Walter Mosley - A Little Yellow Dog

“I hear ya, man.”

He gave me the address of the gangster and I wrote it down. I felt good taking steps that would lead me somewhere. I wasn’t thinking of what might happen when I arrived.

The information i needed wasn’t in the phone book this time.

“Bertrand Stowe’s office,” Stephanie Cordero said in my ear.

“May I speak to him, please? This is Mr. Rawlins.”

I was put on hold for about ten seconds and then the phone rang again.

Stowe answered on the half ring. “Easy?”

“Yeah.” I was about to say more when he cut in.

“Where is she? Have you talked to her? I called but nobody answered. I went by there this morning but there was nobody there. Mrs. Grant said that she’d left but she didn’t even ask them where they were going.” It all came out at once.

“What you talkin’ ’bout, Bert?”

“Gracie, man. Gracie. She’s gone.”

“John an’ Alva prob’ly took her over to their place. You know they got lives and there’s no space for three full-grown adults and a baby at Gracie’s.”

“Give me his number.” I heard sounds over the phone of him searching for something to write on or with.

“I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“John don’t want no junkie’s boyfriend callin’ at all hours. I’ll call him and find out what’s happenin’ with Grace.”

“What’s John’s last name?” Stowe asked with every ounce of authority he could muster.

“Naw, Bert. You gotta trust me on this one.”

“I need that number, Easy.”

“No.” I let that hang in the air and then said, “But you got to do somethin’ for me. I want William Bartlett’s address. Gimme that and I’ll call you about Grace tonight.”

The Little Butcher had been living on Rondolet Street while he worked for the Board of Education. He’d moved but the landlord, who also lived in that building, knew his forwarding address. That was on Courlene, a residential street not far from downtown. It was a small house with peeling white paint and bare brown dirt for a lawn. There was an overflowing trash can right there on the porch. The front door didn’t belong to that house. It was an unfinished plyboard door meant for a temporary bungalow out on some construction site.

I hated that house.

I hated the disrespect it showed for the neighborhood and for itself.

I played the front door like a kettledrum.

“Bartlett!”

When I’d pounded a dent in the cheap wood I remembered Rupert. The next thing I knew my shoulder was making kindling from the door. I stumbled into the house stunned by my own violence.

Billy Bartlett was stunned too. He stood toward the back of the surprisingly neat and sunny room wearing boxer shorts. He had a long and slender knife in his fist.

Remembering the little butcher’s speed I took a large piece of the door and threw it hard; I came right behind it. I hit the confused cook in the nose and he went down.

No one was shouting from outside so I disarmed him and dragged him through the doorway he’d been standing in.

It was a neat little bedroom. Bartlett struggled to his feet and staggered around to get his balance. Blood was coming from his nose and front lip.

I unplugged a long extension cord from the wall and disconnected it from a lamp and an electric clock.

“Com’ere!” I grabbed Bartlett and made him put his hands behind his back. After I’d tied his hands I kicked the crook of his knees to make him fall on the bed. I tied his hands together with his feet, making him a bony bow on the trim single mattress.

It was then that I noticed that my vision was cloudy, dark. My fingers were numb and restless. That was murder in my blood.

I realized suddenly that I had to relieve myself.

I collided with the doorjamb going into the toilet off Bartlett’s room.

The crash of water as I urinated jangled my nerves.

“Hey!” the butcher called out.

“Shut up,” I said. “Or I’ma come in there and shut you up.”

Silence saved his life.

I washed my hands in cold water and then doused my face.

“What you want, man?” Bartlett asked me. I was sitting in a chair next to his bed.

“My hands hurt,” he said. “I cain’t breathe through my nose.”

“You ain’t gonna be breathin’ at all you don’t talk to me,” I said softly.

“Talk about what?”

“You know who I am?” I asked. “My name is Easy Rawlins.”

“I thought you said your name was Koogan?”

“You know who I am?” I asked again.

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Then talk to me.”

“What you wanna know?”

I just slapped him — that’s all. Knocking him around, tying him up. That wasn’t much considering what he had done to me.

“Hey, man!” he cried. “Lemme up.”

“Talk to me, Billy,” I said. “Talk to me.”

“You wanna know ’bout the schools? Is that what you want?”

I didn’t reply.

“It was Sallie Monroe, not me. It was Sallie. I met Roman at Idabell’s house, at a party they had. We got friendly and I introduced him to Sallie. Next thing I know Roman’s with Grace an’ she’s on junk. Roman got the job and then Sallie got me to go in to help him ’cause I knew the school setups and how things worked. You know, alarms and electric systems, where stuff might be stored.”

“What about Holland?”

“What about him?”

“How was he in it?”

“Roman cut him in ’cause we could use his paper shack to hold stuff sometimes.”

“What did Idabell want wit’ you that night she came to Whitehead’s?”

“She wanted some money. She knew I was in it with Holly and she wanted three hunnert dollars.”

“What did she say to you?”

“Nuthin’. Just that she was goin’ outta town.”

“Is that all?”

“No. I mean I asked if she needed a place to stay but she said that she was going to stay with a girlfriend.”

“Who’d you tell?” I asked the flesh and bones.

He saw my face and realized what Joey Beam must have done.

“I didn’t know, man,” he pleaded. “I swear I didn’t know.”

“That ain’t gonna save your life, Billy.” I didn’t even know if I intended to kill him, but I certainly was on the edge.

“I’ll turn myself in, man. It was Sallie wanted to call cop on you. Roman was dead and he thought you could take the fall. It was Sallie.”

“No,” I said.

“What you mean — no!”

“I mean no, Billy. I mean whoever called knew Roman was dead before the cops or anybody else did. The man who called the cops called the principal at Sojourner Truth first. That man already knew that Roman was dead and he wanted them to be lookin’ at me for his killer. You sayin’ that Sallie killed Roman?”

For a moment there I thought that Billy had died. His eyes were opened wide and his mouth was too. Then I heard the high-pitched whine of his breathing.

“I don’t know nuthin’ about that,” he said. “I don’t know a thing.”

“Who killed’im, Billy? I ain’t gonna ask you twice.”

At first I thought he was coughing; that the blood from his nose had gone down his throat. But then I saw the tears. His lips were pushing in and out and his head bobbed in a steady beat with the barks.

“That does it!” I shouted.

I ran into the living room and looked around until I found the long knife on the floor. Then I stalked back to the coffin-shaped bed. I’d run out intending to kill Billy. But standing up and going from one room to the other, bending down to get the knife, made me remember the jailhouse bully whose name wasn’t Jones and Felix Wren. By the time I got back to Bartlett I had lost my desire for his blood.

But Billy didn’t know that.