Summary

Chapter 1

The novel opens in Los Angeles in the year 1948. Easy Rawlins is surprised when DeWitt Albright, a large and imposing white man, walks into Joppy's bar. Its smell and dingy atmosphere usually keeps white folks away. Everything about Mr. Alright is white, from his skin to nearly every item of his clothing. Yet Easy tells us that he is accustomed to being in white company because he fought in World War II in Africa, Italy, Paris, and Germany. He explains: "I ate with them and slept with them, and I killed enough blue-eyed young men to know that they were just as afraid to die as I was." Mr. Albright seems to have a good deal of sway even over Joppy himself, who acts nervous around him. He reminds Easy of a man he used to know named Mouse, which makes him very uneasy. They call Easy over and Mr. Albright proposes over drinks that Easy work for him. Mr. Albright does undercover favors for people and he wants Easy to help him on his next job. Easy is not keen on helping Mr. Albright, but he has been fired from his job at Champion aircraft and is trying to pay off a mortgage. Mr. Albright asks Easy to meet him at another location to discuss the details of the job. He writes down the address on his fancy business card with a elegant, white pen. Easy remarks that Joppy did not protest when Mr. DeWitt left without paying for his drinks.

Chapter 2

Easy discovers that Joppy met Mr. Albright before the war, when he was still a boxer. We also find out that Joppy's prized possession is his marble bar top, which he brought from his late uncle's bar in Houston. Joppy calms Easy's suspicions about Mr. Albright by telling him that he is a shady business man, not a gangster. As Joppy puts it, "Wherever they's a little money to be made Mr. Albright got his nose to the ground ... An' he don't care too much if that money got a little smudge or sumpin' on it neither." Easy is jealous of the stability and success of Joppy's life, even if it lacks glamour. Easy's instincts tell him to distrust Mr. Albright. Still, Easy is interested and thanks Joppy for the opportunity, but wonders if he will still be thankful later.

Analysis

The major themes of race and war come up in Mosley's first two short chapters of Devil in a Blue Dress. The book's first sentence sets racial tensions in play. The novel is set in post-World-War-II Los Angeles, before the Civil Rights Movement, so Mosley includes markers of segregation and cultural alienation in his narrative. Moreover, Mosley uses the novel as a vehicle through which to explore the implications of race and racial prejudice.

Easy notices not simply that Mr. Albright is white, but that every detail about him is white to the point of being sterile and false. He continues: "It's not just that he was white but he wore an off-white linen suit and shirt with a Panama straw hat and bone shoes over flashing white silk socks." Mr. Albright seems especially white in Joppy's dark, dingy, black-populated bar. Even though Mr. Albright reminds Easy of his black friend, Mouse, the white character comes to represent the power whites have over blacks in Easy's society. He likes to be in control of others and give them orders. On the other hand, Joppy explains that Mr. Albright is an opportunist who makes money anywhere he can.

Mosley connects race to the theme of war in the first two chapters. Easy remembers the eyes of German soldiers whom he killed in combat when he served in World War II. When he killed white Germans, he had control over white men instead of the other way around. Meeting Mr. Albright makes Easy think about the Germans he killed almost as a defense mechanism. Faced with a conspicuously sinister and big-talking white man who wants to take advantage of him, he recalls a time when he was the one in control. By doing so, Easy expresses a common frustration of black soldiers who returned to their Southern communities after World War II. Having felt heroic and fighting for their country, they found themselves second-class citizens once again.

Because he is conscious of his second-class status as a black man, Easy is especially proud of being a homeowner. Throughout the novel, he speaks lovingly about his humble house and garden. In fact, his pride in his home is what motivates him to get mixed up in Mr. Albright's shady affair -- Easy needs to pay the mortgage. Easy's desire for stability makes him jealous of even Joppy, a solitary and somber person with property and a stable job. Easy's independence simultaneously gets him into and out of trouble throughout Devil in a Blue Dress.

Summary

Chapter 3

After taking the first step into a shady world, Easy drives home, thinking about the money he needs to keep his small house. We learn that he grew up on a sharecropper's farm and never had any possessions of his own before. The house is the size of a one-bedroom apartment and is surrounded by a garden. Easy's rent is due in six days, and even though Easy can tell that Mr. Albright is "full of violence," he needs money badly.

Easy goes to meet Mr. Albright on the address on his business card. It is a "buff-colored building" with "cream-colored doors." It is also deserted. A slight white man startles Easy and demands to know why he has come. Easy finds himself dizzied and somewhat frightened in the presence of a white authority figure. Even when Easy regains his composure and asks to see Mr. Albright, the white man distrusts him. Easy is furious and has the urge to "rip the skin from his face like [he'd] done to another white boy." Finally the little man gets permission to show Easy to Mr. Albright's office. In order to reach the office, they cross a courtyard and enter the dusty boiler room, where Mr. Albright's bodyguards, Manny and Shariff, try to pat Easy down, which he resists. They lead him into the office proper and Mr. Albright sends them away.

Easy notices that Mr. Albright keeps a bottle of Wild Turkey whiskey right out on his desk. He also notices Mr. Albright's large, black-handled gun, the only thing Mr. Albright seems to wear that is not white. He shows Easy a picture of a light-haired, blue-eyed girl named Daphne Monet. He tells Easy that Daphne likes to spend time in black jazz clubs, and he needs Easy to find her for his client, whom she left. He offers Easy one hundred dollars in advance and the chance to get his job back at Champion. As Mr. Albright talks, Easy again considers how much he reminds him of his old friend, Mouse: a very shady character. Despite his misgivings, Easy takes the job. He explains: "I couldn't see why it shouldn't be my one hundred dollars." After he accepts the job, the two men drink and boast. Mr. Albright tells Easy to start looking for Daphne at an illegal jazz club run by a man named John. Easy knows the place.

Chapter 4

Easy opens by describing John's Place, which was a speakeasy during Prohibition. Even after drinking was legalized again, John could not get a liquor license because of his bad record with the police, so the club remains illegal and hidden in the back of Hattie Parson's market. Hattie is a tiny, light-skinned black woman who sells a few groceries but mostly acts as a door woman for John's Place. She lets in only those who are regulars or seem trustworthy. Her nephew, Junior Fornay, sits on the other side of the door should any trouble arise.

When Easy walks in to the market, he encounters "[his] third white man that day," who is dressed in an expensive suit and is quite drunk. Hattie won't let him into John's Place and the man offers Easy twenty dollars to convince Hattie to let him in, but Easy refuses and leaves him to sit drunkenly against the wall. Hattie tells Easy that Lips and his trio, musicians from Texas, are playing. She also mentions that the legendary jazz singer Billie Holiday was there the Tuesday before. Hattie asks Easy for "six bits" as a cover to go into John's Place. When Easy questions why John has instated a cover charge, Hattie explains that a chauffeur, Howard Green, left Billie Holiday's set early and was beaten to death outside the club. His body was so mutilated that his wife could barely identify it. John now charges his customers an entrance fee "t'keep out the riff-raff." Easy hands Hattie seventy-five cents and she allows him to enter the club.

