Devil in a Blue Dress

Chapter 15

There was another car parked in front of my house when I got home. A white Cadillac. No one was in it but this time it was my front door that was open.

Manny and Shariff were loitering just inside the door. Shariff grinned at me. Manny looked at the floor so I still couldn’t tell about his eyes.

Mr. Albright was standing in the kitchen, looking out over the backyards through the window. The smell of coffee filled the house. When I came in he turned to me, a porcelain cup cradled in his right hand. He wore white cotton pants and a cream sweater, white golf shoes, and a captain’s cap with a black brim.

“Easy.” His smile was loose and friendly.

“What you doin’ in my house, man?”

“I had to talk to you. You know I expected you to be home.” There was the slightest hint of threat in his voice. “So Manny used a screwdriver on the door, just to be comfortable. Coffee’s made.”

“You got no excuse to be breakin’ into my house, Mr. Albright. What would you do if I broke into your place?”

“I’d tear your nigger head out by its root.” His smile didn’t alter in the least.

I looked at him for a minute. Somewhere in the back of my mind I thought, “Bide your time, Easy.”

“So what you want?” I asked him. I went to the counter and poured a cup of coffee.

“Where have you been this time of morning, Easy?”

“Nowhere got to do with your business.”

“Where?”

I turned to him saying, “I went to see a girl. Don’t you git none, Mr. Albright?”

His dead eyes turned colder and the smile left his face. I was trying to say something that would get under his skin and then I was sorry I had.

“I didn’t come here to play with you, boy,” he said evenly. “You got my money in your pocket and all I got is an earful of smartass.”

“What do you mean?” I stopped myself from taking a step backward.

“I mean, Frank Green hasn’t been home in two days. I mean that the superintendent at the Skyler Arms tells me that the police have been around his place asking about a colored girl that was seen with Green a few days before she died. I want to know, Easy. I want to know where the white girl is.”

“You don’t think I did my job? Shit, I give you the money back.”

“Too late for that, Mr. Rawlins. You take my money and you belong to me.”

“I don’t belong to anybody.”

“We all owe out something, Easy. When you owe out then you’re in debt and when you’re in debt then you can’t be your own man. That’s capitalism.”

“I got your money right here, Mr. Albright.” I reached for my pocket.

“Do you believe in God, Mr. Rawlins?”

“What do ya want, man?”

“I want to know if you believe in God.”

“This here is bullshit. I gotta go to bed.” I made like I was going to turn away but I didn’t. I would have never knowingly turned my back on DeWitt Albright.

“Because, you see,” he continued, leaning slightly toward me, “I like to look very close at a man I kill if he believes in God. I want to see if death is different for a religious man.”

“Bide your time,” the voice whispered.

“I seen her,” I said.

I went to the chair in the living room. Sitting down took a great weight off me.

Albright’s henchmen moved close to me. They were roused, like hunting dogs expecting blood.

“Where?” DeWitt smiled. His eyes looked like those of the undead.

“She called me. Said that if I didn’t help her she’d tell the police about Coretta…”

“Coretta?”

“A dead girl, friend’a mine. She prob’ly the one that the police askin’ ’bout. She the one was with Frank an’ your girl,” I said. “Daphne gave me an address over on Dinker and I went there. Then she had me drive up in the Hollywood Hills to a dude’s house.”

“When was all this?”

“I just got back.”

“Where is she?”

“She took off.”

“Where is she?” His voice sounded as if it came from out of a well. It sounded dangerous and wild.

“I don’t know! When we found the body she split in his car!”

“What body?”

“Dude was dead when we got there.”

“What was this guy’s name?”

“Richard.”

“Richard what?”

“She just called him Richard, that’s all.” I saw no reason to tell him that Richard had been nosing around John’s place.

“You sure he was dead?”

“Had a knife right through his chest. There was a fly marchin’ right across his eye.” I felt bile in my throat remembering it. “Blood everywhere.”

“And you just let her go?” The threat in his voice was back so I got up and moved toward the kitchen for more coffee. I was so worried about one of them coming behind me that I bumped into the doorjamb trying to get through the door.

“Bide your time,” the voice whispered again.

“You din’t hire me fo’ no kidnappin’. The girl grabbed his keys and split. What you want me to do?”

“You call the cops?”

“I tried my best to keep in the speed limit. That’s all I did.”

“Now I’m going to ask you something, Easy.” His gaze held my eye. “And I don’t want you to make any mistakes. Not right now.”

“Go on.”

“Did she take anything with her? A bag or a suitcase?”

“She had a ole brown suitcase. She put it in his trunk.”

DeWitt’s eyes brightened and all the tension went out of his shoulders. “What kind of car was that?”

“Forty-eight Studebaker. Pink job.”

“Where’d she go? Remember, now, you’re still telling me everything.”

“All she said was she was gonna park it somewheres, but she didn’t say where.”

“What’s that address she was at?”

“Twenty-six—”

He waved at me impatiently and, to my shame, I flinched.

“Write it down,” he said.

I got paper from the drawer of my end table.

He sat across from me on the couch scrutinizing that little slip of paper. He had his knees wide apart.

“Get me some whiskey, Easy,” he said.

“Get it yourself,” the voice said.

“Get it yourself,” I said. “Bottle’s in the cabinet.”

DeWitt Albright looked up at me, and a big grin slowly spread across his face. He laughed and slapped his knee and said, “Well, I’ll be damned.”

I just looked at him. I was ready to die but I was going to go down fighting.

“Get us a drink, will you, Manny?” The little man moved quickly to the cabinet. “You know, Easy, you’re a brave man. And I need a brave man working for me.” His drawl got thicker as he talked. “I’ve already paid you, right?”

I nodded.

“Well, the way I figure it, Frank Green is the key. She will be around him or he will know where she’s gone to. So I want you to find this gangster for me. I want you to set me up to meet him. That’s all. Once I meet him then I’ll know what to say. You find Frank Green for me and we’re quits.”

“Quits?”

“All our business, Easy. You keep your money and I leave you alone.”

It wasn’t an offer at all. Somehow I knew that Mr. Albright planned to kill me. Either he’d kill me right then or he’d wait until I found Frank.

“I’ll find him for ya, but I need another hundred if you want my neck out there.”

“You my kinda people, Easy, you sure are,” he said. “I’ll give you three days to find him. Make sure you count them right.”

We finished our drinks with Manny and Shariff waiting outside the door.

Albright pushed open the screen to leave but then he had a thought. He turned back to me and said, “I’m not a man to fool with, Mr. Rawlins.”

No, I thought, neither am I.