Devil in a Blue Dress er-1 Read online

  22

  I didn't tell Mouse everything.

  I didn't tell him about the money Daphne stole or the rich white man's name; or that I knew his name. Mouse probably meant to keep his word to me; he could keep from killing if he tried. But if he got a whiff of that thirty thousand dollars I knew that nothing would hold him back. He would have killed me for that much money.

  "All you have to do is worry about Frank," I told him. "Just find out where he goes. If he leads you to the girl then we got it made. Understand me, Raymond, I just wanna find the girl, there ain't no reason to hurt Frank."

  Mouse smiled at me. "Don't worry, Ease. I was just mad when I seen'im over you like that. You know, it made me kinda wanna teach him a lesson."

  "You gotta watch him," I said. "He know how to use that knife."

  "Shit!" Mouse spat. "I'as born wit' a knife in my teefs."

  The police met us as we were leaving the house at eight in the morning.

  "Shit."

  "Mr. Rawlins," Miller said. "We came to ask you a few more questions."

  Mason was grinning.

  "Guess I better be goin', Easy," Mouse said.

  Mason put a fat hand against Mouse's chest. "Who are you?" he asked.

  "Name is Navrochet," Mouse said. "I just come by t'get some money he owe me."

  "Money for what?"

  "Money I lent him over a year ago." Mouse produced a wad of bills, the topmost of which was a twenty.

  The broad grin on Mason's fat face didn't make him any prettier. "And he's just got it now?"

  "Better have," Mouse said. "Or you officers would be comin' fo' me."

  The cops exchanged meaningful glances.

  "Where do you live, Mr. Navrochet?" Miller asked. He took out a pad and a pen.

  "Twenty-seven thirty-two and a half, down on Florence. It's upstairs in the back," Mouse lied.

  "We might have some questions for you later," Miller informed him as he wrote down the address. "So you should stick around town."

  "Anything you boys want. I work at that big World Carwash on Crenshaw. You know I be there if I ain't at my house. See ya, Easy." Mouse went swinging his arms and whistling. I never did figure out how he knew the streets so well to lie like that. "Shall we go in?" Miller gestured back toward the house.

  They put me in a chair and then they stood over me, like they meant business.

  "What do you know about this Richard McGee?" Miller asked me.

  When I looked up I saw them searching my face for the truth.

  "Who?" I said.

  "You heard me," Miller said.

  "I don't know who you said." I was stalling for time to figure out what they knew. Mason laid a heavy hand on my shoulder.

  "LAPD found a dead man in his house in Laurel Canyon last night," Miller told me. "Richard McGee. He had a hand-written note on his table."

  Miller held out the scrap of paper to me. On it was scrawled "C. James."

  "Sound familiar?" Miller asked.

  I tried to look stupid; it wasn't very difficult.

  "How about Howard Green? You know him?" Miller put his foot on my table and leaned forward so far that his gaunt face was no more than a few inches from mine.

  "No."

  "You don't? He goes to that nigger bar you were at with Coretta James. That place just isn't big enough to hide in."

  "Well, maybe I'd know his face if you showed me," I said.

  "That would be kinda hard," Mason growled. "He's dead and his face looks like hamburger."

  "What about Matthew Teran, Ezekiel?" Miller asked.

  "'Course I know him. He was runnin' for mayor up till a few weeks ago. What the hell is this, anyway?" I stood up, faking disgust.

  Miller said, "Teran called us the night we arrested you. He wanted to know if we'd found out who killed his driver, Howard Green."

  I gave him a blank stare.

  "We told him no," Miller continued. "But there had been another murder, Coretta James' murder, that had the same kind of violence related to it. He was real interested, Easy. He wanted to know all about you. He even came down to the station and had us point you out to him and his new driver."

  I remembered the peephole in the door.

  "I ain't never even met the man," I said.

  "No?" Miller said. "Teran's body was found in his downtown office this morning. He had a nice little bullet hole through his heart."

  The spike through my head drove me back into the chair.

