A Little Yellow Dog

41

I left in Mouse’s car. I had to leave, to hide the weapons.

Along the streets the traffic was light, but there were lots of folks out in front of their houses and stores. People were talking to each other with rapt attention on every corner. I saw more than one woman crying. Children walked listlessly, on the whole, not playing or laughing out loud.

The world was in sorrow, it seemed. Was Mouse’s death so powerful? Did everybody feel it when a brave gangster died?

Maybe it was that I hadn’t looked around me lately. Maybe a deep sadness had entered my community but I had been too busy being a workingman; a company man.

On the corner of Pico and Genesee there were three white men and one white woman standing at the bus stop, listening to a transistor radio that one of them held up.

I took the heroin from the glove compartment and went up to my house.

The front door to my house was open.

Inside, Feather was crying in Bonnie’s arms. Jesus stood next to them holding one of Feather’s favorite dolls.

“Easy.” Bonnie had looked up. There was no smile on her face for me.

“Daddy, Daddy,” Feather cried. She limped over to me and I lifted her into my arms.

“Jackson here?” I asked my son.

He shook his head to say no. His voice lost again. Lost again. Everything was lost.

“What’s wrong?” I asked out loud.

“Haven’t you heard?” Bonnie asked me.

I was as mute as my son.

“Kennedy. He’s been shot. He’s dead.”

“What?”

I staggered across the floor with Feather and slumped down on the couch. I buried my head in Feather’s chest too sad even to cry. Bonnie came to hold us and so did my son. My lungs were burning and my throat was sore from choked tears.

I lifted my head and noticed that there was blood on my little daughter’s dress.

“What’s this?” I said. “What’s wrong with you, baby?” My voice was high from the strain.

“It’s from your ear, Daddy,” she said. “Wha’ happened?”

As if on cue Pharaoh yelped down at our feet.

“Frenchie!” Feather cried. “Frenchie.” She pulled away from my arms and hugged the dog on the floor.

I was too sad to be angry at the damn dog. I sat there thinking that he must have jumped into the car while I was helping Mouse. He’d probably hidden under the seat where I had put the gun and knife.

Gun and knife.

“Bonnie?”

“Yes, Easy?”

“Can you drive?”

“Yes.”

I gave her the keys and Primo’s address. I told her about the gun and knife under the seat.

“Take the kids out to his house. He’ll know what to do.”

“What about you, Easy?”

“I’m tired,” I said. I still had unfinished business with Philly Stetz. I didn’t know if he had sent Beam to kill me or not. I didn’t know if he wanted the heroin or if he knew my address. I did know that I didn’t want my children in the crossfire and so I sent them to Primo.

“Daddy.” Feather had tears in her eyes. “Can’t you come with us?”

“Later, honey.”

“Can’t I keep Frenchie, though?”

Being so weak themselves I think that children understand weakness better than adults. I couldn’t say no to her then.

“Okay. Yeah, okay.”

At the door Jesus was the last to leave.

“Did you take the money out of my closet, Dad?”

“No.”

“It’s gone.” He looked at me with his solemn eyes.

Jackson Blue.

I turned on the radio and the TV. Both of them droned on and on about the assassination. I didn’t understand a word of it but the sad sounds of grief resonated in my heart. My best friend was wounded somewhere, maybe he was dead. It was my fault and I couldn’t even go to him and tell him that I was sorry.

I don’t know how much later it was when the doorbell rang. I took the pistol from my pocket and went to the moth hole in the drapes next to the window. Then I went to the door and flung it open quickly. I jammed my cocked .38 into Rupert’s nose and said, “You get killed comin’ around here, fool.”

Rupert wasn’t a fool. He wasn’t afraid either.

“I got sixty-seven hundred thirty-five dollars in this here briefcase,” he said.

“You cain’t spend it where you goin’, brother.”

“It’s yours,” Rupert said. “Mr. Stetz sent it.”

I noticed then that Rupert’s face had been battered, broken, and bruised. It was lopsided and swollen.

“Could I come in?” the big wrestler asked.

“No.” I stepped back and held the gun lower.

Rupert handed the briefcase to me but I shook my head and then gestured at the ground.

“Put it down,” I said. And, when he complied, “What’s it for?”

“It’s a’cause’a Mr. Beam.”

“What about him?”

“Mr. Stetz send Mr. Beam with this here money to give you. But then when he tried to kill you—”

“How do you know that?”

“I was in the warehouse. Mr. Beam didn’t know that. I was there for Mr. Stetz.” Rupert rubbed his hand over his ruined face and I knew that the beating he got was for working with Beam.

“You saw what happened?” I asked.

Rupert’s nod was cautious.

“An’ you didn’t do anything?”

