Billy Bartlett was stunned too. He stood toward the back of the surprisingly neat and sunny room wearing boxer shorts. He had a long and slender knife in his fist.
Remembering the little butcher’s speed I took a large piece of the door and threw it hard; I came right behind it. I hit the confused cook in the nose and he went down.
No one was shouting from outside so I disarmed him and dragged him through the doorway he’d been standing in.
It was a neat little bedroom. Bartlett struggled to his feet and staggered around to get his balance. Blood was coming from his nose and front lip.
I unplugged a long extension cord from the wall and disconnected it from a lamp and an electric clock.
“Com’ere!” I grabbed Bartlett and made him put his hands behind his back. After I’d tied his hands I kicked the crook of his knees to make him fall on the bed. I tied his hands together with his feet, making him a bony bow on the trim single mattress.
It was then that I noticed that my vision was cloudy, dark. My fingers were numb and restless. That was murder in my blood.
I realized suddenly that I had to relieve myself.
I collided with the doorjamb going into the toilet off Bartlett’s room.
The crash of water as I urinated jangled my nerves.
“Hey!” the butcher called out.
“Shut up,” I said. “Or I’ma come in there and shut you up.”
Silence saved his life.
I washed my hands in cold water and then doused my face.
“What you want, man?” Bartlett asked me. I was sitting in a chair next to his bed.
“My hands hurt,” he said. “I cain’t breathe through my nose.”
“You ain’t gonna be breathin’ at all you don’t talk to me,” I said softly.
“Talk about what?”
“You know who I am?” I asked. “My name is Easy Rawlins.”
“I thought you said your name was Koogan?”
“You know who I am?” I asked again.
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Then talk to me.”
“What you wanna know?”
I just slapped him — that’s all. Knocking him around, tying him up. That wasn’t much considering what he had done to me.
“Hey, man!” he cried. “Lemme up.”
“Talk to me, Billy,” I said. “Talk to me.”
“You wanna know ’bout the schools? Is that what you want?”
I didn’t reply.
“It was Sallie Monroe, not me. It was Sallie. I met Roman at Idabell’s house, at a party they had. We got friendly and I introduced him to Sallie. Next thing I know Roman’s with Grace an’ she’s on junk. Roman got the job and then Sallie got me to go in to help him ’cause I knew the school setups and how things worked. You know, alarms and electric systems, where stuff might be stored.”
“What about Holland?”
“What about him?”
“How was he in it?”
“Roman cut him in ’cause we could use his paper shack to hold stuff sometimes.”
“What did Idabell want wit’ you that night she came to Whitehead’s?”
“She wanted some money. She knew I was in it with Holly and she wanted three hunnert dollars.”
“What did she say to you?”
“Nuthin’. Just that she was goin’ outta town.”
“Is that all?”
“No. I mean I asked if she needed a place to stay but she said that she was going to stay with a girlfriend.”
“Who’d you tell?” I asked the flesh and bones.
He saw my face and realized what Joey Beam must have done.
“I didn’t know, man,” he pleaded. “I swear I didn’t know.”
“That ain’t gonna save your life, Billy.” I didn’t even know if I intended to kill him, but I certainly was on the edge.
“I’ll turn myself in, man. It was Sallie wanted to call cop on you. Roman was dead and he thought you could take the fall. It was Sallie.”
“No,” I said.
“What you mean — no!”
“I mean no, Billy. I mean whoever called knew Roman was dead before the cops or anybody else did. The man who called the cops called the principal at Sojourner Truth first. That man already knew that Roman was dead and he wanted them to be lookin’ at me for his killer. You sayin’ that Sallie killed Roman?”
For a moment there I thought that Billy had died. His eyes were opened wide and his mouth was too. Then I heard the high-pitched whine of his breathing.
“I don’t know nuthin’ about that,” he said. “I don’t know a thing.”
“Who killed’im, Billy? I ain’t gonna ask you twice.”
At first I thought he was coughing; that the blood from his nose had gone down his throat. But then I saw the tears. His lips were pushing in and out and his head bobbed in a steady beat with the barks.
“That does it!” I shouted.
I ran into the living room and looked around until I found the long knife on the floor. Then I stalked back to the coffin-shaped bed. I’d run out intending to kill Billy. But standing up and going from one room to the other, bending down to get the knife, made me remember the jailhouse bully whose name wasn’t Jones and Felix Wren. By the time I got back to Bartlett I had lost my desire for his blood.
But Billy didn’t know that.
“It was his brother, man. His brother. His brother. His brother…” He kept saying that with his big eyes on the knife in my hand. He was a butcher, after all; he knew what that knife could do to his meat.
“Holland?” I asked.
“Yeah. It was Holland. Roman come an’ got me to go out to the garden. He wanted to cut his drug for Joey Beam. Beam was gonna kill’im if he didn’t get his aitch. Roman was gonna cut it down at the garden class.”
“You dealin’ wit’im?”
“Uh-uh. No. I only ever helped stealin’ stuff. But Roman was in trouble wit’ Sallie an’ Beam. He wanted to turn the drug over an’ call it square.”
“But?”
“It was Holland. He come right outta the dark wit’ a shovel in his hand. He was shoutin’ an’ I run. I went right up to the fence an’ over.”
“An’ so how you know Holland killed his brother?” I asked.
“He killed him, man. Who else coulda killed’im?”
“Roman had keys to my school?”
“Yeah.”
“They didn’t find no keys on him. That’s why they was lookin’ at me.”
“I got the keys. They in that top drawer, in the dresser. I was carryin’ the keys for Roman and I still had ’em when I ran.” He looked at my knife. “Look in the drawer if you don’t believe me.”
I looked. There was a giant key ring with over thirty master keys on it. I pocketed the keys and went back to the butcher.
“And then you called the principal about me?”
“That was Sallie. I went to him to tell’im what happened. I didn’t tell’im nuthin’ ’bout no drug though. I just told’im that he was outta the school-robbin’ business.”
A feeling of calm came over me. The story sounded right. Yes. Holland killed Roman. Now at least I knew the truth.
I was half the way through the living room when Billy cried out, “Hey! You ain’t gonna leave me tied up!”
I dropped the knife and walked out the front door. Outside there was a man standing on the dirt lawn. He wore green work pants and a blue shirt, I remember. His face was shaped like a crescent and his eyes were small. His eyes darted from me to the front door.
Maybe he freed Billy after I’d gone. Maybe he robbed him.
38
Philly Stetz’s secret office was in a small medical building on Olympic near Vine.
Walking down the midmorning street on my way to face one of the most dangerous men on the West Coast didn’t scare me. My gait was nonchalant and there wasn’t a thought in my head. It wasn’t that I was particularly brave. The fact was that I found it hard to imagine that I had come so far over the line in just a few days. Never in my many years of street life had I gone up against somebody like Stetz.