Walter Mosley - Devil in a Blue Dress

My hands were on my knees. I knew that if I moved Mouse would kill me.

“I don’t have a gun, Raymond. You know that.”

“You fool enough to go without no piece then you must wanna be dead.” His eyes were glazed and I was sure that he didn’t see me. He saw somebody, though, some demon he carried around in his head.

He drew the pistol again. This time he cocked the hammer. “Say your prayers, nigger, ’cause I’m’a send you home.”

“Let him go, Raymond,” I said. “He done learned his lesson good enough. If you kill’im then he won’t have got it.” I was just talking.

“He fool enough t’call me out an’ he ain’t even got no gun! I kill the motherfucker!”

“Let him live, Ray, an’ he be scared’a you whenever you walk in the room.”

“Motherfucker better be scared. I kill the motherfucker. I kill’im!”

Mouse nodded and let the pistol fall down into his lap. His head fell to his chest and he was asleep; just like that!

I took the gun and put it on the table in the kitchen.

Mouse always kept two smaller pistols in his bag; I knew that from our younger days. I got one of them and left a note for Dupree and him. I told them that I had gone home and that I had Mouse’s gun. I knew he wouldn’t mind as long as I told him about it.

I drove down my block twice before I was sure no one was waiting for me in the streets. Then I parked around the corner so that anyone coming up to my place would think I was gone.

When I had the key in my lock the phone started ringing. It was on the seventh ring before I got to it.

“Easy?” She sounded as sweet as ever.

“Yeah, it’s me. I thought you’d be halfway to New Orleans by now.”

“I’ve been calling you all night. Where have you been?”

“Havin’ fun. Makin’ all kinds’a new friends. The police want me to come down there and live wit’em.”

She took my joke about friends seriously. “Are you alone?”

“What do you want, Daphne?”

“I have to talk with you, Easy.”

“Well go on, talk.”

“No, no. I have to see you. I’m scared.”

“I don’t blame ya for that. I’m scared just talkin’ to ya on the phone,” I said. “But I need to talk to ya though. I need to know some things.”

“Come meet me and I’ll tell you everything you need to know.”

“Okay. Where are you?”

“Are you alone? I only want you to know where I am.”

“You mean you don’t want your boyfriend Joppy to know where you hidin’?”

If she was surprised that I knew about Joppy she didn’t show it.

“I don’t want anybody to know where I am, but you. Not Joppy and not that other friend that you said was visiting.”

“Mouse?”

“Nobody! Either you promise me or I hang up right now.”

“Okay, okay fine. I just got in and Mouse ain’t even here. Tell me where you are and I’ll come get ya.”

“You wouldn’t lie to me, would you, Easy?”

“Naw. I just wanna talk, like you.”

She gave me the address of a motel on the south side of L. A.

“Hurry up, Easy. I need you,” she said before hanging up. She got off the phone so quickly that she didn’t give me the number of her room.

I scribbled a note, making my plans as I wrote. I told Mouse that he could find me at a friend’s house, Primo’s. I wrote RAYMOND ALEXANDER in bold letters across the top of the note, because the only words Mouse could read were his own two names. I hoped that Dupree came with Mouse to read him the note and show him the way to Primo’s house.

Then I rushed out the door.

I found myself driving in the L.A. night again. The sky toward the valley was coral with skinny black clouds across it. I didn’t know why I was going alone to get the girl in the blue dress. But for the first time in quite a while I was happy and expectant.

The Sunridge was a smallish pink motel, made up of two rectangular buildings that came together in an L around an asphalt parking lot. The neighborhood was mostly Mexican and the woman who sat at the manager’s desk was a Mexican too. She was a full-blooded Mexican Indian; short and almond-eyed with deep olive skin that had lots of red in it. Her eyes were very dark and her hair was black, except for four strands of white that told me she had to be older than she looked.

She stared at me, the question in her eyes.

“Lookin’ for a friend,” I said.

She squinted a little harder, showing me the thick webbing of wrinkles at the corners of her eyes.

“Monet is her last name, French girl.”

“No men in the rooms.”

“I just have to talk with her. We can go out for coffee if we can’t talk here.”

She looked away from me as if to say our talk was over.

“I don’t mean to be disrespectful, ma’am, but this girl has my money and I’m willing to knock on every door until I find her.”

She turned toward the back door but before she could call out I said, “Ma’am, I’m willing to fight your brothers and sons to talk to this woman. I don’t mean her any harm, or you neither, but I have got to have words with her.”

She sized me up, putting her nose in the air like a leery dog checking out the new mailman, then she measured the distance to the back door.

“Eleven, far end,” she said at last.

I ran down to the far end of the building.

While I knocked on number eleven’s door I kept looking over my shoulder.

She had on a gray terrycloth robe and a towel was wrapped into a bouffant on her head. Her eyes were green right then and when she saw me she smiled. All the trouble she had and all the trouble I might have brought with me and she just smiled like I was a friend who was coming over for a date.

“I thought you were the maid,” she said.

“Uh-uh,” I mumbled. She was more beautiful than ever in the low-slung robe. “We should get outta here.”

She was looking past my shoulder. “We better talk to the manager first.”

The short woman and two big-bellied Mexican men were coming our way. One of the men was swinging a nightstick. They stopped a foot from me; Daphne closed the door a little to hide herself.

“Is he bothering you, Miss?” the manager asked.

“Oh no, Mrs. Guitierra. Mr. Rawlins is a friend of mine. He’s taking me to dinner.” Daphne was amused.

“I don’t want no men in the rooms,” the woman said.

“I’m sure he won’t mind waiting in the car, would you, Easy?”

“I guess not.”

“Just let us finish talking, Mrs. Guitierra, and he’ll be a good man and go wait in his car.”

One of the men was looking at me as if he wanted to break my head with his stick. The other one was looking at Daphne; he wanted something too.

When they moved back toward the office, still staring at us, I said to Daphne, “Listen. You wanted me to come here alone and here I am. Now I need the same feeling, so I want you to come with me to a place I know.”

“How do I know that you aren’t going to take me to the man Carter hired?” Her eyes were laughing.

“Uh-uh. I don’t want any piece of him… I talked to your boyfriend Carter.”

That took the smile from her face.

“You did! When?”

“Two, three days ago. He wants ya back and Albright wants that thirty thousand.”

“I’m not going back to him,” she said, and I knew that it was true.

“We can talk about that some other time. Right now you’ve got to get away from here.”

“Where?”

“I know a place. You’ve got to get away from the men looking for you and I do too. I’ll put you someplace safe and then we can talk about what we can do.”

“I can’t leave L.A. Not before I talk to Frank. He should be back by now. I keep calling, though, and he’s not home.”