Six Easy Pieces: Easy Rawlins Stories Page 20

  The porch had two redwood chairs and looked into the boughs of a tall magnolia. It was cool out there and I relaxed.

  “…wasn’t a bad girl really,” he was saying about Doreen.

  We had been out there for an hour or more. Every once in a while the little white woman from the other apartment would come out onto her little porch to see if I was still there.

  Palmer told me about the war and the trenches, about the mustard gas and wild dogs that fed on soldiers who had fallen alone. He had three children, two dead wives, and had come out to California after the war because the war had taken too many friends from his small Iowa town.

  I told him about my leaving the South for pretty much the same reasons, except that most of my friends had died in Houston rather than on the battlefield.

  It was a nice talk. He was the perfect host; a lonely old man who didn’t worry about race or wildness in girls. I guided him into a discussion about Doreen, telling him that I had a friend who knew her in Santa Maria and who worried that she might have been in trouble because of a guy named Dean.

  “It was that Dean who got to her,” Palmer agreed. “He was handsome and drove a motorcycle. Girls like that. They think they want a wild man until they drop their first kid. Then it’s fuddy-duddies like you’n me they want, Mr. Auburn.”

  I liked being called a fuddy-duddy.

  “My friend wanted me to drop by and see if Doreen had moved back here,” I said.

  “No,” Mr. Palmer said. “She never came back. But I send her mail on to an address down in Venice. I think it’s Dean’s brother. Here, I’ll get it for you.”

  The veteran weighed no more than a hundred and ten pounds but he had to use all of his strength and a lot of leverage to get up and out of his chair. While he was gone the old lady next door spied on me from her kitchen window.

  I felt that I deserved her distrust. There I was lying to the friendly old man. If it wasn’t for Domaque and my blood debt to Mouse I would have left then.

  “It’s a place down in Venice,” Palmer said when he returned. “I drove her down there once before the state took my license. They say I can’t see well enough. Anyway, it’s a small place not far from the water. But his brother isn’t a friendly fellow. I wouldn’t go there alone if I were you, Mr. Auburn. If you know what I mean.”

  It was his only reference to race. Even then he might have meant I’d have trouble because of my fuddy-duddy status.

  I had an extra cup of coffee and swapped a few war stories. He walked me to the door as evening came on.

  “Come back and see me again sometime, Jay,” Mr. Palmer said as I left. “It’s nice to talk to somebody smart now and then.”

  I DROVE DOWN TO THE ADDRESS Mr. Palmer gave me. It was on a small street a mile or so south of Pico. The house was smaller than the gaping garage, and the lawn was covered with rusting cars and motorcycle parts. I saw three men and one white-blond girl sitting on a bench, drinking whiskey from a quart bottle. One of the men and the girl had been in the photograph I took from the Santa Maria trailer.

  The men were a rough-looking lot. They had long greasy hair that came down past where their collars would have been if they wore proper shirts. But they wore T-shirts and leather jackets, dirty jeans and heavy boots.

  I drove by quickly and then headed back toward Compton.

  I MULLED OVER THE PROBLEM of Dean’s brother’s place all the way. Mr. Palmer was probably right about me walking up there alone. Even in a gesture of friendship those men would have probably shown me the door—with a tire iron. And I didn’t want Doreen or Dean to know I was looking into them, not until I had a plan.

  I needed backup but there was only one man I knew who could take that ride. And it scared me to death even to consider his help.

  * * *

  ETTA ANSWERED THE DOOR when I got there. Her eyes turned to stone when she saw me through the screen.

  “How did you find us?” she asked in a whisper.

  “Why’d you lie to me, Etta?” I replied.

  “Who is it?” Mouse called from somewhere in the house.

  “Nobody,” Etta said.

  “It’s me,” I said, raising my voice.

  “Come on in, Easy,” Mouse said.

  Etta stared death at me a moment more and then stepped aside.

  Raymond was sitting at the dining table playing solitaire, dressed in a soft gray shirt and dark gray pants. These colors made his gray eyes spark like fire.

