Instead of snarling, he gave me a quizzical look.
But I wasn’t worried about what was on the big man’s mind. I wondered if I could take him down. I decided that it was possible. I’d get hurt in the process, but I was a man trying to impress a woman. I could maybe take him. . . . It didn’t matter, though. With his helper, Thunder would have torn me in two.
The big white security guard was looking at me, still pondering. I turned my head to see that Tourmaline was frozen, probably holding her breath.
“Mr. Rawlins,” Thunder said, and I knew that Mouse had had a talk with him too.
“Hey, Thunder. Listen, I know you gotta kick me out. Just give me one word with the lady here.”
“Come on, Joe,” Thunder said to his partner.
Joe showed no emotion, just followed his supervisor down the stairs.
I turned to Tourmaline, and she said, “I’ll meet you there at eight, Mr. Rawlins.”
12
Raymond Alexander had always been a fixture in my life. He was a ladies’ man, a philanderer, a fabulous raconteur, a stone-cold killer, and probably the best friend I ever had; not a friend, really, but a comrade. He was the kind of man who stood there beside you through blood and fire, death and torture. No one would ever choose to live in a world where they’d need a friend like Mouse, but you don’t choose the world you live in or the skin you inhabit.
There were times that Mouse had stood up for me when I wasn’t in the room or even the neighborhood. That’s why, sometimes, men like Thunder backed away from me, seeing the ghostly image of Ray at my shoulder.
I lived in a world where many people believed that laws dealt with all citizens equally, but that belief wasn’t held by my people. The law we faced was most often at odds with itself. When the sun went down or the cell door slammed, the law no longer applied to our citizenry.
In that world a man like Raymond “Mouse” Alexander was Achilles, Beowulf, and Gilgamesh all rolled into one.
I STOPPED at a phone booth and dialed a number.
“Library,” a man’s voice answered.
“Gara, please.” I knew she’d told me to wait for a day, but I also knew my hundred-dollar incentive would get her to move quickly.
I waited there, smoking a low-tar cigarette. Usually when I smoked I thought about quitting. I knew that my breath had been shortened and that my life would suffer the same fate if I continued. At the end of most smokes I crushed out the ember planning for it to be my last — but not that day. That day Death held no sway over me. She could come and take me; I didn’t care.
“Hello?” Gara said in a rich tone that I associated only with black women.
“Any headway?”
She laughed at my knowledge and said, “Come on by.”
WHENEVER I SAW Gara she brought to mind deities. She was in that green chair again, fat as Buddha and wise as Ganesh. There was no gender to her divinity, no mortality to her time here on Earth.
“I got somethin’ for you here, Easy,” she said, indicating a buff-colored folder on the table.
There were eight sheets of paper inside. The first listed seven names, neatly typed in the top left-hand corner, single-spaced.
Bruce Richard Morton
William T. Heatherton
Glen Albert Thorn
Xian Lo
Tomas Hight
Charles Maxwell Bob
Francois Lamieux
After that, each page gave all the information that Gara had been able to find on the various heroes.
I scanned the pages. There were lots of abbreviations and acronyms. I didn’t understand most of them, but that didn’t bother me.
“No photos?” I asked.
Gara frowned and sucked a tooth.
“Yeah,” I said. “I didn’t think so.”
“Don’t show those papers to anybody, Easy. And burn ’em up when you’re through.”
“Either I’ll burn them or they’ll burn me.”
ON THE WAY HOME I stopped by the Pugg, Harmon, and Dart Insurance building. It was the newest and tallest glass-and-steel skyscraper to grace the downtown LA skyline. On the top floor was Brentan’s, one of LA’s finest restaurants.
As I headed for the red elevator whose sole purpose was to bring fine diners to Brentan’s, a guard in a tan short-sleeved shirt and black pants approached me. The pale-faced, slender-armed guard had a holster on his left hip. The leather pouch contained what looked to be a .25-caliber pistol.
Most white people at that time wouldn’t have given that guard a second thought. I, on the other hand, saw him as potentially life threatening.
