Walter Mosley - Devil in a Blue Dress

I heard the shot, and something else, something that seemed almost impossible: DeWitt Albright grunted, “Wha?”

Then I saw Mouse! The smoking pistol in his hand!

He’d come into the room through the door Joppy had taken.

More shots exploded. Daphne screamed. I jumped to cover her with my body. Splinters of wood jumped from the wall and I saw Albright hurl himself through a window at the other side of the room.

Mouse took aim but his gun wouldn’t fire. He cursed, threw it down, and got a snub-nose from his pocket. He ran for the window but in that time I heard the Caddy’s engine turn over; tires were slithering in the dirt before Mouse could empty his second chamber.

“ Damn! ” Mouse yelled. “ Damn damn damn! ”

A cold draft, sucked in through the shattered window, washed over Daphne and me.

“I hit him, Easy!” He was grinning down on me with all those golden teeth.

“Mouse,” was all I could say.

“Ain’t ya glad t’see me, Ease?”

I got up and took the little man in my arms. I hugged him like I would hug a woman.

“Mouse,” I said again.

“Com’on man, we gotta get yo’ boy back here.” He jerked his head toward the door he’d come through.

Joppy was on the floor in the kitchen. His arms and legs were behind him, hog-tied by an extension cord. There was thick blood coming from the top of his bald head.

“Les get him to the other room,” Mouse said.

We got him to the chair and Mouse strapped him down. Daphne wrapped herself in a blanket and shied to the end of the couch. She looked like a frightened kitten on her first Fourth of July.

All of a sudden Joppy’s eyes shot open and he shouted, “Cut me loose, man!”

Mouse just smiled.

Joppy was sweating, bleeding, and staring at us. Daphne was staring at the floor.

“Lemme go,” Joppy whimpered.

“Shut up, man,” Mouse said and Joppy quieted down.

“Can I have my clothes now?” Daphne’s voice was thick.

“Sure, honey,” Mouse said. “Right after we take care on some business.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

Mouse leaned forward to put his hand on my knee. It felt good to be alive and to be able to feel another man’s touch. “I think you an’ me deserve a little sumpin’ fo’ all this mess, don’t you, Easy?”

“I give you half of everything I made, Ray.”

“Naw, man,” he said. “I don’t want your money. I wanna piece’a that big pie Ruby over here sittin’ on.”

I didn’t know why he called her Ruby, but I let it pass.

“Man, that’s stolen money.”

“That’s the sweetest kind, Easy.” He turned to her and smiled. “What about it, honey?”

“That’s all Frank and I have. I won’t give it up.” I would have believed her if she wasn’t talking to Mouse.

“Frank’s dead.” Mouse’s face was completely deadpan.

Daphne looked at him for a moment and then she crumpled, just like a tissue, and started shaking.

Mouse went on, “Joppy the one did it, I figure. They found him beat to death in a alley just down from his bar.”

When Daphne raised her head she had hate in her eyes, and there was hate in her voice when she said, “Is that the truth, Raymond?” She was a different woman.

“Now am I gonna lie to you, Ruby? Your brother is dead.”

I had only been in an earthquake once but the feeling was the same: The ground under me seemed to shift. I looked at her to see the truth. But it wasn’t there. Her nose, cheeks, her skin color — they were white. Daphne was a white woman. Even her pubic hair was barely bushy, almost flat.

Mouse said, “You gotta hear me, Ruby, Joppy killed Frank.”

“I ain’t kilt Frankie!” Joppy cried.

“Why you keep callin’ her that?” I asked.

“Me an’ Frank known each other way back, Ease, ’fore I even met you. I remember old Ruby here from her baby days. Half-sister. She more filled out now but I never forget a face.” Mouse pulled out a cigarette. “You know you a lucky man, Easy. I got it in mind to follah this mothafuckah when I seen ’im comin’ outta yo’ house this afternoon. I’as lookin’ fo’ you when I seen’im. I had Dupree’s car so I follahed him downtown and he hooked up with whitey. Once I seed that you know I was on his ass for the duration.”

I looked at Joppy. His eyes were big and he was sweating.

Watery blood was dripping from his chin. “I ain’t killed Frank, man. I ain’t had no cause. Why I wanna kill Frank? Lissen, Ease, only reason I got you in this was so you could get some money — fo’ that house.”

“Then why you wit’ Albright now?”

“She lied, man. Albright come t’me and he told me ’bout that money she got. She lied! She said she ain’t hardly had no money!”

“Alright, thas enough talk,” Mouse said. “Now, Ruby, I don’t wanna scare ya but I will have that money.”

“You don’t scare me, Ray,” she said simply.

Mouse frowned for just a second. It was like a small cloud passing quickly on a sunny day. Then he smiled.

“Ruby, you gotta worry ’bout yourself now, honey. You know men can get desperate when it comes to money…” Mouse let his words trail off while he took the pistol from his waistband.

He turned casually to his right and shot Joppy in the groin. Joppy’s eyes opened wide and he started honking like a seal. He rocked back and forth trying to grab his wound but the wires held him to the chair. After a few seconds Mouse leveled his pistol and shot Joppy in the head. One moment Joppy had two bulging eyes, then his left eye was just a bloody, ragged hole. The force of the second shot threw him to the floor; spasms went through his legs and feet for minutes afterward. I felt cold then. Joppy had been my friend but I’d seen many men die and I cared for Coretta too.

Mouse stood up and said, “So let’s go get that money, honey.” He picked up her clothes from behind the couch and dropped the heap into her lap. Then he went out the front door.

“Help me, easy.” Her eyes were full of fear and promise. “He’s crazy. You still have your gun.”

“I can’t,” I said.

“Then give it to me. I’ll do it.”

That was probably the closest Mouse had ever come to a violent death.

“No.”

“I found some blood in the road,” Mouse said when he returned. “I tole ya I got’im. I don’t know how bad it is but he gonna remember me.” There was childish glee in his voice.

While he talked I untied Joppy’s corpse. I took Mouse’s jammed pistol and put it in Joppy’s hand.

“What you doin’, Easy?” Mouse asked.

“I don’t know, Ray. Just confusing things I guess.”

Daphne Rode with me and Mouse followed in Dupree’s car. When we were a few miles away I threw Joppy’s extension cord bonds down an embankment.

“Did you kill Teran?” I asked as we swung onto Sunset Boulevard.

“I guess so,” she said, so softly that I had to strain to hear her.

“You guess? You don’t know?”

“I pulled the trigger, he died. But he killed himself really. I went to him, to ask him to leave me alone. I offered him all my money but he just laughed. He had his hands in that little boy’s drawers and he laughed.” Daphne snorted. I don’t know if it was a laugh or a sound of disgust. “And so I killed him.”

“What happened to the boy?”

“I brought him to my place. He just ran in the corner and wouldn’t even move.”

Daphne had the bag in a YWCA locker.

Back in East L.A. Mouse counted out ten thousand for each of us. He let Daphne keep the bag.

She called a cab and I went out with her to wait by the granite lamppost at the curb.

“Stay with me,” I said. Moths fluttered around us in that small circle of light.