restaurant; it wasn’t a club or private fraternity either — but it was any one of those things and more at different times of the week. It had a kitchen in the back and round folding tables in the hall. One evening Hennie’s would host a recital for some church diva from a local choir; later that same night there might be a high-stakes poker game for gangsters in from St. Louis. There had been retirement parties for aldermen and numbers runners there. It was an all-purpose room for a select few.
You never went to Hennie’s unless you’d been invited. At least I never did. For some people the door was always open. Mouse was one of them.
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Marcel John stood at the downstairs alley door that led up to Hennie’s. Marcel was a big man with a heavyweight’s physique and an old woman’s face. He had a countenance of sad kind-liness but I knew that he’d killed half a dozen men for money before coming to work for Hennie. He wore an old-fashioned brown woolen suit with a gold watch chain in evidence. A purple flower drooped in his lapel.
“Marcel,” I said in greeting.
He raised his head in a half-inch salutation, watching me with those watery grandmother eyes.
“Lookin’ for Mouse,” I said.
I’d said those words so many times in my forty-six years that they might have been an incantation.
“Not here.”
“He needs to be found.”
Marcel’s wide nostrils flared even further as he tried to get the scent of my purpose. He took in a deep breath and then nodded. I walked past him into the narrow stairway that went upward without a turn, to the third-floor entrance on the other side of the building.
When I neared the top the ebony wood door swung open and Bob the Baptist came out to meet me.
Bob the Baptist’s skin was toasted gold. His features were neither Caucasian nor Negroid. Maybe his grandmother had been an Eskimo or a Hindu deity. Bob was always grinning. And I knew that if he hadn’t gotten the signal from Marcel he would have been ready to shoot me in the forehead.
“Easy,” Bob said. “What’s your business, brother?”
“Lookin’ for Mouse.”
“Not here.” Bob, who was wearing loose white trousers and a blue box-cut shirt, twisted his perfect lips to add,
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“He needs finding,” I said, knowing that even the self-important employees of Hennie’s wouldn’t want to cross Raymond Alexander.
He had to let me in but he didn’t have to like it.
“You armed?” he asked, the godlike grin wan on his lips.
“Yes I am,” I said.
He sniffed, considering if I was a threat, decided I was not, and moved aside.
Hennie’s was mostly one big room that took up nearly the entire floor. It was empty that day. As I walked from Bob’s post to the other side my footfalls echoed, announcing my approach.
Hennie was sitting at a small round table against the far wall.
There was a brandy snifter in front of him, also the
He was a dapper soul, wearing a dark blue suit, an off-white satin shirt, and a red tie held down by a pearl tack. The shirt was so bright that it seemed to flare from his breast. His hair was close-cropped and his skin was black as an undertaker’s shoes.
“I’m readin’ the paper,” he said, not inviting me to sit. He didn’t even look up to meet my eye.
“You see Mouse in there?” I took out my pack of Parliaments and produced a cigarette, which I proceeded to light.
“Raymond didn’t leave me any messages for you, Easy Rawlins.”
“The message is for him,” I said.
He finally looked up.
“What is it?” Hennie’s eyes had no sparkle to them whatsoever, giving the impression that he had seen such bad times that all of his hope had died.
“It’s for Mouse,” I said.
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Hennie stared at me for a few seconds and then called out,
“Melba!”
“Yes, Daddy,” a high-toned woman’s voice called back.
She came into a doorway about ten feet away.
“Bring me the phone.”
