A Red Death

25

Officer Fine was a patient man. Patient and delicate. He and his partner, a wan-faced rookie called Gabor, taught me little secrets like how far an arm can be twisted before it will break.

“All you gotta do is take your time,” Fine said to no one in particular, as he twisted my right hand toward the base of my skull. “I could get these here fingers over the head and into the mouth and he’d probably bite ’em off t’ stop the hurt.”

“Don’t give in, Easy!” the voice screamed in my head.

“Why’d you kill her?” Gabor asked me. I wanted to hit him but my feet and my left hand were manacled to the chair.

We’d been playing the game for over an hour. I’d been slapped, kicked, beaten with a rolled-up magazine, and twisted like a licorice stick.

When I grimaced from the arm twisting I felt dry blood crack across my cheek.

That nearly broke me. I was almost ready to confess, confess to anything they’d say. But the voice kept screaming for me.

The door opened and a tall silver-haired man walked in. I was grateful for the respite, but when Fine released me it felt as if he’d torn the arm from its socket.

I moaned, humiliated and in pain as I gazed at those shiny black shoes.

“Captain,” Gabor said.

Then I saw a second pair of shoes that were as bright as polished onyx.

“This is what you call questioning, John?” Special Agent Craxton asked.

“It’s a hard case, uh, Agent Craxton,” the silver-haired man answered. Then he said to Fine, “Agent Craxton here is with the FBI. He needs Mr. Rawlins for a case he’s working on.”

“What about the murders?” Fine asked.

“Unchain him and apologize or I tear off your prick and shove it down your throat,” Craxton said simply, almost sweetly.

Fine didn’t like that, he brought his fists up to his chest and pushed his body forward a little, but when he peered into Craxton’s eyes he backed down. He even unlocked my manacles, but he didn’t apologize and he looked defiant, like a child angered at his father.

Craxton just smiled. The spaces between his teeth made him look like an alligator that had evolved to human form.

“Send me this officer’s file, John.”

“Apologize, Charlie,” Captain John said.

The fat cop who had caused me so much pain said, “I’m sorry.” And even though I was so hurt, that sounded good to me. His humiliation was like sweet, cold ice cream on hot apple pie.

I rubbed the dried blood from my face and said, “Fuck you, mothahfuckah. Fuck you twice.”

It wasn’t smart but I never imagined that I’d live to be an old man.

Agent Craxton was with two men who looked like real FBI. They wore dark suits and ties with white shirts and short-brimmed hats. They had black shoes and white socks and small bulges on the left side of their bulky jackets. They were clean-shaven and silent as stones.

They were also the same men that I saw Shirley talking to in front of her house.

The twins got in the front seat of a black Pontiac. Craxton and I got in behind. We headed out into the street, turning every three blocks or so. I don’t think we had a destination; at least not a place we were going to.

“They think you killed all of them, Easy. Killed the girl at your place and killed the minister too.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Kill your tenant?”

“What for? Why I wanna kill her?”

“You tell me. She was your tenant. She wasn’t paying your rent.”

“Ain’t nuthin to’ tell. I found Poinsettia dead and I found the minister too. Bad luck, that’s all.”

“I can understand why they suspect you, though. If I hadn’t sent you into that church myself I’d think it pretty strange.”

“Yeah, that’s how things happen-strange. I seen all kindsa things happen you wouldn’t believe.”

“Somebody’s on to you, Mr. Rawlins. Somebody knows you’re working with us.”

“Why you say that?”

“Because this murder in the church was professional. Either they hired it out or one of the Russians did it themselves.”

“Did? You mean shot them? Why would anybody wanna come kill Towne?”

“The reverend must’ve been involved. They thought they could cover their tracks by killing him.”

“Why not just kill me?”

“Kill a weed at its root, that’s what they do. He could have been their prize pupil but they cut him short if they think he’d jeopardize even one thing.”

I decided to take a chance with Craxton.

“Man, they gotta be sumpin’ you ain’t tellin’ me.”

He paused, looking at me for a few moments before speaking.

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, I been on Wenzler for some days now an’ I cain’t see where he’s any big thing. So I gotta wonder why you wanna get me out of a fed’ral charge just to spy on some small-time union guy. Then, on top’a that, this man gets himself killed an’ you sure it’s got somethin’ t’do with what I’m doin’. Like I said-sumpin’ don’t add up.”

