Devil in a Blue Dress er-1 Page 5

  When I arrived the merry-go-round and arcade were closing down. Small children and their parents were leaving and a group of young people were milling around, smoking cigarettes and acting tough the way young people do.

  I went across the pier to the railing that looked down onto the beach. I figured that Mr. Albright would see me there as well as any place and that I was far enough away from the white kids that I could avoid any ugliness.

  But that wasn't my week for avoiding anything bad.

  A chubby girl in a tight-fitting skirt wandered away from her friends. She was younger than the rest of them, maybe seventeen, and it seemed like she was the only girl without a date. When she saw me she smiled and said, "Hi." I answered and turned away to look out over the weakly lit shoreline north of Santa Monica. I was hoping that she'd leave and Albright would come and I'd be back in my house before midnight.

  "It's pretty out here, huh?" Her voice came from behind me.

  "Yeah. It's all right."

  "I come from Des Moines, in Iowa. They don't have anything like the ocean back there. Are you from L.A.?"

  "No. Texas." The back of my scalp was tingling.

  "Do they have an ocean in Texas?"

  "The Gulf, they have the Gulf."

  "So you're used to it." She leaned on the rail next to me. "It still knocks me out whenever I see it. My name's Barbara. Barbara Moskowitz. That's a Jewish name."

  "Ezekiel Rawlins," I whispered. I didn't want her so familiar as to use my nickname. When I glanced over my shoulder I noticed that a couple of the young men were looking around, like they'd lost someone.

  "I think they're looking for you," I said.

  "Who cares?" she answered. "My sister just brought me 'cause my parents made her. All she wants to do is make out with Herman and smoke cigarettes."

  "It's still dangerous for a girl to be alone. Your parents are right to want you with somebody."

  "Are you going to hurt me?" She stared into my face intently. I remember wondering what color her eyes were before I heard the shouting.

  "Hey you! Black boy! What's happening here?" It was a pimply-faced boy. He couldn't have been more than twenty years and five and a half feet but he came up to me like a full-grown soldier. He wasn't afraid; a regular fool of a youth.

  "What do you want?" I asked as politely as I could.

  "You know what I mean," he said as he came within range of my grasp.

  "Leave him alone, Herman!" Barbara yelled. "We were just talking!"

  "You were, huh?" he said to me. "We don't need ya talking to our women."

  I could have broken his neck. I could have put out his eyes or broken all of his fingers. But instead I held my breath.

  Five of his friends were headed toward us. While they were coming on, not yet organized or together, I could have killed all of them too. What did they know about violence? I could have crushed their windpipes one by one and they couldn't have done a thing to stop me. They couldn't even run fast enough to escape me. I was still a killing machine.

  "Hey!" the tallest one said. "What's wrong?"

  "Nigger's trying to pick up Barbara."

  "Yeah, an' she's just jailbait."

  "Leave him alone!" Barbara shouted. "He was just saying where he was from."

  I guess she was trying to help me, like a mother hugging her child when he's just broken his ribs.

  "Barbara!" another girl shouted.

  "Hey, man, what's wrong with you?" the big one asked in my face. He was wide-shouldered and a little taller than I; built like a football player. He had a broad, fleshy face. His eyes, nose, and mouth were like tiny islands on a great sea of white skin.

  I noticed that a couple of the others had picked up sticks. They moved in around me, forcing me back against the rail.

  "I don't want any problem, man," I said. I could smell the liquor on the tall one's breath.

  "You already got a problem, boy."

  "Listen, all she said was hi. That's all I said too." But I was thinking to myself, Why the hell do I have to answer to you?

  Herman said, "He was tellin' her where he lived. She said so herself."

  I was trying to remember how far down the beach was. By then I knew I had to get out of there before there were two or three dead bodies, one of them being mine.

  "Excuse me," a man's voice called out.

  There was a slight commotion behind the football player and then a Panama hat appeared there next to him.

