Devil in a Blue Dress Read online

  A grizzled old man in overalls and a T-shirt was sitting in an aluminum chair at the foot of the stairs.

  “Howdy, Primo.” I waved.

  “Easy,” he said back to me. “You get lost out here?”

  “Naw, man. I just wanted a little privacy so I figured to give you a try.”

  Primo was a real Mexican, born and bred. That was back in 1948, before Mexicans and black people started hating each other. Back then, before ancestry had been discovered, a Mexican and a Negro considered themselves the same. That is to say, just another couple of unlucky stiffs left holding the short end of the stick.

  I met Primo when I became a gardener for a while. We worked together, with a team of men, taking on the large jobs in Beverly Hills and Brentwood. We even took care of a couple of places downtown, off of Sixth.

  Primo was a good guy and he liked to run with me and my friends. He told us that he’d bought that big house so that he could turn it into a hotel. He was always begging us to come out and rent a room from him or tell our friends about him.

  He stood up when I came up the path. He only came up to my chest. “How’s that?” he asked.

  “You got somethin’ with some privacy?”

  “I got a little house out back that you and the señorita can have.” He bent down to look at Daphne in the car. She smiled nicely for him.

  “How much?”

  “Five dollars for a night.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a whole house, Easy. Made for love.” He winked at me.

  I could have argued him down and I would have done it for fun, but I had other things on my mind.

  “Alright.”

  I gave him a ten-dollar bill and he showed us to the path that led around the big house to the house out back. He started to come with us but I stopped him.

  “Primo, my man,” I said. “I’ll come on up tomorrow an’ we do some damage to a fifth of tequila. Alright?”

  He smiled and thumped my arm before he turned to leave. I wished that my life was still so simple that all I was after was a wild night with a white girl.

  THE FIRST THING we saw was a mass of flowering bushes with honeysuckle, snapdragons, and passion fruit weaving through. A jagged, man-sized hole was hacked from the branches. Past that doorway was a small building like a coach house or the gardener’s quarters on a big estate. Three sides of the house were glass doors from ceiling to floor. All the doors could open outward onto the cement patio that surrounded three sides of the house, but they were all shut. The front door was wood, painted green.

  Long white curtains were drawn over all the windows.

  Inside, the house was just a big room with a fallen-down spring-bed on one side and a two-burner gas range on the other. There was a table with a toaster on it and four spindly chairs. There was a big stuffed sofa upholstered with a dark brown material that had giant yellow flowers stitched into it.

  “It’s just beautiful,” Daphne exclaimed.

  My face must’ve said that she was crazy because she blushed a little and added, “Well it could use some work but I think we could make something out of it.”

  “Maybe if we tore it down …”

  Daphne laughed and that was very nice. As I said before, she was like a child and her childish pleasure touched me.

  “It is beautiful,” she said. “Maybe not rich but it’s quiet and it’s private. Nobody else could see us here.”

  I put her bags down next to the sofa.

  “I gotta go out for a little while,” I said. Once I had her in place I saw how to get things moving.

  “Stay.”

  “I got to, Daphne. I got two bad men and the L.A. police on my trail.”

  “What bad men?” She sat at the edge of the bed and crossed her legs. She had put on a yellow sundress at the motel, and it showed off her tan shoulders.

  “The man your friend hired and Frank Green, your other friend.”

  “What does Frankie have to do with you?”

  I went up to her and she stood to meet me. I pulled my collar down and showed her my gashed throat, saying, “That’s what Frankie done to Easy.”

  “Oh, honey!” She reached out gently for my neck.

  Maybe it was just the touch of a woman that got to me or maybe it was finally realizing all that had happened to me in the previous week; I don’t know.

  “Look at that! That’s the cops!” I said, pointing at the bruise on my eye. “I been arrested twice, blamed for four murders, threatened by people I wished I never met, and …” I felt that my liver was going to come out between my teeth.

