at me. But I didn’t even let that become a thought. I was afraid of what might happen if I did.
So instead I went to Targets Bar after my phone calls. It was still early in the day, but I needed some liquor and some peace.
John McKenzie was the bartender at Targets. He was also the cook and the bouncer, and, though his name wasn’t on the deed, John was also the owner. He used to own a speakeasy down around Watts but the police finally closed that down. An honest police captain moved into the precinct, and because of the differences between honest cops and honest Negro entrepreneurs, he put all our best businessmen out of trade.
John couldn’t get a liquor license because he had been a bootlegger in his youth, so he took an empty storefront and set out a plank of mahogany and eighteen round maple tables. Then he gave nine thousand dollars to Odell Jones, who in turn made a down payment to the bank. But it was John’s bar. He managed it, collected the money, and paid the mortgage. What Odell got was that he could come in there anytime he wanted and drink to his heart’s content.
It was John who gave me the idea of how to buy my own buildings through a dummy corporation.
Odell worked at the First African Baptist Day School, which was around the corner from his bar. He was the custodian there.
Odell was at his special table the day I came from the IRS. He was eating his regular egg-and-bacon sandwich for lunch before going back to work. John was standing at the far end of the bar, leaning against it and staring off into the old days when he was an important man.
“Easy.”
“Mo’nin’, John.”
We shook hands.
John’s face looked like it was chiseled in ebony. He was tall and hard. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on John, but he was a big man, still and all. He was the kind of man who could run a bar or speakeasy, because violence came to him naturally, but he preferred to take it easy.
He put a drink down in front of me and touched my big knuckle. When I looked up into his stark white-and- brown eyes he said, “Mouse been here t’day, Easy.”
“Yeah?”
“He askin’ fo’ EttaMae, an’ when that failed he asted ’bout you.”
“Like what?”
“Where you been, who you been wit’. Like that. He was wit’ Rita Cook. They was goin’ t’ her house fo’a afternoon nap.”
“Yeah?”
“I just thought you wanna know ’bout yo’ ole friend bein’ up here, Easy.”
“Thanks, John,” I said, and then, “By the way…”
“Yeah?” He looked at me with the same dead-ahead look that he had for a customer ordering whiskey or an armed robber demanding what was in the till.
“Some people been talkin’ ’bout them buildin’s I bought a while back.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You tell anybody ’bout them papers we did?”
At first he moved his shoulders, as if he were going to turn away without a word. But then he straightened up and said, “Easy, if I wanted to get you I could put sumpin’ in yo’ drink. Or I could get one’a these niggahs in here t’cut yo’ th’oat. But now you know better than that, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I know, John. But you know that I had t’ask.”
We shook hands again, still friends, and I moved away from the bar.
I said hello to Odell. We made plans to get together in the next couple of days. It felt like I was back in the war again. Back then I’d see somebody and make plans, just a few hours away, but I wondered if I’d be alive to make the date.
“Hi, Easy,” Etta said in a cool voice when I got to the door. The potatoes were replanted and the flower beds were tended. My house smelled cleaner than it ever had, and I was sorry, so sorry that I wanted to cry.
“Hi, Unca Easy,” LaMarque yelled. He was jumping up and down on my couch. Up and down, over and over, like a little madman, or a little boy.
“Mouse went to John McKenzie’s bar t’day. He was lookin’ fo’ you an’ askin’ ’bout me,” I told Etta.
“He be here tomorrow then, an’ me an’ LaMarque be gone.”
“How you know he ain’t on his way here right now?”
“You say he was in John McKenzie’s bar just today?”
“Yeah.”
“So he had t’ be either wit’ a girl or after one.”
I didn’t say anything to that, so Etta went on, “Raymond always gotta get his thing wet when he get to a new place. So he be here tomorrah, after he get that pussy.”
I was ashamed to hear her talk like that and looked around to see where LaMarque was. But something about her bold talk excited me too. I didn’t like to feel anything about Mouse’s woman, but things were going so poorly in my life that I was feeling a little reckless.
Luckily Alfred drove up then. He was a tiny young man, hardly larger than a punk kid, but he could work. We put Etta’s bags and a bed from my garage in the truck. I also gave her a chair and a table from my store of abandoned furniture.
Etta softened a little before she left.
“You gonna come an’ see us, Easy?” she asked. “You know LaMarque likes you.”
“Just gotta get this tax man offa my butt an’ I be by, Etta. Two days, three at top.”
“You tell Raymond that I don’t wanna see ’im. Tell ’im that I tole you not t’give’im my address.”
“What if he pulls a gun on me? You want me to shoot ’im?”
“If he pulls his gun, Easy, then we all be dead.”
7
After everyone was gone I sat down by the phone. That was five minutes to three. If Lawrence had called me when he said he was I might have been okay. But the minutes stretched into half an hour and then to an hour. During that time I thought about all that I was going to lose; my property, my money, my freedom. And I thought about the way he called me son so easily. In those days many white people still took it for granted that a black man was little more than a child.
It was well after four by the time Lawrence called.
“Rawlins?”
“Yeah.”
“I want you to come to my office at six-thirty this evening. I’ve notified someone downstairs so you shouldn’t have any trouble getting in.”
“Tonight? I cain’t have all that by then, man.”
But I was wasting my words, because he had already hung up.
I went to the garage and pulled out my box of papers. I had paid taxes on the money I paid myself through Mofass, but I didn’t pay taxes on the stolen money because it was still hot in 1948 and after that it was already undeclared. Most of the profit from the rent went into buying more real estate. It was just easier to let the money ride without telling the government about my income.
Then I drove out to see Mofass. My choices were few and none of them sounded any too good.
On the drive over I heard a voice in my head say, “Mothahfuckah ain’t got no right messin’ like that, man. No right at all.”
But I ignored it. I grabbed the steering wheel a little tighter and concentrated on the road.
“It don’t look good, Mr. Rawlins,” Mofass said behind his fat cigar.