As soon as Easy enters John's Place, he is swept up in the familiar, nostalgic atmosphere. Lips, the other musicians, John, and a good majority of the patrons are originally from Houston, like him. They moved to Los Angeles after World War II expecting abundance, only to find squaller. But for the musicians, patrons, and John himself, John's Place provides a temporary return to the dreams they once had. Junior Fornay welcomes Easy. He is a heavy, strong man about five years older than Easy, whom he knew many years before in Houston. Easy recalls that Junior once knocked him to the floor in a fight and might have killed him had Mouse not intervened. Junior spends his time sitting in one spot in John's Place, guarding the door and smoking cheap cigarettes. Easy sums him up as "a filthy man who [doesn't] give a damn about anything." Easy tells Junior the story of his getting fired from Champion. He had worked a very long day and was ready to go home when his boss, a first-generation Italian-American told him he would have to stay an extra hour. Easy was furious at the way his boss looked down on him because he is black, so he quit.

Easy buys beers for himself and Junior, taking in the scene. He turns his attention to Frank Green, whom the men call Knifehand because of his propensity to stab someone at the slightest provocation. Frank is a gangster who hijacks shipments of liquor and cigarettes in order to sell them himself. Easy can tell Frank is about to go "out to work" because he is dressed in all black. Easy brings the beers back to Junior, who tells the story of Howard Green's murder, adding that the victim had been doing illegal work for Matthew Teran, a white man who recently pulled out of the mayor's race without explanation. Junior says that white men killed Howard, which makes Easy feel even more uneasy. Junior asks after Mouse, and Easy says that he last heard that Mouse was married to a woman named EttaMae Harris. Junior recalls how gallantly Mouse intervened when he was beating up Easy many years before.

We learn that Mouse's full name is Raymond Alexander. Easy has not seen him in four years. The last time they met, Mouse made Easy uncomfortable by bringing up the subject of his stepfather's murder. Mouse had murdered his stepfather and blamed it on a man named Clifton. Apparently, his stepfather's biological son, Navrochet, had come after Mouse because he believed him to be his father's true killer. Navrochet had Mouse at gunpoint and demanded to know where Easy was, thinking him an accomplice to his father's murder. Mouse startled Navrochet by urinating on his boots and then shot him to death. Easy left Texas for good several hours after talking to Mouse.

Easy asks Junior about Daphne, although he pretends not to know her name. Junior says he does not pay attention to the white girls who visit John's Place, but Easy thinks he is lying. Not wanting to rouse suspicion, Easy walks over to sit at the bar.

Analysis

Though not a theme, dialect is an important element in Devil in a Blue Dress. Mosley's black characters speak in Southern black dialects, which both helps us to imagine ourselves in the black communities of post-World-War-II Los Angeles and also contrasts the language of working-class blacks with that of upper-middle-class whites. Though the white characters likely speak with Southern accents as well, Mosley chooses not to represent them on the page. The only white character who speaks with a working-class Southern accent is Daphne Monet, who, we learn later, is in fact part black. Easy himself tries to speak standard "white" English in order to separate himself from the bad elements of his community. As he admits: "I always tried to speak proper English in my life, the kind of English they taught in school, but I found over the years that I could only truly express myself in the natural, 'uneducated' dialect of my upbringing."

In these chapters and throughout the novel we witness Easy's love for his house. He adores the house as though it were a person in its own right. He even goes so far as to say: "... That house meant more to me than any woman I ever knew. I loved her and I was jealous of her and if the bank sent the county marshal to take her from me I might have to some at him with a rifle rather than give her up." Of course Easy loves the physical entity of his home, but the house also represents his independence. As long as Easy has a house to call his own, he has the identity of "homeowner." He is no longer just a soldier or a Champion aircraft worker; having the title "homeowner" allows Easy to feel as though he is making a real life and identity for himself after having pulled up his Houston roots to fight in the war and move to Los Angeles.

Easy's need to keep his home inspires both constructive and destructive actions. He wants to improve and tend the home, yet his need to pay rent lures him into dangerous situations. And this independant streak goes beyond the home. Easy admits that he is "caught by [his] own pride," driven to embrace danger just to prove himself. He admits: "The more I was afraid of [Mr. Albright,] I was that much more certain to take the job he offered." Having proved himself brave and strong in the war, Easy has returned home to a community that does not see him as tough. He is weak and soft compared to the likes of Joppy, Junior, and Mouse. Working for Mr. Albright renews Easy's sense of strength and bravery.

When Easy meets Mr. Albright at his office, he enters the sordid world that traps him until the end of the novel. The building itself has a similar effect to Mr. Albright's attire: it is so white that it intimidates Easy. Primed to be defensive by the building's appearance, Easy finds himself easily threatened by a small, unassuming doorman. He is so furious that he wants to "rip the skin from his face like [he'd] done to another white boy." Again, when Easy is threatened by racial prejudice, he connects back to his anger from the war and his satisfaction in having killed white men. Despite the pristine, pretentious whiteness of the building, Mr. Albright's office is dirty and secretive. Easy's descent into the boiler room to get his mission from Mr. Albright represents his coming descent into the underworld of crime and violence. Easy is in a dark, basement office of a spotless, white building. Already the lines between black and white, as well as the opposites of right and wrong, are blurring.

Mr. Albright's bodyguards, Manny and Shariff, are of mixed and uncertain race. As such, they are symbols of the uncertainty of the world into which Easy is entering. Manny looks Chinese to Easy at first, but he cannot pinpoint his race. Mr. Albright explains that he was raised in an orphanage and does not know his ethnic background. Sharrif is "tall and slight with curly brown hair, dark skin like an India Indian, and brown eyes so light they [are] almost golden." Manny and Shariff are inhabitants of a world as mixed-up and uncertain as their appearances. Because of this, they both frighten and intrigue Easy. At their best, they can even be beautiful. At worst, they are symbols of bewilderment.

Even Mr. Albright is inconsistent in terms of race. Despite his penchant for white clothing and accessories, he carries a conspicuously black-handled pistol. Certainly, Mosley is not insinuating that violence is a black phenomenon; far from it. Yet he arouses Easy's, and our, suspicion that Mr. Albright is not as pristine as his clothing suggests. In addition, Mr. Albright reminds Easy both of his black friend, Mouse, and "the wide-eyed corpses of German soldiers that [he] once saw stacked up on a road to Berlin." Despite these inconsistencies, Mr. Albright is very clear about certain things. One is money, and another is the fact that he is willing to hurt others to make a living. His bottle of whiskey serves as a symbol of his straight-forwardness. Easy notes that while many men have their liquor hidden in a bottom desk drawer, Mr. Albright keeps his right out on the desktop. Of course this is partially because Mr. Albright works for himself. But it is also a clue for all who enter that Mr. Albright is not one to B.S.

At John's Place, Easy is among friends but still close to danger as always. The knife-happy Frank Green is nearby and dressed for work. Easy is also close to danger when he sits with Junior, who merely laughs, recalling how he almost killed Easy in a fight years before. Despite its element of danger, John's Place is a haven for blacks. It is like a transplanted Southern black community. In each other's company, the patrons can escape the tough, workaday atmosphere of Los Angeles. Along with Easy's house and his dreams, John's place is a dreamlike place, a retreat hidden away from interfering forces such as the police. Consequently, when people bring violence to John's Place, break into Easy's house, and wake him out of his dreams, they shake his sense of security and identity. As he reminds us at the end of Chapter 4, he is first and foremost a homeowner, and that title is what keeps him from running away from Los Angeles and back into the warm comfort of Houston.

