Read A Red Death: Featuring an Original Easy Rawlins Short Story "Si (Easy Rawlins Mysteries) for Free Online

it back from her?”
    At that question Misty went silent.
    For the rest of the ride she stared out of the window.
    “W HERE WE GOIN ’?” she asked when we turned off onto JJ’s road.
    “Where you think?”
    “You said to the police.”
    “I figured I’d skip the constabulary and go straight to the judge,” I said.
    When we got to Mofass’s door, I expected to have to pull JJ off of Misty. But there were no fireworks, no waterworks either. JJ grinned when she saw her missing sister. The smilefaded when I told her what was what. JJ didn’t ask why and Misty offered no excuse.
    “Well I guess that’s it,” JJ said when I was through explaining.
    I TOOK M ISTY back down to Compton and dropped her off about six blocks from her hogtied cowboy.
    On the way home I thought about JJ. She must have been brokenhearted over her sister’s betrayal. Money, I thought, is a harsh master in poor people’s lives. It warps us and makes us so hungry that we turn feral and evil. If Misty and JJ had stayed back home in their poor shacks, they would have been friends for fifty years baking pies and raising children side by side.
    J ESUS HAD BOUGHT a sleeping bag with money he’d saved from work. We sat up late into the night talking about my experiences camping out in France and Germany with the small troop I belonged to.
    “Did you kill a lotta Germans?” the bright-eyed boy asked.
    “Yes I did.”
    “Did you hate ’em?”
    “I thought I did—at first. But after a while I began to realize that the German soldiers and the white American soldiers felt the same about me. I used my rifle a little less after that.”
    “How come?”
    “Because I didn’t really know who it was I wanted to shoot.”
    “So you didn’t kill any more?”
    “I didn’t kill except if I absolutely had to.”
    I showed Jesus how to camp so that nobody could see you. I cautioned him to stay low when he heard something in the bushes.
    “Be careful out there, son,” I said to him. “You know I love you more than anything.”
    T HE PHONE RANG at two thirty-five.
    “Yes,” I said, expecting it to be Bonnie.
    “Easy,” she cried. “Easy, come quick. They’re dead. They’re all dead.”
    I filled an empty mayonnaise jar with water and then drove the car I’d borrowed from Primo toward the canyons. At the base of the hills I got out and made mud from the dirt at the side of the road. I smeared the mud on Primo’s license plates.
    T HE DOOR TO THE HOUSE was open. The large living room was strewn with bodies and blood. Clovis was thrown back on the couch so that she was hanging over the backrest. Fitts and Clavell were lying one in front of the other. It seemed as if they had been running at someone but were cut down—first Clavell and then his brother—in the middle of their rush.
    Mofass was leaning up against the wall that the brothers had rushed. The .22 caliber pistol was in his hand. JJ was kneeling next to him, trying to pull him up by the arm.
    “Damn criminals,” Mofass said. I could barely hear him.
    “Get up, Uncle Willy,” JJ pleaded. “Get up.”
    “Take her outta here, Mr. Rawlins,” he said. His eyes were so blurry and yellow that they seemed to be melting right out of his head.
    “What happened?” I asked.
    “Ain’t no time for questions. Take her outta here.”
    When I tried to pull JJ to her feet she clutched Mofass’s arm. Her grip was brittle though and I manged to pull her away.
    “Get his oxygen tank,” I told her.
    While she ran into the other room I interrogated my real estate manager.
    “What happened?”
    “They wanted to steal my property,” he said. “They wanted to hurt my girl. Fuck that. Fuck that.”
    “We got to get you outta here, William,” I said.
    “No, Mr. Rawlins. I got to stay here an’ cover up for the cops. They cain’t know JJ was in on this.”
    I didn’t know for a fact what he meant. But I had my suspicions.
    JJ returned with the oxygen tank and mask. When she held the mask