  "Excuse me," Mr. DeWitt Albright said again. He was smiling.

  "What do you want?" the footballer said.

  DeWitt just smiled and then he pulled the pistol, which looked somewhat like a rifle, from his coat. He leveled the barrel at the large boy's right eye and said, "I want to see your brains scattered all over your friends' clothes, son. I want you to die for me."

  The large boy, who was wearing red swimming trunks, made a sound like he had swallowed his tongue. He moved his shoulder ever so slightly and DeWitt cocked back the hammer. It sounded like a bone breaking.

  "I wouldn't move if I were you, son. I mean, if you were to breathe too heavily I'd just kill you. And if any of you other boys move I'll kill him and then I'll shoot off all your nuts."

  The ocean was rumbling and the air had turned cold. The only human sound was from Barbara, who was sobbing in her sister's arms.

  "I want you boys to meet my friend," DeWitt said. "Mr. Jones."

  I didn't know what to do so I nodded.

  "He's a friend'a mine," Mr. Albright continued. "And I'd be proud and happy if he was to lower himself to fuck my sister and my mother."

  No one had anything to say to that.

  "Now, Mr. Jones, I want to ask you something."

  "Yes, sir, Mr., ah, Smith."

  "Do you think that I should shoot out this nasty's boy's eyeball?"

  I let that question hang for a bit. Two of the younger boys had been weeping already but the wait caused the footballer to start crying.

  "Well," I said, after fifteen seconds or so, "if he's not sorry for bullying me then I think you should kill him."

  "I'm sorry," said the boy.

  "You are?" Mr. Albright asked.

  "Y-y-yes!"

  "How sorry are you? I mean, are you sorry enough?"

  "Yessir, I am."

  "You're sorry enough?" When he asked that question he moved the muzzle of the gun close enough to touch the boy's tiny, flickering eyelid. "Don't twitch now, I want you to see the bullet coming. Now are you sorry enough?"

  "Yessir!"

  "Then prove it. I want you to show him. I want you to get down on your knees and suck his peter. I want you to suck it good now …"

  The boy started crying outright when Albright said that. I was pretty confident that he was just joking, in a sick kind of way, but my heart quailed along with the footballer.

  "Down on your knees or you're dead, boy!"

  The other boys had their eyes glued to the footballer as he went to his knees. They tore out running when Albright slammed the barrel of his pistol into the side of the boy's head.

  "Get out of here!" Albright yelled. "And if you tell some cops I'll find every one of you."

  We were alone in less than half a minute. I could hear the slamming of car doors and the revving of jalopy engines from the parking lot and the street.

  "They got something to think about now," Albright said. He returned his long-barreled .44-caliber pistol to the holster inside his coat. The pier was abandoned; everything was dark and silent.

  "I don't think that they'd dare call the cops on something like this but we should move on just in case," he said.

  Albright's white Cadillac was parked in the lot down under the pier. He drove south down along the ocean. There were few electric lights from the coast, and just a sliver of moon, but the sea glittered with a million tiny glints. It looked like every shiny fish in the sea had come to the surface to mimic the stars that flickered in the sky. There was light everywhere and there
was darkness everywhere too.

  He switched on the radio and tuned in a big-band station that was playing "Two Lonely People," by Fats Waller. I remember because as soon as the music came on I started shivering. I wasn't afraid; I was angry, angry at the way he humiliated that boy. I didn't care about the boy's feelings, I cared that if Albright could do something like that to one of his own then I knew he could do the same, and much worse, to me. But if he wanted to shoot me he'd just have to do it because I wasn't going down on my knees for him or for anybody else.

  I never doubted for a minute that Albright would have killed that boy.

  "What you got, Easy?" he asked after a while.

  "I got a name and an address. I got the last day she was seen and who she was with. I know the man she was seen with and I know what he does for a living." I was proud of knowledge when I was a young man. Joppy had told me just to take the money and to pretend I was looking for the girl, but once I had a piece of information I had to show it off.

