Devil in a Blue Dress

Chapter 23

Portland court was a horseshoe of tiny apartments not far from Joppy’s place, near 107th and Central. There were sixteen little porches and doorways staggered in a semicircle around a small yard that had seven stunted magnolia trees growing in brick pots. It was early evening and the tenants, mostly old people, were sitting inside the screened doorways, eating their dinners off of portable aluminum stands. Radios played from every house. Mouse and I waved to folks and said hello as we made it back to number eight.

That door was closed.

I knocked on it and then I knocked again. After a few minutes we heard something crash and then heavy footsteps toward the door.

“Who’s that?” an angry voice that might have had some fear in it called out.

“It’s Easy!” I shouted.

The door opened and Junior Fornay stood there, in the gray haze of the screen door, wearing blue boxer shorts and a white T-shirt.

“What you want?”

“I wanna talk about your call the other night, Junior. I gotta couple’a things I wanna ask.”

I reached to pull the door open but Junior threw the latch from the inside.

“If you wanted t’talk you should’a done it then. Right now I gotta get some sleep.”

“Why’ont you open the do’, Junior, fo’ I have t’shoot it down,” Mouse said. He had been standing to the side of the door, where Junior couldn’t see, but then he stood out in plain sight.

“Mouse,” Junior said.

I wondered if he was still anxious to see my friend again.

“Open up, Junior, Easy an’ me ain’t got all night.”

We went in and Junior smiled as if he wanted to make us feel at home.

“Wanna beer, boys? I gotta couple’a quarts in the box.”

We got drinks and lit up cigarettes that Junior offered. He seated us on folding chairs he had placed around a card table.

“What you need?” he asked after a while.

I took a handkerchief from my pocket. It was the same handkerchief that I used to pick up something from the floor at Richard McGee’s.

“Recognize this?” I asked Junior as I opened it on his table.

“What’s a cigarette butt gotta do with me?”

“It’s yours, Junior, Zapatas. You the only one I know cheap enough to smoke this shit. And you see how somebody just let it drop to the floor and burn so that the paper on the bottom is just charred but not ash?”

“So what? So what if it’s mine?”

“I found this here on the floor of a dead man’s house. Richard McGee was his name. Somebody had just given him Coretta James’s name; somebody who knew that Coretta was with that white girl.”

“So what?” Like magic, sweat appeared on Junior’s brow.

“Why’d you kill Richard McGee?”

“Huh?”

“Ain’t no time to play, Junior. I know you the one killed him.”

“Whas wrong wit’ Easy, Mouse? Somebody hit him in the head?”

“This ain’t no time to play, Junior. You killed him and I need to know why.”

“You crazy, Easy. You crazy!”

Junior jumped up out of his chair and made like he was about to leave.

“Sit down, Junior,” Mouse said.

Junior sat.

“Tell me what happened, Junior.”

“I don’t know what you talkin’ ’bout, man. I don’t even know who you mean.”

“All right,” I said, showing him my palms. “But if I go to the police they gonna find out that that fingerprint they got on the knife belong to you.”

“What knife?” Junior’s eyes looked like moons.

“Junior, you got to listen real close to this. I got troubles of my own right now and I ain’t got the time to worry ’bout you. The night I was at John’s that white man was there. Hattie had you carry him home and then he must’a paid you for Coretta’s name. That’s when you killed him.”

“I ain’t killed nobody.”

“That fingerprint gonna prove you wrong, man.”

“Shit!”

I knew I was right about Junior but that wasn’t going to help me if he didn’t want to talk. The problem was that Junior wasn’t afraid of me. He was never afraid of any man that he felt he could best in a fight. Even though I had the information that would prove him guilty, he didn’t worry because I was his inferior in combat.

“Kill’im, Raymond,” I said.

Mouse grinned and stood up. The pistol was just there, in his hand.

“Wait a minute, man. What kinda shit you tryin’ t’pull here?” Junior said.

“You killed Richard McGee, Junior. And the next night you called me ’cause it had somethin’ to do with that girl I was lookin’ for. You wanted to find out what I knew but when I didn’t tell you anything you hung up. But you killed him and you gonna tell me why or Mouse is gonna waste your ass.”

Junior licked his lips and threw himself around in his chair like a child throwing a fit.

“What you wanna come messin’ wit’ me fo’, man? What I do to you?”

“Tell it the way it happened, Junior. Tell me and maybe I forget what I know.”

Junior threw himself around some more. Finally he said, “He was down at the bar the night you come in.”

“Yeah?”

“Hattie didn’t want him inside so she told him to go. But he must’a already been drunk ’cause he kinda like passed out on the street. So Hattie got me to go out an’ check on ’im ’cause she didn’t want no trouble with him out there. So I go out to help him to his car, or whatever.”

Junior stopped to take a drink of beer but then he just stared out the window.

“Get on with it, Junior,” Mouse said at last. He wanted to move on.

“He say he give me twenty dollars for to know ’bout that girl you was askin’ on, Easy. He said that he give me a hundred if I was to drive him home and tell ’im how to find the white girl.”

“I know you took that.” Mouse was working a toothpick between his front teeth.

“Lotta money.” Junior smiled hopefully at the warmth Mouse showed. “Yeah, I drove him home. And I told’im that I seen the girl he was lookin’ for, with Coretta James. Just’a white girl anyway, why should I care?”

“Then why you kill’im?” I asked.

“He wanted me to give Frank Green a message. He says that he give me the money after I do that.”

“Yeah?”

“I tole him that he could fuck dat! I did what he wanted and if he needed sumpin’ else we could talk about that after I got paid.” Junior got a wild look in his eye. “He told me I could walk home with my twenty if that’s how I felt. Then he badmouth me some an’ turn off into the other room. Shit! Fo’ all I know’d he had a pistol in there. I got a knife from the sink an’ goes in after’im. He could’a had a gun in there, ain’t that right, Raymond?”

Mouse sipped his beer and stared at Junior.

“What he want you to say to Frank?” I asked.

“He want me t’tell ’im that him an’ his friends had sumpin’ on the girl.”

“Daphne?”

“Yeah,” Junior said. “He say that they got sumpin’ on’er and they should all talk.”

“What else?”

“Nuthin’.”

“You just killed him ’cause he might’a hadda gun?”

“You ain’t got no cause to tell the cops, man,” Junior said.

He was sunken in his chair, like an old man. He disgusted me. He was brave enough to take on a smaller man, he was brave enough to stab an unarmed drunk, but Junior couldn’t stand up to answer for his crimes.

“He ain’t worf living,” the voice whispered in my head.

“Let’s go,” I said to Mouse.