had some possibilities.
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay what?” asked John.
“I know what to do.”
“Really?” That was Grace.
“Yeah. I do. You go tell your boyfriend everything.”
“Everything?”
“Well … you don’t have to say that you was at a whole lotta Sallie’s parties. But just say what Sallie and Bill Bartlett wanna do. Tell’im about the pictures, tell’im all that, an’ then tell’im about me. Say that if he wanna get out of it he should give me a call.”
I had already been to the main personnel office for the Board of Education to see what I could see. Grace Phillips offered me some possibilities—that much was for sure.
Three days later I got the call. I had been taking a nap because I was still recuperating from the deep infection that settled in after my wound. Stowe told me that he’d talked to Grace, and then Bill Bartlett. He wanted to know what I could do. I made an appointment to meet him at his office. At first he balked, but I held firm.
I liked the man. He was straightforward and nervous. I guess I’m always a little gleeful when I’m in the seat of power with a white man.
“Grace says I should trust you, Mr. Rawlins,” he said. “What can you do for me?”
“It’s easy, Mr. Stowe. You just sit at your desk and wait till I come to you. I’ll have the photographs, whatever they are, and a promise that Sallie will leave you be.”
“How can you do that?”
“I cain’t give ya all my secrets now,” I said. I smiled and so did Stowe.
“And how much do you charge, Mr. Rawlins?”
“I want Bartlett’s job.”
“You what?”
From my jacket pocket I took out an application form that I had filled in for the job of supervising senior head custodian. I handed the sheet to Stowe.
“I’ve managed apartment buildings with the Mofass real estate agency for over fifteen years. And I know how to work with people. It says in the handbook I got with the application that someone can be hired at a higher position at the discretion of the area supervisor. I figure if I can make all this happen smoothly then you might wanna recommend me.”
Stowe was amazed at first and then he began to laugh. He laughed very hard and for a long time.
When he was through laughing we had a deal.
SALLIE MONROE WAS A LIFE-TAKER; a man who had a good mind and great strength of will and body—but nowhere legal to use them. He took up a lot of space, dominating almost every situation with his girth. Sallie hated white people because, on the whole, they didn’t respect his mind. He was a buck to them, suited only to tote and break under the weight of unrelenting labor.
Like most black men Sallie took out his anger on other Negroes. But he was always looking to have sway over a white man, or woman. Usually it was a woman. A prostitute or drug addict. White women or white trash men were an easy target for Sallie, but he didn’t indulge his hate much, because, first and foremost, he was a businessman— he never did a thing unless there was a profit to be made.
I knew all that going into Petey’s Rib Hut on the corner of Central and Eighty-third Place.
The Rib Hut had started out as a stand, a patio in front of a small enclosure where Petey and his wife smoked the ribs that they sold through the window. As the years went by Petey made enough money to surround the patio with a high wooden fence. After a few more years the fence turned into walls covered by an aluminum roof. The floor was the same painted cement and the furniture was still redwood benches but Petey had himself a restaurant all the same.
Sallie spent every afternoon sitting at the back of the Rib Hut. He liked sucking ribs and doing business at the same time.
Sitting with him was Charles Moody, his driver and bodyguard, and Foxx, a small dandy-looking man who was always whispering into Sallie’s ear.
Little Richard was shouting “Good Golly, Miss Molly” on the jukebox.
When Sallie saw me coming his eyes went over my shoulder. He was looking for Mouse, I knew. Mouse was my friend, and that meant something on streets from Galveston, Texas, to the San Francisco Bay.
“Easy.” Sallie grinned at me.
“Hey, Sal. S’appenin’?”
“They say I’ma be free if I just get offa my fat ass an’ walk down the streets of Selma wit’ my hands in my pockets.” Sallie slapped Charles on the back and laughed loud enough to drown out the song. His henchmen laughed, and looked really pleased, but I don’t think they got the joke.
I didn’t have to laugh because Sallie didn’t pay my bills.
“What you want, Easy Rawlins?”
“Talk,” I said.
“Then talk.”
“Just you’n me, Sal.”
