“Yes. Please be quiet,” Abel Snow said from a door in the back.
He had a pistol in his hand.
“There’s a man in a car parked out front, Sinestra,” Snow said. “Go out to him. He’ll take you home.”
Without a word the young white woman went for the door.
Etta looked into my eyes. Her stare was hard and certain.
“Sin,” Willis said.
She hesitated and then went out the door without looking back.
“Well, well, well,” Abel Snow said. “Here we are. Just us four.”
Willis was sitting on the couch. Etta and I were standing on either side of the boy. He turned on the blue sofa to see Snow.
“You gonna kill us?” I asked, my voice soaked with manufactured fear.
“You’re gonna go away,” he said, and smiled.
I took a step to the side, away from Etta.
“You gonna let us go?” Willis asked, playing his part well though I’m sure he didn’t know it.
Snow was amused. He was listening for something.
Etta put her hands down at her side. She raised her face to look at the ceiling and prayed, “Lord, forgive us for what we do.”
At a picnic table Snow’s grin would have been friendly.
I took another step and bumped into the wall.
“Nowhere to run,” Snow apologized. “Take it like a man and it won’t hurt.”
“Please God,” Etta said beseechingly. She bent over slightly.
A car horn honked. That was what Snow was waiting for. He raised his pistol. I closed my eyes, the left one a little harder than the right.
Then I forced my eyes open. Abel Snow brought his left heel off the floor, preparing to pivot after killing me. EttaMae pulled a pistol out of the fold of her dress, aimed it at his head, and sucked in a breath. It was that breath that made Snow turn his head instead of pulling the trigger. Etta’s bullet caught him in the temple. He crumpled to the floor, a sack of stones that had recently been a man.
“Oh no,” Willis cried. He pulled his legs up underneath himself. “Oh no.”
Etta looked at me. Her face was hard, her jaws were clenched in victory.
“I knew you had to be armed, baby,” I said. “If he was smart he would’a shot you first.”
“This ain’t no joke, Easy. What we gonna do with him?”
“What caliber you use?” I asked.
“Twenty-five caliber,” she said. “You know what I carry.”
“Didn’t even sound that loud. Nobody live close enough to have heard it.”
“They gonna come in here sooner or later. And even before that he ain’t gonna report in to Mr. Merchant.”
“Tell me somethin’, Etta.”
“What?”
“You plannin’ to go back to work for them?”
“Hell no.”
“Then call your boss. Tell him that Abel’s not comin’ home and that there’s a mess down here.”
“Put myself on the line like that?”
“It’s him on the line. I bet the gun in Abel’s hand was the one he used on Art. And if that girl of his finds out about any killing in this house she’d have somethin’ on her old man till all the money runs out.”
“What about Willis?”
“I’ll take care of him. But we better get outta here now.”
I DROVE ETTA to a bus station in Santa Monica. She kissed me good-bye through the car window.
“Don’t feel guilty about Raymond,” she said. “Much as was wrong with him he took responsibility for everything he did.”
“What you gonna do with me?” Willis Longtree asked as we drove toward L.A.
“Take you to a doctor. Make sure your hand bones set right.”
“I’m still gonna stay here an’ try an’ make it in music,” he told me.
“Oh? What they call you when you were a boy?” I asked.
“Little Jimmy,” he said. “Little Jimmy because my father was James and everybody said I looked just like him.”
