Mouse sipped his beer and stared at Junior.
“What he want you to say to Frank?” I asked.
“He want me t’tell ’im that him an’ his friends had sumpin’ on the girl.”
“Daphne?”
“Yeah,” Junior said. “He say that they got sumpin’ on’er and they should all talk.”
“What else?”
“Nuthin’.”
“You just killed him ’cause he might’a hadda gun?”
“You ain’t got no cause to tell the cops, man,” Junior said.
He was sunken in his chair, like an old man. He disgusted me. He was brave enough to take on a smaller man, he was brave enough to stab an unarmed drunk, but Junior couldn’t stand up to answer for his crimes.
“He ain’t worf living,” the voice whispered in my head.
“Let’s go,” I said to Mouse.
Chapter 24
Dupree was at his sister’s house, out past Watts, in Compton. Bula had a night job as a nurse’s assistant at Temple Hospital so it was Dupree who answered our knock.
“Easy,” he said in a quiet voice. “Mouse.”
“Pete!” Mouse was bright. “That pigtails I smell?”
“Yeah, Bula made some this mo’nin’. Black-eyes too.”
“You don’t need to show me, I just run after my nose.”
Mouse went around Dupree toward the smell. We stood in the tiny entrance looking at each other’s shoulders. I was still half outside. Two crickets sounded from the rose beds that Bula kept.
“I’m sorry ’bout Coretta, Pete. I’m sorry.”
“All I wanna know is why, Easy. Why somebody wanna kill her like that?” When Dupree looked up at me I saw that both of his eyes were swollen and dark. I never asked but I knew that those bruises were part of his police interrogation.
“I don’t know, man. I can’t see why someone wanna do that t’anybody.”
Tears were coming down Dupree’s face. “I do it to the man done it to her.” He looked me in the eye. “When I find out who it was, Easy, I’m a kill that man. I don’t care who he is.”
“You boys better com’on in,” Mouse said from the end of the hall. “Food’s on the table.”
Bula had rye in the cabinet. Mouse and Dupree drank it. Dupree had been crying and upset the whole evening. I asked him some questions but he didn’t know anything. He told us about how the police had questioned him and held him for two days without telling him why. But when they finally told him about Coretta he broke down so they could see that it wasn’t him.
Dupree drank steady while he told his story. He got more and more drunk until he finally passed out on the sofa.
“That Dupree is a good man,” Mouse slurred. “But he jus’ cain’t hold his liquor.”
“You got your sails pretty far up too, Raymond.”
“You callin’ me drunk?”
“All I’m sayin’ is that you been puttin’ it away along wit’im and you could be sure that you wouldn’t pass no breath test neither.”
“If I was drunk,” he said, “could I do this?”
Mouse, moving as fast as I’ve ever seen a man move, reached into his fancy jacket and came out with that long-barreled pistol. The muzzle was just inches from my forehead.
“Ain’t a man in Texas could outdraw me!”
“Put it down, Raymond,” I said as calmly as I could.
“Go on,” Mouse dared, as he put the pistol back into his shoulder holster. “Go fo’ your gun. Les see who gets kilt.”
My hands were on my knees. I knew that if I moved Mouse would kill me.
“I don’t have a gun, Raymond. You know that.”
“You fool enough to go without no piece then you must wanna be dead.” His eyes were glazed and I was sure that he didn’t see me. He saw somebody, though, some demon he carried around in his head.
He drew the pistol again. This time he cocked the hammer. “Say your prayers, nigger, ’cause I’m’a send you home.”
“Let him go, Raymond,” I said. “He done learned his lesson good enough. If you kill’im then he won’t have got it.” I was just talking.
“He fool enough t’call me out an’ he ain’t even got no gun! I kill the motherfucker!”
“Let him live, Ray, an’ he be scared’a you whenever you walk in the room.”
“Motherfucker better be scared. I kill the motherfucker. I kill’im!”
Mouse nodded and let the pistol fall down into his lap. His head fell to his chest and he was asleep; just like that!
I took the gun and put it on the table in the kitchen.
Mouse always kept two smaller pistols in his bag; I knew that from our younger days. I got one of them and left a note for Dupree and him. I told them that I had gone home and that I had Mouse’s gun. I knew he wouldn’t mind as long as I told him about it.
I drove down my block twice before I was sure no one was waiting for me in the streets. Then I parked around the corner so that anyone coming up to my place would think I was gone.
When I had the key in my lock the phone started ringing. It was on the seventh ring before I got to it.
“Easy?” She sounded as sweet as ever.
“Yeah, it’s me. I thought you’d be halfway to New Orleans by now.”
“I’ve been calling you all night. Where have you been?”
“Havin’ fun. Makin’ all kinds’a new friends. The police want me to come down there and live wit’em.”
She took my joke about friends seriously. “Are you alone?”
“What do you want, Daphne?”
“I have to talk with you, Easy.”
“Well go on, talk.”
“No, no. I have to see you. I’m scared.”
“I don’t blame ya for that. I’m scared just talkin’ to ya on the phone,” I said. “But I need to talk to ya though. I need to know some things.”
“Come meet me and I’ll tell you everything you need to know.”
“Okay. Where are you?”
“Are you alone? I only want you to know where I am.”
“You mean you don’t want your boyfriend Joppy to know where you hidin’?”
If she was surprised that I knew about Joppy she didn’t show it.
“I don’t want anybody to know where I am, but you. Not Joppy and not that other friend that you said was visiting.”
“Mouse?”
“Nobody! Either you promise me or I hang up right now.”
“Okay, okay fine. I just got in and Mouse ain’t even here. Tell me where you are and I’ll come get ya.”
“You wouldn’t lie to me, would you, Easy?”
“Naw. I just wanna talk, like you.”
She gave me the address of a motel on the south side of L. A.
“Hurry up, Easy. I need you,” she said before hanging up. She got off the phone so quickly that she didn’t give me the number of her room.
I scribbled a note, making my plans as I wrote. I told Mouse that he could find me at a friend’s house, Primo’s. I wrote RAYMOND ALEXANDER in bold letters across the top of the note, because the only words Mouse could read were his own two names. I hoped that Dupree came with Mouse to read him the note and show him the way to Primo’s house.
Then I rushed out the door.
I found myself driving in the L.A. night again. The sky toward the valley was coral with skinny black clouds across it. I didn’t know why I was going alone to get the girl in the blue dress. But for the first time in quite a while I was happy and expectant.
Chapter 25