Summary

Chapter 5

Easy sits at the bar next to his fifty-year-old friend, a slight man named Odell Jones. Odell is quiet and "God-fearing," and is a regular at John's Place. He likes to sit listening to the music and nursing one beer until the stroke of midnight, when he habitually leaves. He does not make an effort to speak to anyone unless they address him. Easy says hello to the other regulars, asking nondescriptly about Daphne, referring to her as "Delia or Dahlia or something." Just then, Easy's friend, Dupree, makes a loud entrance with his girlfriend, Coretta. She is coyly alluring in sharp contrast to big, loud, imposing Dupree. Dupree tells Easy that Benny, their Italian-American boss at Champion, wants Easy back. Easy agrees to come by on Friday. Then he, Odell, Dupree, and Coretta chat and drink bourbon on ice. Odell leaves at midnight as usual, and Dupree eventually passes out at three in the morning, to Coretta's disappointment. She quips: "He use' to play till the cock crowed, but that ole cock don't crow nearly so much no mo'."

Chapter 6

Easy and Coretta drag Dupree back from John's Place to Coretta's. He is staying with her because although Dupree is a first-class machinist with a good wage, he wasted away his money and was evicted from his apartment. After they settle Dupree into bed, Coretta seduces Easy, leaning close to him and exposing her breasts as they talk. Easy is reluctant to flirt in return because of his loyalty to Dupree, but eventually Coretta wins his attention by mentioning that she made friends with Daphne a week earlier when they were both out at a club called the Playroom. Easy and Coretta have passionate sex, during which she reveals the name of Daphne's boyfriend. The information disappoints Easy, but he promises Coretta ten dollars of his pay for her help. They continue to have sex until Dupree begins to stir in the next room, at which point Easy leaves.

Analysis

Even though Odell is a minor character, he is an important foil for Easy and the world he inhabits. Easy describes him as, "... A quiet man and a religious man. His head was the color and shape of a red pecan. And even though he was a God-fearing man he'd find his way down to John's about three or four times a week. He'd sit there until midnight nursing a bottle of beer, not saying a word unless somebody spoke to him." Easy has other confidants such as Joppy and Coretta, but Odell is different in that he is totally self-contained. He does not seem to want or need anything from others, and is content to be a quiet creature of habit amid a tumultuous and often violent community.

Later on, Odell becomes the voice of fear and cowardice that opposes the brave voice in Easy's head. He tells Easy to run away from his problems. Odell serves to remind us, and Easy, that there is another path in life than the one he is choosing. He can stay safe from confrontation and violence if he chooses. But choosing such a path would mean living a quiet, uneventful life. When we put him next to Odell, we realize that Easy is not just a victim of circumstance, but a thrill-seeker.

Dupree is another foil for Easy. In fact, the two men are quite similar. Both of them have been employed at Champion aircraft, and both love thrills while preferring to stay out of the way of the truly rough types. They both sleep with Coretta, and are both subsequently interrogated by the police. What makes Dupree different from Easy primarily is his lack of concern for his own success. Whereas Easy loves his house so much that he practically considers it a person, Dupree drinks his wages away so that he is evicted from his place. Dupree reminds us that Easy is a man who loves stability despite his adventurous spirit.

Easy's interactions with Coretta are our first taste of the deceptive and dishonest side of Easy's character. Up until he sleeps with Coretta, he seems like a morally-upright person. Even though Coretta seduces Easy, he is not hard to convince. Later, in Chapter 9, Easy must lie to Dupree about the fact that he stole his girlfriend. After he does so, he says: "I swore to myself that I'd never look at another man's woman. I've taken that pledge many times since then." Easy is a good person at his core, but he is a bit of a "home wrecker" too.

Summary

Chapter 7

When Easy returns home to his house on 116th street, it is already morning. He finds a blue envelope scented with perfume and written in a woman's handwriting. It is from Houston and has his full name, "Mr. Ezekiel Rawlins." Both details grab Easy's attention. Before he begins reading the letter, Easy notices that a jay is sitting on his neighbor's fence, taunting a ferocious dog below. The jay is "mesmerized" by the dangerous canine. The letter is from Mouse. He explains that Sophie gave him Easy's address after she returned to Houston from Los Angeles because it was "too much" for her. Mouse says that he thinks "maybe too much is just right for [him]." Mouse tells Easy that his wife, EttaMae, threw him out after he came home so drunk one night that he forgot to shower. In spite of his troubles, Mouse is proud of his beautiful son, LaMarque. He asks Easy when is a good time to visit him. Mouse ends the letter by saying: "I got Lucinda writing this letter for me and I told her that if she don't write down every word like I say then I'm a beat her butt down Avenue B so hold onto it, alright?"

Easy says that as he read the letter's first words, he instinctively went to his closet as though to pack or hide. Easy recalls that he and Mouse were the best of friends until his wedding day neared. Late one night, Mouse made Easy accompany him to a small town called Pariah where he shot his stepfather, and a man named Clifton also died in the struggle.

Easy assures us that he was not involved in Mouse's murders but he feels guilty about having taken a share of blood money from Mouse; he knew, however, that the unremorseful and touchy Mouse would kill him if he refused it. In fact, Easy's fear of Mouse is part of what drove him to join the army and eventually settle far away, in Los Angeles. Easy is no stranger to fear. He was part of the D-Day operation in Normandy during World War II and killed many German soldiers in hand-to-hand combat. Easy says the only time he felt invincible was when he was with Mouse. Yet he does not want to help his old friend; he prefers a more conventional, non-violent life. As he puts it: "I had dreams that didn't have me running in the streets anymore; I was a man of property and I wanted to leave my wild days behind."

Easy settles down by his front window with a bottle of vodka. He muses on the South. There one can see all one's friends sitting by one's front window. In Los Angeles, people are too busy to take a walk, much less stop to chat with neighbors. After finishing the bottle of vodka, Easy falls asleep. A call from Mr. Albright awakens him. Mr. Albright pressures Easy into meeting him at the Santa Monica pier.

Chapter 8

Easy is nervous about meeting Mr. Albright in the white community of Santa Monica. He had never spent time there except to work at Champion. Easy recalls: "I never loitered anywhere except among my own people, in my own neighborhood." Easy's eagerness to get paid and someday own more property keeps him going. He arrives at the designated meeting place, a merry-go-round, and waits nearby at the railing above the beach. Easy wants to avoid human contact, but a chubby, Jewish girl named Barbara Moskowitz wanders away from her crowd to talk to him. Easy tries to ignore her, but she is talkative and lonely. She is tagging along with her sister's friends, because their parents made her. But Barbara's sister just wants to smoke and neck with her boyfriend, Herman. Suddenly Herman and some other boys confront Easy, calling him "nigger" and degrading him. Easy knows that he could kill them with his bare hands, but ignores them. Barbara tries to defend him to no avail. Just then, Mr. Albright arrives and hold the largest boy, whom Easy calls "the footballer," at gunpoint. He threatens to kill him and all his friends, and degrades him by telling him to suck Easy's penis. After holding him in agony for a few minutes Mr. Albright pistol-whips the boy and lets all the teenagers go. He tells them not to inform the police on pain of death.