  "All that's worth the money."

  "But I want to know something first."

  "What's that?" Mr. Albright asked. He pulled the car onto a shoulder that overlooked the shimmering Pacific. The waves were really rolling that night, you could even hear them through the closed windows.

  "I want to know that no harm is going to come to that girl, or anybody else."

  "Do I look that much like God to you? Can I tell you what will happen tomorrow? I don't plan for the girl to be hurt. My friend thinks he's in love with her. He wants to buy her a gold ring and live happily ever after. But, you know, she might forget to buckle her shoes next week and fall down and break her neck, and if she does you can't hold me up for it. But whatever."

  I knew that was the most I would get out of him. DeWitt made no promises but I believed that he meant no harm to the girl in the photograph.

  "She was with a man named Frank Green, Tuesday last. They were at a bar called the Playroom."

  "Where is she now?"

  "Woman who told me said she thought that they were a team, Green and the girl, so she's probably with him."

  "Where's that?" he asked. His smile and good manners were gone; this was business now—plain and simple.

  "He's got an apartment at Skyler and Eighty-third. Place is called the Skyler Arms."

  He took out the white pen and wallet and scribbled something on the notepad. Then he stared at me with those dead eyes while he tapped the steering wheel with the pen.

  "What else?"

  "Frank's a gangster," I said. That got DeWitt to smile again. "He's with hijackers. They take liquor and cigarettes; sell'em all over southern California."

  "Bad man?" DeWitt couldn't keep his smile down.

  "Bad enough. He somethin' with a knife."

  "You ever see him in action? I mean, you see him kill somebody?"

  "I saw him cut a man in a bar once; loudmouth dude didn't know who Frank was."

  DeWitt's eyes came to life for a moment; he leaned across the seat so far that I could feel his dry breath on my neck. "I want you to remember something, Easy. I want you to think about when Frank took his knife and stabbed that man."

  I thought about it a second and then I nodded to let him know that I was ready.

  "Before he went at him, did he hesitate? Even for a second?"

  I thought about the crowded bar down on Figueroa. The big man was talking to Frank's woman and when Frank walked up to him he put his hand against Frank's chest, getting ready to push him away, I suppose. Frank's eyes widened and he threw his head around as if to say to the crowd, "Look at what this fool is doin'! He deserve t'be dead, stupid as he acts!" Then the knife appeared in Frank's hand and the big man crumpled against the bar, trying to ward off the stroke with his big fleshy arms …

  "Maybe just a second, not even that," I said.

  Mr. DeWitt Albright laughed softly.

  "Well," he said. "I guess I have to see what I shall see."

  "Maybe you could get to the girl when he's out. Frank spends a lot of time on the road. I saw him the other night, at John's, he was dressed for hijacking, so he might be out of town for a couple of more days."

  "That would be best," Albright answered. He leaned back across the seat. "No reason to be any messier than we have to, now. You got that photograph?"

  "No," I lied. "Not on me. I left it at home."

  He only looked at me for a second but I knew he didn't believe it, I don't know why I wanted to keep her picture. It's just that the way she looked out at me made me feel good.

  "Well, maybe I'll pick it up after I find her; you know I like to make everything neat after a job … Here's another hundred and take this card too. All you have to do is go down to that address and you can pick up a job to tide you over until something else comes up."

  He handed me a tight roll of bills and a card. I couldn't read the card in that dim light so I shoved it and the money in my pocket.

  "I think I can get my old job back so I won't need the address."

  "Hold on to it," he said, as he turned the ignition. "You did alright by me, getting this information, and I'm doing right by you. That's the way I do business, Easy; I always pay my debts."

  The drive back was quiet and brilliant with night lights. Benny Goodman was on the radio and DeWitt Albright hummed along as if he had grown up with big bands.

