“Naw. Don’t worry. It’s just somethin’ I’m lookin’ into.”
“What is it?”
I told him about Nola Payne and her aunt, about the white man and the car thief named Loverboy.
“Okay,” he said. “You know I got to go make a pickup anyway. You wait at your place and me an’ Hauser be over in forty-five.”
“Where you comin’ from?”
“Santa Monica. That’s where I’m set up.”
I TRIED TO apologize to Bonnie but she kissed it away.
“I know you have to go, baby,” she told me. “I’m proud of you.”
“I like to spend time with you when you’re home, honey,” I said. “I just have to go out and —”
“Be our hero,” she whispered.
We were standing on the front porch, between the spaces where I once grew roses to celebrate our love. Later I cut the roses down when I thought Bonnie loved another man. I did it to show her how angry I was but somehow the emptiness came to mean more to us than the flowers had.
A big Andy’s Supermarket truck was rumbling up the street. I was surprised to see such a big truck on a side street. I was amazed to see it stop in front of my house.
“Easy!” Mouse yelled from the passenger’s window about two stories high. “Come on up, man.”
Bonnie and I laughed and embraced each other. She kissed me again and I ran toward the semi.
I remember thinking, as Mouse reached down to help me, that it was as if I were living in one of Feather’s fairy-tale books. Only this was an adult fairy tale. So instead of a flying carpet I had a six-axle produce delivery truck and instead of an evil ogre I had a well-to-do white man who shot virtuous young black women after raping and strangling them.
16
Easy Rawlins, meet Randolph Hauser,” Mouse said as I took my place next to the passenger’s window. When I pulled the door shut I could see Bonnie going back into the house. Watching our door close brought a tightening around my heart—the symptom of a premonition that was indecipherable and unsettling.
“How you doin’?” the big, redheaded white man said to me.
He stuck out a hand bulging with the muscle of a working man. I shook it and was immediately convinced of his strength.
“Good,” I said. “You on a delivery run.”
“Deliverin’ the goods,” he said and then he let out a big laugh.
Randolph Hauser was the opposite of Mouse in almost every way. He was white, nearly fat with muscle, and he had blunt features compared to Ray’s chiseled and fine ones.
“What’s that mean?” I asked simply.
The white man slipped the truck into gear and took off with a roar.
“Don’t your boy know the score, Raymond?” Hauser asked.
“He can count higher than you can think, white boy,” Mouse replied. “Easy walk up to a haystack and pick up a gold pin quicker than you could find a straw.”
“What are you doin’ with this truck, Ray?” I asked.
“I do my pickups around this time, Easy. It’s late but not too late. And with Hauser here drivin’, the cops let us be.”
“Not too late for what?” I asked.
It always took a while to get a bead on what Mouse was doing. He was naturally crafty, keeping in practice even when talking to people he trusted.
“I already told you. The pickup.”
“What are we picking up?”
“Don’t never know till we get there.” He gave me a broad smile. “That’s the wonder of this here job. Ain’t that right, white boy?”
“Yesiree, son,” Hauser said. “This is the best job I had since drivin’ shotgun on a regular route we used to bring in from Baja.”
He shifted gears again and we rumbled east on Olympic.
The streets were pretty quiet and so was I.
We were just turning onto Western when Hauser asked, “So what about the stuff they take over to your place?”
“What about it?” Mouse said in a less than friendly tone.
“We said that we were going to split the profits —”
“On what we move outta your place, brother. Out of there. Whatever I keep for me is mine.”
I could see that Hauser wasn’t happy about loot he was missing out on. But I knew, and he did too, that