Easy walks Mr. Albright to his white Cadillac. Easy is angry at him for humiliating the footballer, because he knows that Mr. Albright would do the same or worse to Easy. But he resolves not to let Mr. Albright humiliate him. He tells Mr. Albright that he will give him the information about Daphne as long as he promises that no one will be hurt as a result. Mr. Albright says that his client's intentions with Daphne are innocent, but that he cannot guarantee that no harm will come to people. Easy is satisfied that Mr. Albright does not want to hurt Daphne, so he gives him the information. He tells Mr. Albright that Daphne was last seen with Frank Green at a bar called the Playroom. He explains that Frank is a gangster and tells Mr. Albright where he lives. Mr. Albright is fascinated by the fact that Frank Green is quick to kill with his knife. He asks Easy to recall if, when he once saw Frank cut a man, he hesitated. Easy cannot give him a definite answer, but Mr. Albright is quietly delighted at the thought of facing Frank Green. He gives Easy another hundred dollars and a card with an address where he can find another job. Easy lies and tells Mr. Albright that he does not have Daphne's picture because he wants to keep it for himself. Mr. Albright drives Easy back to his car as they listen to big band music. As he shakes Easy's hand goodbye, Mr. Albright asks him why he did not defend himself against the footballer and his friends. Easy says, "I don't kill children." At that Mr. Albright laughs.

Analysis

In Chapter 7, Mosley uses animal symbolism to convey Easy's feeling of being in a delicate balance between success and death. Just before he opens the letter from Mouse, Easy notices a jay taunting a ferocious neighborhood dog outside his window. He describes: "There was a jay looking down from the fence at the evil dog in the yard behind mine. The mongrel was growling and jumping at the bird. Every time he slammed his body against the wire fence the jay started as if he were about to fly off, but he didn't He just kept staring down into those deadly jaws, mesmerized by the spectacle there." In this metaphor, the jay represents Easy and the dog represents Mr. Albright, Frank Green, Junior, and everyone else who poses a threat to him.

Like the jay, Easy is perched above a dangerous reality. He is safe, but one false step and he could end up dead. But Easy flirts with danger, as the jay does. He likes to play with Mr. Albright and show his bravery because danger fascinates him. The jay can easily fly off the fence, but his fascination with the dog keeps him there. Easy has several opportunities to get out of his situation, but exhilaration and fascination hold him near the danger.

Mosley creates another nature-based metaphor in Chapter 8, when Easy drives along the beach with Mr. Albright. Easy remembers: "There were a few electric lights from the coast, and just a sliver of moon, but the sea glittered with a million tiny glints. It looked like every shiny fish in the sea had come to the surface to mimic the stars that flickered in the sky. There was light everywhere and there was darkness everywhere too." The seascape is a metaphor for Easy's situation. He is on the verge of attaining a beautiful independence for himself, which Mosley represents in the brightness of the seascape. The "sliver of moon" and the way the water glints remind Easy of the success and joy to which he aspires. Yet despite the brightness and beauty he sees, Easy is reminded that "there [is] darkness everywhere too." Easy's happiness is inextricably tied to his involvement with "darkness," with the violence and dishonesty he encounters while trying to earn the money to cultivate his dream life. Easy perches between lightness and darkness, joy and death, like the jay on the fence. He tries to focus on the "million little glints" of success he sees despite the danger around him, the "sliver" of joy he must endure the darkness to find.

In these chapters, Mosley gives us tantalizing hints about Mouse. Until now, we have only heard reference to Mouse when Mr. Albright reminds Easy of him. Mouse's name is simultaneously fitting and ironic. In that a mouse is a small animal, the name fits the character. First of all, Mouse is a small person physically. But he is also a creature of instinct, like a wild animal. As Easy describes, Mouse "... Could put a knife in a man's stomach and ten minutes later sit down to a plate of spaghetti." In other words, Mouse is totally unremorseful. Like an animal, he fights and kils to defend himself or to get what he wants, and then moves on. While Easy is wracked with guilt for his minor involvement in the Pariah murders, Mouse, who actually did the killing, does not care. Mouse is such an "animal," in fact, that he would even kill Easy if he suspected him of disloyalty. The irony of Mouse's name is that a mouse is typically seen as shy, nonviolent, and cowardly. As Easy tells us, Mouse is just the opposite of this image.

Easy's experience with Mouse in Pariah haunts him in such a way that he hides when he receives even a letter from Mouse. The name of the town is "Pariah," which literally means an exile or outsider. Fittingly, Easy's memories about the murders in Pariah make him feel morally bereft and isolated. The word "pariah" also echoes Easy's loneliness. True, he works towards independence and being a homeowner. But Easy is also a loner. He is especially lonely in his identity as a World War II soldier. Like many black soldiers returning to the South after fighting in the war, Easy finds himself a second-class citizen instead of the hero he knows he is. His encounter with the footballer and his friends reminds Easy of this. He says: "I could have killed all of them too. What did they know about violence? I could have crushed their windpipes one by one and they couldn't have done a thing to stop me. They couldn't even run fast enough to escape me. I was still a killing machine." Even though he puts up with the teenagers' racial slurs and prejudiced humiliation, Easy knows that he is a brave soldier. He is a much better soldier than Mr. Albright, who shows even unarmed teenagers little mercy. As he reminds Mr. Albright, Easy -- unlike him -- does not "kill children."

Summary

Chapter 9

The next morning, Easy arrives at Champion aircraft company in Santa Monica to get his job back. Easy explains the purpose of Benny -- his boss' -- work team. Once Champion commissions a new aircraft to be built, Benny's team assembles a prototype. Then a group of inspectors goes over the work very carefully to make sure that the procedures for assembly are sound. Easy says that Benny fired him because he was in a bad mood from so much pressure on a new project. Benny had wanted Easy and his team to stay late to go over their work after a long shift. When Easy refused, Benny fired him. Easy says that were he white, Benny would have kidded and gone out for a drink with him. But because he is black, Benny fired him to demonstrate his feeling of racial superiority. When Dupree sees that Easy has arrived at Champion, he comes barreling out to greet him. He asks Easy what he said to Coretta the other night, because he has not seen her since she made a hasty exit the next morning. Easy can sense that Dupree is in a violent mood, so he lies and tells Dupree that he did not see Coretta after he helped her tuck Dupree into bed. He appeases his acquaintance by joking that Coretta must be gambling in Reno. After this narrow miss with Dupree, Easy swears never to take another man's woman. Yet he tells us, "I've taken that pledge many times since then."

Benny invites Easy into his office. He says he cannot give Easy his job back because it would make him look like a pushover. He gives Easy an opportunity to apologize and brownnose, implying that only then will he concede. But Easy is not willing to subordinate himself to Benny any longer. He tells Benny that he needs his job back so that he can pay his bills and nothing more. When Benny calls him by his nickname, Easy demands that Benny give him respect and call him "Mr. Rawlins." Benny does so, but maintains that he has no place for Easy at the plant. When Easy leaves Benny's office, Dupree is gone. He does not think much of it, as he feels triumphant for having stood up to Benny. He proclaims: "I had a notion of freedom when I walked out to my car."