  “Oh my poor man,” she said as she took me by the arm and led me to the bathroom. She didn’t let go of my arm while she turned on the water for the bath. She was right there with me, unbuttoning my shirt, letting down my pants.

  I was sitting there, naked on the toilet seat, and watching her go through the mirror-doored medicine cabinet. I felt something deep down in me, something dark like jazz when it reminds you that death is waiting.

  “Death,” the saxophone rasps. But, really, I didn’t care.

  CHAPTER 26

  DAPHNE MONET, a woman who I didn’t know at all personally, had me laid back in the deep porcelain tub while she carefully washed between my toes and then up my legs. I had an erection lying flat against my stomach and I was breathing slowly, like a small boy poised to catch a butterfly. Every once in a while she’d say, “Shh, honey, it’s all right.” And for some reason that caused me pain.

  When she finished with my legs she washed my whole body with a rough hand towel and a bar of soap that had pumice in it.

  I never felt drawn to a woman the way I was to Daphne Monet. Most beautiful women make me feel like I want to touch them, own them. But Daphne made me look inside myself. She’d whisper a sweet word and I was brought back to the first time I felt love and loss. I was remembering my mother’s death, back when I was only eight, by the time Daphne got to my belly. I held my breath as she lifted the erection to wash underneath it; she looked into my face, with eyes that had become blue over the water, and stroked my erection up and down, twice. She smiled when she finished and pressed it back down against my flesh.

  I couldn’t say a word.

  She stepped back from the tub and shrugged off her yellow dress in one long stretch, then tossed it into the water over me and pulled down her pants. She sat on the toilet and urinated so loudly that it reminded me more of a man.

  “Hand me the paper, Easy,” she said.

  The roll was at the foot of the bathtub.

  She stood over the tub, with her hips pressed outward, looking down at me. “If my pussy was like a man’s thing it’d be as big as your head, Easy.”

  I stood out of the tub and let her hold me around the testicles. As we went into the bedroom she kept whispering obscene suggestions into my ear. The things she said made me ashamed. I never knew a man who talked as bold as Daphne Monet.

  I never liked it when women talked like that. I felt it was masculine. But, beneath her bold language, Daphne seemed to be asking me for something. And all I wanted was to reach as far down in my soul as I could to find it.

  We yelled and screamed and wrestled all night long. Once, when I had fallen asleep, I woke to find her rubbing an ice cube down my chest. Once, at about 3 A.M., she took me out to the cement patio behind the bushes and made love to me as I lay back against a rough tree.

  When the sun came up she nestled against my side on the bed and asked, “Does it hurt, Easy?”

  “What?”

  “Your thing, does it hurt?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is it sore?”

  “It’s more like the blood vessels ache.”

  She grabbed my penis. “Does it hurt for you to love me, Easy?”

  “Yeah.”

  Her grip tightened. “I love it when you hurt, Easy. For us.”

  “Me too,” I said.

  “Do you feel it?”

  “Yeah, I feel it.�
�

  She released me. “I don’t mean that. I mean this house. I mean us here, like we aren’t who they want us to be.”

  “Who?”

  “They don’t have names. They’re just the ones who won’t let us be ourselves. They never want us to feel this good or close like this. That’s why I wanted to get away with you.”

  “I came to you.”

  She put her hand out again. “But I called you, Easy; I’m the one who brought you to me.”

  WHEN I LOOK BACK on that night I feel confused. I could say that Daphne was crazy but that would mean that I was sane enough to say, and I wasn’t. If she wanted me to hurt, I loved to hurt, and if she wanted me to bleed, I would have been happy to open a vein. Daphne was like a door that had been closed all my life; a door that all of a sudden flung open and let me in. My heart and chest opened as wide as the sky for that woman.

  But I can’t say that she was crazy. Daphne was like the chameleon lizard. She changed for her man. If he was a mild white man who was afraid to complain to the waiter she’d pull his head to her bosom and pat him. If he was a poor black man who had soaked up pain and a rage for a lifetime, she washed his wounds with a rough rag and licked the blood till it staunched.

