Walter Mosley - Devil in a Blue Dress

“So what? So what if it’s mine?”

“I found this here on the floor of a dead man’s house. Richard McGee was his name. Somebody had just given him Coretta James’s name; somebody who knew that Coretta was with that white girl.”

“So what?” Like magic, sweat appeared on Junior’s brow.

“Why’d you kill Richard McGee?”

“Huh?”

“Ain’t no time to play, Junior. I know you the one killed him.”

“Whas wrong wit’ Easy, Mouse? Somebody hit him in the head?”

“This ain’t no time to play, Junior. You killed him and I need to know why.”

“You crazy, Easy. You crazy!”

Junior jumped up out of his chair and made like he was about to leave.

“Sit down, Junior,” Mouse said.

Junior sat.

“Tell me what happened, Junior.”

“I don’t know what you talkin’ ’bout, man. I don’t even know who you mean.”

“All right,” I said, showing him my palms. “But if I go to the police they gonna find out that that fingerprint they got on the knife belong to you.”

“What knife?” Junior’s eyes looked like moons.

“Junior, you got to listen real close to this. I got troubles of my own right now and I ain’t got the time to worry ’bout you. The night I was at John’s that white man was there. Hattie had you carry him home and then he must’a paid you for Coretta’s name. That’s when you killed him.”

“I ain’t killed nobody.”

“That fingerprint gonna prove you wrong, man.”

“Shit!”

I knew I was right about Junior but that wasn’t going to help me if he didn’t want to talk. The problem was that Junior wasn’t afraid of me. He was never afraid of any man that he felt he could best in a fight. Even though I had the information that would prove him guilty, he didn’t worry because I was his inferior in combat.

“Kill’im, Raymond,” I said.

Mouse grinned and stood up. The pistol was just there, in his hand.

“Wait a minute, man. What kinda shit you tryin’ t’pull here?” Junior said.

“You killed Richard McGee, Junior. And the next night you called me ’cause it had somethin’ to do with that girl I was lookin’ for. You wanted to find out what I knew but when I didn’t tell you anything you hung up. But you killed him and you gonna tell me why or Mouse is gonna waste your ass.”

Junior licked his lips and threw himself around in his chair like a child throwing a fit.

“What you wanna come messin’ wit’ me fo’, man? What I do to you?”

“Tell it the way it happened, Junior. Tell me and maybe I forget what I know.”

Junior threw himself around some more. Finally he said, “He was down at the bar the night you come in.”

“Yeah?”

“Hattie didn’t want him inside so she told him to go. But he must’a already been drunk ’cause he kinda like passed out on the street. So Hattie got me to go out an’ check on ’im ’cause she didn’t want no trouble with him out there. So I go out to help him to his car, or whatever.”

Junior stopped to take a drink of beer but then he just stared out the window.

“Get on with it, Junior,” Mouse said at last. He wanted to move on.

“He say he give me twenty dollars for to know ’bout that girl you was askin’ on, Easy. He said that he give me a hundred if I was to drive him home and tell ’im how to find the white girl.”

“I know you took that.” Mouse was working a toothpick between his front teeth.

“Lotta money.” Junior smiled hopefully at the warmth Mouse showed. “Yeah, I drove him home. And I told’im that I seen the girl he was lookin’ for, with Coretta James. Just’a white girl anyway, why should I care?”

“Then why you kill’im?” I asked.

“He wanted me to give Frank Green a message. He says that he give me the money after I do that.”

“Yeah?”

“I tole him that he could fuck dat! I did what he wanted and if he needed sumpin’ else we could talk about that after I got paid.” Junior got a wild look in his eye. “He told me I could walk home with my twenty if that’s how I felt. Then he badmouth me some an’ turn off into the other room. Shit! Fo’ all I know’d he had a pistol in there. I got a knife from the sink an’ goes in after’im. He could’a had a gun in there, ain’t that right, Raymond?”

Mouse sipped his beer and stared at Junior.

“What he want you to say to Frank?” I asked.

“He want me t’tell ’im that him an’ his friends had sumpin’ on the girl.”

“Daphne?”

“Yeah,” Junior said. “He say that they got sumpin’ on’er and they should all talk.”

“What else?”

“Nuthin’.”

“You just killed him ’cause he might’a hadda gun?”

“You ain’t got no cause to tell the cops, man,” Junior said.

He was sunken in his chair, like an old man. He disgusted me. He was brave enough to take on a smaller man, he was brave enough to stab an unarmed drunk, but Junior couldn’t stand up to answer for his crimes.

“He ain’t worf living,” the voice whispered in my head.

“Let’s go,” I said to Mouse.

Dupree was at his sister’s house, out past Watts, in Compton. Bula had a night job as a nurse’s assistant at Temple Hospital so it was Dupree who answered our knock.

“Easy,” he said in a quiet voice. “Mouse.”

“Pete!” Mouse was bright. “That pigtails I smell?”

“Yeah, Bula made some this mo’nin’. Black-eyes too.”

“You don’t need to show me, I just run after my nose.”

Mouse went around Dupree toward the smell. We stood in the tiny entrance looking at each other’s shoulders. I was still half outside. Two crickets sounded from the rose beds that Bula kept.

“I’m sorry ’bout Coretta, Pete. I’m sorry.”

“All I wanna know is why, Easy. Why somebody wanna kill her like that?” When Dupree looked up at me I saw that both of his eyes were swollen and dark. I never asked but I knew that those bruises were part of his police interrogation.

“I don’t know, man. I can’t see why someone wanna do that t’anybody.”

Tears were coming down Dupree’s face. “I do it to the man done it to her.” He looked me in the eye. “When I find out who it was, Easy, I’m a kill that man. I don’t care who he is.”

“You boys better com’on in,” Mouse said from the end of the hall. “Food’s on the table.”

Bula had rye in the cabinet. Mouse and Dupree drank it. Dupree had been crying and upset the whole evening. I asked him some questions but he didn’t know anything. He told us about how the police had questioned him and held him for two days without telling him why. But when they finally told him about Coretta he broke down so they could see that it wasn’t him.

Dupree drank steady while he told his story. He got more and more drunk until he finally passed out on the sofa.

“That Dupree is a good man,” Mouse slurred. “But he jus’ cain’t hold his liquor.”

“You got your sails pretty far up too, Raymond.”

“You callin’ me drunk?”

“All I’m sayin’ is that you been puttin’ it away along wit’im and you could be sure that you wouldn’t pass no breath test neither.”

“If I was drunk,” he said, “could I do this?”

Mouse, moving as fast as I’ve ever seen a man move, reached into his fancy jacket and came out with that long-barreled pistol. The muzzle was just inches from my forehead.

“Ain’t a man in Texas could outdraw me!”

“Put it down, Raymond,” I said as calmly as I could.

“Go on,” Mouse dared, as he put the pistol back into his shoulder holster. “Go fo’ your gun. Les see who gets kilt.”