Walter Mosley - A Little Yellow Dog

“It was his brother, man. His brother. His brother. His brother…” He kept saying that with his big eyes on the knife in my hand. He was a butcher, after all; he knew what that knife could do to his meat.

“Holland?” I asked.

“Yeah. It was Holland. Roman come an’ got me to go out to the garden. He wanted to cut his drug for Joey Beam. Beam was gonna kill’im if he didn’t get his aitch. Roman was gonna cut it down at the garden class.”

“You dealin’ wit’im?”

“Uh-uh. No. I only ever helped stealin’ stuff. But Roman was in trouble wit’ Sallie an’ Beam. He wanted to turn the drug over an’ call it square.”

“But?”

“It was Holland. He come right outta the dark wit’ a shovel in his hand. He was shoutin’ an’ I run. I went right up to the fence an’ over.”

“An’ so how you know Holland killed his brother?” I asked.

“He killed him, man. Who else coulda killed’im?”

“Roman had keys to my school?”

“Yeah.”

“They didn’t find no keys on him. That’s why they was lookin’ at me.”

“I got the keys. They in that top drawer, in the dresser. I was carryin’ the keys for Roman and I still had ’em when I ran.” He looked at my knife. “Look in the drawer if you don’t believe me.”

I looked. There was a giant key ring with over thirty master keys on it. I pocketed the keys and went back to the butcher.

“And then you called the principal about me?”

“That was Sallie. I went to him to tell’im what happened. I didn’t tell’im nuthin’ ’bout no drug though. I just told’im that he was outta the school-robbin’ business.”

A feeling of calm came over me. The story sounded right. Yes. Holland killed Roman. Now at least I knew the truth.

I was half the way through the living room when Billy cried out, “Hey! You ain’t gonna leave me tied up!”

I dropped the knife and walked out the front door. Outside there was a man standing on the dirt lawn. He wore green work pants and a blue shirt, I remember. His face was shaped like a crescent and his eyes were small. His eyes darted from me to the front door.

Maybe he freed Billy after I’d gone. Maybe he robbed him.

Philly Stetz’s secret office was in a small medical building on Olympic near Vine.

Walking down the midmorning street on my way to face one of the most dangerous men on the West Coast didn’t scare me. My gait was nonchalant and there wasn’t a thought in my head. It wasn’t that I was particularly brave. The fact was that I found it hard to imagine that I had come so far over the line in just a few days. Never in my many years of street life had I gone up against somebody like Stetz.

Never in my life had I taken such a chance for somebody else. I’d risked my life before but that was always because of my pride — or stupidity. But here I was working for a dead woman to save a woman who I hardly even knew.

Those shots of whiskey in John’s car had gone right to my brain and stayed there.

The office building was really a walled-in courtyard. The path between the cottage-offices was wet brick. The offices were made of brick too. Old crumbling brick that was dark from the dust of years and not pigment. The cold those walls threw off was clammy and unhealthy.

If there was a valley of death I had stumbled upon it.

Dr. Green’s office wasn’t even in the court, it was through a redwood door at the back and across an alley. There stood a turquoise stucco building with potted succulents on either side of the oak entrance.

I knocked and awaited my fate.

The man who opened the door wore a green suit. Maybe, I thought, that was his joke. There was no Dr. Green. Jackson had discovered that Stetz rented the office as a partial cover to his gambling activities.

“Mr. Stetz?” I asked the dark-skinned white man. He had a bad complexion, rough caves instead of cheeks. His hair was thick and black. He wasn’t a big man but you could tell by his dark stare that if he got mad you’d have to kill him just to slow him down.

“Who’re you?” He jutted his head at me.

“My name is Rawlins. I’ve come to speak with Mr. Stetz.”

“How’d you know to come here?”

I saw no reason to lie so I said, “Jackson Blue.”

The ugly man froze for a second and then he moved backwards, making room for me to enter the sham office.

He led me through a dwarf foyer into a waiting room, or parlor. There, seated around a squat maple table, were five white men. All of them smoking and all of them hard. Each one was figuring how he’d have to go about killing me, if he got the chance.

“Wait here,” the man in the green suit told me.

He went through a door. The men peered at me from their seats.

I was remembering the wet heat of the Louisiana summers of my boyhood. Old folks used to say that it was so hot that even God was sweating.

“What’s the skinny, shine?” a roly-poly man in a dark suit asked. His slight accent was eastern European but he’d been down among my people once or twice; the twist on his words told me that.

His tone also told me that my mortal troubles might soon be over. But I was pacific. I had a .38 strapped to my thigh and a slit cut into my pants so that I could get to it fast. I could kill the moonfaced talker and maybe one or two of his friends before I went down.

It was that thought that saved me. I didn’t lose my cool. I gave that man a look that said, “Don’t mess, motherfucker, don’t mess.” If I had gotten mad or scared he would have been on me in a second. This way he had to consider first. He had to wonder what it was that I had.

The other men started to laugh. They liked a good standoff. The man I was looking at had probably killed a dozen men, and every one of them begged for life. But not this time.

“Hey, Aaron,” a slappy-looking guy dressed in clashing browns said. “Looks like you met your match there.”

All the men laughed.

Moonface tried to grin, but failed.

I took a deep breath and he measured it. He tried another smile and I lowered my shoulder to go for the gun. I was a fool but I didn’t mind.

“Hey you.” The man in the green suit was standing in the doorway to the doctor’s office.

I looked at him feeling unconcerned. I was in no hurry.

“Yeah?” I asked.

“Come on.”

Aaron smoothed back the little hair he had as I walked by. I felt a sort of comradeship with him. For a moment the violence that we both wanted seemed okay, like it was just an expression between men — rough humor, healthy competition, survival of the fittest.

As I passed into the big man’s office I shed the feelings of impending violence I had with Aaron. Now I had to be ready for a new game. I didn’t know what to expect, but that’s what street life is all about — you get thrown into the mix and see if you can get your bearings before your head’s caved in.

“This is him, Mr. Stetz,” the green suit said.

“Thanks, Arnie. You frisk him?” Stetz asked.

Arnie and I looked at each other.

Stetz shook his head.

“Get outta here, Arnie.”

Arnie wanted to say something but Stetz said, “Just go.”

Something about the way Stetz sent Arnie away made me like the man. In those two words he said, “You’re hopeless, Arnie, but I’ve got to keep you around because we’ve known each other so long and because I can still squeeze an ounce of worth out of you now and then.” It reminded me of my job at Sojourner Truth.

Stetz was a good-looking white man. Tall and comfortable with the elevation, he had a good tan and light brown hair. His eyes wavered between brown and yellow and his shoulders had seen their days of labor.