Charles and Foxx both gave me a who-is-this-fool? look—but I ignored them. I had a strong reputation in the streets and Sallie knew it.
He also knew Mouse.
“Give us a minute,” he said to his men. After they moved away he whispered, “This better be good.”
I sat down and pulled my jacket closed, hoping that no one saw the weight of the .38 in my right pocket.
“I’m here for a friend’a mines,” I said.
Sallie gestured for Petey to bring over more food.
“Bertrand Stowe,” I continued.
That got Sallie’s attention. “Don’t get yo’ nose caught up in my business now, Easy.”
“I ain’t messin’ wit’ you, Sal,” I said. “Stowe called me when he heard that you was gonna mess wit’ him. He told me that he wasn’t gonna do what you say an’ that he was gonna go down to the police.”
“Say what?”
I gave a small but definite nod. “You got to understand, Sal. Bert’s from a straight white family. He cross at the crosswalk an’ leave a dime in the cigar box when the paper boy ain’t around.”
“He gone leave his liver under my back tire he call cop on me,” Sallie said. I knew he meant it. Sallie was a hard case. He didn’t play.
But I was serious that day too. I had shared the same sour air with men like Sal and his lackeys for my whole life. One day one of them was bound to kill me—unless I could make the break.
I could have gotten a job as a dishwasher or stone buster, I could have become a regular janitor for the city or state. But I was like Sallie when it came to the disrespect shown to blacks by white men. I needed a job with responsibility and, at least, some pride.
“That’s what I told him,” I said. “I told’im that you cain’t play wit’ Sallie. Sallie will fuck you up.”
The gangster eyed me. He didn’t know where I was coming from—yet.
“What you want, Easy Rawlins?” he asked again.
“Bert’s gonna go to the cops you push’im,” I said. “That’s a fact. He’s a straight arrow an’ only go one way. I know that you’ll go after him. All that is cut in stone. But it don’t have to be.”
Sallie stared at me.
I let my hand drift toward my pocket.
“So I got another choice,” I said.
“What’s that?” Sallie mouthed the words with no voice.
“I give you seventeen hundred and sixty-two dollars and you give me the snapshots—and the negatives.”
I was a shorebird crying at the sea.
Sallie gauged me for a moment. The record on the jukebox switched and “Stagger Lee” came on. It played down to the sax solo before Sallie spoke again.
“Tell me why I don’t reach over there an’ break yo’ neck, Easy Rawlins.”
He wanted me to say Mouse. He wanted me to run for cover under the protection of my friend. All I had to do was call out Raymond’s name and Sallie would have slapped me silly and then gone to have a sit-down with Mouse.
Maybe I would have been smarter to say his name.
But not that day.
No.
“Because if you reach at me,” I said, dead serious, “I got a little something right here in my pocket for you. I got it right here.”
I’ve run across quite a few white men who have bragged to me about how they worked their way through college; about how they worked hard to get where they’re at. Shit. I’d like to see any one of them working like I did with Sallie that day. I had my hand on the trigger and my eye in his. There was going to be blood or money on the table before long because neither one of us was walking away until the issue was settled.
If it had been Mouse sitting across from me I would have shot without any words. If it had been Mouse I wouldn’t have even made it into the room. Mouse would have seen trouble coming and shot me for luck.
But Sallie wasn’t on Mouse’s level. He was a bully, a pimp; an angry man—but not a courageous one.
“Twenty-five hundred dollars,” he said.
I stuck to my number because it was all the money I could get. I decided that I would pay for Mr. Stowe’s freedom and he would pay me back with a job.
The trade happened the next morning.
I went alone to Petey’s to meet with Sallie and his thugs. I was a fool, I know, not to have brought Raymond with me. But it was my own move. It was a chance at a new life and I was willing to gamble everything for that chance.
Mouse was in the room anyway. Sallie had to be thinking that he wanted me dead. Seventeen hundred dollars was nothing compared to what he could steal out of the Board of Education warehouses. But if he killed me it was only a matter of time before Mouse got to him.
