'Then get t'askin', man,' Mouse grinned.
'Where's Daphne Monet?' I asked Green. He just stared at me, his eyes sharp as his knife.
'You heard'im, Frank,' Mouse said. 'Where is she?'
Frank's eyes weren't so sharp when he looked at Mouse but he stayed quiet anyway.
'This ain't no game, Frank.' Mouse let the pistol hang down until the muzzle was pointing at the floor. He walked up to Frank; so close that Knifehand could have grabbed him. But Frank stayed still. He knew that Mouse was just playing with him.
'Tell us what we wanna know, Frankie, or I'm'a shoot ya.'
Frank's jaw set and his left eye half closed. I could see that Daphne meant enough to him that he was ready to die to keep her safe.
Mouse raised the pistol so that it was pointing to the soft place under Frank's jaw.
'Let'im go,' I said.
'But you said you had a five-hundred-dollar deal.' Mouse was hungry to hurt Frank, I could hear it in his tone.
'Let'im go, man. I don't want him killed in my house.' I thought maybe Mouse would sympathize with keeping blood off the furniture.
'Gimme your keys then. I take him for a drive.' Mouse smiled an evil grin. 'He'll tell me what I wanna know.'
Without warning Mouse pistol-whipped Frank three times; every blow made a sickening thud. Frank fell to his knees with the dark blood coming down over his dark clothes.
When Frank fell to the floor I jumped between him and Mouse.
'Let'im go!' I cried.
'Get outta my way, Easy!' There was bloodlust in Mouse's voice.
I grabbed for his arm. 'Let him be, Raymond!'
Before anything else could happen I felt Frank pushing me from behind. I was propelled onto Mouse and we fell to the floor. I hugged Mouse to break my fall but also to keep him from shooting Frank. By the time the wiry little man got out from under me Frank had bolted out the door.
'Dammit, Easy!' He turned with the pistol loosely aimed at me. 'Don't you never grab me when I got a gun in my hand! You crazy?'
Mouse ran to the window but Frank was gone.
I hung back for a moment while Mouse calmed down.
After a minute or two he turned away from the window and looked down at his jacket, 'Look at the blood you got on my coat, Easy! Why you wanna go and do that?'
'I need Frank Green alive. You kill him and one of my sources dries up.'
'What? What that got to do with this mess?' Mouse took off his jacket and draped it over his arm. 'That the bathroom?' he asked, pointing to the door.
'Yeah,' I said.
He hung the pistol in his belt and carried the stained jacket to the toilet. I heard the water running. When Mouse returned I was staring out the front window, through the slatted blinds.
'He ain't gonna be back t'night, Easy. Tough man like Frank seen too much death to want it on him.'
'What you doin' here, Mouse?'
'Din't you call Etta?'
'Yeah?'
Mouse was looking at me, shaking his head and smiling.
'Easy, you changed.'
'How's that?'
'You use' t'be kinda scared of everything. Take them little nigger jobs like gardenin' and cleanin' up. Now you got this nice house and you fuckin' some white man's girl.'
'I ain't touched her, man.'
'Not yet.'
'Not ever!'
'Com'on Easy, this is the Mouse you talkin' to. A woman look twice at you an' you cain't say no. I should know.'
I had messed around with Etta behind Mouse's back when they were just engaged. He found out about it but he didn't care. Mouse never worried about what his women did. But if I'd touched his money he'd have killed me straight away.
'So what you doin' here?' I asked to change the subject.
'First thing I want to figure is how I can get that money you told Frank about.'
