“Tax evasion is a felony,” he said, and then he hesitated.
“Do you understand the severity of a felony charge?”
“Yeah, but I ain’t done nuthin’ like that. I’m just a maintenance man for Mofass.”
“Who?”
“Mofass, he’s the guy I work for.”
“How do you spell that?”
I made up something, and he pulled out the card with my information on it and jotted it down.
“Did you bring the documents I asked for in the letter?” he asked.
He could see I didn’t have anything.
“No, sir,” I said. “I thought that it was all a mistake and that you didn’t have to be bothered with it.”
“I’m going to need all your financial information for the past five years. A record of all your income, all of it.”
“Well,” I said, smiling and hating myself for smiling, “that might take a few days. You know I got some shoe boxes in the closet, and then again, some of it might be in the garage if it goes all that far back. Five years is a long time.”
“Some people make an awful lot of noise about equality and freedom, but when it comes to paying their debt they sing a different song.”
“I ain’t singin’ nuthin’, man,” I said. I would have said more but he cut me off.
“Let’s get this straight, Rawlins. I’m just a government agent. My job is to find out tax fraud if it exists. I don’t have any feeling about you. I’ve asked you here because I have reason to believe that you cheated the government. If I’m right you’re going to trial. It’s not personal. I’m just doing my job.”
There was nothing for me to say.
He looked at his watch and said, “I have a lot of business to see to today and tomorrow. You’ve served in the army, haven’t you, son?”
“Say what?”
He stroked the lower half of his face and regarded me. I noticed a small, L-shaped scab on the forefinger knuckle of his right hand.
“I’m going to call you this afternoon at three sharp,” he said. “Three. And then I’m going to tell you when I can meet with you to go over your income statements. I want all your tax returns, and I want to see bank statements too. Now, it might not be regular office hours, because I’m doing a lot of work this month. There’s a lot of bigger fish than you trying to cheat Uncle Sam, and I’m going to catch them all.”
If there was something wrong at home for Agent Lawrence, he was going to make sure that the whole world paid for it.
“So it may not be until tomorrow evening that I can see you.” He stood up with that.
“Tomorrow! I can’t have all that by tomorrow!”
“I have an appointment at the federal courthouse in half an hour. So if you’ll excuse me.” He held his open hand toward the door.
“Mr. Lawrence…”
“I’ll call you at three. An army man will know how to be at that phone.”
6
The first thing I did after leaving the tax man was to go to a phone. I called Mofass and told him to have somebody get the empty apartment at the Sixty-fourth Street building ready for two tenants. Then I called Alfred Bontemps at his mother’s house.
She answered sweetly, “Yes?”
“Mrs. Bontemps?”
“Is that you, Easy Rawlins?”
“Uh-huh, yeah. How you been, ma’am?”
“Just fine,” she said. There was gratitude in her voice. “You know Alfred’s come back home ’cause of you.”
“I know that. I went up there an’ got ’im. I could see how you missed him.”
Mrs. Bontemps’ son, Alfred, stole three hundred dollars from Slydell, a neighborhood bookie, and then he ran out to Compton because he was afraid that Slydell wanted him dead-which he did. Alfred stole the money because his mother was sick and needed a doctor. Slydell hired me to find the boy and his money. I went straight to Mrs. Bontemps and told her that if she didn’t tell me about Alfred, Slydell would kill him.
She gave me the address after I told her how Slydell had once torn off a man’s ear for stealing the hubcaps from his car.
“But you workin’ fo’ that man,” she’d told me. Tears were in her eyes.
“That’s just business though, ma’am. If I could get what Slydell wants I could maybe cut a deal with him.”
She was so scared that she told me the address. Woman’s love has killed many a man that way.
I found Alfred, threw him in the back of my Ford, and drove him to a hotel on Grand Street in L.A. Then I drove over to the bookie shop; that was the back room of a barbershop on Avalon.
I gave Slydell the forty-two dollars Alfred had left and told him, “Alfred’s gonna give you fifteen dollars a month until that money is paid, Slydell.”
“The hell he is!”
I had no intention of letting that boy get killed after I’d found him, so I brought out my pistol and held it to the bookie’s silver-capped tooth.
“I said I’d bring you yo’ money, man. You know Alfred cain’t pay you if he’s dead.”
“I cain’t let that boy get away wit’ stealin’ from me. I got a reputation t’think of, Easy.”
Slydell was only tough with a man who cowered at threats of violence. And he knew I wasn’t the kind of man who bowed down.
“Then it’s either you or him, man,” I said. “You know I don’t look kindly on killin’ boys.”
We settled it without bloodshed. Alfred got a good job with the Parks Department, paid Slydell, and got his mother on his health insurance.
Mrs. Bontemps kind of took me on as her foster son after that.
“You ever gonna get married, Easy?” she asked.
“If I ever find somebody t’take me.”
“Oh, you’d be a good catch, honey,” she said. “I know lotsa good women give they eyeteeth fo’you.”
But all I was interested in was Alfred at that moment. He was a small boy, barely out of his teens, and skitterish, but he felt he owed me a debt of honor for standing up against Slydell. And I think he might have been happy to get back home to his mother too.
“Could I talk with Alfred, ma’am?”
“Sure, Easy, an’ maybe you could come over fo’ dinner sometimes.”
“Love it,” I said.
After a few moments Alfred came on the line.
“Mr. Rawlins?”
“Listen up, Alfred. I gotta move somebody t’day an’ I need a helper ain’t gonna go runnin’ his mouth after it.”
“You got it, Mr., um, Easy. When you need the help?”
“You know my house on 116th Street?”
“Not really.”
I gave him the address and told him to be there at about one-thirty.
“But first go over to Mofass’s office an’ tell ’im that you gonna use his truck fo’ the move,” I said.
All the time I was on the phone the idea of the government taking my money and my freedom was gnawing
