smelled.
“Come on,” Naylor finally said.
“Hey wha…” Fine started to say, but Quinten stood up to him, and Quinten Naylor looked to be made from bricks.
“He’s going to make a call. That’s his right,” Naylor said.
Naylor unlocked my handcuffs and led me down the hall toward a small area that was partitioned off by three frosted glass walls. Each one was about six feet high. There was a phone on a wooden stool in the cubicle.
“There you go,” Naylor said to me, then he stood back to show me some privacy. Reedy came down with Fine and the three men started to haggle. I was a dead longhorn and those men were vultures, every one of them.
I dialed Mofass’s office. No answer.
I dialed the boardinghouse he lived in. On the third ring Hilda Bark, the owner’s daughter, answered. “Yeah?”
“Mofass there?”
“He gone.”
“Gone where?”
“Gone. Don’t you understand English?” she scolded me the way her mother must have scolded her. “He left.”
“You mean he moved out?”
“Uh-huh,” she grunted and then she hung up.
The men were still haggling over my bones, so I quickly dialed Craxton’s number.
“FBI,” a bright male voice said.
“Yeah, yeah, right. Can I talk to Agent Craxton?”
“Agent Craxton is in the field today. He’ll be back tomorrow. Would you like to leave a message?”
“Is he gonna call in?”
“Hard to say, sir. Agent Craxton is a field agent. He goes where he wants to and calls when he feels like it.”
“Please tell him that this is Ezekiel Rawlins calling from the Seventy-seventh Street police station. Tell him that I need to see him down here right away.”
“What’s the nature of your business?”
“Just tell ’im, man.”
He hung up on me too.
The next place I dialed was First African Day School. The phone was ringing when Fine came up and grabbed me by the shoulder.
“Nobody else was home,” I told him.
“Okay,” he smiled. He’d wait until I was finished with this call and then he’d see how loud I could scream.
“Hello?” a voice I didn’t recognize said.
“May I speak to Odell Jones, please?”
There was a long wait but Odell finally came on the line.
“Yes?”
“Odell?”
“Easy?”
“Man, I’m in trouble.”
“That’s how you was born, man. Born to trouble an’ bringin’ everybody else down wit’ you.”
“They got me in jail, Odell.”
“That’s where criminals belong, Easy, in jail.” He even raised his voice!
“Listen, man, I ain’t had nuthin’ t’ do wit’ Towne. It wasn’t me, not at all.”
“If it wasn’t you then tell me this,” he said. “If you didn’t go out there to the church in the first place would he be dead now?”
It was a good question. I didn’t have an answer.
“So what you want?” he asked curtly.
“Come get me outta here, man.”
“How’m I gonna do that? I ain’t got no money. All I got is God.”
“Odell,” I pleaded.
“Call on someone else, Easy Rawlins, this well is dry.”
Three strikes and Fine took me by the arm.
“I’m off duty now, Mr. Rawlins,” Quinten Naylor said. “Officer Fine will continue your interrogation.”
25
Officer Fine was a patient man. Patient and delicate. He and his partner, a wan-faced rookie called Gabor, taught me little secrets like how far an arm can be twisted before it will break.
“All you gotta do is take your time,” Fine said to no one in particular, as he twisted my right hand toward the base of my skull. “I could get these here fingers over the head and into the mouth and he’d probably bite ’em off t’ stop the hurt.”
“Don’t give in, Easy!” the voice screamed in my head.
“Why’d you kill her?” Gabor asked me. I wanted to hit him but my feet and my left hand were manacled to the chair.
We’d been playing the game for over an hour. I’d been slapped, kicked, beaten with a rolled-up magazine, and twisted like a licorice stick.
When I grimaced from the arm twisting I felt dry blood crack across my cheek.
That nearly broke me. I was almost ready to confess, confess to anything they’d say. But the voice kept screaming for me.
The door opened and a tall silver-haired man walked in. I was grateful for the respite, but when Fine released me it felt as if he’d torn the arm from its socket.
I moaned, humiliated and in pain as I gazed at those shiny black shoes.
“Captain,” Gabor said.
Then I saw a second pair of shoes that were as bright as polished onyx.
“This is what you call questioning, John?” Special Agent Craxton asked.
“It’s a hard case, uh, Agent Craxton,” the silver-haired man answered. Then he said to Fine, “Agent Craxton here is with the FBI. He needs Mr. Rawlins for a case he’s working on.”
“What about the murders?” Fine asked.
“Unchain him and apologize or I tear off your prick and shove it down your throat,” Craxton said simply, almost sweetly.
Fine didn’t like that, he brought his fists up to his chest and pushed his body forward a little, but when he peered into Craxton’s eyes he backed down. He even unlocked my manacles, but he didn’t apologize and he looked defiant, like a child angered at his father.
Craxton just smiled. The spaces between his teeth made him look like an alligator that had evolved to human form.
“Send me this officer’s file, John.”
“Apologize, Charlie,” Captain John said.
The fat cop who had caused me so much pain said, “I’m sorry.” And even though I was so hurt, that sounded good to me. His humiliation was like sweet, cold ice cream on hot apple pie.
I rubbed the dried blood from my face and said, “Fuck you, mothahfuckah. Fuck you twice.”
It wasn’t smart but I never imagined that I’d live to be an old man.
