“Was a dude named Pirelli, but he got circulatory problems.”
“Heart attack?”
“Kinda like. A bullet through the heart. Now it’s a man named Haas. He’s a slick bita business run his people outta the Exchequer on Melrose.”
“How about a man named Lund?”
Jackson squinted and brought his long thumbs together. “No. Don’t know no Lund. What’s this all about, Easy?”
I told Jackson about the smoke bomb and Cousin.
When I finished he said, “So? What do you care about all that, man? It ain’t your house.”
“It’s my job.”
“Your job is to make sure that the toilets don’t smell and that the trash cans is emptied. You not no bomb squad.”
I remember trying to dismiss Jackson’s argument as some kind of cowardly advice, but even then there was a grain of truth that made it through.
“Maybe not,” I said. “But I’m in it now.”
“You better bring some backup you wanna tango with Haas.”
That reminded me of Mouse. He had been my backup since I was a teenager in Fifth Ward, Houston, Texas. Mouse was crazy, but he was always on my side.
“I got a call this mornin’, Jackson. It was a woman with a deep bass voice—”
“She ask you about Mouse?”
“How you know that?”
“She called me too. Three days ago. Said she was lookin’ for Raymond.”
“What you say?”
Jackson became wary again. He scratched the back of his neck with his left hand and looked off to his left. When he saw that there was no escape route, he turned back to me. “I don’t want no trouble now, Easy.”
“Trouble’s over, man. Mouse is dead.”
“Like you once told me: you don’t know that.”
“I saw him. He wasn’t breathin’ and his eyes were wide. That bullet opened him up like a busted piñata.”
“But you didn’t go to no funeral.”
“Etta carried the body outta the hospital. You know how much she loved him. She probably put him in the ground herself.”
Jackson wrung his hands.
“What did you tell that woman?” I asked.
“Nuthin’. I didn’t tell her a thing.”
“Okay,” I said. “What didn’t you say?”
“You cain’t tell nobody I told, Easy.”
“Fine.”
“A girl named Etheline, Etheline Teaman.”
“What about her?”
“I met her a few weeks back and we started talkin’ shit. I told her ’bout some’a the crazy stuff Mouse done did. You know, just talkin’ jive. She told me that just before she left Richmond she met a gray-eyed, light-skinned brother named Ray. She said he got in a fight one night, and even though he was small, he put down this big dude with a chair, a bottle, and his knee. She didn’t even know Mouse, man. She only moved here from Richmond six months ago.”
“Where is this girl?”
“Piney’s.”
“A prostitute?”
“So what? You ain’t askin’ her to take care’a your kids. She said that she knew a man might be him. That’s what you asked me.”
“Why didn’t you call me about this, Jackson?”
“If Mouse is alive and don’t want nobody to know, then I don’t need to say a word.”
It was Jackson’s long silence that bothered me. He turned into a loudmouth braggart after just one beer. For him to have kept quiet about his suspicions meant that something in what he heard made him fear that Mouse was really alive.
And Mouse was a man to fear. He was deadly to begin with, and his heart was unrestrained by any feelings of guilt or morality.
“What you gonna do, Easy?”
“Go out and buy me a tie.”
I STOPPED AT THE May Company downtown and bought an orange silk tie. It had blue veins running through it and a yellow kite veering to the side as if it had broken its string.
I knotted my tie using the rearview mirror and then drove off to Melrose Avenue.
The Exchequer hotel and bar was a small building wedged between a lamp store and a hospital for the elderly. Lined out on the sidewalk were the aged inmates of that old folks’ prison. They sat in wheelchairs and on benches, looking out over Melrose as if it were the river Styx. I turned my head now and again as I passed them, thinking that one day, if I made it through this life, I would end up like them: discarded and broken at the side of the road.
There was one child-sized woman wearing a thin blue robe over blue pajamas. Her sagging, colorless eyes caught mine.
“Mister,” she mouthed. Then she waved.
“Yeah, honey?” I crouched down in front of her.
“When you were a boy you were so beautiful,” she whispered.
I smiled, wondering if my boyhood was showing in my face.
“Just like your mother,” she said.
“You knew my mother?” I asked. Maybe she thought some black maid in the old days was my relation.
“Oh yes,” she said, her voice getting stronger. “You’re my grandson—Lymon.”
Her eyes, when I first saw them, were beyond despair, verging on that stare that a dying man has when all hope of life is gone. I had seen many men during the war, shot up and dying, whose eyes had given up hope. But now the old lady’s eyes overflowed with delight—her white grandson, me, filling their field of vision.
She reached out a hand and I took it. She leaned forward and I accepted the kiss on my cheek. I kissed her gray head and stood up.
“I’ll come back a little later, Granny,” I said. Then I walked off to meet with a gangster.
THE HOTEL LOBBY WAS SMALL and simple. Not elegant or tawdry, but plain. The registration desk could have been a bell captain’s station. The rug would have to be changed in a year or less. The only outstanding features were the light fixtures set high up on the walls. They were in the form of nude women finished in shiny gold leaf. Above their heads they held big white globes of light.
“Help you?” the small man behind the desk asked. He was white and bald, about my age—which was mid-forties at the time. His eyes, nose, mouth, and ears were all too small for his small head. His miniature features showed disapproval and distrust of my presence. I couldn’t blame him. How often did white people see black men in fancy suits in 1964?
“Lookin’ for Mr. Haas,” I said.
“Who are you?”
“You don’t need to know my name, man.”
The desk clerk ran his tongue up under his lower lip and looked over at a doorless doorway. He nodded toward the dark maw and I went.
“WHAT’S UP, ROCHESTER?” a white man with big ears asked me. He was standing at the bar.
“Could be your ticket,” I said.
While he considered my words, I took a step closer to get within arm’s distance, so that if he decided to go for a weapon, I could stop him before he stopped me.
“Fuck you,” he said.
“Now that’s better,” I replied. “Are you Mr. Haas?”
“Who wants to know?”
“Ray,” I said. “Ray Alexander. I need to talk some business with the man.”
“Wait here.”
Big Ears wore an ugly, copper-colored iridescent suit. As he shimmered away from me into the gloom of the bar, I wondered if I had gone crazy somehow without warning. Jackson Blue was right; I was way out of my prescribed world there at the Exchequer.
I had fallen back into bad habits.
“Can I help you?”
It was yet another white man, this time a bartender. His words offered help, but his tone was asking me to leave.
“Mr. Haas,” I said, pointing toward the gloom.
A shimmering copper mass was emerging. Big Ears came up to me. “Come on.”
* * *
IT WAS POSSIBLY the darkest room I had ever been in that wasn’t intended for sleep. A man sat at a table under an intolerably weak red light. His suit was dark and his hair was perfect. Even though he was seated, I could tell that he was a small man. The only thing remarkable about his face were the eyebrows; they were thick and combed.
“Alexander?” he said.
I took a seat across from him without being bidden. “Mr. Alexander,” I said.