A Red Death

23

I hadn’t been to the Seventy-seventh Street station for questioning in many years. It looked older in the fifties but it smelled the same. A sour odor that wasn’t anything exactly.

It wasn’t living and it wasn’t dead, it wasn’t food and it wasn’t excrement. It wasn’t anything I knew, but it was wrong, as wrong as the smells in Poinsettia’s apartment.

The last time I was taken there I had been under arrest and the police put me in a raw-walled room that was made for questioning prisoners. The kind of questioning that was punctuated by fists and shoes. This time, though, they sat me at a desk with Quinten Naylor. He had a blue-and-white form in front of him and he asked me questions.

“Name?”

“Ezekiel Porterhouse Rawlins,” I answered.

“Date of birth.”

“Let’s see now,” I said. “That would be November third, nineteen hundred and twenty.”

“Height.”

“Close to six feet, almost six-one.”

“Weight.”

“One eighty-five, except at Christmas. Then I’m about one ninety.”

He asked more questions like that and I answered freely. I trusted a Negro, I don’t know why. I’d been beaten, robbed, shot at, and generally mistreated by more colored brothers than I’d ever been by whites, but I trusted a black man before I’d even think about a white one. That’s just the way things were for me.

“Okay, Ezekiel, tell me about Poinsettia, Reverend Towne, and that woman.”

“They all dead, man. Dead as mackerel.”

“Who killed them?”

He had an educated way of talking. I could have talked like him if I’d wanted to, but I never did like it when a man stopped using the language of his upbringing. If you were to talk like a white man you might forget who you were.

“I’ont know, man. Poinsettia kilt herself, right?”

“Autopsy report on her will be in this evening. You got something to say about it now?”

“They ain’t got to that yet?” I was really surprised.

“The coroner’s working a little hard these days, Mr. Rawlins. There was that bus accident on San Remo Street and the fire in Santa Monica. Up until now we were only half sure that this was even a case,” Quinten said. “He’s been butt-high in corpses, but your turn is coming up.”

“I don’t know nuthin’, man. I know the minister and the girl was murdered ’cause I seen the blood. I’ont know who killed ’em an’ if I get my way I ain’t gonna know. Murder ain’t got nuthin’ t’do wit’ me.”

“That’s not how I hear it.”

“How’s that?”

“I hear that there were quite a few murders that you were intimate with a few years ago. Your testimony put away one of the killers.”

“That’s right! Not me.” I pointed at my chest. “Somebody else did a killin’ an’ I told the law. If I knew today I’d tell you now. But I was dumb-assed in the basement, movin’ some clothes, when I heard Winona yell. I went up to help but I could see that they was beyond what I could do.”

“You think Winona did it?”

“Beats me.”

“You see anybody else around?”

“No,” I said. Chaim had mentioned Robert Williams, but I hadn’t seen him.

“Nobody?”

“I seen Chaim, an’ Chaim seen me. That’s it.”

“Where were you before you got to work?”

“I was at breakfast, with a friend’a mines.”

“Who was that?”

“Her name was Shirley.”

“Shirley what?”

“I don’t know the girl’s last name but I know where she lives.”

“How long were you at the church before you went down to the basement?”

“I went right down.”

So we started from the top again. And again.

One time he asked me if I heard the shots.

“Shots?”

“Yeah,” he answered gruffly. “Shots.”

“They were shot?”

“What did you think?”

“I’ont know, man, they coulda been stabbed fo’all I know.”

That was it for Officer Naylor. He got up and left in disgust. A few minutes later he returned and told me I could go. Chaim and Winona had been gone for hours. The police didn’t suspect them. Winona was too hysterical to be faking it, and nobody knew that Chaim was part of the Red Terror.

I went out on the street and caught a bus down Central to the church, then I drove home. Nothing seemed quite right. Everything was off. It was strange enough that so much had happened. But now people were dying and still it didn’t make sense.

As if to prove my fears, Mouse was on my swinging sofa on the front porch, drinking whiskey. I could smell him from ten feet away.

He was usually a natty dresser. He wore silk and cashmere as another man might wear cotton. Women dressed him and then took him out to show the world what they had.

