Walter Mosley - Devil in a Blue Dress

But then one day I was in the PX when a load of white soldiers came in, fresh from battle outside Rome. They made a comment about the Negro soldiers. They said that we were cowards and that it was the white boys that were saving Europe. I knew they were jealous because we were behind the lines with good food and conquered women, but it got to me somehow. I hated those white soldiers and my own cowardice.

So I volunteered for the invasion of Normandy and then later I signed on with Patton at the Battle of the Bulge. By that time the Allies were so desperate that they didn’t have the luxury of segregating the troops. There were blacks, whites, and even a handful of Japanese-Americans in our platoon. And the major thing we had to worry about was killing Germans. There was always trouble between the races, especially when it came to the women, but we learned to respect each other out there too.

I never minded that those white boys hated me, but if they didn’t respect me I was ready to fight.

It was outside Normandy , near a little farm, when the voice first came to me. I was trapped in the barn. My two buddies, Anthony Yakimoto and Wenton Niles, were dead and a sniper had the place covered. The voice told me to “get off yo’ butt when the sun comes down an’ kill that motherfucker. Kill him an’ rip off his fuckin’ face with yo’ bayonet, man. You cain’t let him do that to you. Even if he lets you live you be scared the rest’a yo’ life. Kill that motherfucker,” he told me. And I did.

The voice has no lust. He never told me to rape or steal. He just tells me how it is if I want to survive. Survive like a man.

When the voice speaks, I listen.

There was another car parked in front of my house when I got home. A white Cadillac. No one was in it but this time it was my front door that was open.

Manny and Shariff were loitering just inside the door. Shariff grinned at me. Manny looked at the floor so I still couldn’t tell about his eyes.

Mr. Albright was standing in the kitchen, looking out over the backyards through the window. The smell of coffee filled the house. When I came in he turned to me, a porcelain cup cradled in his right hand. He wore white cotton pants and a cream sweater, white golf shoes, and a captain’s cap with a black brim.

“Easy.” His smile was loose and friendly.

“What you doin’ in my house, man?”

“I had to talk to you. You know I expected you to be home.” There was the slightest hint of threat in his voice. “So Manny used a screwdriver on the door, just to be comfortable. Coffee’s made.”

“You got no excuse to be breakin’ into my house, Mr. Albright. What would you do if I broke into your place?”

“I’d tear your nigger head out by its root.” His smile didn’t alter in the least.

I looked at him for a minute. Somewhere in the back of my mind I thought, “Bide your time, Easy.”

“So what you want?” I asked him. I went to the counter and poured a cup of coffee.

“Where have you been this time of morning, Easy?”

“Nowhere got to do with your business.”

“Where?”

I turned to him saying, “I went to see a girl. Don’t you git none, Mr. Albright?”

His dead eyes turned colder and the smile left his face. I was trying to say something that would get under his skin and then I was sorry I had.

“I didn’t come here to play with you, boy,” he said evenly. “You got my money in your pocket and all I got is an earful of smartass.”

“What do you mean?” I stopped myself from taking a step backward.

“I mean, Frank Green hasn’t been home in two days. I mean that the superintendent at the Skyler Arms tells me that the police have been around his place asking about a colored girl that was seen with Green a few days before she died. I want to know, Easy. I want to know where the white girl is.”

“You don’t think I did my job? Shit, I give you the money back.”

“Too late for that, Mr. Rawlins. You take my money and you belong to me.”

“I don’t belong to anybody.”

“We all owe out something, Easy. When you owe out then you’re in debt and when you’re in debt then you can’t be your own man. That’s capitalism.”

“I got your money right here, Mr. Albright.” I reached for my pocket.

“Do you believe in God, Mr. Rawlins?”

“What do ya want, man?”

“I want to know if you believe in God.”

“This here is bullshit. I gotta go to bed.” I made like I was going to turn away but I didn’t. I would have never knowingly turned my back on DeWitt Albright.

“Because, you see,” he continued, leaning slightly toward me, “I like to look very close at a man I kill if he believes in God. I want to see if death is different for a religious man.”

“Bide your time,” the voice whispered.

“I seen her,” I said.

I went to the chair in the living room. Sitting down took a great weight off me.

Albright’s henchmen moved close to me. They were roused, like hunting dogs expecting blood.

“Where?” DeWitt smiled. His eyes looked like those of the undead.

“She called me. Said that if I didn’t help her she’d tell the police about Coretta…”

“Coretta?”

“A dead girl, friend’a mine. She prob’ly the one that the police askin’ ’bout. She the one was with Frank an’ your girl,” I said. “Daphne gave me an address over on Dinker and I went there. Then she had me drive up in the Hollywood Hills to a dude’s house.”

“When was all this?”

“I just got back.”

“Where is she?”

“She took off.”

“Where is she?” His voice sounded as if it came from out of a well. It sounded dangerous and wild.

“I don’t know! When we found the body she split in his car!”

“What body?”

“Dude was dead when we got there.”

“What was this guy’s name?”

“Richard.”

“Richard what?”

“She just called him Richard, that’s all.” I saw no reason to tell him that Richard had been nosing around John’s place.

“You sure he was dead?”

“Had a knife right through his chest. There was a fly marchin’ right across his eye.” I felt bile in my throat remembering it. “Blood everywhere.”

“And you just let her go?” The threat in his voice was back so I got up and moved toward the kitchen for more coffee. I was so worried about one of them coming behind me that I bumped into the doorjamb trying to get through the door.

“Bide your time,” the voice whispered again.

“You din’t hire me fo’ no kidnappin’. The girl grabbed his keys and split. What you want me to do?”

“You call the cops?”

“I tried my best to keep in the speed limit. That’s all I did.”

“Now I’m going to ask you something, Easy.” His gaze held my eye. “And I don’t want you to make any mistakes. Not right now.”

“Go on.”

“Did she take anything with her? A bag or a suitcase?”

“She had a ole brown suitcase. She put it in his trunk.”

DeWitt’s eyes brightened and all the tension went out of his shoulders. “What kind of car was that?”

“Forty-eight Studebaker. Pink job.”

“Where’d she go? Remember, now, you’re still telling me everything.”

“All she said was she was gonna park it somewheres, but she didn’t say where.”

“What’s that address she was at?”

“Twenty-six—”

He waved at me impatiently and, to my shame, I flinched.

“Write it down,” he said.

I got paper from the drawer of my end table.

He sat across from me on the couch scrutinizing that little slip of paper. He had his knees wide apart.

“Get me some whiskey, Easy,” he said.