  Etta moved to a corner and stared at me like Feather’s little yellow dog does sometimes.

  “Don’t be gettin’ all mad, Etta,” Mouse said. “I told Easy I was here. You know we gonna need him if we want Dom to get out from under that police investigation.”

  Etta turned on her heel and strode from the room. We could hear her slamming pots and pans around in the kitchen.

  “What you know, Easy?” Mouse asked.

  “Too much,” I said.

  “It’s them books, brother. Readin’ ain’t all that good, you know. It softens up your brain.”

  “We can’t kill ’em, Ray.”

  His teeth were smiling but he was staring gray-eyed death.

  “Really, man,” I said. “If you kill ’em then Dom will go down for the murder.”

  “Okay, baby. I got ya. No killin’ ’cause it’s for Dom. Okay.”

  “I need an out-of-town car,” I said. “That and the money bag.”

  “We could keep the money, though,” Mouse said. “Right?”

  “Most of it. Hopefully they got more money at the house.”

  “What house?”

  “Down in Venice.”

  Mouse grinned again. “You’re good, Easy. Damn good.”

  WE PICKED UP A CAR from a friend of Raymond’s. It was a purple Chrysler, from San Diego we were told. We headed out for Venice at about nine-fifteen. On the way we decided that Mouse should approach the family, to make sure that Dean and Doreen were there. I tried to think of something better. Putting Mouse in the face of the enemy more often than not ended up in a war. But I made him promise that he’d keep his gun in his belt loop and his knife in his pocket. That didn’t mean much, though. Mouse had killed people with his hands, feet, and once with his teeth.

  I waited down the block while he approached them with the promise of good weed that he could procure. He was gone over an hour and a half.

  I sat in the car worried that the men got suspicious and overpowered my friend. If he died this time there’d be no solace for me. I was just about ready to take the eight-chambered .38 and rush the houseful of long-haired white men.

  But then Mouse strolled up.

  He was singing a song. “Feelin’ Good.”

  Once next to me again I could see that he was pretty high.

  “Damn, Easy. If them boys wasn’t all up against Dom I’d like ’em pretty good. You know I offered ’em my weed but they had golden hash. Damn. Wow. That shit twist up your mind.”

  “Dean and Doreen there?” I asked.

  “Sure is. Both of ’em. But they headed out to Canada tomorrow morning. Leavin’ the country—‘just in case,’ they said.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Bright and early.”

  “Shit.”

  “What we gonna do, brother?” Mouse asked.

  He was grinning, looking at his face in the rearview mirror.

  “Wait here.” I took out the Wells-Fargo bag and made it down the street.

  I went into a driveway two houses down from the house of the motorcyclists and jumped over three fences. This brought me to a stand of fruitless banana trees that separated Dean’s brother’s house from his neighbors. There was loud rock and roll music playing from the open back door.

  I took a deep breath and made my way across the cement patio and to an open window. Inside the window a balding man with a beard was kissing Doreen. It was a long, slow kiss. They were lying on a mattress on the floor, pressed up into a corner. The bald man put a hand up under her dres
s and she made a grunting sound that surprised me.

  Then Dean came in.

  “What the fuck,” he said.

  Doreen jumped up immediately. She was a little slow on her feet, though.

  The balding man was laughing.

  “Just a little kiss, Dean. That’s all, man. You don’t mind if your brother gets a little kiss from his future sister-in-law.”

  “Get the fuck in our room, Dorrie,” Dean said.

  “Oh come on, baby,” she said. “It wasn’t nuthin’.”

  I felt something brush against my ankle. When I looked down I expected to see a cat but instead it was a rat standing on its back legs, baring uneven yellow fangs.

  I know I made some kind of sound but luckily Dean and his brother’s cursing drowned it out.

  They argued for a minute or more and then took it out of the room with Doreen trailing after.

  I tossed the money bag into a corner and then ran for all I was worth.

  Mouse was listening to the radio when I got there. He was lost in the soul of Otis Redding and I couldn’t stop from breathing like a spent dog.

  “WE COULD JUST CALL THE POLICE,” I was saying. We were still parked down the block.

