“That was a good trick, Rawlins,” Hauser was saying. “How’d you do it?”
“Charm school,” I replied.
The giant looked hard at me for a moment and then he cracked a smile.
“You’re all right, son,” he said. “I guess Ray is better than I gave him credit for.”
“If you borrowed on me,” Mouse added, “you’d be a rich man.”
We all laughed and smoked for a while and then I wandered out toward the front of the warehouse so that Mouse and the big man could conclude their business.
As a rule I avoided Raymond’s illegal business. I knew he was a crook, but what could I do? He was like blood to me. And that night the rules as I had always known them had been suspended. Police opening fire on a house of worship, covering up information about a murder, and employing a black man to get them out of a jam. Our bigoted mayor was set to meet with Martin Luther King. I hadn’t even broken the law, telling those policemen that Raymond was working with me. So it didn’t disturb me standing in the thieves’ den. That was simply another step toward the other side of our liberation.
MOUSE JOINED ME outside the warehouse a few minutes past midnight. He still had that small duffel bag. He was smiling so I knew the money had worked out fine. Mouse only ever had two things on his mind: money and women. Revenge ran a distant third but still you wouldn’t want to be on his bad side.
“Ready to go, Easy?”
“Go where?”
“To shake Nate Shelby outta his tree.”
His white teeth and gray eyes flashed in the night and a laugh came unbidden from deep in my chest.
THE MENLO JUNKYARD was dark, and so was every other house and business on the street. All except one. That was a house that had a double garage at the end of its driveway.
“You gotta dime, Ease?”
“For what?”
“I got to make a call.”
I gave my friend the ten-cent piece and he walked down to the corner where a working phone booth stood. I remember thinking that that had to be the only phone booth in Watts that had not been smashed by rampaging rioters.
Ray talked for a good five minutes. Every now and then I could hear his voice rise in a threatening tone.
“Here’s your dime,” he said, handing me the coin.
“I thought you needed it for the call.”
“I did. But the coin box is broke out so you get your money right back. I been callin’ people all over the country from the phones down here.”
He took a cigarette from his white coveralls pocket, lit up, and then leaned against the junkyard fence.
“What are we waitin’ for?” I asked when he lit a second smoke.
“Magic.”
“Come on, Ray. Who did you call?”
“What you had in that note you showed the cops?”
Mouse’s revenge ran a slow third but it always crossed the finish line.
I laughed and said, “Okay, Ray. I’ll wait for your magic trick.”
And so we stood there at 1:15, smoking cigarettes and watching the single lit window on the block. No one was out; not the army or the police force or people in the neighborhood. When we had stood around for about five minutes or so one of the doors to the garage came open and a car drove out. A red Galaxie 500. It came across the street and parked in front of us. The door opened and a big black man with a weathered, angry face got out.
He walked up to Raymond and said, “This what you wanted?”
Mouse turned to me and asked, “This the car you lookin’ for, Easy?”
“Is it the one stolen from a white man bein’ beat on the second day of the riots?”
Mouse looked at the ugly man.
“Yeah,” the man said.
“Then that’s the car.”
“You got the papers, Nate?” Raymond asked Loverboy.
“Glove compartment.”
“Did you see what happened that night?” I asked then.
“Who you, mothahfuckah?” Nate replied.
“All you need to do is answer him,” Raymond said. “You see him standin’ here with me, don’t you?”
“Crazy motherfuckin’ white man drivin’ around lookin’ out the window with people burnin’ and breakin’ and throwin’ rocks,” Nate said. “They grabbed and beat him good. Tore his clothes all up. He ran away screamin’ like a baby. Shit.”
“You see where he went to?” I asked.
