I liked the man. He was straightforward and nervous. I guess I’m always a little gleeful when I’m in the seat of power with a white man.
“Grace says I should trust you, Mr. Rawlins,” he said. “What can you do for me?”
“It’s easy, Mr. Stowe. You just sit at your desk and wait till I come to you. I’ll have the photographs, whatever they are, and a promise that Sallie will leave you be.”
“How can you do that?”
“I cain’t give ya all my secrets now,” I said. I smiled and so did Stowe.
“And how much do you charge, Mr. Rawlins?”
“I want Bartlett’s job.”
“You what?”
From my jacket pocket I took out an application form that I had filled in for the job of supervising senior head custodian. I handed the sheet to Stowe.
“I’ve managed apartment buildings with the Mofass real estate agency for over fifteen years. And I know how to work with people. It says in the handbook I got with the application that someone can be hired at a higher position at the discretion of the area supervisor. I figure if I can make all this happen smoothly then you might wanna recommend me.”
Stowe was amazed at first and then he began to laugh. He laughed very hard and for a long time.
When he was through laughing we had a deal.
Sallie Monroe was a life-taker; a man who had a good mind and great strength of will and body — but nowhere legal to use them. He took up a lot of space, dominating almost every situation with his girth. Sallie hated white people because, on the whole, they didn’t respect his mind. He was a buck to them, suited only to tote and break under the weight of unrelenting labor.
Like most black men Sallie took out his anger on other Negroes. But he was always looking to have sway over a white man, or woman. Usually it was a woman. A prostitute or drug addict. White women or white trash men were an easy target for Sallie, but he didn’t indulge his hate much, because, first and foremost, he was a businessman — he never did a thing unless there was a profit to be made.
I knew all that going into Petey’s Rib Hut on the corner of Central and Eighty-third Place.
The Rib Hut had started out as a stand, a patio in front of a small enclosure where Petey and his wife smoked the ribs that they sold through the window. As the years went by Petey made enough money to surround the patio with a high wooden fence. After a few more years the fence turned into walls covered by an aluminum roof. The floor was the same painted cement and the furniture was still redwood benches but Petey had himself a restaurant all the same.
Sallie spent every afternoon sitting at the back of the Rib Hut. He liked sucking ribs and doing business at the same time.
Sitting with him was Charles Moody, his driver and bodyguard, and Foxx, a small dandy-looking man who was always whispering into Sallie’s ear.
Little Richard was shouting “Good Golly, Miss Molly” on the jukebox.
When Sallie saw me coming his eyes went over my shoulder. He was looking for Mouse, I knew. Mouse was my friend, and that meant something on streets from Galveston, Texas, to the San Francisco Bay.
“Easy.” Sallie grinned at me.
“Hey, Sal. S’appenin’?”
“They say I’ma be free if I just get offa my fat ass an’ walk down the streets of Selma wit’ my hands in my pockets.” Sallie slapped Charles on the back and laughed loud enough to drown out the song. His henchmen laughed, and looked really pleased, but I don’t think they got the joke.
I didn’t have to laugh because Sallie didn’t pay my bills.
“What you want, Easy Rawlins?”
“Talk,” I said.
“Then talk.”
“Just you’n me, Sal.”
Charles and Foxx both gave me a who-is-this-fool? look — but I ignored them. I had a strong reputation in the streets and Sallie knew it.
He also knew Mouse.
“Give us a minute,” he said to his men. After they moved away he whispered, “This better be good.”
I sat down and pulled my jacket closed, hoping that no one saw the weight of the .38 in my right pocket.
“I’m here for a friend’a mines,” I said.
Sallie gestured for Petey to bring over more food.
“Bertrand Stowe,” I continued.
That got Sallie’s attention. “Don’t get yo’ nose caught up in my business now, Easy.”
“I ain’t messin’ wit’ you, Sal,” I said. “Stowe called me when he heard that you was gonna mess wit’ him. He told me that he wasn’t gonna do what you say an’ that he was gonna go down to the police.”
“Say what?”
I gave a small but definite nod. “You got to understand, Sal. Bert’s from a straight white family. He cross at the crosswalk an’ leave a dime in the cigar box when the paper boy ain’t around.”
“He gone leave his liver under my back tire he call cop on me,” Sallie said. I knew he meant it. Sallie was a hard case. He didn’t play.
But I was serious that day too. I had shared the same sour air with men like Sal and his lackeys for my whole life. One day one of them was bound to kill me — unless I could make the break.
I could have gotten a job as a dishwasher or stone buster, I could have become a regular janitor for the city or state. But I was like Sallie when it came to the disrespect shown to blacks by white men. I needed a job with responsibility and, at least, some pride.
“That’s what I told him,” I said. “I told’im that you cain’t play wit’ Sallie. Sallie will fuck you up.”
The gangster eyed me. He didn’t know where I was coming from — yet.
“What you want, Easy Rawlins?” he asked again.
“Bert’s gonna go to the cops you push’im,” I said. “That’s a fact. He’s a straight arrow an’ only go one way. I know that you’ll go after him. All that is cut in stone. But it don’t have to be.”
Sallie stared at me.
I let my hand drift toward my pocket.
“So I got another choice,” I said.
“What’s that?” Sallie mouthed the words with no voice.
“I give you seventeen hundred and sixty-two dollars and you give me the snapshots — and the negatives.”
I was a shorebird crying at the sea.
Sallie gauged me for a moment. The record on the jukebox switched and “Stagger Lee” came on. It played down to the sax solo before Sallie spoke again.
“Tell me why I don’t reach over there an’ break yo’ neck, Easy Rawlins.”
He wanted me to say Mouse. He wanted me to run for cover under the protection of my friend. All I had to do was call out Raymond’s name and Sallie would have slapped me silly and then gone to have a sit-down with Mouse.
Maybe I would have been smarter to say his name.
But not that day.
No.
“Because if you reach at me,” I said, dead serious, “I got a little something right here in my pocket for you. I got it right here.”
I’ve run across quite a few white men who have bragged to me about how they worked their way through college; about how they worked hard to get where they’re at. Shit. I’d like to see any one of them working like I did with Sallie that day. I had my hand on the trigger and my eye in his. There was going to be blood or money on the table before long because neither one of us was walking away until the issue was settled.
If it had been Mouse sitting across from me I would have shot without any words. If it had been Mouse I wouldn’t have even made it into the room. Mouse would have seen trouble coming and shot me for luck.
But Sallie wasn’t on Mouse’s level. He was a bully, a pimp; an angry man — but not a courageous one.