  “Ain’t LAPD’s case,” Mouse argued. “They ain’t gonna come runnin’ on a phone call. And even if they do come they’ll stop at the front door and that’ll be that. No, Easy. My way is the only way and you know it.”

  I finally agreed. Mouse was crazy and unread but he was smart in spite of that.

  I DROVE DOWN THE STREET going about thirty. Mouse, who was sitting in the backseat, lowered his window. When we got in front of the bikers’ house, he opened fire with his cannon-like .41. He shot all six chambers and reloaded with amazing precision while I made a U-turn at the end of the block. He opened fire again on our return route. On our third pass a man was standing out in front of the house holding a rifle or maybe a shotgun.

  “Don’t kill him, Raymond!” I shouted as my friend opened fire.

  The rifleman fired too, blowing out the rear window.

  “I hit him!” Mouse declared. “In the leg, Easy. In the leg.”

  The next time we went down the block the man was crawling toward the house. Gunfire flared from the windows and our stolen Chrysler was hit with a few slugs.

  I threw a bundle of money onto the lawn.

  Mouse was laughing.

  “One more time,” he said.

  “No,” I told him. “If that don’t do it then nuthin’ will.”

  I DROVE SEVENTEEN blocks north to the nearly vacant parking lot of a Safeway supermarket. We left the wounded Chrysler there and went on foot to my car, which was four blocks farther on.

  Then we came to the hard part.

  I drove back down to Venice, to the street where we had played cowboys and Indians. The police were there arresting the occupants of the house. I saw them put Doreen into the back of a squad car.

  “…THERE WAS A VIOLENT shootout in Venice last night,” the radio announcer was saying at 5:15 the next morning. I was on my way to work. “When the police arrived at the scene they discovered a bundle of cash in a Wells-Fargo wrapper. Inside the house police found a number of unregistered handguns and more evidence from the armored car robbery that occurred in Santa Maria last week. Arrested were Anthony Gleason, who was wounded in the shootout, Mickey Lannerman, Doreen Fitz, and Arnold Wilson. A fifth suspect, Dean Lannerman, is believed to have fled the scene on foot. Police sources have informed us that the escaped Lannerman and Miss Fitz are now prime suspects in the armored car robbery. Lannerman is considered armed and dangerous…”

  The announcer went on to explain that the weapon that might have been used in the robbery-murder was also found at the scene. There was also some speculation that Lannerman and Fitz might have had something to do with the murder of an associate of theirs, a man named Myermann.

  I made a U-turn in the middle of Central Avenue headed for Santa Barbara.

  I stopped to call EttaMae’s number. Luckily she answered.

  “What you want, Easy?”

  “I need Mama Jo’s number.”

  “She ain’t got no phone.”

  “Then I need her address.”

  “Why?”

  “I think somethin’ me and Raymond did might come back on her. I need to get there fast, Etta.”

  “You want me to get Raymond up? He knows the way.”

  “I got a map. I’ll find my own way.”

  She hesitated and then gave me what I needed.

  I drove along the Pacific Coast Highway part of the way, then followed the map to a dirt road that led up into a forest of pine.

  Walking down toward the house I was brought back to an earlier time, a time in the swamplands of eastern Texas. The trees, the smell of soil, insects buzzing around my head, even the fever I’d felt in the primeval wood returned.

  The two-story house was rustic. Made from wood and stone, brick and plaster. There were large patches of chicken wire and tarpaper where the more costly materials had crumbled and failed.

  The front door was ajar.

  I picked up a stone and pushed the door open.

  The room I entered was just like the one I had seen twenty-five years before. Shelves along the walls were filled with bottles and jars containing powders, leaves, twigs, and crystals. There was the same rough-hewn table and chairs. There was even a fireplace with the same skulls—five or six armadillos and one human, Domaque Sr.

  “Easy,” she whispered from behind a drawn curtain.

  I jumped nearly across the room.

  “What’s wrong?” the curtains opened and Jo walked out.