  IT WAS MIDAFTERNOON when I gave out. We had spent every moment in each other’s arms. I didn’t think about the police or Mouse or even DeWitt Albright. All I cared about was the pain I felt loving that white girl. But finally I pulled away from her and said, “We gotta talk, Daphne.”

  Maybe I was imagining it, but her eyes flashed green for the first time since the bath.

  “Well, what?” She sat up in the bed covering herself. I knew that I was losing her, but I was too satisfied to care.

  “There’s a lot of dead people, Daphne, and the police want me behind that. There’s that thirty thousand dollars you stole from Mr. Carter, and DeWitt Albright is on my ass for that.”

  “Any money I have is between me and Todd and I don’t have anything to do with dead people or that Albright man. Nothing at all.”

  “Maybe you don’t think so but Albright has the talent to make your business his …”

  “So, what do you want from me?”

  “Why’d Howard Green get killed?”

  She stared through me as if I were a mirage. “Who?”

  “Come on.”

  She looked away for a moment and then sighed. “Howard worked for a rich man named Matthew Teran. He was Teran’s driver, chauffeur. Teran wanted to run for mayor but in that crowd you have to ask permission like. Todd didn’t want Teran to do it.”

  “How come?” I asked.

  “A while ago I met him, Teran I mean, and he was buying a little Mexican boy from Richard.”

  “The man we found?”

  She nodded.

  “And who was he?”

  “Richard and I were”—she hesitated for a moment—“friends.”

  “Boyfriend?”

  She nodded slightly. “Before I met Todd we spent some time together.”

  “The night I first started lookin’ for you I ran into Richard in front of John’s speak. Was he lookin’ for you?”

  “He might have been. He didn’t want to let me go so he got together with Teran and Howard Green, to cause me trouble so they could get at Todd.”

  “What kind of trouble?” I asked.

  “Howard knew something. Something about me.”

  “What?”

  But she wouldn’t answer that question.

  “Who killed Howard?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer at first. She just played with the blankets, letting them fall down below her breasts.

  “Joppy did,” she said at last. She wouldn’t meet my eye.

  “Joppy!” I cried. “Why’d he want to do somethin’ like that?” But I knew it was the truth even before I asked the question. It would take the kind of violence Joppy had to beat someone to death.

  “Coretta too?”

  Daphne nodded. The sight of her nakedness nauseated me right then.

  “Why?”

  “Sometimes I would go to Joppy’s place with Frank. Just because Frank liked people to see me with him. And the last time I went there Joppy whispered that someone had been asking for me and that I should call him later to find out who. That’s when I found out about that Albright man.”

  “But what about Howard and Coretta? What about them?”

  “Howard Green had already come to me and told me that if I didn’t do what he and his boss said, they would ruin me. I told Joppy that I could get him a thousand dollars if he could make sure that Albright didn’t find me and if he could talk with Howard.”

  “So he killed Howard?”

  “It was a mistake, I think. Howard had a fast tongue. Joppy just got mad.”

  “But what about Coretta?”

  “When she came to me I told Joppy about it. I told him that you were asking questions and”—she hesitated—“he killed her. He was scared by then. He’d already killed one man.”

  “Why didn’t he kill you?”

  She raised her head and threw her hair back. “I hadn’t given him the money yet. He still wanted the thousand dollars. Anyway, he thought I was Frank’s girl. Most people respect Frank.”

  “What’s Frank to you?”

  “Not anything you’d ever understand, Easy.”

  “Well, do you think he knows who killed Matthew Teran?”

  “I don’t know, Easy. I haven’t killed anybody.”

  “Where’s the money?”

  “Somewhere. Not here. Not where you can get it.”

  “That money’s gonna get you killed, girl.”

  “You kill me, Easy.” She reached over to touch my knee.

