Walter Mosley: A Red Death

“If they could prove you made some money and didn’t tell them about it, yo’ ass be in a cast-iron sling,” Mofass said.

“Shit! I just pay ’em, that’s all.”

He shook his head, and I felt my heart wrench.

“Naw, Mr. Rawlins. Government wants you t’tell ’em what you make. You don’t do that and they put you in the fed’ral penitentiary. And you know the judge don’t even start thinkin’ ’bout no sentence till he come up with a nice round number-like five or ten.”

“But you know, man, my name ain’t even on them deeds. I set up what they call a dummy corporation, John McKenzie helped me to do it. Them papers say that them buildin’s ’long to a Jason Weil.”

Mofass curled his lip and said, “IRS smell a dummy corporation in a minute.”

“Well then I just tell ’em I didn’t know. I didn’t.”

“Com’on, man.” Mofass leaned back and waved his cigar at me. “They just tell ya that ignorance of the law ain’t no excuse, thas all. They don’t care. Say you go shoot some dude been with your girl, kill ’im. You gonna tell ’em you didn’t know ’bout that killin’ was wrong? Anyway, if you went to all that trouble t’hide yo’ money they could tell that you was tryin’ t’cheat ’em.”

“It ain’t like I killed somebody. It ain’t right if they don’t even give me a chance t’pay.”

“On’y right is what you get away wit’, Mr. Rawlins. And if they find out about some money, and they think you didn’t declare it…” Mofass shook his head slowly.

The girl returned with two giant white plates. Each one had a fat, open-ended burrito and a pile of chili and yellow rice on it. The puffy burritos had stringy dark red meat coming out of the ends so that they looked like oozing dead grubs. The chili had yellowish-green avocado pieces floating in the grease, along with chunks of pork flesh.

One hundred guitars played from the jukebox. I put my hand over my mouth to keep from gagging.

“What can I do?” I asked. “You think I need a lawyer?”

“Less people know ’bout it the better.” Mofass leaned forward, then whispered, “I don’t know how you got the money to pay for those buildin’s, Mr. Rawlins, and I don’t think nobody should know. What you gotta do is find some family, somebody close.”

“What for?” I was also leaning across the table. The smell of the food made me sick.

“This here letter,” Mofass said, tapping the envelope.

“Don’t say, fo’a fact, that he got no proof. He just investigatin’, lookin’. You sign it over t’ some family, and backdate the papers, and then go to him, prove that it ain’t yours. Say that they was tryin’ t’hide what they had from the rest of the family.”

“How I back-whatever?”

“I know a notary public do it-for some bills.”

“So what if I had a sister or somethin’? Ain’t the government gonna check her out? ’Cause you know ev’rybody I know is poor.”

Mofass took a suck off his cigar with one hand and then shoveled in a mouthful of chili with the other.

“Yeah,” he warbled. “You need somebody got sumpin’ already. Somebody the tax man gonna believe could buy it.”

I was quiet for a while then. Every good thing I’d gotten was gone with just a letter. I had hoped that Mofass would tell me that it was alright, that I’d get a small fine and they’d let me slide. But I knew better.

Five years before, a rich white man had somebody hire me to find a woman he knew. I found her, but she wasn’t exactly what she seemed to be, and a lot of people died. I had a friend, Mouse, help me out though, and we came away from it with ten thousand dollars apiece. The money was stolen, but nobody was looking for it and I had convinced myself that I was safe.

I had forgotten that a poor man is never safe.

When I first got the money I’d watched my friend Mouse murder a man. He shot him twice. It was a poor man who could almost taste that stolen loot. It got him killed and now it was going to put me in jail.

“What you gonna do, Mr. Rawlins?” Mofass asked at last.

“Die.”

“What’s that you say?”

“On’y thing I know, I’ma die.”

“What about this here letter?”

“What you think, Mofass? What should I do?”

He sucked down some more smoke and mopped the rest of his chili with a tortilla.

“I don’t know, Mr. Rawlins. These people here don’t have nothin’, far as I can see. And you got me t’lie for ya. But ya know if they come after my books I gotta give ’em up.”

“So what you sayin’?”

“Go on in there and lie, Mr. Rawlins. Tell ’em you don’t own nuthin’. Tell ’em that you a workin’ man and that somebody must have it out for you to lie and say you got that property. Tell ’em that and then see what they gotta say. They don’t know your bank or your banker.”

“Yeah. I guess I’ma have to feel it out,” I said after a while.

Mofass was thinking something as he looked at me. He was probably wondering if the next landlord would use him.

It wasn’t far to my house. Mofass offered to drive, but I liked to use my legs, especially when I had thinking to do.

I went down Central. The sidewalks were pretty empty at midday, because most people were hard at work. Of course, the streets of L.A. were usually deserted; Los Angeles has always been a car-driving city, most people won’t even walk to the corner store.

I had solitude but I soon realized that there was nothing for me to consider. When Uncle Sam wanted me to put my life on the line, fighting the Germans, I did it. And I knew that I’d go to prison if he told me to do that. In the forties and fifties we obeyed the law, as far as poor people could, because the law kept us safe from the enemy. Back then we thought we knew who the enemy was. He was a white man with a foreign accent and a hatred for freedom. In the war it was Hitler and his Nazis; after that it was Comrade Stalin and the communists; later on, Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese took on an honorary white status. All of them bad men with evil designs on the free world.

My somber mood lifted when I came to 116th Street. I had a small house, but that made for a large front lawn. In recent years I had taken to gardening. I had daylilies and wild roses against the fence, and strawberries and potatoes in large rectangular plots at the center of the yard. There was a trellis that enclosed my porch, and I always had flowering vines growing there. The year before I had planted wild passion fruit.

But what I loved the most was my avocado tree. It was forty feet high with leaves so thick and dark that it was always cool under its shade. I had a white cast-iron bench set next to the trunk. When things got really hard, I’d sit down there to watch the birds chase insects through the grass.

When I came up to the fence I had almost forgotten the tax man. He didn’t know about me. How could he? He was just grabbing at empty air.

Then I saw the boy.

He was doing a crazy dance in my potato patch. He held both hands in the air, with his head thrown back, and cackled deep down in his throat. Every now and then he’d stamp his feet, like little pistons, and reach both hands down into the soil, coming out with long tan roots that had the nubs of future potatoes dangling from them.

When I pushed open the gate it creaked and he swung around to look at me. His eyes got big and he swiveled his head to one side and the other, looking for an escape route. When he saw that there was no escape he put on a smile and held the potato roots out at me. Then he laughed.

It was a ploy I had used when I was small.

I wanted to be stern with him, but when I opened my mouth I couldn’t keep from smiling.