  She didn’t look a day older, except maybe around the eyes. Black skin and dark hair with some silver showing here and there. She stood erect, an inch taller than I. She was wearing a coral-colored robe drawn tight around her shoulders.

  “We gotta get outta here, Jo,” I said.

  “Sit down, honey,” she said. “Let me make you some tea calm your nerves.”

  “We got to go,” I said again.

  “Why?” She smiled. Her teeth were the color of aged ivory. They were big and somehow frightening.

  “The man who robbed that armored car and blamed it on Dom was found by the police,” I said. “But he got away. We framed him with the same bag he tried to frame Dom with. He might be comin’ here.”

  “Oh?” she said. “Then go on and sit, baby. I done thrown the bones on that one and the girl. They ain’t gonna mess around me. Go on—sit.”

  I did as she said.

  She made a pot of tea from her leaves and twigs. She served mine in a wooden mug.

  The table was clear except for a worn black velvet bag.

  “That’s my chicken bones,” she said. “That’s how I divine the future.”

  From the first sip I was a little light-headed.

  “Really?” I said.

  “Uh-huh. You want me to read your future?”

  “No thanks.” I took a second sip and settled back into the chair. I was still thinking about Dean Lannerman but for some reason I wasn’t concerned.

  “I know what you mean, honey,” Jo said. “Men like you is better off not knowin’. Otherwise you might second-guess what you doin’ and get all worried when they ain’t nuthin’ you could do.”

  “Yeah,” I said. I grinned too.

  “Old Domaque was like that,” she said waving her hand at the skull covered in dried skin on the mantel. “He died for love of me and my father. He refused to fight and died thinkin’ that if he killed my father he would have broke my heart.”

  “He must have been a great man,” someone speculated. That someone was probably me.

  “Drink up, baby,” Jo said.

  I did so. The world around me got sparkly and soft. Jo’s deep voice droned on. Some kind of music was playing. It was music that I had listened to years before on scratchy phonographs down in Texas when I was a child. I don’t know if the music came out of my me
mories or if Jo was playing something on an old player.

  “You never did nuthin’ wrong to Raymond, baby,” she was saying. “And you saved Dom for me. Don’t you ever worry about what you do, Easy. You are the kinda man who stands up for who he is. You come here because you know what’s right. You might not always make it in time but you always on the way. That’s all we can ask for, darling child.”

  I fell asleep to the deep crooning tones of Mama Jo’s speech. I felt as if I were being lifted up by a hundred black hands, that I was being carried up the side of a mountain while a thousand women sang. There were drums and trumpets playing. And I was walking down the center of Central Avenue with ten thousand people behind me. We were all walking together toward some unknown destiny.

  I came to a door that had my name on it. Then I took a deep breath and trundled off into a deep sleep.

  WHEN I WOKE UP I knew it was night. I was in bed and dressed only in my pants. There were voices coming from beyond the curtains. I came out feeling deeply refreshed. Dom and Mouse were sitting with Jo at the country table, eating from tin plates.

  “You sleep good, baby?” Jo asked me.

  Just that little bit of concern made me want to cry.

  “What happened to Dean?” I asked.

  “Dead,” Mouse said.

  “Dead,” echoed Dom.

  “How?”

  “They had a roadblock waitin’ for him down on the highway. They knew him around here and spotted him on the road.”

  “He was comin’ for Jo,” I said.

  “But he was ordained to die on the asphalt,” Jo said.

  I wondered if her chicken bones had been so specific but I didn’t ask.

  “Wanna go fishin’, Easy?” Dom asked.

  “In the mornin’?”

  “Now,” he cried. “The grunion’s runnin’.”

  I STOPPED AT a phone booth and called Bonnie. She seemed to understand, which surprised me because I was still in the haze of Jo’s potion.

  “I dreamed I had a door,” I said into the receiver.

  “It was telling you something,” Bonnie said. “Something that you need to know.”

  * * *

  AFTER THAT RAYMOND AND DOM and I ran up and down the beach with our aluminum pails scooping up the spawning fish and laughing out loud. We were like children in the dark of the ocean. No one knew we were there. No one cared about us and that was just fine by me.