Walter Mosley - Devil in a Blue Dress

I hated Carter then. I wanted to know Daphne like he did. I wanted her, even if knowing her meant that I couldn’t have her.

Daphne and I took the back path, through the bushes, to the little house. Everything was fine.

I opened the door for her. She hadn’t had anything else to say after her story about the zoo. I don’t know why but I didn’t have anything else to say either. Maybe it was because I didn’t believe her. I mean, I believed that she believed the story, or, at least, she wanted to believe it, but there was something wrong with the whole thing.

Somewhere between the foo yong and the check I decided to cut my losses. Daphne was too deep for me. Somehow I’d call Carter and tell him where she was. I’d wash my hands of the whole mess. I’m just in it for the money, I kept thinking.

I was so busy having those thoughts that I didn’t think to check the room. What was there to worry about anyway? So when Daphne gasped I was surprised to see DeWitt Albright standing at the stove.

“Evening, Easy,” he drawled.

I reached for the pistol in my belt but before I could get to it an explosion went off in my head. I remember the floor coming up to my face and then there was nothing for a while.

I was on a great battleship in the middle of the largest firefight in the history of war. The cannons were red hot and the crew and I were loading those shells. Airplanes strafed the deck with machine-gun fire that stung my arms and chest but I kept on hefting shells to the man in front of me. It was dusk or early dawn and I was exhilarated by the power of war.

Then Mouse came up to me and pulled me from the line. He said, “Easy! We gotta get outta here, man. Ain’t no reason t’die in no white man’s war!”

“But I’m fighting for freedom!” I yelled back.

“They ain’t gonna let you go, Easy. You win this one and they have you back on the plantation ’fore Labor Day.”

I believed him in an instant but before I could run a bomb rocked the ship and we started to sink. I was pitched from the deck into the cold cold sea. Water came into my mouth and nose and I tried to scream but I was underwater. Drowning.

When i came awake I was dripping from the bucket of water that Primo had dumped on me. Water was in my eyes and down my windpipe.

“What happened, amigo? You have a fight with your friends?”

“What friends?” I asked suspiciously. For all I knew at that minute it was Primo who suckered me.

“Joppy and the white man in the white suit.”

“White man?” Primo helped me to a sitting position. I was on the ground right outside the door of our little house. My head started clearing.

“Yeah. You okay, Easy?”

“What about the white man? When did he and Joppy get here?”

“About two, three hours ago.”

“Two, three hours?”

“Yeah. Joppy asked me where you were and when I told him he drove the car back around the house. Then they took off about a little bit after that.”

“The girl with ’em?”

“I don’t see no girl.”

I pulled myself up and went through the house, Primo at my heels.

No girl.

I went out back and looked around but she wasn’t there either. Primo came up behind me. “You guys have a fight?”

“Not much’a one. Can I use your phone, man?”

“Yeah, sure. It’s right inside.”

I called Dupree’s sister but she said that he and Mouse had left in the early morning. Without Mouse I didn’t know what to do. So I went out to my car and drove toward Watts.

The night was fully black with no moon and thick clouds that hid the stars. Every block or so there’d be a streetlamp overhead, shining in darkness, illuminating nothing.

“Get out of it, Easy!”

I didn’t say anything.

“You gotta find that girl, man. You gotta make this shit right.”

“Fuck you!”

“Uh-uh, Easy. That don’t make you brave. Brave is findin’ that white man an’ yo’ friend. Brave is not lettin’ them pull this shit on you.”

“So what can I do?”

“You got that gun, don’t ya? You think them men’s gonna beat bullets?”

“They armed too, both of ’em.”

“All you gotta do is make sure they don’t see ya comin’. Just like in the war, man. Make believe you is the night.”

“But how I even find’em t’sneak up on? What you want me t’do? Look in the phone book?”

“You know where Joppy live, right? Les go look. An’ if he ain’t there you know they gotta be with Albright.”

Joppy’s house was dark and his bar was padlocked from the outside. The night watchman on duty at Albright’s building, a fat, florid-faced man, said that Albright had moved out.

So I made up my mind to call information for every town north of Santa Monica. I got lucky and found DeWitt Albright on my first try. He lived on Route 9, in the Malibu Hills.

I drove past Santa Monica into Malibu and found Route 9. It was just a graded dirt road. There I found three mailboxes that read: Miller, Korn, Albright. I passed the first two houses and drove a full fifteen minutes before getting to Albright’s marker. It was far enough out that any death cry would go unheard.

It was a simple, ranch-style house, not large. There were no outside lights except on the front porch so I couldn’t make out the color. I wanted to know what color the house was. I wanted to know what made jets fly and how long sharks lived. There was a lot I wanted to know before I died.

I could hear loud male voices and the woman’s pleading before I got to the window.

Over the sill I saw a large room with a darkwood floor and a high ceiling. Before the blazing hearth sat a large couch covered with something like bearskin. Daphne was on the couch, naked, and the men, DeWitt and Joppy, stood over her. Albright was wearing his linen suit but Joppy was stripped to the waist. His big gut looked obscene hanging over her like that and it took everything I had not to shoot him right then.

“You don’t want any more of that now do you, honey?” Albright was saying. Daphne spat at him and he grabbed her by the throat. “If I don’t get that money you better believe I’ll get the satisfaction of killing you, girl!”

I like to think of myself as an intelligent man but sometimes I just run on feelings. When I saw that white man choking Daphne I eased the window open and crawled into the room. I was standing there, pistol in hand — but DeWitt sensed me before I could draw a bead on him. He swung around with the girl in front of him. When he saw me he threw her one way and he leaped behind the couch! I moved to shoot but then Joppy bolted for the back door. That distracted me, and in my one moment of indecision the window behind me shattered and a shot, like a cannon roar, rang out. As I dove for cover behind a sofa chair I saw that DeWitt Albright had drawn his pistol.

Two more shots ripped through the back of the fat chair. If I hadn’t moved to the side, down low, he would have gotten me then.

I could hear Daphne crying but there was nothing I could do for her. My big fear was that Joppy would come around outside and get me from behind. So I moved into a corner, still hidden, I hoped, from Albright’s sight and in a position to see Joppy if he stuck his head in the window.

“Easy?” DeWitt called.

I didn’t say a word. Even the voice was silent.

We waited two or three long minutes. Joppy didn’t appear at the window. That bothered me and I began to wonder what other way he might come. But just as I was looking around I heard a noise as if DeWitt had lurched up. There was a dull thud and the sofa chair came falling backward. He’d heaved a lamp at the top of its high back. The lamp shattered and, even as I pulled off a shot where I expected him to be, I saw DeWitt rise up a few feet farther on; he had that pistol leveled at me.