Chapter 10

When Easy returns home from Champion aircraft, there is a black Ford parked outside his house. He pays it no mind until two white men approach him. He describes one, who is named Miller, as "tall and skinny" and the other, named Mason, as "my height and three times my girth." They show their police badges and say they must take Easy to the police station. When he resists, Mason punches him in the diaphragm and handcuffs him. They throw him in their Ford and take him to an interrogation room against his will. Easy is nervous, because they are not "follow[ing] the routine" to which he is accustomed at the police station. Usually he is brought into a "holding tank" of criminals before being interrogated. Easy explains: "I didn't know why they had me, but I did know that it didn't matter as long as they thought they were right." As he surveys the room, Easy notices a line of ants marching in through the window to devour the corpse of a dead mouse. He considers its fate, and assumes that a prisoner cornered and killed it a few days before. Just then, Mason and Miller enter the room. They take off his handcuffs, but proceed to hit and push him over as they interrogate him. They ask Easy where he was at five in the morning on Thursday. Easy says he got drunk at a nightclub and then escorted his drunk friend, "Peter," home. The officers ask Easy where he went after leaving Coretta James's house, and whether he fought with Dupree Bouchard. Easy says he went home from Coretta's and did not argue with Dupree. Mason tries to beat up Easy some more, but Easy throws him on the ground. When Mason asks Miller to leave him alone with Easy, he refuses. After Mason and Miller leave the room, Easy looks at the mouse again. He imagines that Mason is the mouse and he is the prisoner killing it, thinking: "I crushed him that his whole suit was soiled and shapeless in the corner; his eyes came out of his head." As the day grows dark, Easy dozes intermittently. Only then, Mason and Miller send him home, refusing to tell him why they brought him in or to help him get home, even though public transportation is closed for the night.

Analysis

Easy's visit to Champion is more than anything, a commentary on racism. Benny is a first-generation Italian-American. It is safe to assume that his parents lived hard lives and endured much difficulty in immigrating to the United States. They likely faced discrimination in their new country. Yet Benny was not born an Italian; he was born a white, American citizen. Mosley does not give Benny an accent in order to differentiate him from the blacks in the story. Benny is dark-skinned, so it is likely that he has faced some racism himself. Perhaps partially because of this, he takes out his aggression on those 'darker' than him. Easy says, "His skin was darker than many mulattos I'd known. But Benny was a white man and I was a Negro. He wanted me to work hard for him and he needed me to be grateful that he allowed me to work at all." On the surface, Easy's conversation with Benny appears to be a normal one between employee and former employer. It is almost scripted up until the end when Easy stands up for himself. Behind the niceties and formality is real, deep racism. Benny is almost like Mr. Albright in the way he puts on a façade of kindness and honesty in order to deceive and degrade others.

Before Easy's visit to Benny's office, Mosley discusses race most obviously in relation to Easy's experiences as a black World War II veteran. Yet in Chapter 9, he harkens back to the kind of racism that blacks experienced when they were still enslaved. Easy says, "A job in a factory is an awful lot like working on a plantation in the South. The bosses see all the workers like they're children, and everyone knows how lazy children are." Later, he explains, "Benny didn't care about what I had to say. He needed all his children to kneel down and let him be the boss. He wasn't a businessman, he was a plantation boss; a slaver." In these quotes, Mosley makes us aware that even though the novel is set in 1948, many years after slavery was abolished, racism is just as pervasive and extreme as it was before emancipation. Many whites still look upon blacks as though they are intellectually inferior and have no sense of responsibility, like children.

Because of the extent of Benny's racism, Easy's triumph over him is especially meaningful. True, Easy does not win his job back, but Easy demands respect. When Benny calls him "Easy," our protagonist tells him: "I said, you have got to treat me with respect. Now I call you Mr. Giacomo because that's your name. You're no friends to me and I got no reason to be disrespectful and call you by your first name ... My name is Mr. Rawlins." It is clear that Benny does not respect Easy even though he calls him "Mr. Rawlins." But it is enough for Easy to make Benny just go through the motions of treating him as though he is an equal.

Easy's experience at the police station is a further examination of racism. Miller and Mason are indeed officers of the law and have the right to arrest someone whom they know is connected to an investigation. Yet they take a sadistic glee in arresting Easy and being cruel to him. Mason uses unnecessary force on Easy, hitting him and knocking him to the ground. They are cruel to him because they are racist, and their job gives them an opportunity to express their prejudice. Mosley again uses animal symbolism to represent Easy's situation. As Easy waits in the interrogation room, the dead Mouse in the corner sparks his imagination. This mouse represents Mason instead of the character named Mouse. Whereas in the jay metaphor, Easy is the animal, in this metaphor, he is the human and Mason is the animal. Mason sees Easy as an inferior being, an animal that he can abuse. By imagining that Mason is a Mouse that he can stomp on, Easy expresses the fact that he knows he is intellectually and morally superior to Mason. Mason is, in fact, the unfeeling "animal."

Summary

Chapter 11

After he leaves the police station, Easy heads for John's Place. He wants to run, but knows that the police will arrest him again just for being a black man at a running pace. After a few blocks, a Cadillac pulls up near him and the driver addresses him by name. He says that "someone in the back" wants to chat with Easy, but Easy brushes him off. Even when the driver offers Easy fifty dollars to get into the car, he refuses. Finally, the driver pulls the Cadillac onto the curb and gets out to talk to Easy, who is by now calculating how best to defend himself against the tall, white driver. The driver tells Easy that the man in the back knows why he was taken down to the police station and wants to talk to him about it. Sensing Easy's continued distrust, he offers: "If he wanted to hurt you you'd already be dead." Easy gets in and the car speeds off.

Easy meets the fat, white man who has been seeking him. He is grotesque with his fat face and big lips "like swollen wounds." Without taking time for introductions, the man asks Easy where Daphne Monet is. Easy pretends he does not know who Daphne is and focuses his attention on a mysterious shallow storage space behind the seat. The man calls, "Come on out, honey," and a small Mexican boy in dirty underwear and socks crawls out of the space and curls around the man's leg. Of the child, he says, "This is my little man ... He's the only reason I can keep on going." Easy identifies the man as Matthew Teran, who dropped out of the mayor's race weeks before. When Easy continues to evade his questions about Daphne, Teran asks if he knows who Howard Green is. Easy says yes but pretends that no one mentioned Howard the night he was at John's. Sensing that Easy is not going to break, Teran tells the driver to take Easy where he wants to go, and Easy directs him to John's.

When they arrive, Easy refuses money from Teran because he "[doesn't] want to touch anything that that man had touched." He tells Easy to call his office if he thinks of anything. Easy rushes out of the car and into Hattie's grocery shop. Hattie immediately senses Easy's unease and he explains that he was taken down to the police station. Hattie tells him that Coretta has been murdered in the same manner as Howard Green, so that her body was barely recognizable. Dupree has been taken in for questioning as well. Hattie fetches Odell for Easy, who asks him for a ride home. When they arrive at Easy's house, Odell advises him to leave town. Easy says he cannot leave town even though he "could have driven across the nation with the money Albright had given [him.]" When he looks at his house, he is too proud of how far he has come to run. Always a good friend, Odell idles in front of the house to make sure Easy gets into his house safely.

Chapter 12

Easy must drink a large amount of bourbon before he can fall asleep, because visions of Coretta keep haunting him. A phone call awakens Easy; Junior is on the other end. He has "just remembered" that he saw Daphne with Frank Green at John's the week before. Easy pretends not to care about Daphne and hangs up, but he is intrigued. Junior must know something if he took the trouble to call Easy in the middle of the night.