  "We don't think you had anything to do with it, Ezekiel. At least, we can't prove anything. But you have to know something … and we have all day to ask you questions."

  Mason grinned wide enough to show me his flaring red gums.

  "I don't know what you guys are talking about. Maybe I know this dude Howard Green. I mean if he goes to John's I prob'ly know what he looks like but I don't know nuthin' else."

  "I think you do, Ezekiel. And if you do but you don't tell us then things are going to get bad. Real bad for you."

  "Man, I don't know a thing. People gettin' killed ain't gotta thing to do with me. You took me in. You know I ain't got no record. I had me a drink with Dupree and Coretta and that's all. You cain't hang me for that."

  "I can if I prove that you were in McGee's house."

  I noticed that Miller had a small crescent scar under his right eye. It seemed to me that I always knew he had that scar. Like I knew it and I didn't know it at the same time.

  "I ain't been there," I said.

  "Where?" Miller asked eagerly.

  "I ain't been to no dead man's house."

  "There's a big fat fingerprint on the knife, Ezekiel. If it's yours then you're fried."

  Mason took my jacket from a chair and held it out to me, like a butler might. He thought he had me so he could afford being polite.

  They took me back down to the station for fingerprinting, then they sent the prints downtown to be compared against the one found on the knife.

  Miller and Mason took me to the little room again for another round of questions.

  They kept asking the same things. Did I know Howard Green? Did I know Richard McGee? Miller kept threatening to go down to John's and find somebody who could tie me to Green but we both knew that he was throwing a bluff. Back in those days there wasn't one Negro in a hundred who'd talk to the police. And those that did were just as likely to lie as anything else. And John's crowd was an especially close one so I was safe, at least from the testimony of friends.

  But I was worried about that fingerprint.

  I knew that I hadn't touched the knife but I didn't know what the police were up to. If they really wanted to catch who did the killing then they'd be fair and check my prints against the knife's and let me go. But maybe they needed a culprit. Maybe they just wanted to close the books because their record hadn't been so good over the year. You never could tell when it came to the cops and a colored neighborhood. The police didn't care about crime among Negros. I mean, some soft-hearted cops got upset if a man killed his wife or did any such harm to a child. But the kind of violence that Frank Green dished out, the business kind of violence, didn't get anybody worried. The papers hardly ever even reported a colored murder. And when they did it was way in the back pages. So if they wanted to get me for Howard Green's death, or Coretta's, then they might just frame me to cut down the paperwork. At least that's what I thought at the time.

  The difference was that two white men had died also. To kill a white man was a real crime. My only hope was that these cops were interested in finding the real criminal.

  I was still being questioned that afternoon when a young man in a loose brown suit entered the small room. He had a large brown envelope that he handed to Miller. He whispered something into Miller's ear and Miller nodded seriously as if he had heard something that was very important. The young man left and Miller turned to me; it was the only time I ever saw him smile.

  "I got the answer on the fingerprints right here in this package, Ezekie
l," he grinned.

  "Then I guess I can go now."

  "Uh-uh."

  "What's it say?" Mason was frisking from side to side like a dog whose master had just come home.

  "Looks like we got our killer."

  My heart was beating so fast that I could hear the pulse in my ear. "Naw, man. I wasn't there."

  I looked into Miller's face, not giving away an ounce of fear. I looked at him and I was thinking of every German I had ever killed. He couldn't scare me and he couldn't bring me down either.

  Miller pulled out a white sheet from the envelope and looked at it. Then he looked at me. Then to the paper again.

  "You can go, Mr. Rawlins," he said after a full minute. "But we're going to get you again. We're going to bring you down for something, Ezekiel, you can bank on that."

  "Easy! Easy, over here!" Mouse hissed to me from my car across the street.

  "Where'd you get my keys?" I asked him as I climbed in the passenger's side.

  "Keys? Shit, man, all you gotta do is rub a couple'a sticks together an' you could start this thing."

  The ignition had a bunch of taped wires hanging from it. Some other time I might have been mad but all I could do then was laugh.

