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

carried a small white cardboard box about the size of a workman’s lunch pail. This box had cardboard handles that folded out from the top.
    I thought about the police. Looking back on it now I realize that I should have called the cops. I could have said that I saw a woman, bound hand and foot, carried into the house. But I was never happy about dealing with the city’s armed thugs. Even though the cowboy was probably guilty I couldn’t call the law in on him until I was sure.
    The ladies were handing two long rectangular bars to a woman standing at the front of the house nearest me. When they came back to the sidewalk I was waiting for them.
    “Excuse me, ladies,” I said.
    The taller one was in the pink dress suit. It was Sunday attire; all that was missing was a hat. She was tall and dark-skinned. There was a gold wedding ring on her finger so I supposed that someone had once found her beautiful. I suspected that that was a long time ago. She had a frown that would give children nightmares.
    “What do you want?” she demanded. It was as if she recognized me as the no-good black sheep of the family and wasn’t about to let me get an inch too close.
    “Are those church chocolates?”
    “Oh yes,” said the shorter woman wearing the powder-blue dress. She was dark too. But she was sweet all the way through. “A big grin and big butt on a black woman and you know I be a happy man,” my uncle Stanley used to profess. He would have been happy seeing what I saw.
    “With almonds?” I asked the friendlier church lady.
    “Yes,” she said.
    “You know I love church candy.”
    “This ain’t no tea party, young man,” the lady in pink said. “We’re selling these chocolates.”
    “Hester,” the lady in blue complained. “There’s no need to be rude.”
    “I have a house to take care of, Minne Roland,” Hester replied. “So now, mister, if you would please move—”
    “I would like to buy all of your candies, ladies,” I said, reaching for my wallet. “How many have you got left?”
    “Almost twenty,” Blue Minne replied.
    The bars sold for thirty-five cents a piece. I gave them seven dollars and they thanked me. Hester made a grimace that I was sure was meant to be a smile.
    I walked off toward the cowboy’s house laden with chocolates and high hopes.
    T HE FRONT DOOR hadn’t been used much recently. There were spider webs at the corners and leaves sticking out from underneath the welcome mat. There were stains on the peeling white door left from the last rainstorm three months ago.
    I pressed the doorbell. There was no sound from inside.
    I knocked on the door.
    There came the sound of footsteps. But not the heavy-booted feet of the black cowboy I’d been following. The door whined and cracked as it opened. The short honey-brown woman had a wide smile and smaller eyes than JJ’s photograph indicated.
    “Hey y’all,” she said, greeting me with all the friendliness of the country.
    “Hi,” I said, widening my eyes in surprise.
    Misty took my stare as a compliment; it might have been if it were not for my astonishment at her carefree attitude.
    “You sellin’ candy?” she asked.
    “You bet,” I said. “Milk chocolate and almonds for twenty-five cents a bar.”
    “Misty, who you talkin’ too?” The man’s voice was hard and serious.
    The cowboy appeared in the disheveled room behind the young Texan miss. His skin was rough and brown with the strong aura of drab green emanating from underneath. His eyes were brown too but just barely. This cowboy’s ancestors could have well included a rattlesnake or two.
    “Anthony Lender,” I said, remembering the name of a white private I once went to war with. “Sellin’ chocolate.”
    “What you wanna knock on this door for?” he asked me.
    “To sell a pretty young lady somethin’ sweet,” I said.
    Misty smiled at me and the snake pushed her aside.
    “It don’t look like no one live in here,” he said. “Why you wanna come up