“Richard.”
“Richard what?”
“She just called him Richard, that’s all.” I saw no reason to tell him that Richard had been nosing around John’s place.
“You sure he was dead?”
“Had a knife right through his chest. There was a fly marchin’ right across his eye.” I felt bile in my throat remembering it. “Blood everywhere.”
“And you just let her go?” The threat in his voice was back so I got up and moved toward the kitchen for more coffee. I was so worried about one of them coming behind me that I bumped into the doorjamb trying to get through the door.
“Bide your time,” the voice whispered again.
“You din’t hire me fo’ no kidnappin’. The girl grabbed his keys and split. What you want me to do?”
“You call the cops?”
“I tried my best to keep in the speed limit. That’s all I did.”
“Now I’m going to ask you something, Easy.” His gaze held my eye. “And I don’t want you to make any mistakes. Not right now.”
“Go on.”
“Did she take anything with her? A bag or a suitcase?”
“She had a ole brown suitcase. She put it in his trunk.”
DeWitt’s eyes brightened and all the tension went out of his shoulders. “What kind of car was that?”
“Forty-eight Studebaker. Pink job.”
“Where’d she go? Remember, now, you’re still telling me everything.”
“All she said was she was gonna park it somewheres, but she didn’t say where.”
“What’s that address she was at?”
“Twenty-six—”
He waved at me impatiently and, to my shame, I flinched.
“Write it down,” he said.
I got paper from the drawer of my end table.
He sat across from me on the couch scrutinizing that little slip of paper. He had his knees wide apart.
“Get me some whiskey, Easy,” he said.
“Get it yourself,” the voice said.
“Get it yourself,” I said. “Bottle’s in the cabinet.”
DeWitt Albright looked up at me, and a big grin slowly spread across his face. He laughed and slapped his knee and said, “Well, I’ll be damned.”
I just looked at him. I was ready to die but I was going to go down fighting.
“Get us a drink, will you, Manny?” The little man moved quickly to the cabinet. “You know, Easy, you’re a brave man. And I need a brave man working for me.” His drawl got thicker as he talked. “I’ve already paid you, right?”
I nodded.
“Well, the way I figure it, Frank Green is the key. She will be around him or he will know where she’s gone to. So I want you to find this gangster for me. I want you to set me up to meet him. That’s all. Once I meet him then I’ll know what to say. You find Frank Green for me and we’re quits.”
“Quits?”
“All our business, Easy. You keep your money and I leave you alone.”
It wasn’t an offer at all. Somehow I knew that Mr. Albright planned to kill me. Either he’d kill me right then or he’d wait until I found Frank.
“I’ll find him for ya, but I need another hundred if you want my neck out there.”
“You my kinda people, Easy, you sure are,” he said. “I’ll give you three days to find him. Make sure you count them right.”
We finished our drinks with Manny and Shariff waiting outside the door.
Albright pushed open the screen to leave but then he had a thought. He turned back to me and said, “I’m not a man to fool with, Mr. Rawlins.”
No, I thought, neither am I.
Chapter 16
I slept all that day and into the evening. Maybe I should have been looking for Frank Green but all I wanted was to sleep.
I woke up sweating in the middle of the night. Every sound I heard was someone coming after me. Either it was the police or DeWitt Albright or Frank Green. I couldn’t throw off the smell of blood that I’d picked up in Richard’s room. There was the hum of a million flies at the window, flies that I’d seen swarming on our boys’ corpses in North Africa, in Oran.
I was shivering but I wasn’t cold. And I wanted to run to my mother or someone to love me, but then I imagined Frank Green pulling me from a loving woman’s arms; he had his knife poised to press into my heart.
Finally I jumped up from my bed and ran to the telephone. I didn’t know what I was doing. I couldn’t call Joppy because he wouldn’t understand that kind of fear. I couldn’t call Odell because he’d understand it too well and just tell me to run. I couldn’t call Dupree because he was still locked up. But I couldn’t have talked to him anyway because I would have had to lie to him about Coretta and I was too upset to lie.
So I dialed the operator. And when she came on the line I asked her for long distance, and then I asked for Mrs. E. Alexander on Claxton Street in Houston’s Fifth Ward.
When she answered the phone I closed my eyes and remembered her: big woman with deep brown skin and topaz eyes. I imagined her frown when she said “Hello?” because EttaMae never liked the telephone. She always said, “I like to see my bad news comin’; not get it like a sneak through no phones.”
“Hello,” she said.
“Etta?”
“Who’s this?”
“It’s Easy, Etta.”
“Easy Rawlins?” And then a big laugh. The kind of laugh that makes you want to laugh along with it. “Easy, where are you, honey? You come home?”
“I’m in L.A., Etta.” My voice was quavering; my chest vibrated with feeling.
“Sumpin’ wrong, honey? You sound funny.”
“Uh… Naw, ain’t nuthin’, Etta. Sure is good to hear you. Yeah, I can’t think of nuthin’ better.”
“What’s wrong, Easy?”
“You know how I can reach Mouse, Etta?”
There was silence then. I thought of how they said in science class that outer space was empty, black and cold. I felt it then and I sure didn’t want to.
“You know Raymond and me broke up, Easy. He don’t live here no more.”
The idea that I made Etta sad was almost more than I could take.
“I’m sorry, baby,” I said. “I just thought you might know how I could get to him.”
“What’s wrong, Easy?”
“It’s just that maybe Sophie was right.”
“Sophie Anderson?”
“Yeah, well, you know that she’s always sayin’ that L.A. is too much?”
Etta laughed in her chest. “I sure do.”
“She might just be right.” I laughed too.
“Easy…”
“Just tell Mouse that I called, Etta. Tell him that Sophie might have been right about California and maybe it is a place for him.”
She started to say something else but I made like I didn’t hear her and said, “Good-bye.” I pushed down the button of the receiver.
I put my chair in front of the window so I could look out into my yard. I sat there for a long time, balling my hands together and taking deep breaths when I could remember to. Finally the fear passed and I fell asleep. The last thing I remember was looking at my apple tree in the predawn.
Chapter 17
I put the card that DeWitt Albright had given me on the dresser. It read:
MAXIM BAXTER
Personnel Director
Lion Investments
In the lower right-hand corner there was an address on La Cienega Boulevard.
I was dressed in my best suit and ready to ride by 10 A.M. I thought that it was time to gather my own information. That card was one of two things I had to go on, so I drove across town again to a small office building just below Melrose, on La Cienega. The whole building was occupied by Lion Investments.
The secretary, an elderly lady with blue hair, was concentrating on the ledger at her desk. When my shadow fell across her blotter she said to the shadow, “Yes?”