see, Wenzler never really gets involved with the place he’s organizing. He won’t work there. But he finds his fair-haired boy and grooms him to be his mouthpiece. That’s what he did with Andre Lavender. Know him?”

Craxton stared me straight in the eye awaiting the answer.

I remembered Andre. A big, sloppy man. But he had the energy of ten men for all his weight. He always had a plan to get rich quick. For a while he sold frozen steaks and then, later on, he tried construction. Andre was a good man but he was too excitable; even if he made a couple of bucks he’d spend them just that quick. “Rich an’ important men gotta spend money, Easy,” he told me once. He was driving a leased Cadillac at the time, delivering frozen steaks from door to door.

“I don’t remember him,” I said to Special Agent Craxton.

“Well, maybe he wasn’t so loud when you were at Champion, but now he’s a union man. Chaim Wenzler’s boy.”

Craxton sat back for a moment and appraised me. He put his hand flat against my file like a man swearing on a sacred text. Then he leaned across the table and began to whisper, “You see, Easy, in many ways the Bureau is a last line of defense. There are all sorts of enemies we have these days. We’ve got enemies all over the world; in Europe, in Asia, everywhere. But the real enemies, the ones we really have to watch out for, are people right here at home. People who aren’t Americans on the inside. No, not really.”

He drifted off into a kind of reverie. The confusion must have shown on my face, because he added, “And we have to stop these people. We have to bring them to the attention of the courts and the Congress. So even if I have to overlook some lesser crimes …” He paused and stared at me again. “… like petty tax theft, I will do that in order to get the bigger job done.”

“Listen, man,” I said. “You got me by the nuts on this one, so I’ma do what you want. But get to it, alright? I’m a little nervous with all this talk an’ these files an’ shit.”

“Okay,” he said, and then he took a deep breath. “Chaim Wenzler has been organizing people through the unions. He’s been giving them ideas about this country that are lies and unpatriotic. There’s more to it, but I can’t tell you what because we can’t get anybody close enough to him to really find out what it is that he’s up to.”

“Why don’t you just arrest him? Cain’t you do that?”

“He’s not what we want, Easy. It’s what he represents, the people he works with—that’s what we need to know.”

“An’ you cain’t make him tell you all this stuff?” I was well aware of the persuasive powers of the law.

“Not this man.” There was a hint of admiration in Craxton’s tone. “And it’s worth our time to find out who he’s working with, without him knowing it, that is. You see, Wenzler is bad, but where you can see someone like him you know that there’s serious rot underneath.”

“Uh-huh.” I nodded, trying to look like I was right up there with him. “So what do you need me for if you already know that this guy is the center of the problem? I mean, what could I do?”

“Wenzler is small potatoes. He’s a fanatic, thinks that America isn’t free and the Reds are. All by himself he’s nothing, just a malcontent with a dull ax to grind. But it’s just that kind of man that gets duped into doing the worst harm.”

“But I don’t even know this guy, how you expect me to get next to him?”

“Wenzler works in the Negro churches. We figure that he’s making his contacts down there.”

“Yeah?”

“He’s working three places right now. One of them is the First African Baptist Church and Day School. That’s your neighborhood, right? You probably know some of that flock.”

“So what does he do at the church?”

“Charity,” Agent Craxton sneered. “But that’s just a front. He’s looking for others who are like him; people who feel that this country has given them a raw deal. He feels like that, doesn’t hardly trust a soul. But the thing is, he’ll trust you. He’s got a soft spot for Negroes.”

It was at that moment I decided not to trust Agent Craxton.

“I still don’t see why you need me. If the FBI wants something on him why don’t you just make it up?” I was serious.

Agent Craxton took my meaning and laughed. It sounded like an asthmatic’s cough.

“I don’t have a partner, Easy. Did you notice that?”

I nodded.

“There’s no crime here, Mr. Rawlins. We’re not trying to put somebody in jail for tax evasion. What we are doing is shedding light on a group of people who use the very freedom we give them in order to burn down what we believe.”

I wondered if Agent Craxton had political aspirations. He sounded like a man running for office.

“There is no crime to arrest him for. No crime that we know of, that is. But if you get next to him you might find out something. You might see where we could come in and arrest him for a crime the courts would recognize. You might be our means to his end.”

“Uh-huh,” I grunted. “But what do you mean about not havin’ no partner?”

“I’m a special kind of agent, Easy. I don’t just look for evidence. Some agents are in the business of solving crimes. My job is to avoid the damage before it’s done.”

“Yeah,” I said, nodding. “But now lemme get this straight. You want me to get to know this Wenzler guy, then get him to trust me so I find out if he’s a spy?”

