an underlined title—$500. Bob Henry was on the list. Ted Durgen was too. Musa Tanous was the second to last name, just before Matthew Munson.
WHEN WE WALKED OUT of the front door I noticed a man pushing a wire shopping cart, stolen from some supermarket, down the street. I say stolen because he wasn’t coming home from the grocery store. Neither had he been to the laundromat in the past year or so. His cart was filled with junk he’d picked up along the way. Broken umbrellas, a painting of a white woman holding an apple up to her eye, bottles, cans, newspapers, and various types of clothing. There was a green felt derby in there with a yellow hatband that sported three green feathers and a new-looking powder-blue scarf, festooned with large black polka dots, tied to the guide bar.
Close up the man stank. Mouse refused to get within three steps of him.
“Excuse me,” I said. “My name’s Easy.”
“Hello, Easy,” he replied holding out a hand. “I’m Harold.”
His hand was big and soft, bloated almost. I didn’t want to shake it but I needed to gain the man’s confidence.
“You got a cigarette, Easy?” Harold asked me.
I handed him a Chesterfield and lit it. His bloated hand was quivering; there was a line of sweat across his upper lip.
Harold’s brown chin sported white stubble and his eyes saw everything and nothing all at once.
“Do you hang out around here much, Harold?”
“Oh yeah. I sleep in that empty lot down the street two, three days a week. You know—when John Bull ain’t beatin’ the bushes. Sometimes they catch on to me and send me to county jail. It’s alright except if it’s in with the drunks. You know I hate the smell in there. I stay with my mama sometimes—”
“Did you know a young woman live in here, down on the first floor? Her name is Jackie Jay?”
“Jackie Jay,” he said, considering the name for a moment or two. “Jackie Jay. No. No. No I cain’t say that I do. My mama’s name is Jocelyn—”
“You sure?” I asked. “She’s a young black woman…” I was wishing that I knew what the woman-child looked like. “…a young woman hangs out with men more my age.”
“No, sir. Uhp. Whop. Maybe. Did one’a her boyfriends drive a red T-Bird? Convertible?”
“I don’t know,” I said, honestly. “It could be.”
“There’s a real pretty young thing wear them, what my mama calls scandalous short skirts. She come outta there every once in a while and this Mexican picks her up in a red sports car. Then they drive off.”
“Did you see them last Thursday?”
“Thursday I was in the can,” Harold said.
He was short and powerful, maybe fifty years old, but his hairline had just begun to recede. And even though his skin was medium brown you could see the streaks of filth on the back of his hands and across his face.
“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “I had a stomach bug, couldn’t hardly walk but they said I was drunk and took me off. When I was still sick the next day they took me to the nurse’s office and she sent me home. There I was sick like some kinda dog. First they arrest me and then they throw me out on the street. It’s a wonder that a colored child ever makes it to be a man.”
“Did you notice anything else about the pretty girl and the man in the red car?” I asked. “Did they ever fight?”
But Harold was still thinking about the disservice that the nurse and the police had done him.
“Easy,” Mouse said from his three-step distance. “Let’s get outta here, man.”
“YOU STILL WORKING over at that school, Ease?” Mouse asked me.
We were on the road again, heading back for Ginny’s so that Mouse could retrieve his car.
“What else I’m gonna do?” I asked him. “I got to pay the bills.”
“What about them apartments you got? Don’t they make you some money?”
“I put that away, for Jesus and Feather.”
“How is Juice?”
“Almost finished with that boat. It looks good too.”
“Why’ont you come to work for me, Ease? I get you rich in no time.”
“Doin’ what?”
“I got this dockworker gig goin’.”
“What’s that?”
“I gotta couple’a guys movin’ anything from Swiss watches to French champagne for me. I get ’em to drop it off different places and then I make some calls. The people I do business wit’ pick the shit up and then they pay me.” When Mouse smiled his gray eyes flashed. “Everybody gets paid and the police be scratchin’ they heads.”
“What you need me for?”
“I don’t know, Easy,” Mouse shrugged. “You my friend, right? You cleanin’ up toilets, right?”
“I’m the supervisor, Raymond. I tell people what to do.”
“Whatever. It’s the same chump change all these workin’ fools bring home. You should live better’n that.”
