Free A Red Death by Walter Mosley Page A

that,” Naylor said. “We got an investigation going here and we can’t have the evidence disturbed. I want someone to photograph the room first.”
    “Aw, geez,” Reedy sighed.
    “Shit,” the fat man said. Then, “Okay, we go, but who signs for the call?”
    “We didn’t call so you can’t charge us,” Naylor said.
    “What about you, son?” the ambulance attendant asked me. He looked to be in his mid-twenties, almost ten years younger than I.
    “Can’t say that I know. I just called the police.” I lied. It was a kind of warm-up lie. I was getting ready for the real lies I’d have to tell later.
    The fat man glared at me but that’s all he could do.
    When the ambulance men left I turned away and saw Poinsettia hanging there. She seemed to be swaying slightly and my stomach started to move with her, so I turned to leave.
    Naylor touched my arm and asked, “Who did you say that Mr. Mofass represented?”
    “It’s just Mofass. He don’t go by no other name.”
    “Who does he represent?” Naylor insisted.
    “Can’t say I know. I just clean fo’ him.”
    “Geez, Quint,” Reedy said. He’d taken out a handkerchief and covered his mouth and nose. That seemed like a good idea, so I pulled out my own rag.
    Reedy was an older man, past fifty. Naylor was young, the ambulance attendant’s age. He had probably been a noncommissioned officer in Korea. We got all kinds of things out of that war. Integration, advancement of some colored soldiers, and lots of dead boys.
    “Don’t look right, Andy,” Naylor said. “Let’s give it a little bit more.”
    “Who’s gonna care about this one girl, Quint?”
    “I care,” was all the young policeman answered. And it made me proud. It was the first time I had ever seen civilian blacks and whites dealing with each other in an official capacity. I mean, the first time I’d seen them acting as equals. They were really working together.
    “You need me for that?” I asked.
    “No, Mr. Rawlins,” Reedy sighed. “Just give me your address and phone number and we’ll call you for a statement if we need to.”
    I gave him my address and phone. He wrote them down in a leather-bound notepad that he took from his pocket.
    Downstairs, I told Mrs. Trajillo what was happening with the police. She was not only the burglar alarm but she was also a kind of newsletter for the neighborhood.

— 11 —

    I LAMENTED POINSETTIA’S DEATH. She’d come down in the world, but that was no reason to wish her ill. It was a senseless and brutal death whether she killed herself or somebody else did it. But if it was suicide I dreaded the thought that she did herself in over the threat of eviction; an eviction I knew was wrong. I tried to put that thought out of my mind but it burrowed there, in the back of my thoughts, like a gopher tunneling under the ground.

    B UT, NO MATTER HOW I FELT, life had to go on.
    I picked EttaMae up on Sunday morning. She was wearing a royal-blue dress with giant white lilies stitched into it. Her hat was eggshell-white, just a layered cap on the side of her head. Her shoes were white too. Etta never wore high heels because she was a tall woman, just a few inches shorter than I.
    On the way I asked her, “You talk to Mouse?”
    “I called him yesterday, yeah.”
    “An’ what he say?”
    “Just like always. He start out fine, but then he get that funny sound in his voice. Then he talkin’ ’bout how he will not be denied, like I owe ’im sumpin’. Shit! I’ma have t’kill Raymond if he start comin’ ’round scarin’ LaMarque like he did in Texas.”
    “He say anything to LaMarque?”
    “Naw. He won’t even talk to the boy no more. Why you ask?”
    “I dunno.”

    F IRST AFRICAN BAPTIST CHURCH was a big salmon-colored building, built on the model of an old Spanish monastery. There was a large mosaic that stood out high on the wall. Jesus hung there, bleeding red pebbles and suffering all over the congregation. Nobody seemed to notice,