All the dead men that I'd ever known came back to me in that instant. Bernard Hooks, Addison Sherry, Alphonso Jones, Marcel Montague. And a thousand Germans named Heinz, and children and women too. Some were mutilated, some burned. I'd killed my share of them and I'd done worse things than that in the heat of war. I'd seen open-eyed corpses like this man Richard and corpses that had no heads at all. Death wasn't new to me and I was to be damned if I'd let one more dead white man break me down.
While I was down there, on my knees, I noticed something. I bent down and smelled it and then I picked it up and wrapped it in my handkerchief.
When I got to my feet I saw that Daphne was gone. I went to the kitchen and rinsed my face in the sink. I figured that Daphne had run to the toilet. But when I was through she hadn't returned. I looked in the bathroom but she wasn't there. I ran outside to look at my car but she was nowhere to be seen.
Then I heard a ruckus from the carport.
Daphne was there pushing the old suitcase into the trunk of a pink Studebaker.
'What's goin' on?' I asked.
'What'a ya think's goin' on! We gotta get out of here and it's best if we split.'
I didn't have the time to wonder at her loss of accent. 'What happened here?'
'Help me with my bag!'
'What happened?' I asked again.
'How the hell do I know? Richard's dead, Frank's gone too. All I know is that I have to get out of here and you better too, unless you want the police to prove you did it.'
'Who did it?' I grabbed her and turned her away from the car.
'I do not know,' she said quietly and calmly into my face. Our faces were no more than two inches apart.
'I cain't just leave it like this.'
'There's nothing else to do, Easy. I'll take these things so nobody will know that I was ever here and you just go on home. Go to sleep and treat it like a dream.'
'What about him?' I yelled, pointing at the house.
'That's a dead man, Mr. Rawlins. He's dead and gone. You just go home and forget what you saw. The police don't know you were here and they won't know unless you shout so loud that someone looks out here and sees your car.'
'What you gonna do?'
'Drive his car to a little place I know and leave it there. Get on a bus for somewhere more than a thousand miles from here.'
'What about the men lookin' for you?'
'You mean Carter? He doesn't mean any harm. He'll give up when they can't find me.' She smiled.
Then she kissed me.
It was a slow, deliberate kiss. At first I tried to pull away but she held on strong. Her tongue moved around under mine and between my gums and lips. The bitter taste in my mouth turned almost sweet from hers. She leaned back and smiled at me for a moment and then she kissed me again. This time it was fierce. She lunged so deep into my throat that once our teeth collided and my canine chipped.
'Too bad we won't have a chance to get to know each other, Easy. Otherwise I'd let you eat this little white girl up.'
'You can't just go,' I stammered. 'That's murder there.'
She slammed the trunk shut and went around me to the driver's side of the car. She got in and rolled down the window.
'Bye, Easy,' she said as she popped the ignition and threw it into reverse.
The engine choked twice but not enough to stall.
I could have grabbed her and pulled her out of the car but what would I have done with her? All I could do was watch the red lights recede down the hill.
Then I got into my car thinking that my luck hadn't turned yet.
'You lettin' them step on you, Easy. Lettin' them walk all over you and you ain't doin' a thing.'
'What can I do?'
I pulled onto Sunset Boulevard and turned left, toward the band of fiery orange light on the eastern horizon.
'I don't know, man, but you gotta do somethin'. This keep up and you be dead 'fore next Wednesday.'
'Maybe I should just do like Odell says and leave.'
'Leave! Leave? You gonna run away from the only piece'a property you ever had? Leave,' he said disgustedly. 'Better be dead than leave.'