Finally, Easy falls back to sleep. He dreams about fishing for catfish like he did when he was a boy. The phone rings again, but Easy resists answering it because he is dreaming that he has hold of a catfish with a snout "the size of a man's torso." He recalls, "I couldn't answer it without losing my fish so I shouted for my mother to get it, but she must not have heard because the phone kept on ringing and that catfish kept trying to dive. I finally had to let it go and was almost crying when I picked up the receiver." A French woman is on the other end of the line: it is Daphne Monet. She tells Easy that two days before, Coretta told Daphne that he was looking for her, and demanded that Daphne bribe her not to reveal her whereabouts. Daphne says she gave Coretta her last twenty dollars and mentions Frank Green. Easy tells Daphne that Coretta was beaten to death. Daphne is scared and says that if Easy does not help her, she will go to the police and tell them about him and Coretta. Finally, Easy agrees to come over and give Daphne enough money for a cab so that she can try to find Frank.

Analysis

Chapter 11 introduces the major theme of sexual perversity. Everything about Matthew Teran is grotesque. In fact, Easy notices the nauseating scent of his car before he even meets the man. The moment the driver opens the door for Easy, he smells something "... Sweet like perfume and sour, an odor of the body that [he] recognized but could put no name to." The filthiness of Teran's car as well as the little boy's despicably unkempt appearance reflect the perversity of sexual slavery and pedophilia. Easy writes that the boy is wearing "soiled briefs" and that "Thick mucus threaten[s] to flow from the boy's nose." Teran himself is also grotesque in appearance. Easy remembers that he is fat and"ha[s] lips that [are] fat and red. They [look] like swollen wounds." These putrid smells, bodily fluids, and references to wounds compound the revolting nature of the situation. Mosley also uses the character of Teran to criticize government. After all, he makes Teran, who was a candidate for mayor, a pedophile and criminal. The whole society of L.A. seems utterly corrupt, as embodied in Teran.

Mosley uses the scene inside Teran's car as another opportunity to explore animal symbolism. Easy recalls that the little boy looks at him with cautious fascination: "His mouth was open and he stared at me as if I were a strange animal. Not a dangerous animal, maybe the corpse of a dog or porcupine run over and bleeding on the highway." The way the boy looks at Easy says more about Easy's state of mind than the boy's, because like the rest of the novel, this description is from Easy's perspective. Easy sees himself reflected in the stare of someone completely innocent. Therefore, he sees his own image of himself. Like an animal hit by a car and dying, Easy feels helpless and abused. He has been mistreated by Mason and Miller, and now coerced into a disgusting environment with Matthew Teran.

Mosley uses animal symbolism again in Chapter 12, when Easy is dreaming about the catfish. Even though Easy dreams of his childhood in the South, the content of the dream is clearly his deep anxiety. The dream is a sort of allegory for the way Easy feels about his situation. He began his involvement with the Daphne Monet case innocently, wanting only to earn enough money to pay his mortgage and facilitate his goal of being independent. The catfish represents this goal. He has taken the first step in 'hooking' it and it is within his reach. But just as Easy's dilemma has become larger-than-life and spiraled out of control, the catfish is too big for Easy to control. Even though Daphne is the key to Easy's financial comfort and happiness, she is also throwing his life off balance and putting his dream at risk. To underline this, Mosley makes not just anyone's phone call, but Daphne's, interrupt Easy's dream.

In Chapter 11, Odell becomes Easy's voice of fear. He tells Easy to run from his problems and return to a simpler, safe life. But Easy is a thrill-seeker: nothing but his pride keeping Easy from using the money Mr. Albright paid him to escape back to Houston and live a 'normal' life. Odell is also one of the only characters in the book who is, as far as we know, completely honest. He does not hide his feelings or feel the need to be brave. It is enough for him to be a good friend to others and live a quiet, simple, life. That is his idea of honor, whereas others need adventure, danger, money and lust.

In Chapter 12, we encounter an innocent side to Easy that connects him to Odell. Coretta's murder shakes him to the foundation. He resorts to drinking to calm himself, but even that does not prevent his anxiety from keeping him awake. He says, "I was still young enough that I couldn't imagine death really happening to someone I knew. Even in the war I expected to see friends again, though I knew they were dead." Easy is not so shy that he runs away from danger and death like Odell. But he is not hardened like Mouse and Mr. Albright. Despite his sometimes violent actions, Easy is a moral and cautious person at the core. This is what ultimately keeps him alive when so many others fall.

Summary

Chapter 13

When Easy arrives at Daphne's house, he realizes that he should have taken Odell's advice and left town. Daphne lets him in. She is young, about twenty-two, and beautiful though plain. She wears a simple blue dress. When Easy tries to give Daphne the cab money, she begs him to take her to her friend's house instead. Easy can tell that she is lying to him, but agrees because he realizes he is too deep into the mystery to go back. He explains, "If I was going to say no, it should have been to DeWitt Albright or even to Coretta." Before they leave, Daphne fetches an old suitcase that belongs to her friend, Richard, who lives on Laurel Canyon Road above Hollywood. Easy feels a renewed sense of power as he drives Daphne to Richard's. When they arrive at the house, the door is wide open. Richard is lying on his bed, stabbed to death with a butcher knife. Easy recognizes him as the drunk man he saw at John's Place the night he met Dupree and Coretta there. Easy sinks to his knee, flooded with memories of all the dead bodies he has seen. While he is on the floor, he notices something, smells it, and picks it up in his handkerchief. Then he notices that Daphne is gone. He finds her putting Richard's suitcase into the back of a pink Studebaker. Her French accent is replaced by a common Southern one. She says she is getting out of town and advises Easy to do the same. Then she kisses him so fiercely that she chips his tooth before driving off. Easy knows it is useless to try to stop her, but he has a renewed sense that he will triumph over his situation.

Chapter 14

As Easy drives home, a voice in his head gives him advice. When Easy suggests that he run like Odell suggested, the voice says, "Better be dead than leave." It tells him to stand up for himself and make things right. It reminds Easy that he is a strong man. Easy explains that the voice has been giving him objective advice ever since he was in the army. He recounts his army experience. He enlisted because he believed the propaganda for the war, but soon discovered that the army was segregated. He was made a typist in the statistics unit, which followed the troops and recorded their casualties. Even though he was trained as a soldier, he explains that "white men weren't anxious to see a gun in my hands. They didn't want to see me spill white blood. They said we didn't have the discipline or the minds for a war effort, but they were really scared that we might get to like the kind of freedom that death-dealing brings." One day, some white soldiers insulted Easy by saying that black soldiers were cowards. This roused Easy to volunteer for combat, something he considered very foolish. He took part in the invasion of Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge. Going back to the voice, Easy recalls the first time it spoke to him, when he was trapped in a barn outside Normandy. His two fellow soldiers were dead and there was a sniper waiting outside to kill him, too. The voice told him to kill the soldier with his bayonet and Easy did so. He says that ever since then, he has always listened to the voice. It never tells him to "rape or steal," but only how to survive.

Analysis

The drive to Richard's house brings the reader a sense of relative calm before the major plot twists that happen once Easy and Daphne arrive. Easy recalls, "At every other curve, near the top of the road, we'd catch a glimpse of nighttime L.A. Even way back then the city was a sea of lights. Bright and shiny and alive. Just to look out on Los Angeles at night gave me a sense of power." Having found Daphne, Easy feels a sense of accomplishment that the city fortifies. For a moment, he feels as though he has triumphed over darkness and that his life is "... Bright and shiny and alive" like the city of Los Angeles. Once he and Daphne find Richard dead in his bed, Easy is thrown back into the tenuous balance between darkness and light.

