A Red Death Read Online Free PDF Page B

be the same age as LaMarque, both cowered under the large and smiling figure of the man before me.
    “Nice-lookin’ fam’ly,” I said.
    “Um, yes, thank you,” he mumbled. “I assume that you received my letter and so you know why I wanted to meet with you. I couldn’t find your home address in our files, and so I had to hope that the address we found in the phone book was yours.”
    I was never listed in a phone book from that year on.
    “The only address we had for you,” Lawrence continued, “was the address of a Fetters Real Estate Office.”
    “Yeah, well,” I said. “I been in that same house for eight years now.”
    “Be that as it may, I’d like you to write your current address and phone number on this card. Also any business number if I need to get in touch with you during the day.”
    He produced a three-by-five lined card from a drawer and handed it to me. I took it and put it down on the desk. He didn’t say anything at first, just stared until finally he asked, “Do you need a pencil?”
    “Um, yeah, I guess. I don’t carry one around with me.”
    He took a short, eraserless pencil from the drawer, handed it to me, and waited until I had written the information he wanted. He read it over two or three times and then returned the pencil and card to the drawer.
    I didn’t want to start the conversation. I had taken the position of an innocent man, and that’s the hardest role to play in the presence of an agent of the government. It’s even harder if you really are innocent. Police and government officials always have contempt for innocence; they are, in some way, offended by an innocent man.
    But I was guilty, so I just sat there counting the toes of my right foot as I pressed them, one by one, into the sole of my shoe. It took great concentration for the middle toes.
    I had reached sixty-four before he said, “You’ve got a big problem, son.”
    The way he called me son instead of my name returned me to southern Texas in the days before World War Two; days when the slightest error in words could hold dire consequences for a black man.
    But I smiled as confidently as I could. “It must be some mistake, Mr. Lawrence. I read your note and I don’t own nuthin’, ’cept fo’ that li’l house I done had since ’forty-six.”
    “No, that’s not right. I have it, from reliable sources, that you purchased apartment buildings on Sixty-fourth Place, McKinley Drive, and Magnolia Street in the last five years. They were all auctioned by the city for back taxes.”
    He wasn’t even reading from notes, just rattling off my life as if he had my whole history submitted to memory.
    “What sources you talkin’ ’bout?”
    “Where the government gets its information is none of your concern,” he said. “At least not until this case goes to court.”
    “Court? You mean like a trial?”
    “Tax evasion is a felony,” he said, and then he hesitated.
    “Do you understand the severity of a felony charge?”
    “Yeah, but I ain’t done nuthin’ like that. I’m just a maintenance man for Mofass.”
    “Who?”
    “Mofass, he’s the guy I work for.”
    “How do you spell that?”
    I made up something, and he pulled out the card with my information on it and jotted it down.
    “Did you bring the documents I asked for in the letter?” he asked.
    He could see I didn’t have anything.
    “No, sir,” I said. “I thought that it was all a mistake and that you didn’t have to be bothered with it.”
    “I’m going to need all your financial information for the past five years. A record of all your income, all of it.”
    “Well,” I said, smiling and hating myself for smiling, “that might take a few days. You know I got some shoe boxes in the closet, and then again, some of it might be in the garage if it goes all that far back. Five years is a long time.”
    “Some people make an awful lot of noise about equality and freedom, but when it comes to paying their debt they sing a different