  "I was startin' t'think that I'd have t'come in after you, Ease," Mouse said. He patted the pistol that sat between us on the front seat.

  "They don't have enough to hold me, yet. But if something don't happen fo' them real soon they might just take it in their heads to fo'get ev'rybody else an' drag me down."

  "Well," Mouse said, "I found out where Dupree is holed up. We could go stay with him and figger what's next."

  I wanted to talk to Dupree but there was something that was more important.

  "We go over there a little later, but first I want you to drive somewhere."

  "Where's that?"

  "Go up here to the corner and take a left," I said.

  23

  Portland Court was a horseshoe of tiny apartments not far from Joppy's place, near 107th and Central. There were sixteen little porches and doorways staggered in a semicircle around a small yard that had seven stunted magnolia trees growing in brick pots. It was early evening and the tenants, mostly old people, were sitting inside the screened doorways, eating their dinners off of portable aluminum stands. Radios played from every house. Mouse and I waved to folks and said hello as we made it back to number eight.

  That door was closed.

  I knocked on it and then I knocked again. After a few minutes we heard something crash and then heavy footsteps toward the door.

  "Who's that?" an angry voice that might have had some fear in it called out.

  "It's Easy!" I shouted.

  The door opened and Junior Fornay stood there, in the gray haze of the screen door, wearing blue boxer shorts and a white tee-shirt.

  "What you want?"

  "I wanna talk about your call the other night, Junior. I gotta couple'a things I wanna ask."

  I reached to pull the door open but Junior threw the latch from the inside.

  "If you wanted t'talk you should'a done it then. Right now I gotta get some sleep."

  "Why'ont you open the do', Junior, fo' I have t'shoot it down," Mouse said. He had been standing to the side of the door, where Junior couldn't see, but then he stood out in plain sight.

  "Mouse," Junior said.

  I wondered if he was still anxious to see my friend again.

  "Open up, Junior, Easy an' me ain't got all night."

  We went in and Junior smiled as if he wanted to make us feel at home.

  "Wanna beer, boys? I gotta couple'a quarts in the box."

  We got drinks and lit up cigarettes that Junior offered. He seated us on folding chairs he had placed around a card table.

  "What you need?" he asked after a while.

  I took a handkerchief from my pocket. It was the same handkerchief that I used to pick up something from the floor at Richard McGee's.

  "Recognize this?" I asked Junior as I opened it on his table.

  "What's a cigarette butt gotta do with me?"

  "It's yours, Junior, Zapatas. You the only one I know cheap enough to smoke this shit. And you see how somebody just let it drop to the floor and burn so that the paper on the bottom is just charred but not ash?"

  "So what? So what if it's mine?"

  "I found this here on the floor of a dead man's house. Richard McGee was his name. Somebody had just given him Coretta James' name; somebody who knew that Coretta was with that white girl."

  "So what?" Like magic, sweat appeared on Junior's brow.

  "Why'd you kill Richard McGee?"

  "Huh?"

  "Ain't no time to play, Junior. I know you the one killed him."

  "Whas wrong wit' Easy, Mouse? Somebody hit him in the head?"

  "This ain't no time to play, Junior. You killed him and I need to know why."

  "You crazy, Easy. You crazy!"

  Junior jumped up out of his chair and made like he was about to leave.

  "Sit down, Junior," Mouse said.

  Junior sat.

  "Tell me what happened, Junior."

  "I don't know what you talkin' 'bout, man. I don't even know who you mean."

  "All right," I said, showing him my palms. "But if I go to the police they gonna find out that that fingerprint they got on the knife belong to you."

  "What knife?" Junior's eyes looked like moons.

  "Junior, you got to listen real close to this. I got troubles of my own right now and I ain't got the time to worry 'bout you. The night I was at John's that white man was there. Hattie had you carry him home and then he must'a paid you for Coretta's name. That's when you killed him."

  "I ain't killed nobody."

  "That fingerprint gonna prove you wrong, man."

  "Shit!"