Mosley uses Richard's murder scene as an opportunity to delve back into the themes of physical violence and war. As the plot intensifies, Mosley is careful not to glorify violence and death. One way in which he does so is by using very graphic descriptions that sicken, rather than thrill, the reader. Easy remembers how Richard's corpse looked: "He'd fallen on his back on a bunch of blankets so that the blood had flown upward, around his face and neck. There was a lot of blood around his wide-eyed stare. Blue eyes and brown hair and dark blood so thick you could have dished it up like Jell-O. My tongue grew a full beard and I gagged." Because of Mosley's graphic description, we gag along with Easy. In this scene and in the rest of the novel, death is not romantic; it is disgusting and sad.

Easy instantly connects the murder scene to his experiences in World War II. He sinks to his knee because he is so overcome by his memories. As Easy explains, "All the dead men I'd ever known came back to me in that instant ... Some were mutilated, some burned. I'd killed my share of them and I'd done worse things than that in the heat of war. I'd seen open-eyed corpses like this man Richard and corpses that had no heads at all." Easy's experience of death and more specifically, of killing others, has traumatized him as much as it has emboldened him. Even though Easy feels initial sympathy for Richard, he quickly becomes annoyed and irreverent, saying, "Death wasn't new to me and I was to be damned if I was to let one more dead white man break me down." More important than the fact that Richard is dead is that he is a white man. Easy feels beaten down enough by his experiences with the white Miller, Mason, and Mr. Albright that he sees through the tragedy of Richard's death to the racial issue at hand. This reminds us that Easy's experience of racism has left him with little love for any white man.

In Chapter 14, Mosley completes our image of Easy as a soldier. We discover that for him, fighting had everything to do with race and prejudice. Because blacks were forbidden to engage in combat at first, Easy had a desk job like many of his black comrades. Easy is so brave that he volunteers for combat and ends up fighting in some of the war's most notoriously bloody battles, specifically the Battle of the Bulge and the Invasion of Normandy. He wanted to prove to himself and others that black men were just as capable of bravery and strategy as white men. But Easy took much more from the War than images of death and resentment for prejudice. He developed the voice of reason that tells him what to do when he is in trouble. As we begin to see during this first encounter with the voice, Easy's instinct and intelligence are what make him survive one dangerous situation after another.

Summary

Chapter 15

When Easy arrives home, Mr. Albright's white Cadillac is parked outside. Manny and Shariff are waiting for him inside along with Mr. Albright, who has brewed a pot of coffee. He tells Easy that his information led to dead ends and demands to know where Daphne Monet is. Throughout his interactions with Mr. Albright, the voice tells Easy, "bide your time." Easy tells Mr. Albright about his night driving Daphne Monet to Richard's, and about Richard's murder. He writes down Richard's address for Mr. Albright. When Mr. Albright asks him for a drink of whiskey, Easy follows the voice's advice and tells him to get it himself. Easy's bravery tickles Mr. Albright, who has a renewed sense of faith in him. He tells Easy that he will leave him alone once he arranges a meeting for him with Frank Green. Easy, on the other hand, believes that Albright wants to kill him. He demands another hundred dollars, to which Mr. Albright agrees. Before he leaves, Mr. Albright tells Easy: "I'm not a man to fool with, Mr. Rawlins." Easy thinks, "... Neither am I."

Chapter 16

After Mr. Albright leaves, Easy sleeps all day and into the evening, haunted by visions of fear and death. Finally he calls EttaMae Harris in Houston and asks her how he can find Mouse. When she reminds him that she and Mouse broke up, Easy is heartbroken that he has caused her pain. He says, "The idea that I made Etta sad was almost more than I could take." Easy asks EttaMae to get in touch with Mouse for him if she can. Still spooked, Easy finally falls asleep as he stares at his lawn.

Analysis

Mr. Albright breaks into Easy's home to symbolically violate him, to demonstrate that Easy isn't even safe in his own home. He even makes himself a pot of coffee, as though he is completely comfortable in Easy's place. As we know, Easy's home represents his independence and happiness. When Mr. Albright acts as though Easy's home does not belong to him, he insinuates that Easy will never fully claim the goals to which he so aspires, of being self-sufficient and happy. This only increases Easy's determination to hold onto his home.

Chapter 15 is the first time we get to see Easy's inner voice at work. The turning point of the scene is when Easy tells Mr. Albright to get whiskey for himself. He lets Mr. Albright know that they are equals; he will not serve him. It is a false show of familiarity that impresses Mr. Albright, because he sees that Easy is brave. Easy's inner voice is responsible for this triumph. It brings Easy composure in the face of danger and allows him to navigate in a delicate power balance. As Easy says, "I was ready to die but I was going to go down fighting."

Easy's instinct enables him to make the best of Mr. Albright's intrusion. Yet Mr. Albright has thoroughly infiltrated his sense of security. Easy cannot feel safe and at ease anymore, even in his own house. The only way Easy knows to feel safe is to call for reinforcements. As he explains in an earlier chapter, despite all of his bravery during the war, Easy felt truly safe only when he was with Mouse. That Easy is willing to invite such a volatile character back into his life signifies to us that he is feeling cornered by Mr. Albright and growing desperate. In a more general sense, Easy's call to Mouse informs us of the tremendous power that Mouse has over others. Indeed, the likes of Junior Fornay, Joppy, and others are no match for him. For Easy, Mouse is a protector and comfort despite the guilt and fear he evokes.

The last paragraph of Chapter 16 demonstrates that just having called for Mouse makes him feel safe again. Easy recalls, "I put my chair in front of the window so I could look out into my yard. I sat there a long time, balling my hands together and taking deep breaths when I could remember to. Finally the fear passed and I fell asleep. The last thing I remember was looking at my apple tree in the predawn." Knowing that he has an ally in Mouse, Easy can appreciate being a homeowner again. While Easy still feels unsafe in his house, the yard and especially the apple tree represent the success that he anticipates. Just like his tree, Easy hopes that his endeavor will "bear fruit" after all.

Summary

Chapter 17

In the morning, Easy dresses in his best suit and goes to the address on the business card Mr. Albright gave him. It is the office of Lion Investments, and the name of his reference is the vice president, Maxim Baxter. Mr. Baxter's secretary tries to dismiss Easy until she sees the business card and goes to speak with Mr. Baxter. While he waits, Easy surveys the room. He notices a placard with the names of the company's important members. Interestingly, Mr. Carter, the president's name is at the bottom, "as if he were a shy man who didn't want his name spread around." The secretary returns and tries to dismiss him. Easy tells her that he is hired to find Mr. Carter's missing girlfriend. This convinces Mr. Baxter to come out. He is tall and thin with shadowy eyes and a smile "so white that it would have looked at home on DeWitt Albright." Easy scares Mr. Baxter into getting him an audience with Mr. Carter by saying that the president might go to jail because of recent events.

Mr. Baxter leads Easy to an elevator that takes him up to Mr. Carter's opulent office. Mr. Carter is so small, weak-looking, and simply dressed that Easy initially thinks him to be a servant. They sit and drink brandy while Easy explains to Mr. Carter that he has found himself in a great deal of danger since he started looking for Daphne Monet. Mr. Carter says he loves Daphne and wants to marry her. He confesses that before she left him, she took thirty thousand dollars, which he does not seem to consider a large sum. Mr. Carter claims that Daphne left to save him, because someone was trying to blackmail her in order to "get to" him. Easy tells him about Richard, whom Mr. Carter identifies as Richard McGee. He says he is glad Richard is dead because he was a "blackmailer and a homosexual pimp" who provided young boys to "rich men with sick appetites."

