Little Scarlet

17

How you do that, Easy?” Mouse asked when we were back on the road.

“Do what?” I asked innocently.

“You know what. Get them cops to treat you like you was the mayor or somethin’.”

“You don’t expect me to let up on all my secrets, do you, Ray?”

“Come on, man, what did that letter say?”

“It said, ‘Listen up, Mr. Policeman, that’s Easy Rawlins you talkin’ to.’ ”

“I never saw anything like that in my life,” Randolph Hauser said. “That cop called you mister and he didn’t even try to look in our truck.”

I didn’t respond to the compliment. I was just happy that Hauser’s estimation of Mouse and his value had risen.

THIRTY MINUTES LATER we reached another warehouse on Hart, not half a block from the ocean. Six or seven white men rushed out on the dock and started unloading. I had found out along the way that Hauser really didn’t have the key. He carried a set of open padlocks to secure the van, so if the police did stop him they couldn’t get into the truck without metal-cutting tools.

We went to the glass-walled warehouse to smoke and drink coffee while Hauser’s men worked.

“That was a good trick, Rawlins,” Hauser was saying. “How’d you do it?”

“Charm school,” I replied.

The giant looked hard at me for a moment and then he cracked a smile.

“You’re all right, son,” he said. “I guess Ray is better than I gave him credit for.”

“If you borrowed on me,” Mouse added, “you’d be a rich man.”

We all laughed and smoked for a while and then I wandered out toward the front of the warehouse so that Mouse and the big man could conclude their business.

As a rule I avoided Raymond’s illegal business. I knew he was a crook, but what could I do? He was like blood to me. And that night the rules as I had always known them had been suspended. Police opening fire on a house of worship, covering up information about a murder, and employing a black man to get them out of a jam. Our bigoted mayor was set to meet with Martin Luther King. I hadn’t even broken the law, telling those policemen that Raymond was working with me. So it didn’t disturb me standing in the thieves’ den. That was simply another step toward the other side of our liberation.

MOUSE JOINED ME outside the warehouse a few minutes past midnight. He still had that small duffel bag. He was smiling so I knew the money had worked out fine. Mouse only ever had two things on his mind: money and women. Revenge ran a distant third but still you wouldn’t want to be on his bad side.

“Ready to go, Easy?”

“Go where?”

“To shake Nate Shelby outta his tree.”

His white teeth and gray eyes flashed in the night and a laugh came unbidden from deep in my chest.

THE MENLO JUNKYARD was dark, and so was every other house and business on the street. All except one. That was a house that had a double garage at the end of its driveway.

“You gotta dime, Ease?”

“For what?”

“I got to make a call.”

I gave my friend the ten-cent piece and he walked down to the corner where a working phone booth stood. I remember thinking that that had to be the only phone booth in Watts that had not been smashed by rampaging rioters.

Ray talked for a good five minutes. Every now and then I could hear his voice rise in a threatening tone.

“Here’s your dime,” he said, handing me the coin.

“I thought you needed it for the call.”

“I did. But the coin box is broke out so you get your money right back. I been callin’ people all over the country from the phones down here.”

He took a cigarette from his white coveralls pocket, lit up, and then leaned against the junkyard fence.

“What are we waitin’ for?” I asked when he lit a second smoke.

“Magic.”

“Come on, Ray. Who did you call?”

“What you had in that note you showed the cops?”

Mouse’s revenge ran a slow third but it always crossed the finish line.

I laughed and said, “Okay, Ray. I’ll wait for your magic trick.”

And so we stood there at 1:15, smoking cigarettes and watching the single lit window on the block. No one was out; not the army or the police force or people in the neighborhood. When we had stood around for about five minutes or so one of the doors to the garage came open and a car drove out. A red Galaxie 500. It came across the street and parked in front of us. The door opened and a big black man with a weathered, angry face got out.

He walked up to Raymond and said, “This what you wanted?”

Mouse turned to me and asked, “This the car you lookin’ for, Easy?”

“Is it the one stolen from a white man bein’ beat on the second day of the riots?”

Mouse looked at the ugly man.

“Yeah,” the man said.

“Then that’s the car.”

“You got the papers, Nate?” Raymond asked Loverboy.

“Glove compartment.”

“Did you see what happened that night?” I asked then.

“Who you, mothahfuckah?” Nate replied.

“All you need to do is answer him,” Raymond said. “You see him standin’ here with me, don’t you?”

“Crazy motherfuckin’ white man drivin’ around lookin’ out the window with people burnin’ and breakin’ and throwin’ rocks,” Nate said. “They grabbed and beat him good. Tore his clothes all up. He ran away screamin’ like a baby. Shit.”

“You see where he went to?” I asked.

“Naw, man. I just wanted the car. You lucky I still got it. We so backed up right now that we couldn’t chop it till Monday.”

Mouse flashed his eyes at me and I shrugged.

“Thanks, Nate,” Mouse said in dismissal.

“What about my money?” the car thief asked.

“You do want trouble, don’t you, son?” Mouse said.

While Loverboy was screwing up the courage to die I opened the car door and took whatever papers there were in the glove compartment. I made a quick search under the front and back seats but found nothing.

I took the keys from the ignition and opened the trunk. That was empty too.

“You can keep the car, man,” I said. “All I need is this here.”

I returned the keys to Loverboy. He took them from me and then turned to Mouse.

“Is that all?”

“Okay,” my friend, the self-appointed sovereign of Watts, said.

We all stood there for a moment, wondering what the exact etiquette was in a situation like that. Was somebody supposed to say thank you or even good-bye?

Nate made a quick move for the car.

When he drove off, Mouse asked me, “Even, Easy?”

“Maybe right now but I believe I’ll be in your debt before it’s all through.”

RAYMOND DROVE ME home. We had a good time on the way, chatting about people we knew. It wasn’t until he stopped at the curb in front of my house that I remembered my message.

“I ran into Benita Flag at Cox Bar,” I said.

“You did?”

“Yeah. Didn’t Ginny tell you?”

“Ginny don’t talk to me about women too much.”

“Benita was worried about you.”

“I bet she was.”

It was almost three and I wasn’t Benita’s lawyer, so I opened my door.

“What you do about your girlfriends, Ease?”

“Say what?”

“Your girlfriends,” he repeated. “When they get all cow-eyed and hungry for you.”

Juanda popped into my mind but I pushed her away.

“I don’t have any girlfriends, Ray. It’s just me and Bonnie, that’s all.”

“You don’t get you no pussy on the side?”

“Not lately.”

“I cain’t live without it. I gots to have me a little taste every now and then. But you know some’a these girls don’t hear it when you tell ’em you married and shit. I mean they say okay but then they wanna know how you could love ’em like that and then not move in.”

I didn’t even smile. This was a true moral conflict for my friend. His understanding of anyone outside of himself was severely limited. He didn’t know why Benita didn’t understand him, so he cut her off. And the mere fact that she would mention him to me set him on a dark path.

“I’ll talk to her, Ray,” I said.

“You will?”

“Oh yeah. I’ll explain your predicament. She’ll understand.”

“You know, you all right, Easy,” he said. “You all right.”

He left me standing in the warm night air appreciating the silence. There I was, a middle-aged city employee. The only thing I should have had on my mind was my bed and my children, my mortgage, and the woman I loved. All of that was waiting for me in the house.

But instead of heeding that domestic call I went to my car, turned over the engine, and drove off.