He told me once that a woman had the pockets in his pants taken out and replaced them with satin so that she could stroke him under the table, or at a show, the way she did at home.

But it wasn’t the smooth dresser I saw on my porch. He hadn’t shaved in days, and Mouse had that kind of sparse beard that looked ratty on a man. His clothes were soiled, his disposition was taciturn. And he was drunk. Not the one-night kind of drunk but a drunk that you can only get from days of booze.

“Hiya, Easy.”

“Mouse.”

I sat down next to him and all of a sudden I had the feeling that we were young men again, as if we’d never left Texas. I guess that’s what I was hoping for, simpler times.

“I ain’t got my gun, man,” Mouse said.

“No?”

“Naw.”

“How come?”

“Might kill somebody, Easy. Somebody I don’t wanna kill.”

“Whas wrong wit’ you, Ray? You sick?”

He laughed, hunching forward as if he were having a seizure.

“Yeah,” he said. “Sick. Sick t’ death of all this pain.”

“What pain is that?”

He looked into my eyes with a steely gray gaze. “You seen my boy?”

“Yeah, when Etta come she brought him.”

“He’s a beautiful boy, ain’t he?”

I nodded.

“He got big feet and a big mouf. Shit, that’s all you need in this world. That’s all you need.”

Mouse stopped talking, so I said, “He’s a great boy. Strong, and he’s smart too.”

“He’s the devil hisself,” Mouse whispered to his left arm.

“What’s that you said?”

“Satan. Evil angel’a hell. You could tell the way his eyebrows goes up, makin’ like horns.”

“LaMarque kinda mischievous, but he ain’t bad, Raymond.”

“Satan in hell. Black cats and voodoo curse. You ’member Mama Jo?”

“Yeah.”

I’d never forget her.

Mouse had conned me into driving him, in a stolen car, to a small bayou town in eastern Texas called Pariah. We were barely in our twenties but Mouse’s true nature was already fully developed. He wanted a dowry his mother had promised him before she died. He was to marry EttaMae and he said, “I will get that money or Daddy Reese will be dead.” Reese was Mouse’s stepfather.

But before we ever got to Pariah, Mouse had me drive to a place out in the middle of the swamplands. There we came to a house hidden on all sides by pear trees that doubled as pillars. And in that house lived the country witch, Mama Jo. She was a six-foot-six witch who lived by her wits out beyond the laws of normal men. She was twenty years older than I, and I was barely twenty. But she put a spell on me when we stayed with her for a night. Mouse was out planning the murder and Mama Jo had me by the hair. I was screaming love for her and talking out of my head. I remembered the smell of her breath: sweet chili and garlic, bitter wine and stale tobacco.

“She always told me,” Mouse said, “that sometimes evil come down on ya when you live bad. Evil come out in your chirren if you don’t pay fo’ what you done.”

“LaMarque ain’t like that, Ray.”

“How you know?” he shouted, rearing up belligerently. “That boy done give me the eye, Easy. He tole me hisself that he hates me. He tole me hisself that he wisht I was dead. Now tell me it don’t take a evil son to make that kinda wish on his own daddy.”

I was thinking about Etta. I was trying to figure out how I thought I could get away with being her lover and Mouse’s friend too.

“He don’t hate you, Ray. He just a boy an’ he mad that you an’ Etta cain’t be together.”

“Devil outta hell,” he whispered again. Then he said, “I did what a daddy’s s’posed, Ease. I mean, I ain’t ever seen my own daddy, an’ you know I killed Reese.”

Mouse had finally murdered his stepfather despite my attempts to stop him.

“Yeah,” Mouse continued. “Kilt ’im dead. But you know him an’ his son Navrochet beat me reg’lar an’ laughed on it too.”

Mouse had also killed his stepbrother, Navrochet.

“LaMarque don’t think’a you like that, Ray,” I said.

