A Red Death

16

That night I went to the Cozy Room on Slauson. It was a small shack with plaster walls that were held together by tar paper, chicken wire, and nails. It stood in the middle of a big vacant lot, lopsided and ungainly. The only indication you got that it was inhabited was the raw pine plank over the door. It had the word Entrance painted on it in dripping black letters.

It was a small room and very dark. The bar was a simple dictionary podium with a row of metal shelves behind it. The bartender was a stout woman named Ula Hines. She served gin or whiskey, with or without water, and unshelled peanuts by the bag. There were twelve small tables hardly big enough for two. The Cozy Room wasn’t a place for large parties, it was there for men who wanted to get drunk.

Because it wasn’t a social atmosphere, Ula didn’t invest in a jukebox or live music. She had a radio that played cowboy music and a TV, set on a chair, that only went on for boxing.

Winthrop was at a far table drinking, smoking, and looking mean.

“Evenin’, Shaker,” I said. Shaker Jones was the name he went by when we were children in Houston. It was only when he became an insurance man that he decided he needed a fancy name like Winthrop Hughes.

Shaker didn’t feel very fancy that night.

“What you want, Easy?”

I was surprised that he even recognized me, drunk as he was.

“Mofass sent me.”

“Wha’ fo’?”

“He need some coverage down on the Magnolia Street apartments.”

Shaker laughed like a dying man who gets in the last joke.

“He got them naked gas heaters, he could go to hell,” Shaker said.

“He got sumpin’ you want though, man.”

“He ain’t got nuthin’ fo’me. Nuthin’.”

“How ’bout Linda an’ Andre?”

My aunt Vel hated drunks. She did because she claimed that they didn’t have to act all sloppy and stupid the way they did. “It’s all in they minds,” she’d say.

Shaker proved her point by straightening up and asking, in a very clear voice, “Where are they, Easy?”

“Mofass told me t’get them papers from you, Shaker. He told me t’drive you out almost to ’em an’ then you give me the papers an’ I take you the whole way.”

“I pay you three hundred dollars right now and we cut Mofass out of it.”

I laughed and shook my head.

“I’ll see ya tomorrow, Shaker.” I knew he was sober because he bridled when I called him that. “Front’a Vigilance Insurance at eight-fifteen.”

I turned back to look at him before I went out of the door. He was sitting up and breathing deeply. I knew when I saw him that I was all that stood between Andre and an early grave.

I was in front of his office at the time I said. He was right out there waiting for me. He wore a double-breasted pearl-gray suit with a white shirt and a maroon tie that had dozens of little yellow diamonds printed on it. His left pinky glittered with gold and diamonds and his fedora had a bright red feather in its band. The only shabby thing about Shaker was his briefcase, it was frayed and cracked across the middle. That was Shaker to a T: he worried about his appearance but he didn’t give a damn about his work.

“Where we headed, Easy?” he asked before he could slam the door shut.

“I tell ya when we get there.” I smiled at his consternation. It did me good to see an arrogant man like Shaker Jones go with an empty glass.

I drove north to Pasadena, where I picked up Route 66, called Foothill Boulevard in those days. That took us through the citrus-growing areas of Arcadia, Monrovia, and all the way down to Pomona and Ontario. The foothills were wild back then. White stone and sandy soil knotted with low shrubs and wild grasses. The citrus orchards were bright green and heavy with orange and yellow fruit. In the hills beyond roamed coyotes and wildcats.

The address for Linda and Andre was on a small dirt road called Turkel, just about four blocks off the main drag, Alessandro Boulevard. I stopped a few blocks away.

“Here we are,” I said in a cheery voice.

“Where are they?”

“Where them papers Mofass wanted?”

Shaker stared death at me for a minute, but then, when I didn’t keel over, he put his hand into the worn brown briefcase and came out with a sheaf of about fifteen sheets of paper. He shoved the papers into my lap, turning a few pages back so he could point out a line that said “Premiums.”

“That’s what he wanted when we talked last December. Now where’s Linda and Andre?”

I ignored him and started flipping through the documents.

Shaker was huffing but I took my time. Legal documents need a close perusal; I’d seen enough of them in my day.

“Man, what you doin’?” Shaker squealed at me. “You cain’t read that kinda document. You need to have law trainin’ for that.”

Shaker was no lawyer. As a matter of fact, he hadn’t finished the eighth grade. I had two part-time years of Los Angeles City College under my belt. But I scratched my head to show that I agreed with him.

I said, “Maybe so, Shaker. Maybe. But I jus’ got a question t’ask you here.”

“Don’t you be callin me Shaker, Easy,” he warned. “That ain’t my name no mo’. Now what is it you wanna know?”

I turned to the second-to-the-last sheet and pointed to a blank line near the bottom of the page.

“Whas this here?”

“Nuthin’,” he said quickly. Too quickly. “The president of Vigilance gotta sign that.”

“It says, ‘the insurer or the insurer’s agent.’ Thas you, ain’t it?”

Shaker stared death at me a little more, then he snatched the papers and signed them.

“Where is she?” he demanded.

I didn’t answer but I pulled back into the road and drove toward Andre and Linda’s address.

Shaker’s Plymouth was in the yard, hubcap-deep in mud.

“There you go,” I said, looking at the house.

