“Just trying to steal poor people’s money.” She didn’t like white people too well.
“Did he try to sell any to you?”
“I wasn’t interested, but he went up and down in here looking for somebody to rob.”
I wasn’t interested in an insurance man, though. “So that was it, huh?”
“I think so, Mr. Rawlins. That white policeman was checking the door around back. He said that it looked like it had been forced open not too long ago.”
I thanked her and bid her good-bye. But I must have looked grim, because she said after me, “You take care now, Mr. Rawlins. You know it is nobody’s fault when someone dies.”
“No?”
“It is only God who takes life.”
I kept the laughter inside of me, like a caged wolf.
I still felt dirty when I got home, so I took a long bath. I wanted to be clean, perfect. I put a chair beside the tub and laid my. 38 on it. I left the door open and all the lights on. Shadows would be my alarm.
I called Dupree but Mouse was out, playing with LaMarque.
There was one chance that I had of staying in Los Angeles. That chance depended on some creative handling of the top-secret papers.
So I dressed in dark worker clothes, loaded a squirt gun with ammonia, wrapped a canvas tarp I used for painting, and bought three steaks from the corner store. Then I went to the car graveyard on Vernon and went around the back, because it was nighttime and the place was closed. I made it over the barbed-wire fence by laying the canvas tarp over it. I didn’t have time for the regular business hours.
The yard was made up of wide alleys formed by stacks of automobiles. I had worked my way down three lanes before the dogs got my scent. I saw two of them, a boxerlike monster and a shepherd, ’round the aisle of cars. The first one was growling and running at me fast, his brother hot on his tail. I squirted them both directly on their snouts with my ammonia gun. A dog would rather gnaw off his tail than have a snout full of that poison.
The papers were right where Andre had said they’d be. They were bound in a leather notebook, the kind that zips up the side, behind the seat of an ancient Dodge pickup truck. I tucked them under my arm, thinking about how Chaim put those papers there. I hadn’t really said good-bye to my friend.
By the time I reached the tarp-covered fence the dogs were on me again. The boxer/greyhound showed his teeth and snarled, but he was tentative for all that and hung back behind the three or four other dogs. I took out the squirt gun and splashed the first snapping dog-no breed would describe him-on the snout.
He couldn’t get away from me fast enough. The other dogs were on their way soon after, and I got out of the whole thing with no more than a small cut I suffered opening the truck’s door. I left the steaks on the ground near the fence. Those dogs couldn’t bark after me, causing unwanted attention, if they had their mouths full of T- bone.
Before I knocked on the door I heard screaming. High-pitched yelling mixed with words like “no” and “no mo’.”
I knocked. When Etta opened the door the yelling was still going on behind her. Mouse and LaMarque were wrestling on the couch. They were both yelling, but LaMarque was on top, playfully pounding the sides of Mouse’s head. Mouse was bowing low, pretending to be in pain and screeching like his namesake.
Etta put her hand to my chest, which I felt all the way down to my knees, and said, “Thank you, baby, Raymond done come back t’life fo’ him.”
“Etta, do you love me?” I whispered.
“Yes, Easy, I do,” she whispered back.
I wanted to ask her to run with me, to go down to Mexico, but I’d wait until Mouse was somewhere else.
“Easy!” Mouse shouted from inside.
“Hi, Unca Easy,” LaMarque said.
I wondered if LaMarque would come with Etta and me down to Mexico or would she leave him with her sister. He was still young enough to pick up a language if he had to.
“Hi, boys,” I said. Then, “Raymond.”
“Yeah, Ease?”
“I need yo’ help on sumpin’.”
LaMarque had looked away from us to a round table that they used for meals. Across it lay Mouse’s long. 41 -caliber pistol. It looked obscene there, but I supposed it was safer than if Mouse wore it while they tussled.
“I’ll make tea,” Etta said. Raymond’s artillery didn’t seem to bother her. She just pushed it to one side and another as she wiped off the table.
“No, honey,” I said. “Raymond an’ me got business. We gots to go.”
And so we left.
In the hall I said, “I need some help, Mouse.”
“Who you want me to kill?” he asked, pulling out his pistol to prove his readiness.
“I just need you to come with me, Raymond. I gotta look into a couple’a things and I could use somebody at my back.”
Raymond was smiling as he holstered his long gun.
We drove out to Mofass’s office. I had the key, so it wouldn’t be a case of burglary.
“What we lookin’ fo’, Ease?” Mouse asked me. He was working at his golden teeth with an ivory toothpick that he carried. “Just sit’own, Raymond. I gotta search Mofass’s files.”
“You don’t need me fo’ that.”
“Somebody tried t’shoot me out in front’a my house yester-day,” I told him. “I was standin’ out there with a friend and I just happened t’bend over or the lights woulda been out on my show.”
“Oh,” Mouse said simply. He felt for his pistol under his coat and sat back in Mofass’s swivel chair. He put his feet up on the desk and smiled at me as I went through the filing cabinet.
In his files Mofass kept a book of all the properties he managed. There were twelve columns to the right of each address or unit, where he indicated, on a monthly basis, if the place was occupied or not. If the property was vacant for that month there was an x marked in pencil.
There were about twenty unoccupied apartments, the longest vacancy being on Clinton Street. I listed them, but I really didn’t think Mofass would try to hide in an apartment. People didn’t like Mofass, and they were likely to blab his whereabouts if given the opportunity.
Mofass also managed a group of business properties and seven warehouses. All of them were rented. One warehouse was rented to Alameda Fruits and Vegetables Incorporated. Mofass had told me when they had gone out of business. The president, Anton Vitali, also owned the building. He’d cleared out the building but kept paying the rent, to himself, because he needed people to believe he was solvent as a real estate owner. Mofass was happy with that, because he still got his percentage and didn’t have to lift a finger.
I gave Mouse all the addresses, telling him to check the warehouse first.
“You want me to kill’im, Ease?” Mouse asked as simply as if he were offering me a beer.
“Just hold him, Ray. I’ll do what killin’s gotta be done.”
35
He answered the phone himself on the first ring. “Craxton!”
“Hello, Mr. Craxton.”
“Well, well, Mr. Rawlins, I thought you might’ve run out on me.”
“No, sir. Where’m I gonna go?”
“No further than I can reach, that’s for sure.”
“I been kinda busy, gettin’ news.”
