Devil in a Blue Dress

'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 to myself, neither am I.

16

I slept all that day and into the evening. Maybe I should have been looking for Frank Green but all I wanted was to sleep.

I woke up sweating in the middle of the night. Every sound I heard was someone coming after me. Either it was the police or DeWitt Albright or Frank Green. I couldn't throw off the smell of blood that I'd picked up in Richard's room. There was the hum of a million flies at the window, flies that I'd seen swarming on our boys' corpses in North Africa, in Oran.

I was shivering but I wasn't cold. And I wanted to run to my mother or someone to love me, but then I imagined Frank Green pulling me from a loving woman's arms; he had his knife poised to press into my heart.

Finally I jumped up from my bed and ran to the telephone. I didn't know what I was doing. I couldn't call Joppy because he wouldn't understand that kind of fear. I couldn't call Odell because he'd understand it too well and just