“Yes he do. Yes he do. An’ you know I ain’t given him no reason, man. You know I loved that boy an’ I done right by him.” There were tears streaming down his face. “You know sometimes I pick him up an’ take ’im down t’ Zelda’s big-timin’ house. The ho’s there love it when you bring a boy. They jus’ fuss over him an’ give ’im chocolates. An’ I shows ’im how t’gamble an’ dance. But you know he start t’actin’ shy an’ scared an’ shit. Embarrass me in front’a Zelda herself.

“But you know he always runnin’ after me t’go t’the baf-room at the same time.” Mouse smiled then. “He look at Dick like he ain’t never seen nuthin’ that big. Then, right after the las’ time we went, he tole me that he don’t wanna go nowhere wit’ me no mo’. He won’t even talk to’ me an’ if I try an’ make ’im he scream like a demon, right out there in the middle’a the street just like I was a bad man, like Reese.”

Before Mouse got the drop on Reese the old farmer had us on the run through the swamp. Raymond had killed one of his hunting dogs, but he had two more and they were chasing us down through the trees. We finally escaped, but by then it was nightfall and we had to stay outside for the night. I had the grippe and Mouse curled around me like a momma cat, keeping me warm through the night. I might have died if he hadn’t cared for me.

I reached out my hands and held him by the forearms while he cried. It was loud and embarrassing but I didn’t let go.

“I’m sorry, Raymond,” I said after he stopped. He looked up at me, his eyes were red and his nose was running.

“I love that boy, Easy.”

“He loves you too, man. That’s your son, your blood. He loves you.”

“Then why he act like that?”

“He just a li’l boy, that’s all. You go down wit’ all them wild folks you know an’ he get so scared an’ worked up that he wanna get outta there. He cain’t stand it.”

“Why don’t he tell me that? I take ’im fishin’.”

“He prob’ly don’t know, man. You know kids don’t really think, ’cept ’bout what feel good, and what don’t.”

Mouse sat back and stared at me as if I had just pulled a rabbit out of my ear. I could see the change come about in him. He sat up a little straighter, his eyes cleared.

I said, “Why don’t you come on in? You get a shower and a good night’s sleep. I’ll talk wit’ LaMarque the next time I’m over there.”

I made the call while Mouse was in the shower.

“How’s it going, Mr. Rawlins?” Special Agent Craxton asked.

“Minister and his girlfriend got killed.”

“What?”

I told him about the murders. He asked all sorts of questions about the room.

Finally he said, “Sounds like a professional job.”

“Could just be a good shot.”

“Then why wasn’t anything moved around, messed up?”

“She was down on his peter, man, maybe her husband found ’em. Maybe Winona found ’em and she thought Towne was hers.”

“Maybe. Hear me,” he said. “I’ll look into things on my end. Meanwhile, you find out what you can about the minister. Who has he been seeing, what kind of political connections does he have?”

Craxton was the boss, so I said, “Okay.”

Raymond came out of the shower with a towel around his hips and a smile on his face.

“You look better,” I said.

“And you look like you just swallowed a pig. What’s wrong, Easy?”

“You might as well ask what’s right.”

“You gonna talk to LaMarque fo’ me?”

“Soon as I can, man.”

He laughed like a small boy, younger even than his son.

“Then tell me what’s wrong.”

“I owe a man some money an’ he holds the deed t’my houses. He want me to find some stuff on some men work down at First African.”

I lied to Mouse because I was afraid that if I told him the truth he might decide to do me a Louisiana kind of favor, like burning down the IRS office, records and all.

“Yeah?”

“So then the minister, Reverend Towne, and some girl gets killed and I was there when it happened. And another man work for the first man’s company still wants my houses and a girl live in one’a my places hung herself on account of I wanted t’ throw her out. Or maybe she was murdered.”

“You talk wit’ the boy an’ I kill the men, Easy.”

“Naw, man. They work fo’ big companies. You know, cut off one an’ two take his place.”

“White men?”

“Yeah.”

“You think about it, man. If you want sumpin’ just call me.”

He dressed in the bathroom and left soon afterward. He didn’t stay, because his good clothes were at Dupree’s and he was ready to look good again.

After he’d gone I went to my bed and drank three glasses of whiskey too fast. I passed out thinking that I should call EttaMae.