Free Ron Goulart - John Easy 03 - The Same Lie Twice by Ron Goulart

Mustang hood.
    “Good afternoon.” Easy continued moving toward the front steps of the mansion.
    “What do you want, Jim?”
    “Gladys Waugh wants to see me. I’m John Easy.”
    “Naw.” The black man shook his head, jabbing the wrench at the air.
    Easy’s foot hit the lowest wood step of the porch.
    “Naw, she doesn’t have any desire in the world to see you, Jim.” The black man dropped a hand on Easy’s shoulder. “Hey, I’m sorry. I went and got a big glob of grease on your handsome coat.”
    “That’s okay,” said Easy, stepping up free of his grip. “The last guys I tangled with walked on my coat and then shredded it up. A glob of grease is nothing.”
    “How about a boot in the ass, Jim?”
    Easy turned. Without saying anything further he hit the Negro twice just below the sternum.
    “Oof.” The black man went bicycling backwards and ended up on one knee down in the weeds. “That’s a son-of-a-bitch thing to do, Jim.” He chopped the wrench once sideways in the air as he rose up off the ground.
    “Ram, stop it now,” cautioned someone from the big house.
    Ram watched Easy for a second, shrugged, and returned to the Mustang. He hit the engine hard again.
    “Three hundred years of slavery have made Ram belligerent,” said the vast woman in the doorway.
    “You should give him some time off.” Easy climbed the rest of the steps to shake hands with the great fat woman waiting there.
    “I’m Gladys Waugh,” she said. She was milk-colored, weighing three hundred pounds. Her dress was a loose floor-length mother hubbard as black as her house. Around her thick neck hung a silver chain with a pendant of the Egyptian symbol known as the Eye of Osiris. She rubbed at the silver emblem, which was sunk in the gully between her two enormous unrestrained breasts. “You are John Easy?”
    “Yep. You have something to sell me?”
    Gladys Waugh smiled and for a moment her tiny red mouth disappeared into the milky fat of her huge cheeks. “Do you know, I have expected you for over a month, Mr. Easy. Certain signs, certain very significant signs, told me you would make this pilgrimage to my coven. I don’t suppose you know how to read the entrails of chickens.”
    “I read mostly non-fiction.” Easy stepped into the mansion’s hallway as the enormous witch backed to let him enter.
    Gladys Waugh sucked her little mouth away out of sight again, snorting. “The entrails even predicted you would be a wise-ass.”
    In the parlor to the right of the dismal hallway a pretty Chinese girl wearing only a pair of panties with Tuesday embroidered all over them was fooling with a guitar which had three strings too few. A black candle was stuck atop a plaster skull resting on the sooty mantelpiece.
    “Go and meditate somewheres else, Elizabeth,” ordered the witch. “I don’t feel like schlumping all the way up to my eyrie to commune with Mr. Easy.”
    The girl thumped her narrow buttocks once on the bare unpolished wood floor, in mild anger, before she hopped up and carried the guitar away. “Holy Moloch,” she muttered going away.
    “I sense you seek information from me, Mr. Easy.” The enormous woman dropped herself on a square hard tan couch beneath the clouded bow window.
    When the after-shocks had ceased Easy said, “I bet you learned that from the entrails of a telephone.”
    “One of my lesser disciples has indeed communicated with me,” admitted Gladys Waugh. She forced a giant puffy hand down her front and extracted a box of Tiparillo cigars. Lighting up with a match from a pewter cup on the off-kilter coffee table, she said, “You’re looking for Joanna Feyer, also known as Joan St. John.”
    “You know where she is,” said Easy.
    Puffing out smoke, the witch said, “Ever since I was a slip of a girl I’ve had exceptional powers, Mr. Easy. By long dedicated years of studying the black arts I have amplified those powers.”
    Easy stepped over a Coke bottle holding a half-dozen bedraggled