“All right,” Shaker said. He got out of the car and so did I.

“Where you goin’, Easy?”

“With you, Shaker.”

He bristled when I called him that again.

Then he said, “You got what you want. It’s my business here on out.”

I noticed that his jacket pocket hung low on the right side. That didn’t bother me, though. I had a. 25 hooked behind my back.

“I ain’t gonna leave you t’kill nobody, Shaker. I ain’t no lawyer, like you said, but I know that the police love what they call accessory before the fact.”

“Just stay outta my way,” he said. Then he turned toward the house, striding through the mud.

I stayed behind him, walking a little slower.

When he pushed through the front door I was seven, maybe eight, steps behind. I heard Linda scream and Andre make a noise something like a hydraulic lift engaging. The next thing I heard was crashing furniture. By that time I was going through the door myself.

It was a mess. A pink couch was turned on its back and big Linda was on the other side of it, sitting down and practicing how wide she could open her eyes. She was screaming too; loud, incoherent shrieks. Her wiry, straightened hair stood out from the back of her head so that she resembled a monstrous chicken.

Shaker had a blackjack in one hand and he had Andre by the scruff of the neck with the other. Poor Andre sagged down trying to protect himself from the blows Shaker was throwing at him.

“Lemme go!” Andre kept shouting. Blood spouted from the center of his forehead.

Shaker obliged. He let Andre slump to the floor and dropped the sap. Then went for his jacket pocket. But by that time I was behind him. I grabbed his arm and pulled the pistol out of his pocket.

“What? What? What?” he asked.

I almost laughed.

“You ain’t gonna kill nobody t’day, Shaker.”

“Get get get.” His eyes were glazed over, I don’t think he had any idea of what was happening.

“You got some whiskey?” I asked Andre.

“In the kitchen.” Andre blinked his enormous eyes at me and made to rise. He was so shaken it took him two attempts to make it to his feet. Blood cascaded down his loose blue shirt. He was a mess.

“Get it,” I said.

Linda was still screaming. Her voice was already gone, though. Instead of a chicken she’d begun to sound like an old, hoarse dog barking at clouds.

I grabbed her by the shoulders and shouted, “Shut up, woman!”

I heard something fall, and when I turned around I saw Shaker going at Andre again. He had him by the throat this time.

I boxed Shaker’s ears, then I sapped him with the barrel of his gun. He hit the ground faster than if I had shot him.

“He was gonna kill me.” Andre sounded surprised.

“Yeah,” I said. “You spendin’ his money, drivin’ his car, an’ fuckin’ his wife. He was gonna kill you.”

Andre looked like he didn’t understand.

I went over to Linda and asked, “How much of Shaker’s money you got left?”

“ ’Bout half.” The fear of death had knocked any lies she might have had right out of her head.

“How much is that?”

“Eighteen hundred.”

“Gimme sixteen.”

“What?”

“Gimme sixteen an’ then you take two an’ get outta here. That is, ’less you wanna go back with him?” I motioned my head toward Shaker’s body.

Andre got the money. It was in a sock under the mattress.

While I counted out Linda’s piece she was throwing clothes into a suitcase. She was scared because Shaker showed signs of coming to. It didn’t fluster me, though. I would have liked to sap him again.

“Come on, baby,” Linda said to Andre once she was packed. She wore a rabbit fur and a red box hat.

“I just come from Juanita, Andre,” I said. “Li’l Andre want you back, an’ you know this trick is over.”

Andre hesitated. The side of his face was beginning to swell, it made him resemble his own infant son.

“You go on, Linda,” I said. “Andre already got a family. And you cain’t hardly take care of both of you on no two hundred dollars.”

“Andre!” Linda rasped.

He looked at his toes.

“Shit!” was the last word she said to him.

I said, “There’s a bus stop ’bout four blocks up, on Alessandro.”

She cursed me once and then she was gone.

“My car is the Ford out front,” I said to Andre after I watched Linda slog through the mud toward the end of their street. “You go get in it an’ I’ll talk to the man here.”

Andre took a small bag from the closet. I laughed to myself that he was already packed to leave.

I sat and watched Shaker writhing on the floor and rolling his eyes. He wasn’t aware yet. While enjoying the show I took three hundred dollars from the wad that Linda left. He came to his senses about fifteen minutes later. I was sitting in front of him, hugging the back of a folding chair. He looked up at me from his knees.

“Thirteen hundred was all they had left. Here you go,” I said, throwing the sock in his face.

“Where Linda?”

“She had somewhere to go.”

“Wit’ Andre?”

“He’s wit’ me. I’ma take him home to his family.”

“I’ma kill that boy, Easy.”

“No you not, Shaker,” I said. “ ’Cause Andre is under my protection. You understand me? You best to understand, ’cause I will kill you if anything happens to him. I will kill you.”

“We had a deal, Easy.”

“An’ I met it. You got your car, you got all the money that’s left, an’ you’ wife don’t want you; killin’ Andre ain’t gonna stop that. So leave it be or we gonna have it out, an’ you know you ain’t gonna win that one neither.”

Shaker believed me, I could see it in his eyes. As long as he thought I was a poor man he’d be scared of me. That’s why I kept my wealth a secret. Everybody knows that a poor man’s got nothing to lose; a poor man will kill you over a dime.