“I was there to watch. That’s all. Mr. Stetz didn’t tell me to do nuthin’ else.”

Now I understood why Rupert showed no fear of me and my pistol: he was already filled to the brim with the fear of his boss.

I wanted to kill him. I really did. Behind me Walter Cronkite was almost ready to cry. Mouse was dying somewhere.

“Come on in,” I said to Rupert. “Come on.”

I turned off the TV. I would have poured a stiff drink if there was one in the house.

I waved at a seat with my gun. Rupert sat.

I laid the gun down next to me on the couch with my hand nearby.

“How’d you find my house, man?”

“Mr. Stetz made a call to the police. He axed a man down there t’get it. You know.” Rupert winked and cocked his head to the side.

It was that easy. One call and Stetz could get information that I’d have to sweat blood for. I’d gone way over to the deep end of the pool.

But I didn’t care.

“You know why Sallie and Beam tried to kill me?” I asked, feeling the superiority of my close-at-hand gun.

“Not exactly,” the ex-wrestler said. He looked dumb and ugly but Rupert was not a stupid man. “Mr. Beam called me to come with him but I told him no.”

“What’d he say?”

“He said that he had the man that killed Roman and stole his drug. He said that he wanted me to throw in with ’im but I said that I worked for Mr. Stetz. He said that Mr. Stetz might not be on top forever but I told him that I had made up my mind and that was that.” Rupert’s resolve made him resemble a stone sculpture even more.

“But you worked for Beam before, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Him and Roman and Sallie all worked together, didn’t they?”

“Roman started comin’ ’round the Black Chantilly a couple’a year ago. He was lookin’ for a way in. He showed up with this girl, Grace Phillips, an’ then Sallie Monroe got in on it. Sallie and Roman went to Mr. Beam after Roman got this job at the schools through Grace’s boyfriend.”

“What did they want with Beam?”

“They wanted to have a meeting with Mr. Stetz, but Mr. Beam said that he could fence whatever they stole through some people he knew downtown. Then Mr. Beam asked me to go with’em so he’d have a finger in the soup.”

“And you went around stealin’ from school to school?”

Rupert actually smiled. “Yeah. We’d get us a truck from the Board of Education garage and go out ’bout once a month on the average. It wasn’t a lotta money, but it was somethin’. And then Roman hooked up this drug thing and the money got to be big.”

“Which one of you killed Holland Gasteau?” I already knew the answer but it didn’t hurt to ask.

“I don’t know who killed him, or Roman neither. Holland wasn’t in on the drugs. Sometimes we’d use his paper shack to hide what we took out the schools, but that was it.”

Rupert gave me a hard stare and I put my hand on my gun.

He said, “I wished I wasn’t never in it neither.”

“What were you doing at Bonnie Shay’s place?” I asked.

“Mr. Beam sent me. He said that he’d already killed somebody on that street and he didn’t want to be seen.”

“He tell you why he was after her?”

“Yeah. She stoled his drug. He wanted it back.”

“And were you going to kill her?”

I guess Rupert had told so much truth that he couldn’t switch over to lying too quickly; instead he just blinked and said, “She don’t have a thing to fear from me no more.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll be sure to tell her that. So what’s that money all about?” Somewhere the only president I ever loved was lying dead. Somewhere my closest friend was dying because of me. I wanted to despair but as long as I could keep asking questions I could keep on going.

“It’s for you. Mr. Stetz told Mr. Beam to do right. He told him to make it up wit’ you. He said that he wanted to see Mr. Beam throw the drugs down the toilet. He was givin’ him a chance to do right. Mr. Beam was supposed to give you that money and then Mr. Stetz told me on the phone to bring it to you.”

“An’ how come the odd number?”

“I dunno, brother,” Rupert said. “That’s what he wanted me t’give you an’ that’s what I’m doin’.”

“What’s going to happen when they find those bodies in front of your boss’s warehouse?”

“They won’t find them.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“They’re right out there.”

We had left the door open. The briefcase that Rupert brought was sitting outside. Beyond that was a big ’57 Cadillac. I priced a car just like it when they were new; I remembered commenting on how roomy the trunk was.

“You can go on, Rupert,” I said.

He stood and looked down on me.

“Yeah?” I asked him.

“Mr. Stetz said to tell you that he respects a man that stands up.”

I considered telling him to take the money back to his boss. But sixty-seven hundred and thirty-five dollars was exactly one year’s salary for my grade. Stetz was telling me that he knew my price and that he could afford it. That cash could help to pay for Feather’s college. And besides, I had earned it. Paid for it with the most precious things in my life.

“You tell him that I still got his recorders. I’ll bring ’em up to the Chantilly in a couple’a days.”

I watched Rupert drive away in his makeshift hearse, then I went to the toilet and flushed away the drug.