Craxton leaned back against the window and began to outline his jaw with a hairy index finger. He started from the center of his chin and worked his way up the left side of his face. As his finger progressed a smile began to form. It was a full-fledged grin by the time he’d reached the earlobe.

“You’re a smart one, eh, Rawlins?”

“Yeah,” I said. “So smart that I’m here with you worryin’ ’bout my liberty, my money, and my life. If I was any smarter I wouldn’t even have to breathe.”

“Wenzler’s got something,” Craxton said.

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“You don’t really need to know that, Easy. All you need to know is that we’re playing for high stakes here. We’re playing for keeps.”

“You sayin’ I could get killed?”

“That’s right.”

“So why the fuck didn’t you say that before?” One of the robots in the front seat cocked his head a little. But I didn’t let that bother me. “Here you lettin’ me walk around like everything is goin’ on accordin’ t’plan an’ really they’s people drawin’ a bead on me.”

Craxton wasn’t bothered by me, though.

“You want to go to prison, Easy?” he asked. “Just say the word and we can hand you back to Agent Lawrence.”

“Listen,” I said. “If you know what it is that Wenzler has got, why don’t you just take him?”

“We have, Easy. We arrested him and interrogated him. But he gave us nothing and we haven’t got any proof. We don’t have a fiber of evidence. I can’t tell you what it is that we think he has but I can tell you that it’s something important. I can tell you that it would hurt America to let it slip through our fingers.”

“So you ain’t gonna tell me what it is I’m lookin’ for?”

“It’s better if you don’t know, Easy. Believe me, you don’t want to know.”

“Okay then, tell me this,” I said. “Does whatever this is have to do with Andre Lavender?”

“I can tell you that if you know where Lavender is you should tell us. This isn’t about race, Easy, it’s about your country.”

“So I should go out there with a bull’s-eye on my back ’cause you say so?”

“You can pull out anytime.”

He knew the chances of me doing that. “So you want me to stay on Wenzler?”

“That’s right. And now you have the knowledge that Towne was somehow linked. We already have his involvement with the antiwar people. You can work from his relationship with Wenzler. For all we know Wenzler is the one who killed him.”

Chaim had been a killer in Poland. The war wasn’t so far back that a good soldier would forget his trade.

“What about Poinsettia? You think the Russians killed her?”

He gave me a hard look then.

“You could have killed her, or maybe somebody else did. I don’t know and I don’t care, because I don’t have that job.”

“You better believe those cops care.”

Craxton shifted in his seat and gazed out the window.

“When this is over I’ll explain why you were at the church,” he said, leaning so close to the glass that steam clouded his already dim reflection. “I’ll tell them that you’re a hero. If they have no physical evidence you did the girl, then…” He hunched his shoulders and turned from the window to look at me. I felt a trickle of blood come down the side of my face.

“Ever been out in a cold foxhole, Ezekiel?”

“More times than I’d like t’ remember.”

“It’s cold and alone out there, but that sure makes coming home sweet.”

I didn’t say anything, but I could have said, “Amen to that.”

“Yeah,” he continued. “Pain makes men out of scared little boys.”

The sun was a big red ball just over the city. The underbellies of the clouds over our heads were long black hanging things, like stalactites in a great cave, but above those clouds was a bright orange that was almost religious it was so warm. I could almost hear the church organs.

“Yeah, Ezekiel, we have a real job to do. And it might get kind of painful.”

I couldn’t twitch my baby finger without a jolt going through my arm, but I asked, “How you figure?”

“We got to get Wenzler. He’s a tough man and he’s in with people worse than that. I know that you’re taking a chance, but we need that to get this job done.”

“What if I do all this you say an’ I still don’t find nuthin’?”

“If I don’t get what I want, Mr. Rawlins, then my job isn’t worth a cent. If I can’t make this case you’ll be shit out of luck along with me.”

“And if you do find it?”

“Then I help you, Easy. Sink or swim.”

“I have your word, Mr. Craxton?”

Instead of answering me he asked, “Home?”

“Yeah.”

On the ride all he talked about was how he was going to buy some bonita, cut the fish in chunks, scald it, and then marinate it in a vinegar and soya sauce. It was a dish he’d learned to make while on duty in Japan.

“Nips know how to do fish,” he said.