Jackson nodded. “They even got the guy invented the atomic bomb on that paper, Easy. Big ole important man like that.”
“So? What you sayin’?”
“Yo’ name ain’t on that list, Easy. My name ain’t neither. You know why?”
I shook my head.
“They don’t need yo’ name to know you black, Easy. All they gotta do is look at you an’ they know that.”
“So what, Jackson?” I didn’t understand and I was so drunk and high that it made me almost in a rage.
“One day they gonna th’ow that list out, man. They gonna need some movie star or some new bomb an’ they gonna th’ow that list away. Mosta these guys gonna have work again,” he said, then he winked at me. “But you still gonna be a black niggah, Easy. An’ niggah ain’t got no union he could count on, an’ niggah ain’t got no politician gonna work fo’ him. All he got is a do’step t’shit in and a black hand t’wipe his black ass.”
32
I woke up in my house, hung over and in profound pain. I got Jackson’s bottle of morphine from my pants on the floor and took three pills. Then I went into the bathroom to wipe off the grime and smell of the night before.
Jackson’s words stuck in my head like the pain of my tooth. I wasn’t on either side. Not crazy Craxton and his lies and half-truths and not Wenzler’s either, if indeed Wenzler even had a side.
I thought of going to a dentist. I was even looking in the phone book when the knocking came at my door.
It was Shirley Wenzler, and she was in worse shape than I was.
“Mr. Rawlins,” she said, her lower lip trembling. “Mr. Rawlins, I came here because I didn’t know. I mean, what else could I do?”
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Come with me, Mr. Rawlins, please. It’s Poppa, he’s hurt.”
I got my pants and my pullover sweater. She walked me to the car.
“Where to?”
“Santa Monica,” she said.
I asked her if she had called a doctor and she answered, “No.”
On the ride out she gave me more instructions, but that was it. I was nauseous and in pain, so I didn’t push her. If Chaim needed a doctor I could figure that out when we got there.
It was a small house across the street from a park. The park was small too. Just one little grassy hill that rose up to the street on the other side. No trees or benches. Just a hill that was only fit for the two little children who rolled down it, pretending that they’d lost control.
I expected Shirley to have a key in her hand but she just pushed the door open and walked in. I limped behind her. The morphine dulled the hurt in my jaw, but then I could feel the tenderness of my left ankle and thigh.
The house was decorated in some cool, dull color, green or blue. The ceiling was so low that I remember ducking to go through the door from the living room to the bedroom.
The color there was red death.
Chaim was hunched over a chair. Most of the blood was right there under him. But there was also blood on the dresser and in the bathroom. Blood on the phone, in the dial. There were bloody handprints on the wall. He’d gone all the way around the room, propping himself up with his bloody hand.
Next to his body was a light green cushion, splattered and clotted with blood. He’d pressed the cushion to his chest, trying to staunch the bleeding, but he must have known that it wasn’t going to work.
Shirley’s eyes were wide and she wrung her hands. I pushed her back through the door. It was then I noticed the few drops of blood on the living-room carpet. I hadn’t seen them before in the unlit room.
“He’s dead,” I told her. Even though she already knew it, she needed someone else to pronounce him gone.
There were two small-caliber bullet holes in the door. Maybe somebody had knocked and when Chaim asked who, they shot him through his own door.
“Let’s get to the car,” I said. I tried smudging any surface I’d touched, but there was no telling where a fingerprint might show up. I let my head hang down when we left the house and when we got in the car I sat so low that I could barely see over the dash. I didn’t sit up straight until we were far from there.
We got to a small coffee shop in Venice Beach. A little place that had sandy floors and nets with seashells that hung from the ceiling. Our window looked out onto the shore. It was a cool morning; no one was out yet.
“When’d you find’im?”
“This morning. Poppa,” she said and then she choked on a sob. “He wanted me to bring him something.”
“What?”
“Money.”
“How’d you know where to find me?”
“I called the church.”
I had a coffee. I had to drink it carefully, because if I let the warm liquid on the wrong side I got a stabbing pain from my tooth.
“What did he need the money for?”
“He had to run, Easy. The government wanted him.”
“Government?” I said as if I had never heard of the FBI.
“Poppa’s a member of the Communist Party,” she said, looking down into her knotted fists. “He got something, some papers, and the FBI has been hounding him. The last time they came by, last night, they said that they’d be back. Dad thought they’d take him, so he called me to bring him some money.”
“Those FBI men at the house when I was there last week?”
I asked just to see what she’d say.
“Yes.”
“What is it he had?”
She looked reluctant to talk, so I said, “He’s dead, Shirley. What we do now we gotta do for you.”
“Some kind of plans. He got them from a guy at Champion Aircraft.”
“What kind of plans?”
“Poppa didn’t know but he thought that they were for weapons. He was sure that the government was making weapons to kill more people. Poppa hates the atomic bomb.
He thinks that America will kill millions more due to imperialism. He says the plans are for a new bomber, maybe for atomic weapons.”
The fact that she spoke of her father as if he were still alive bothered me, but I couldn’t see setting her straight.
“What was he going to do with them?”
She shook her head, weeping.
“I don’t know,” she moaned. “I don’t know.”
“You gotta know.”
“Why? Why is it important? He’s dead.”
“I didn’t know him too long, but Chaim was my friend. I’d like to know that he wasn’t a traitor.”
“But he was, Mr. Rawlins. He believed that the kind of government we have only wants to make war. He wanted to take America’s secret weapons plans and give them to a socialist newspaper, maybe in France, and to have everybody know about them. He wanted to make it so everybody was aware of the danger. He…” She began crying again.
Chaim was my friend and he was dead. Poinsettia was my tenant and she was dead too. One way or another both deaths were my fault. Even if it was only because of me not telling the truth or not having compassion when I