“And then you find out all you can, Easy. We let you pay your taxes and go back home.”

“And what if I don’t find out somethin’ that you could use? What if it’s just that he complains a lot but he don’t do nuthin’ really?”

“You just report to me. Say once a week. I’ll know how to read it. And when you’re through the IRS will let you alone.”

“All that sounds good, but I need to know somethin’ first.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, you talkin’ ’bout my own people with this conspiracy stuff. An’ if you want my opinion, all that is just some mistake. You know I live down there an’ I ain’t never heard that we some kinda communist conspiracy or whatever.”

Craxton just smiled.

“But if you wanna believe that,” I continued, “I guess you can. But you cain’t get me t’ go after my own people. I mean, if these guys broke the law like you say, I don’t mind that, but I don’t wanna hurt the people at First African just ’cause they run a charity drive or somethin’.”

“We see eye to eye, Easy,” Craxton said. “I just want the Jew, and whatever it is he’s up to. You won’t even know I was there.”

“So what’s this stuff about this other guy, Lavender?”

“You remember him?”

“No.”

“We need to find Lavender. He’s worked closer with Wenzler than anyone. If we could get him into custody I’m sure that he’d be able to help.”

“You sound like he’s missin’?”

“He quit Champion three weeks ago, and nobody has seen him since. We’d appreciate a line on him, Easy. Finding Lavender would go a long way toward settling your taxes.”

“But you just wanna talk to ’im?”

“That’s right.” Craxton was leaning so far across the table that he could have jumped down my throat.

I knew that he was lying to me, but I needed him, so I said, “Okay,” and we shook hands.

The orange juice in my screwdriver was canned; it left a bitter metallic taste in my mouth. But I drank it anyway. Screwdriver was what I asked for; I guess I asked for Craxton too.

— 9 —

I
LEFT ADOLF’S AND DROVE STRAIGHT to John’s bar. I wanted a good-tasting drink in the bar of my own choosing.

That was about nine o’clock, so lots of people were there. Odell was at his regular seat, near the wall. Pierre Kind was with him. Bonita Smith danced slowly in the middle of the floor with Brad Winston in her arms. The bar was lined with men and women, and John worked hard meeting their demands. “Good Night, Irene,” the original version by Leadbelly, played on the jukebox, and a haze of cigarette smoke dimmed the room.

I saw Mouse sitting at a table with Dupree Bouchard and Jackson Blue; as unlikely a trio as I could imagine.

Jackson had on jeans and a dark blue button-down shirt. He also wore a baby-blue jacket with matching pointy-toed shoes. Jackson’s skin was so black that it glinted blue when in the full sun. He was a small man, smaller than Mouse even, and as cowardly as they come. He was a petty thief and a lackey to the various numbers runners and gangsters. He would have been what we called trash back then, but that wasn’t all there was to Jackson Blue. He was the closest I ever came to knowing a genius. Jackson could read and write as well as anybody I knew, including the professors at Los Angeles City College. He’d tell you all kinds of things about history and science and things that happened in places elsewhere in the world. At first I didn’t believe the things he’d tell me, but then I bought an old encyclopedia set from him. No matter how I tested him, Jackson knew every fact in those books. From then on I just took it on faith that everything else he said was true too.

But Jackson didn’t just read and remember, he could also tell what people were thinking and what they were likely to do, by just talking to them. Jackson would walk into a room and come out the other side knowing everybody’s secrets from just watching their eyes or hearing them talk about the weather.

He was a valuable asset to a man like me; even more so because Jackson never used his ability except to rat back and forth between factions of the criminal element. Give Jackson five dollars and he’d sell out his best friend. And you never had to worry about Jackson lying to you, because he was so cowardly and because he had great pride in the fact that he was right about whatever he said.

Dupree dwarfed his companions. He was a head taller than I and built to split stones. He was wide and burly with close-cropped hair and a great propensity for laughter. Right when I walked in he let go a terrific gust of guffaws. Mouse had probably been telling one of his grim tales.

Dupree wore drab green overalls with CHAMPION sewn into the back in dull red thread. We both worked at the airplane manufacturer for some years, before the untimely death of his girlfriend, Coretta James, and my entrée into the world of real estate and favors.

But for all their showy qualities, Dupree and Jackson were dim lights compared with Mouse.

He wore a cream double-breasted suit with a felt brown derby and brown, round-toed shoes. His white shirt looked to be satin. His teeth were all aglitter with gold edgings, silver caps, and one lustrous blue jewel. He didn’t wear rings or bracelets, because they got in the way of weapons handling. Mouse’s color was a dusky pecan and his eyes were light gray. He was smiling and talking. People from other tables leaned away from their drinks to hear what he had to say.