“I’ll have to speak with my supervisor,” Lawrence continued.
“You do what you think is appropriate, Mr. Lawrence.” Craxton never stopped smiling. “I appreciate that a man has to do his job, he has to do what he thinks is right. If everybody just does that this country will be fine and healthy.”
The blood rose to Lawrence’s face. My heart was going like a bird in flight.
8
Special Agent Craxton was saying, “Nice place, Hollywood,” as he sipped a glass of 7-Up.
I was nursing a screwdriver. We had driven to a small bar called Adolf’s on Sunset Boulevard near La Cienega. Adolf’s was an old place, established before the war, so it held on to that unpopular name.
When we got to the door a man in a red jacket and top hat barred our way.
“May I help you gentleman?”
“Stand aside,” Craxton said.
“Maybe you don’t understand, mister,” the doorman replied, raising his hand in a tentative gesture. “We’re a class place and not everyone can cut it.”
He was looking directly into my face.
“Listen, bud.” Craxton peeled back his left lapel. Pinned to the inside of the jacket was his FBI identification. “Either you open the door now or I shut you down-for good.”
After that the manager came over and seated us near the piano player. He also offered us free drinks and food, which Craxton turned down. Nobody bothered us after that. I remember thinking that those white people were just as afraid of the law as any colored man. Of course, I always knew that there was no real difference between the races, but still, it was nice to see an example of that equality.
I was thinking about that and how I had been suddenly saved from the gas chamber. Because it was a certainty that I would have murdered Agent Lawrence if the ugly man in front of me hadn’t shaken my hand.
“What do you know about communism, Mr. Rawlins?” Craxton asked. His tone was like a schoolteacher’s-I was being quizzed.
“Call me Easy. That’s the name I go by.”
He nodded and I said, “I figure the Reds to be one step worse than the Nazis unless you happen to be a Jew. To a Jew they ain’t nuthin’ worse than a Nazi.”
I said that because I knew what the FBI man wanted to hear. My feelings were really much more complex. In the war the Russians were our allies; our best friends. Paul Robeson, the great Negro actor and singer, had toured Russia and even lived there for a while. Joseph Stalin himself had Robeson as his guest at the Kremlin. But when the war was through we were enemies again. Robeson’s career was destroyed and he left America.
I didn’t know how we could be friends with somebody one day and then enemies the next. I didn’t know why a man like Robeson would give up his shining career for something like politics.
Agent Craxton nodded while I answered and tapped his cheekbone with a hairy index finger. “Lots of Jews are communists too. Marx was a Jew, grandfather to all the Reds.”
“I guess there’s all kindsa Jews just like ev’rybody else.”
Craxton nodded, but I wasn’t so sure that he agreed with me.
“One thing you have right is how bad the Reds are. They want to take the whole world and enslave it. They don’t believe in freedom like Americans do. The Russians have been peasants so long that that’s the way they see the whole world-from chains.”
It was strange talk, I thought, a white man lecturing me about slavery.
“Yeah, some folks learn how to love their chains, I guess.”
Craxton gave me a quick smile. In that brief second a shine of admiration flashed across his walnut eyes.
He said, “I knew we’d understand each other, Easy. Soon as I saw your police file I knew you were the kind of man for us.”
“What kinda man is that?”
The pianist was playing “Two Sleepy People” on a bright and lively note.
“Man who wants to serve his country. Man who knows what it is to fight and maybe take a couple of chances. Man who doesn’t give in to some foreign power saying that they have a better deal.”
I had the feeling that Craxton didn’t see the man sitting before him, but I’d seen pictures of Leavenworth in Life magazine so I pretended to be the man he described.
“Chaim Wenzler,” Craxton said.
“Who?”
“One of those communist kind of Jews. Union persuasion. Calls himself a worker. Building chains is what he’s doing. He’s been organizing unions from Alameda County on down the line to Champion Aircraft. You know Champion, don’t you, Easy.”
The last real job I had was at Champion.
“I worked production there,” I said. “Five years ago.”
“I know,” Craxton said. He pulled a manila folder from his jacket pocket. The folder was soiled, creased, and pleated down the center. He smoothed it out in front of me. The block red letters across the top said: “LAPD Special Subject.” And below that: “subj-Ezekiel P. Rawlins, aka-Easy Rawlins.”
“Everything we need to know in here, Easy. War record, criminal associations, job history. One police detective wrote a letter in 1949 saying that he suspected you of being involved in a series of homicides the previous year. Then in 1950 you turn around and help the police find a rapist working the Watts community.
“I’d been looking for a Negro to work for us. Somebody who might have a little trouble but nothing so bad that we couldn’t smooth it over if somebody showed a little initiative and some patriotism. Then Clyde Wadsworth called about you.”
“Who?”
“Wadsworth, he’s Lawrence’s head. Clyde saw an inquiry for your file go across his desk a few weeks back. He knew the neighborhood you lived in and gave me a call. Lucky for everybody.”
He tapped the folder with a clean, evenly manicured fingernail.
“We need you to get to know this Wenzler, Easy. We need to know if it’s the left or right leg he puts into his pants first in the morning.”
“How could I do that and the whole FBI cain’t do it?”
“This is a sly Jew. We know that he’s up to his shoulders in something bad, but damned if we can do anything about it. You see, Wenzler never really gets involved with the place he’s organizing. He won’t work there. But he finds his fair-haired boy and grooms him to be his mouthpiece. That’s what he did with Andre Lavender. Know him?”
Craxton stared me straight in the eye awaiting the answer.
I remembered Andre. A big, sloppy man. But he had the energy of ten men for all his weight. He always had a plan to get rich quick. For a while he sold frozen steaks and then, later on, he tried construction. Andre was a good man but he was too excitable; even if he made a couple of bucks he’d spend them just that quick. “Rich an’ important men gotta spend money, Easy,” he told me once. He was driving a leased Cadillac at the time, delivering frozen steaks from door to door.
“I don’t remember him,” I said to Special Agent Craxton.
“Well, maybe he wasn’t so loud when you were at Champion, but now he’s a union man. Chaim Wenzler’s boy.”
Craxton sat back for a moment and appraised me. He put his hand flat against my file like a man swearing on a sacred text. Then he leaned across the table and began to whisper, “You see, Easy, in many ways the Bureau is a last line of defense. There are all sorts of enemies we have these days. We’ve got enemies all over the world; in Europe, in Asia, everywhere. But the real enemies, the ones we really have to watch out for, are people right here at home. People who aren’t Americans on the inside. No, not really.”
He drifted off into a kind of reverie. The confusion must have shown on my face, because he added, “And we
