“I understand what you sayin’, but the shootin’ is over and the shooters dead. So, what you worried about?”
“Police make me nervous, man.”
“Why? You didn’t shoot nobody.”
“Plenty Negroes didn’t do nuttin’ been thrown in jail or hung from some tree. You know that’s true.”
“That’s a fact, Mr. Minton. It is. But our greatest danger, the worst enemy, is lettin’ that truth lead us down the wrong road.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Knowledge like that makes us feel guilty. And when you feel guilty you act like it.”
That simple pronouncement banished Paris’s fears for a time. This was due to his towering intelligence. His mind was telling him that I was offering a talisman of protection, if only he would heed it.
“What you mean?” he asked.
“Come on now, man. You know what I’m talkin’ ’bout.”
Paris Minton and Jackson Blue were both genius cowards. They could see so many potential dangers that waking up in the morning or going to bed at night, for them, was filled with trepidations. They were similar but Paris had it a little better because his thinking mind often eclipsed his fears. I could see in his face that he realized the problem. If he left right then, a whole squad of police would see him hurrying away from the scene of a crime. They would mark him for acting guilty.
It was a pleasure to watch.
“You got any good whiskey somewhere, Easy?”
“I don’t suggest you drink and drive,” I said.
“Naw. I ain’t gonna drive. I think I’ll stay around till Fearless need to go. He could do the drivin’.”
Back at the house, nearly my entire extended family had gathered around the long table again. Amethystine was getting drinks; Fearless was telling war stories about the last days of World War II when he was tasked with the slaughter of a Gestapo bureaucrat named Gustav Blaustrahl. When Paris and I walked in, Fearless paused his tale and regarded me.
“So, what are they saying?” Mr. Jones asked.
“They don’t know what happened.”
“Do you?” Violet asked.
Before I could think of some lie, Anger stood up and said, “Come on with me, Easy.”
We climbed all the way to the roof, sitting ourselves down at a low point of the outer wall. I offered her a cigarette and took one for myself.
For a long while Anger puffed on her cancer stick while watching me. Her way of smoking was to fill her mouth with the smoke, then pull in her upper lip and blow the vapors up her nose, inhaling deeply. There was an intensity to this process that was impressive.
“I can hardly believe it,” she said at last. Her sneer was less a snarl and more a question.
“What?”
“What would you have said all them years ago if I aksed you to come run away wit’ me?” she asked, her words reinforced by sincerity. “I mean, would you go on the run with me, leavin’ all you knew?”
“The only thing real to me was you, honey. You know that.”
“But you was just a child.”
“Man enough to make Hannibal.”
Anger’s grin was love in my heart.
“I shoulda asked ya,” she said. “I wanted to. I didn’t wanna be alone out there. You know the only people made me suffer more than them Black men was they women. I got scars inside and out. And in all that time you the only one stood up for me. The only one. That’s why I didn’t take you wit’ me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I never trusted nobody till you stood up to Edgar—”
“That was the man attacked us?”
“Edgar Jess,” she said on a nod. “You put your life on the line for me. How could I take you away to where we would be in that kinda danger every mornin’ and every night?”
It was my turn to be quiet.
There was a brown-and-red beetle scuttling across the weathered wood floor of the roof garden. That bug was headed for the flowers, worried about birds, shoes, shadows — and, all the while, looking for a mate.
“That’s not why I wanted to talk to you,” Anger said softly.
“No?”
“I been thinkin’ ’bout Santangelo,” she said. “Hannie told me that he give that letter-deed to him to get to me.”
“Why didn’t he get it to you himself?”
“He didn’t know where I was, and when he talked to his brother, Saint said that he knew a way.” Upon saying this, she reached into her brown leather purse and pulled out a red leather wallet. From this she took a small brass key. Then she handed the key to me. “There’s a little post office box sto’ on Western down around Venice.”
“I know it. Mail and money orders, that’s what the sign says.”
“PO box twenty-one B,” Anger added. “I didn’t know that Saint was lookin’ for me. But this mornin’ I remembered that I give him that PO box address in case he needed sumpin’. You know Santangelo was always jealous at how close me and Hannie was.”
“Why didn’t you check the box?” I asked.
“I gave up usin’ it a few months ago because, you know, it was time. That money order joint was the only sure way that Saint could get in touch with me. I bet ya he sent me sumpin’ there. I bet he did.”
31
New World Money Orders, Mail, and Stationery was a bodega-style bungalow, wedged in between Lucky Star Liquor Store and Vanessa’s Veterinarian Care, two blocks north of Venice Boulevard, on Western Ave. I went in, found box 21B, and retrieved its solitary piece of mail, a green envelope scrawled upon with Anger Lee’s pseudonym and New World’s address.
“Excuse me, sir,” a woman said to my back.
“Yes?” I turned, putting on a smile for her.
“Is that box yours?”
“It belongs to a friend. Miss Lutisha James.”
“Yes,” the small, somewhat wide, white woman said. She had cheeks that crowded her eyes and wore a short, curly wig that sported gray strands of hair, here and there, among the predominantly black strands. “That’s her name. Her rent on the box is seven months overdue.”
“How much she owe?”
“Forty-seven dollars, twenty-one cent.”
I took out my wallet, handing her two twenties and a ten.
“Oh,” she uttered. “Well, this is very nice. Let me get your change.”
Saying this, she went behind a modest lime-green Formica-topped counter, reached underneath to retrieve a tin cash box, and then carefully counted out my two dollars and seventy-nine cents.
Handing me the change, she asked, “Would you like to pay for the next month also?”
Proffering the brass key to the box, I said, “No, ma’am. Miss James has moved back down to Texas. She won’t be needing this box anymore.”
“Would you like to leave a forwarding address for her?”
“I don’t know it offhand, but the next time I’m around here, I’ll drop it off.”
“Okay,” the shopkeeper replied, saying, with her expression, that she didn’t believe a word I said.
Benita met me at the bamboo scrim that hid the entrance to Mama Jo’s domain.
“Hey,” I said from the open window of my car.
“Hi, Easy,” she said. When we were with Jesus, she almost always called me Mr. Rawlins. I never really understood why she used my nickname only when we were alone.
“Hey, Benita. So, you the welcome wagon, huh?”
“Essie and Juice is sleep, so I came out in case I had the answers you needed.”
“Come on and sit next to me, then,” I said.
She went to the passenger’s side and got in.
“You and Jesus are about to be free from the BNDD men.”
“How? I mean, I’d like to know, but, um, can we drive around a little bit first? You know I been cooped up in that tin house for days.”