t’Africa. You prob’ly ain’t never heard’a him ’cause he’s a com’unist. They don’t teach ya ’bout com’unists.”
“So how do you know, if they don’t teach it?”
“Lib’ary got its do’ open, man. Ain’t nobody tellin’ you not to go.”
There aren’t too many moments in your life when you really learn something. Jackson taught me something that night in John’s, something I’d never forget.
But I didn’t have time to discuss the political nature of information right then. I had to find out what was happening, and it was the African Migration that was my next stop.
“Thanks, Jackson. You gonna be ’round fo’a while?” I put a five-dollar bill on the counter; Jackson covered it with his long skinny hand. Then he tipped his drink at me.
“Sure, Ease, sure I be here. You prob’ly find ’em too. They got a meetin’ there just about ev’ry night.”
There was a meeting going on in the gutted hardware store that evening. About forty people were gathered around a platform toward the back of the room to listen to the speakers.
A big man stopped me at the front door.
“You comin’ to the meetin’?” he asked. He was tall, six-four or more, and fat. His big outstretched hand looked like the stuffed hand of a giant brown doll.
“Yeah.”
“We like a little donation,” the big man said, unconsciously rubbing the tips of his fingers together.
“… they don’t want us and we don’t want them,” I heard the female speaker in the back of the large room say.
“How little?” I asked.
“One dollar for one gentleman,” he smiled.
I gave him two Liberty half-dollars.
The people in the room were a serious sort on the whole. Most of the men wore glasses, and every other person had a book or papers under their arm. Nobody noticed me. I was just another brother looking for a way to hold my head up high.
Among the crowd I made out Melvin Pride. He was intent on the speaker and so didn’t notice me. I moved behind a pillar, where I could watch him without being seen.
The speaker was talking about home, Africa. A place where everybody looked like the people in that room. A place where the kings and presidents were black. I was moved to hear her.
But not so moved that I didn’t keep an eye on the deacon. Melvin kept looking around nervously and rubbing his hands.
After a while the crowd broke out into a kind of exultant applause. The woman speaker, who wore wraparound African robes, bowed her head in recognition of the adulation before giving up the podium to the man behind her. She was chubby and light brown and had the face of a precocious schoolgirl, serious but innocent. Melvin went up to her, whispering while the next speaker prepared to address the crowd.
What looked to be a wad of folded money changed hands.
The man on the platform spoke in glowing terms about a powerful Negro woman who had shown leadership beyond her years. I knew it had to be Melvin’s friend, because she took out a moment from her transaction to make eye contact with the speaker.
Melvin had finished his business anyway; he headed for the exit.
“… Sonja Achebe,” the speaker said. The crowd applauded again and the young woman headed for a doorway at the back of the room.
“Miss Achebe?”
“Yes?”
She smiled at me.
“Excuse me, ma’am, but my name is Easy, Easy Rawlins.”
She frowned a bit as if the name meant something to her but she couldn’t quite remember why.
“Yes, Brother Rawlins.”
The mood of the Migration, like that of so many other black organizations, was basically religious.
“I need to talk to you ’bout Tania Lee.”
She knew who I was then. She didn’t say anything, just pointed at a doorway. We walked toward it as another speaker began to preach.
“What is it you wanted to know about Sister Lee?” she asked. We were in a large storeroom that was cut into tiny aisles by rows of slender, empty shelves. It was like a rat’s maze, dimly lit by sparse forty-watt bulbs.
“I need to know who killed her, and why.”
“She’s dead?” Miss Achebe made a lame attempt at surprise. “Com’on, lady, you know what happened. She’s one’a you people.” I was reaching but I thought I might be right.
“You tell the police that?”
I stuck out my bottom lip and shook my head. “No reason. Least not yet.”
Miss Achebe didn’t look like a little girl anymore. The lines of an older woman etched her face.
“What do you want with me?” she asked.
“Who killed your friend and my minister?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t have anything to do with killings.”
“I saw you with Melvin and I seen him with Tania and Reverend Towne. Somethin’s goin’ on wit’ you and the church. I know they gave you at least thirty-six hundred dollars, honey, but you see I don’t care about that. The police lookin’ at me for murder an’ I cain’t be worried ’bout you-all’s li’l thing.”
“We didn’t kill Towne.”
“Why’m I gonna believe that?”
“I don’t care what you believe, Mr. Rawlins. I didn’t kill anyone-nobody I know killed anyone.”
“Maybe not.” I nodded at her. “But all I gotta do is whisper a word to the man and he might just wanna prove that you did.”
She snorted in place of a laugh. “We live with danger here, Mr. Rawlins. The police and the FBI make weekly visits. They don’t scare me and you don’t either.”
“I don’t wanna scare ya, Miss Achebe. What you got here looks good to me, but I was in the wrong place at the wrong time an’ I gotta have some answers.”
“I can’t help you. I know nothing.”
“Didn’t Melvin say anything?”
“Nothing.” She shrugged and glanced over my shoulder.
“Okay. But I gotta know…” I was interrupted by a heavy hand on my shoulder.
I turned to look up into the face of the man who took my money at the door.
“Anything wrong?” he asked.
“Yes, Bexel,” Sonja said. “Mr. Rawlins here thinks that we’re somehow involved with the murder of Reverend Towne.”
“He do?” You could see how it hurt the big man that I could think such a thing.
Sonja smiled. “He wants to tell the police that.”
“Naw?” When Bexel balled his hands into fists the knuckles of his fingers did an impression of popping corn.
I guess that my fights with Willie and Agent Lawrence had made me a little cocky. I made like I was going to step away from the sergeant-at-arms and then I dropped my right shoulder to deliver an uppercut to his lower gut.
It was a perfectly executed blow that I followed with an overhand left just below Bexel’s heart. I danced backward until I felt a row of shelves behind me. It wasn’t far but I didn’t expect my quarry to be in any shape to trap me.
Then I looked up into his placid, smiling face.
Bexel leaned forward and pushed me with his great padded paw. My hurtling body shattered the shelves behind and the shelves behind them. My lungs collapsed in my chest and I felt pain in places that I’d never felt
