Devil in a Blue Dress

'Help me, Easy.' Her eyes were full of fear and promise. 'He's crazy. You still have your gun.'

'I can't,' I said.

'Then give it to me. I'll do it.'

That was probably the closest Mouse had ever come to a violent death.

'No.'

'I found some blood in the road,' Mouse said when he returned. 'I tole ya I got'im. I don't know how bad it is but he gonna remember me.' There was childish glee in his voice.

While he talked I untied Joppy's corpse. I took Mouse's jammed pistol and put it in Joppy's hand.

'What you doin', Easy?' Mouse asked.

'I don't know, Ray. Just confusing things I guess.'

Daphne rode with me and Mouse followed in Dupree's car. When we were a few miles away I threw Joppy's extension cord bonds down an embankment.

'Did you kill Teran?' I asked as we swung onto Sunset Boulevard.

'I guess so,' she said, so softly that I had to strain to hear her.

'You guess? You don't know?'

'I pulled the trigger, he died. But he killed himself really. I went to him, to ask him to leave me alone. I offered him all my money but he just laughed. He had his hands in that little boy's drawers and he laughed.' Daphne snorted. I don't know if it was a laugh or a sound of disgust. 'And so I killed him.'

'What happened to the boy?'

'I brought him to my place. He just ran in the corner and wouldn't even move.'

Daphne had the bag in a YWCA locker.

Back in East L.A. Mouse counted out ten thousand for each of us. He let Daphne keep the bag.

She called a cab and I went out with her to wait by the granite lamppost at the curb.

'Stay with me,' I said. Moths fluttered around us in that small circle of light.

'I can't, Easy, I can't stay with you.'

'Why not?' I asked.

'I just can't.'

I put my hand out but she moved away saying, 'Don't touch me.'

'I've done more than touch you, honey.'

'That wasn't me.'

'What you mean? Who was it if it wasn't you?' I moved toward her and she got behind her bag.

'I'll talk to you, Easy. I'll talk to you till the car comes but just don't touch me. Don't touch me or I'll yell.'

'What's wrong?'

'You know what's wrong. You know who I am; what I am.'

'You ain't no different than me. We both just people, Daphne. That's all we are.'

'I'm not Daphne. My given name is Ruby Hanks and I was born in Lake Charles, Louisiana. I'm different than you because I'm two people. I'm her and I'm me. I never went to that zoo, she did. She was there and that's where she lost her father. I had a different father. He came home and fell in my bed about as many times as he fell in my mother's. He did that until one night Frank killed him.'

When she looked up at me I had the feeling that she wanted to reach out to me, not out of love or passion but to implore me.

'Bury Frank,' she said.

'Okay. But you could stay here with me and we could bury him together.'

'I can't. Do me one other favor?'

'What's that?'

'Do something about the boy.'

I didn't really want her to stay. Daphne Monet was death herself. I was glad that she was leaving.

But I would have taken her in a second if she'd asked me to.

The cab driver could tell something was wrong. He kept looking around as if he expected to be mugged any second. She asked him to carry her bag. She put her hand on his arm to thank him but she wouldn't even shake my hand goodbye.

'Why'd you kill him, Mouse?'

'Who?'

'Joppy!'

Mouse was whistling and wrapping his money in a package fashioned from brown paper bags.