Walter Mosley - Devil in a Blue Dress

“Get it yourself,” the voice said.

“Get it yourself,” I said. “Bottle’s in the cabinet.”

DeWitt Albright looked up at me, and a big grin slowly spread across his face. He laughed and slapped his knee and said, “Well, I’ll be damned.”

I just looked at him. I was ready to die but I was going to go down fighting.

“Get us a drink, will you, Manny?” The little man moved quickly to the cabinet. “You know, Easy, you’re a brave man. And I need a brave man working for me.” His drawl got thicker as he talked. “I’ve already paid you, right?”

I nodded.

“Well, the way I figure it, Frank Green is the key. She will be around him or he will know where she’s gone to. So I want you to find this gangster for me. I want you to set me up to meet him. That’s all. Once I meet him then I’ll know what to say. You find Frank Green for me and we’re quits.”

“Quits?”

“ All our business, Easy. You keep your money and I leave you alone.”

It wasn’t an offer at all. Somehow I knew that Mr. Albright planned to kill me. Either he’d kill me right then or he’d wait until I found Frank.

“I’ll find him for ya, but I need another hundred if you want my neck out there.”

“You my kinda people, Easy, you sure are,” he said. “I’ll give you three days to find him. Make sure you count them right.”

We finished our drinks with Manny and Shariff waiting outside the door.

Albright pushed open the screen to leave but then he had a thought. He turned back to me and said, “I’m not a man to fool with, Mr. Rawlins.”

No, I thought, neither am I.

I slept all that day and into the evening. Maybe I should have been looking for Frank Green but all I wanted was to sleep.

I woke up sweating in the middle of the night. Every sound I heard was someone coming after me. Either it was the police or DeWitt Albright or Frank Green. I couldn’t throw off the smell of blood that I’d picked up in Richard’s room. There was the hum of a million flies at the window, flies that I’d seen swarming on our boys’ corpses in North Africa, in Oran.

I was shivering but I wasn’t cold. And I wanted to run to my mother or someone to love me, but then I imagined Frank Green pulling me from a loving woman’s arms; he had his knife poised to press into my heart.

Finally I jumped up from my bed and ran to the telephone. I didn’t know what I was doing. I couldn’t call Joppy because he wouldn’t understand that kind of fear. I couldn’t call Odell because he’d understand it too well and just tell me to run. I couldn’t call Dupree because he was still locked up. But I couldn’t have talked to him anyway because I would have had to lie to him about Coretta and I was too upset to lie.

So I dialed the operator. And when she came on the line I asked her for long distance, and then I asked for Mrs. E. Alexander on Claxton Street in Houston’s Fifth Ward.

When she answered the phone I closed my eyes and remembered her: big woman with deep brown skin and topaz eyes. I imagined her frown when she said “Hello?” because EttaMae never liked the telephone. She always said, “I like to see my bad news comin’; not get it like a sneak through no phones.”

“Hello,” she said.

“Etta?”

“Who’s this?”

“It’s Easy, Etta.”

“Easy Rawlins?” And then a big laugh. The kind of laugh that makes you want to laugh along with it. “Easy, where are you, honey? You come home?”

“I’m in L.A., Etta.” My voice was quavering; my chest vibrated with feeling.

“Sumpin’ wrong, honey? You sound funny.”

“Uh… Naw, ain’t nuthin’, Etta. Sure is good to hear you. Yeah, I can’t think of nuthin’ better.”

“What’s wrong, Easy?”

“You know how I can reach Mouse, Etta?”

There was silence then. I thought of how they said in science class that outer space was empty, black and cold. I felt it then and I sure didn’t want to.

“You know Raymond and me broke up, Easy. He don’t live here no more.”

The idea that I made Etta sad was almost more than I could take.

“I’m sorry, baby,” I said. “I just thought you might know how I could get to him.”

“What’s wrong, Easy?”

“It’s just that maybe Sophie was right.”

“Sophie Anderson?”

“Yeah, well, you know that she’s always sayin’ that L.A. is too much?”

Etta laughed in her chest. “I sure do.”

“She might just be right.” I laughed too.

“Easy…”

“Just tell Mouse that I called, Etta. Tell him that Sophie might have been right about California and maybe it is a place for him.”

She started to say something else but I made like I didn’t hear her and said, “Good-bye.” I pushed down the button of the receiver.

I put my chair in front of the window so I could look out into my yard. I sat there for a long time, balling my hands together and taking deep breaths when I could remember to. Finally the fear passed and I fell asleep. The last thing I remember was looking at my apple tree in the predawn.

I put the card that DeWitt Albright had given me on the dresser. It read:

MAXIM BAXTER

Personnel Director

Lion Investments

In the lower right-hand corner there was an address on La Cienega Boulevard.

I was dressed in my best suit and ready to ride by 10 A.M. I thought that it was time to gather my own information. That card was one of two things I had to go on, so I drove across town again to a small office building just below Melrose, on La Cienega. The whole building was occupied by Lion Investments.

The secretary, an elderly lady with blue hair, was concentrating on the ledger at her desk. When my shadow fell across her blotter she said to the shadow, “Yes?”

“I came to see Mr. Baxter.”

“Do you have an appointment?”

“No. But Mr. Albright gave me his card and told me to come down whenever I had a chance.”

“I know no Mr. Albright,” she said, again to the shadow on her desk. “And Mr. Baxter is a very busy man.”

“Maybe he knows Mr. Albright. He gave me this card.” I tossed the card down onto the page she was reading and she looked up.

What she saw surprised her. “Oh!”

I smiled back down. “I can wait if he’s busy. I got a little time off’a work.”

“I, ah… I’ll see if he can make time, Mr. — ?”

“Rawlins.”

“You just have a seat over on the couch and I’ll be right back.”

She went through a doorway behind the desk. After a few minutes another elderly lady came out. She looked at me suspiciously and then took up the work that the other one had left.

The waiting room was nice enough. There was a long, black leather couch set up against a window that looked out onto La Cienega Boulevard. Through the window was a view of one of those fancy restaurants, the Angus Steak House. There was a man standing out front in Beefeater’s uniform, ready to open the door for all the nice people who were going to drop a whole day’s salary in forty-five minutes. The Beefeater looked happy. I wondered how much he made in tips.

There was a long coffee table in front of the couch. It was covered with business newspapers and business magazines. Nothing for women. And nothing for men who might have been looking for something sporty or entertaining. When I got tired of watching the Beefeater open doors I started looking around the room.

On the wall next to the couch was a bronze placard. At the top there was a raised oval that had the form of a swooping falcon carved into it. The falcon had three arrows in its talons. Below that were the names of all the important partners and affiliates of Lion Investments. I recognized some of the names as celebrities that you read about in the daily Times . Lawyers, bankers, and just the plain old wealthy folks. The president’s name was at the bottom of the plaque as if he were a shy man who didn’t want his name placed too obviously as the one in charge. Mr. Todd Carter wasn’t the kind of man who wanted his name spread around, I figured. I mean, what would he say if he knew that a strange French girl, who went in the night to steal a dead man’s car, was using his name? I laughed loud enough for the old woman behind the desk to look up and scowl.