  I stood up. “Daphne, I gotta talk to Mr. Carter.”

  “I won’t go back to him. Not ever.”

  “He just wants to talk. You don’t have to be in love with him to talk.”

  “You don’t understand. I do love him and because of that I can’t ever see him.” There were tears in her eyes.

  “You makin’ this hard, Daphne.”

  She reached for me again.

  “Cut it out!”

  “How much will Todd give you for me?”

  “Thousand.”

  “Get me to Frank and I’ll give you two.”

  “Frank tried to kill me.”

  “He won’t do anything to you if I’m there.”

  “Take more than your smile to stop Frank.”

  “Take me to him, Easy; it’s the only way you’ll get paid.”

  “What about Mr. Carter and Albright?”

  “They want me, Easy. Let Frank and me take care of it.”

  “What’s Frank to you?” I asked again.

  She smiled at me then. Her eyes turned blue and she lay back against the wall behind the bed. “Will you help me?”

  “I don’t know. I gotta get outta here.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s just too much,” I said, remembering Sophie. “I need some air to breathe.”

  “We could stay here, honey; this is the only place for us.”

  “You wrong, Daphne. We don’t have to listen to them. If we love each other then we can be together. Ain’t no one can stop that.”

  She smiled, sadly. “You don’t understand.”

  “You mean all you want from me is a roll in the hay. Get a little nigger-love out back and then straighten your clothes and put on your lipstick like you didn’t ever even feel it.”

  She put out her hand to touch me but I moved away. “Easy,” she said. “You have it wrong.”

  “Let’s go get somethin’ to eat,” I said, looking away. “There’s a Chinese place a few blocks from here. We could walk there through a shortcut out back.”

  “It’ll be gone when we get back,” she said.

  I imagined that she had said that to lots of men. And lots of men would have stayed rather than lose her.

  WE DRESSED IN SILENCE.

  When we
were ready to go a thought came to me.

  “Daphne?”

  “Yes, Easy?” Her voice was bored.

  “I wanted to know somethin’.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Why’d you call me yesterday?”

  She turned green eyes on me. “I love you, Easy. I knew it from the first moment we met.”

  CHAPTER 27

  CHOW’S CHOW was a kind of Chinese diner that was common in L.A. back in the forties and fifties. There were no tables, just one long counter with twelve stools. Mr. Ling stood behind the counter in front of a long black stove on which he prepared three dishes: fried rice, egg foo yong, and chow mein. You could have any one of these dishes with chicken, pork, shrimp, beef, or, on Sunday, lobster.

  Mr. Ling was a short man who always wore thin white pants and a white T-shirt. He had the tattoo of a snake that coiled out from under the left side of his collar, went around the back of his neck, and ended up in the middle of his right cheek. The snake’s head had two great fangs and a long, rippling red tongue.

  “What you want?” he yelled at me. I had been in Mr. Ling’s diner at least a dozen times but he never recognized me. He never recognized any customer.

  “Fried rice,” Daphne said in a soft voice.

  “What kind?” Mr. Ling shouted. And then, before she could answer, “Pork, chicken, shrimp, beef!”

  “I’ll have chicken and shrimp, please.”

  “Cost more!”

  “That’ll be alright, sir.”

  I had egg foo yong with pork.

  Daphne seemed a little calmer. I had the feeling that if I could get her to open up, to talk to me, then I could talk some sense into her. I didn’t want to force her to see Carter. If I forced her I could have been arrested for kidnapping and there was no telling how Carter would have reacted to her being manhandled. And maybe I loved her a little bit right then. She looked very nice in that blue dress.

  “You know, I don’t want to force anything on you, Daphne. I mean, the way I feel you don’t ever have to kiss Carter again and it’s okay with me.”

  I could feel her smile in my chest and in other parts of my body.

  “You ever go to the zoo, Easy?”

  “No.”

  “Really?” She was astonished.