  I knew I was right about Junior but that wasn't going to help me if he didn't want to talk. The problem was that Junior wasn't afraid of me. He was never afraid of any man that he felt he could best in a fight. Even though I had the information that would prove him guilty he didn't worry because I was his inferior in combat.

  "Kill'im, Raymond," I said.

  Mouse grinned and stood up. The pistol was just there, in his hand.

  "Wait a minute, man. What kinda shit you tryin' t'pull here?" Junior said.

  "You killed Richard McGee, Junior. And the next night you called me 'cause it had somethin' to do with that girl I was lookin' for. You wanted to find out what I knew but when I didn't tell you anything you hung up. But you killed him and you gonna tell me why or Mouse is gonna waste your ass."

  Junior licked his lips and threw himself around in his chair like a child throwing a fit.

  "What you wanna come messin' wit' me fo', man? What I do to you?"

  "Tell it the way it happened, Junior. Tell me and maybe I forget what I know."

  Junior threw himself around some more. Finally he said, "He was down at the bar the night you come in."

  "Yeah?"

  "Hattie didn't want him inside so she told him to go. But he must'a already been drunk 'cause he kinda like passed out on the street. So Hattie got me to go out an' check on'im 'cause she didn't want no trouble with him out there. So I go out to help him to his car, or whatever."

  Junior stopped to take a drink of beer but then he just stared out the window.

  "Get on with it, Junior," Mouse said at last. He wanted to move on.

  "He say he give me twenty dollars for to know 'bout that girl you was askin' on, Easy. He said that he give me a hundred if I was to drive him home and tell'im how to find the white girl."

  "I know you took that." Mouse was working a toothpick between his front teeth.

  "Lotta money," Junior smiled hopefully at the warmth Mouse showed. "Yeah, I drove him home. And I told'im that I seen the girl he was lookin' for, with Coretta James. Just'a white girl anyway, why should I care?"

  "Then why you kill'im?" I asked.

  "He wanted me to give Frank Green a me
ssage. He says that he give me the money after I do that."

  "Yeah?"

  "I tole him that he could fuck dat! I did what he wanted and if he needed sumpin' else we could talk about that after I got paid." Junior got a wild look in his eye. "He told me I could walk home with my twenty if that's how I felt. Then he bad-mouth me some an' turn off into the other room. Shit! Fo' all I know'd he had a pistol in there. I got a knife from the sink an' goes in after'im. He could'a had a gun in there, ain't that right, Raymond?"

  Mouse sipped his beer and stared at Junior.

  "What he want you to say to Frank?" I asked.

  "He want me t'tell'im that him an' his friends had sumpin' on the girl."

  "Daphne?"

  "Yeah," Junior said. "He say that they got sumpin' on'er and they should all talk."

  "What else?"

  "Nuthin'."

  "You just killed him 'cause he might'a hadda gun?"

  "You ain't got no cause to tell the cops, man," Junior said.

  He was sunken in his chair, like an old man. He disgusted me. He was brave enough to take on a smaller man, he was brave enough to stab an unarmed drunk, but Junior couldn't stand up to answer for his crimes.

  "He ain't worf living," the voice whispered in my head.

  "Let's go," I said to Mouse.

  24

  Dupree was at his sister's house, out past Watts, in Compton. Bula had a night job as a nurse's assistant at Temple Hospital so it was Dupree who answered our knock.

  "Easy," he said in a quiet voice. "Mouse."

  "Pete!" Mouse was bright. "That pigtails I smell?"

  "Yeah, Bula made some this mo'nin'. Blackeyes too."

  "You don't need to show me, I just run after my nose."

  Mouse went around Dupree toward the smell. We stood in the tiny entrance looking at each other's shoulders. I was still half outside. Two crickets sounded from the rose beds that Bula kept.

  "I'm sorry 'bout Coretta, Pete. I'm sorry."

  "All I wanna know is why, Easy. Why somebody wanna kill her like that?" When Dupree looked up at me I saw that both of his eyes were swollen and dark. I never asked but I knew that those bruises were part of his police interrogation.