Free A Red Death: Featuring an Original Easy Rawlins Short Story "Si (Easy Rawlins Mysteries) by Walter Mosley

here you are again. An’ here I am wit’ my nose open.
    “You know somebody saw you get on that bus, Etta. Somebody told somebody else that they heard you went to California. And Mouse could be outside that door at this very minute. Or maybe he be here tomorrah. He’s comin’, though, you could bet on that. An’ if he finds you been in my bed we gonna have it out.” I didn’t add that I knew Mouse well enough to be afraid. I didn’t need to.
    “Raymond don’t care ’bout if I got boyfriends, Easy. He don’t care ’bout that.”
    “Maybe not. But if Mouse think I done taken his wife an’ child fo’ my own he see red. And now here you are talkin’ ’bout him bein’ crazy—how I know what he might do?”
    Etta didn’t say anything to that.
    Mouse was a small, rodent-featured man who believed in himself without question. He only cared about what was his. He’d go against a man bigger than I was with no fear because he knew that nobody was better than him. He might have been right.
    “And here I am again,” I said. “Tryin’ to keep offa you when I got so many problems I shouldn’t even think about it.”
    Etta leaned forward in the chair, resting her elbows on her knees, revealing the dark cleft of her breasts. “So what you wanna do, Easy?”
    “I …”
    “Yeah?” she asked after I stalled.
    “I know a man named Mofass.”
    “Who’s he?”
    “He manages some units up here and I work fo’im.”
    When Etta shifted, her gown slid and tremors went down my back.
    “Yeah?” she asked.
    “I think I could get him to find a place for you and LaMarque. You know, some place fo’ you t’live. Without no rent, I mean.” I was talking but I didn’t want to say it: I wanted her for myself.
    Etta sat up and her gown rose over her breasts. Her nipples were hard dimes against the slick material.
    “So that’s it? I come all this way an’ now you gonna put us out.” She stuck her lower lip out and shrugged, ever so slightly. “LaMarque an’ me be ready by noon.”
    “You don’t have t’rush, Etta …”
    “No, no,” she said, rising and waving her hand at me. “We gotta settle in someplace, and the sooner the better. You know chirren need a home.”
    “I’ll give you money, Etta. I got lotsa money.”
    “I’ll pay you back soon as I find work.”
    We looked at each other awhile after that.
    Etta was the most beautiful woman I’d ever known. I’d wanted her more than life itself, once. And the fact that I had let that go was worse than the fear of the penitentiary.
    “’Night, Easy,” she whispered.
    I made to get up, to kiss her good night, but she held her hand against me.
    “Don’t kiss me, honey,” she said. “ ’Cause you know I been thinkin’ ’bout you long as you been thinkin’ ’bout me.”
    Then she went off to bed.
    I didn’t sleep that night. I didn’t worry or think about taxes either.

CHAPTER
5
    T HE GOVERNMENT BUILDING was on Sixth Street, downtown. It was small, four stories, and built from red brick. It almost looked friendly from the outside, not like the government at all.
    But once you got past the front door all the friendliness was gone. A woman sat at the information desk. Her blond hair was pulled back so tight that it pained my scalp just to look at her. She wore a gray businesslike jacket and dark horn-rimmed glasses. She squinted at me, wincing as if her skull might have actually hurt.
    “May I assist you, sir?” she asked.
    “Lawrence,” I said. “Agent Lawrence.”
    “FBI?”
    “Naw. Revenue.”
    “IRS?”
    “I guess that’s what you call it. Spells taxes no matter what way you say it.”
    As government workers went she was polite, but she wasn’t going to smile for my joke.
    “Go down to the end of this hall.” She pointed it out for me. “And take the elevator to the third floor. The receptionist there will assist you.”
    “Thanks,” I said, but she had turned back to something important on her desk. I peeked over the little