  When we pulled up to my car, next to the pier, everything was as it had been when we left. When I opened the door to get out Albright said, "Pleasure working with you, Easy." He extended his hand and when he had the snake grip on me again his look became quizzical and he said, "You know, I was wondering just one thing."

  "What's that?"

  "How come you let those boys get around you like that? You could have picked them off one by one before they got your back to the rails."

  "I don't kill children," I said.

  Albright laughed for the second time that night.

  Then he let me go and said goodbye.

  9

  0ur team worked in a large hangar on the south side of the Santa Monica plant. I got there early, about 6 a.m., before the day shift began. I wanted to get to Benny, Benito Giacomo, before they started working.

  Once Champion designed a new aircraft, either for the air force or for one of the airlines, they had a few teams build them for a while to get out the kinks in construction. Benito's team would, for instance, put together the left wing and move it on to another group in charge of assembly for the entire aircraft. But instead of assembling the plane a group of experts would go over our work with a magnifying glass to make sure that the procedures they set up for production were good.

  It was an important job and all the men were proud to be on it but Benito was so high-strung that whenever we had a new project he'd turn sour.

  That's really why he fired me.

  I was coming off of a hard shift, we had two men out with the flu, and I was tired. Benny wanted us to stay longer just to check out our work but I didn't want any of it. I was tired and I knew that anything I looked at would have gotten a passing grade, so I said that we should wait until morning. The men listened to me. I wasn't a team leader but Benny relied on me to set an example for others because I was such a good worker. But that was just a bad day. I needed sleep to do the job right and Benny didn't trust me enough to hear that.

  He told me that I had to work hard if I wanted to get the promotion we'd talked about; a promotion that would put me just a grade below Dupree.

  I told him that I worked hard every day.

  A job in a factory is an awful lot like working on a plantation in the South. The bosses see all the workers like they're children, and everyone knows how lazy children are. So Benny thought he'd teach me a little something about responsibility because he was the boss and I was the child.

  The white workers didn't have a problem with that kind of treatment because they didn't come from a place where men were always called boys. The white worker would have just said,
"Sure, Benny, you called it right, but damn if I can see straight right now." And Benny would have understood that. He would have laughed and realized how pushy he was being and offered to take Mr. Davenport, or whoever, out to drink a beer. But the Negro workers didn't drink with Benny. We didn't go to the same bars, we didn't wink at the same girls.

  What I should have done, if I wanted my job, was to stay, like he asked, and then come back early the next day to recheck the work. If I had told Benny I couldn't see straight he would have told me to buy glasses.

  So there I was at the mouth of the man-made cave of an airplane hangar. The sun wasn't really up but everything was light. The large cement floor was empty except for a couple of trucks and a large tarp over the wing assembly. It felt good and familiar to be back there. No jazzy photographs of white girls anywhere, no strange white men with dead blue eyes. I was in a place of family men and working men who went home to their own houses at night and read the newspaper and watched Milton Berle.

  "Easy!"

  Dupree's shout always sounded the same whether he was happy to see you or he was about to pull out his small-barreled pistol.

  "Hey, Dupree!" I shouted.

  "What you say to Coretta, man?" he asked as he came up to me.

  "Nuthin', nuthin' at all. What you mean?"

  "Well, either you said sumpin' or I got bad breath because she tore out yesterday mornin' an' I ain't seen'er since."

  "What?"

  "Yeah! She fixed me some breakfast an' then said she had some business so she'd see me fo' dinner and that's the last I seen of'er."

  "She din't come home?"

  "Nope. You know I come in an' burnt some pork chops to make up for the night before but she din't come in."

  Dupree had a couple of inches on me and he was built like Joppy when Joppy was still a boxer. He was hovering over me and I could feel the violence come off of him in waves.

  "No, man, I didn't say a thing. We put you in the bed, then she gave me a drink and I went home. That's all."

  "Then where is she?" he demanded.

  "How you expect me t'know? You know Coretta. She likes to keep her secrets. Maybe she's with her auntie out in Compton. She could be in Reno."