They all had their pistols drawn.
In my left hand I held the letter given to me by Gerald Jordan.
“Before you make a mistake, officers,” I said. “Please read this letter.”
I hadn’t been pistol-whipped for quite some time.
The advance policeman struck me for no reason I could see. He didn’t know me. I hadn’t committed a crime as far as he knew. My hands were aloft and the only thing I held was a flimsy note. But he hit me so hard that
I didn’t go down, though. And instead of striking back I held out the note.
“You better read this,” I said.
“Hold it, Billings,” another cop said.
Billings swung at me anyway but I bent my knees and lowered my arm so that the gun swung over my head. I tasted blood on the side of my mouth but all I was worried about was Raymond murdering those four cops.
The one who had told Billings to stop stood in front of me.
“What’s that you got there?” the cop asked.
“A letter about me and my friends,” I said, “from your boss.”
I didn’t expect it to work. But the officer read my letter while the rest of the cops braced Hauser and Raymond.
“Where’s the key to the back?” Billings was asking Hauser.
“Lost it,” the big redhead said.
By then my cop had read the letter.
“This doesn’t have anything to do with you in a truck in the middle of the night,” he told me.
“Call up and find out,” I said.
He was brown-eyed and I would have said brawny if it wasn’t for Hauser. Sonny Liston would have looked scrawny in the presence of Raymond’s disgruntled partner.
I was trussed up in handcuffs and pressed against the side of the forty-foot trailer—next to my friends.
“Where’s the key?” a cop was yelling into Raymond’s ear.
“It ain’t mines to keep,” Raymond said. “And stop spittin’ on me.”
“Uncuff them,” the officer who took my official hall pass said.
“What?” Billings asked belligerently.
“Which word didn’t you understand?”
I could see the two cops got along about as well as Mouse and Hauser. But that meant nothing to me. My chains were released and three of the cops stood back. The leader, the one who read my note, came up to me then.
“Can I be of any assistance, Mr. Rawlins?” he asked.
It was worth the whole night just to see the look of wide-eyed shock enter Mouse’s face. In all the years I’d known him, since we were in our teens, I had never surprised my friend. He was a force of nature, the spawn of some nether god. There was nothing a mortal like me could do that would take him off guard.
But I did that night.
“As a matter of fact, yes, Officer,” I said. “Could you let your friends know that Mr. Alexander here and his friend Mr. Hauser will be doing work with me for the next few nights? I really wouldn’t want them to be bothered anymore.”
“You got it,” he said. He didn’t even sound angry. Gerald Jordan was not only the enemy of my people but, in some ways, more powerful than all of us put together.
17
How you do that, Easy?” Mouse asked when we were back on the road.
“Do what?” I asked innocently.
“You know what. Get them cops to treat you like you was the mayor or somethin’.”
“You don’t expect me to let up on all my secrets, do you, Ray?”
“Come on, man, what did that letter say?”
“It said, ‘Listen up, Mr. Policeman, that’s Easy Rawlins you talkin’ to.’ ”
“I never saw anything like that in my life,” Randolph Hauser said. “That cop called you mister and he didn’t even try to look in our truck.”
I didn’t respond to the compliment. I was just happy that Hauser’s estimation of Mouse and his value had risen.
THIRTY MINUTES LATER we reached another warehouse on Hart, not half a block from the ocean. Six or seven white men rushed out on the dock and started unloading. I had found out along the way that Hauser really didn’t have the key. He carried a set of open padlocks to secure the van, so if the police did stop him they couldn’t get into the truck without metal-cutting tools.
We went to the glass-walled warehouse to smoke and drink coffee while Hauser’s men worked.