Mr. Carter asks Easy fondly about Daphne's appearance when he last saw her. Easy tells him she was wearing a blue dress, blue high heels, blue stockings, and a small red ceramic pin with green dots over her breast. Mr. Carter in turn tells Easy about how Daphne would comfort and stand up for him. Easy calls Mr. Carter's familiarity and intimacy with him "the worst kind of racism" because Mr. Carter cares so little about him that he pays no heed to race. Mr. Carter offers Easy a thousand dollars to find Daphne for him and says he will fire Mr. Albright. Easy takes a hundred and fifty dollars in advance. Even though he has an intimation that he will be killed like Coretta and Dupree, Easy takes the rich man's money with pleasure.

Chapter 18

With Mr. Carter's money in his pocket, Easy sets out to find Frank "Knifehand" Green. He visits several haunts, starting with Ricardo's Pool Room. He describes the place as "peopled with jaundice-eyed bad men who smoked and drank heavily while they waited for a crime they could commit." There one "could almost feel the violence pulsing in the dark." Easy had been there with Joppy before, so he was familiar with Ricardo's wife, Rosetta. She had run Ricardo's Pool Room ever since her husband lost both his legs to diabetes. Rosetta is suspicious of Easy, but she entertains him briefly. Easy asks her where he can get cases of whiskey, and she tells him to consult Frank Green. When Easy presses her further, she says she has not seen him in a few days.

Easy next visits a lounge and brothel called Vernie's. Vernie is an enormous light-skinned black woman who dyes her hair gold. Her daughter, Darcel, also enormous, helps her run the business. The only other employee besides the prostitutes is Huey Barnes, a large bouncer who sits up on the second floor where the girls' rooms are. Vernie and Darcel give Easy a warm welcome, as does his friend, a plumber named Ronald White. Ronald is only thirty-four but already has nine children because his wife is religious and does not believe in using birth control. So many children make his life extremely stressful. Easy yells for Darcel to bring some whiskey so that he, Ronald, and their friend Curtis Cross can drink their sorrows away. Easy plays dumb and asks Darcel how she can sell liquor so cheaply -- three dollars a bottle -- and still make money. She says that she and her mother let Huey buy bulk. Easy drops the issue, knowing that Huey is not someone to question about Frank Green. After a few hours, he drives Ronald home to his wife, Mary, and his nine children. Ronald cries as Easy sends him off, miserably returning to his family.

The next day, Easy visits the bars and alley crap games where he thinks he might find Frank Green. He says that "it was those two days more than any other time that made me a detective." He recalls that, like a fool, he feels confident and safe snooping around after Frank with hidden intentions and buying drinks with money paid to him to do just that.

Analysis

Chapters 17 and 18 underscore money as the driving force behind the novel's action. Regarding this topic, we find a foil for Easy in Mr. Carter. For Mr. Carter, an executive of an important financial company, money is disposable. He is not interested in getting his thirty-thousand dollars back, but only Daphne. As Easy explains, money causes Mr. Carter to treat him in a friendly, but extremely racist, manner. He recalls: "I could tell that he didn't have the fear or contempt that most white people showed when they dealt with me. It was the worst kind of racism. Mr. Todd Carter was so rich that he didn't even consider me in human terms. He could tell me anything. I could have been a prized dog that he knelt to and hugged when he felt low." According to Easy, money has a numbing effect to those who are so accustomed to it. Mr. Carter does not care about those who lack money -- including nearly every black person in L.A. -- save Daphne.

Experiencing Mr. Carter's brand of classism and racism fortifies Easy. He has a new sense that he will die trying to find Daphne and Frank Green. So he changes his goal from making money for his mortgage (after all, he will not need his house when he is dead) to "milk[ing] all those white people for all the money they'd let go of." Easy even says directly that money is the driving force behind everything that has happened to him recently. He says: "Money bought everything. Money paid the rent and fed the kitty. Money was why Coretta was dead and why DeWitt Albright was going to kill me. I got the idea, somehow, that if I got enough money then maybe I could buy my own life back." Beyond being a source of security, money motivates everything from love (as Daphne loves Mr. Carter) to murder. He even goes so far as to consider money a savior, saying: "Money isn't a sure bet but it's the closest to God I've ever seen in this world."

Money gives Easy a sense of fearlessness. He begins to put himself in situations of greater danger for its sake, searching the underbelly of the city. With the sense that he will not live long, he propels himself into darkness. Even though Easy is subjecting himself to great danger, he feels more secure then when he balanced between death and success. After all, that was an unsure state; jumping fully into darkness and danger is freeing because it is a definite choice. Unlike the jay, perched precariously above the dog, Easy dives into the enemy's maw.

These chapters mark a change in Easy's character. Before, being safe and knowing he was a homeowner provided Easy with joy and a sense of independence. Now, doing just the opposite produces the same effect. He recounts, "I had a feeling of great joy as I walked away from Ricardo's ... It was as if for the first time in my life I was doing something on my own terms. Nobody was telling me what to do. I was acting on my own." The only commands Easy follows are those from his inner voice. Just as in the war when he was without a commander, Easy is at his bravest. His sense of his own mortality combined with money and the thrill of adventure carry him through the dangers of his journey.

Just as Easy is claiming his independence, Mosley introduces us to the foil of Ronald White. While Easy flirts with darkness, Ronald is the ultimate symbol of light or "whiteness," as his name suggests. Ronald is not "light" in a racial sense; he is black. But he has the ultimate "bright" life to which Easy aspired. He has a home, a wife, and many children. However, because he has so many children, Ronald is indentured to a life of security. Easy has the independence of being a homeowner and listening to his own desires and instincts. But Ronald has such a stable life that he is trapped between his wife's and children's demands. There is no room for Ronald in his own life. Ronald reminds Easy that he does not want to be too secure, even though he still loves his home. As he watches Ronald walk to his house, he cannot help but laugh because he is free unlike his friend. He thinks, "Ronald didn't have any chance to be happy unless he broke his poor family's heart."

Summary

Chapter 19

Easy pays a visit to Ernesto's barber shop, outside of which stands the barber's palsied brother, Zeppo. Zeppo is "half Negro, half Italian," and cannot help shaking, stuttering, and making odd expressions. There is always a crap game in the back of Ernesto's shop, and he plays Italian opera. Ernest does not allow Zeppo in his shop because he is a drunk, and Ernest's father was a drunk who beat him and his mother. Easy sits down for a haircut even though it is not Thursday, when he usually comes in. Jackson Blue enters the shop and insults Lenny, with whose girlfriend Jackson purportedly had sex after she left him. When Lenny and Jackson begin to argue, Ernest steps between them with one of his razors to keep order. As Easy explains, "You had to be tough to be a barber because your place was the center of business for a certain element in the community. Gamblers, numbers runners, and all sorts of other private businessmen met in the barbershop."

Easy leaves Ernest money and leaves with Jackson. Zeppo follows them down the block and asks Jackson for whiskey. But Jackson says he does not sell for Frank Green anymore, because Frank only wants to deal with big buyers like stores. Easy says he is having a party and wants some Jim Beam for it, which makes Jackson suspicious. But he still agrees to get Easy whiskey, and Easy hopes the deal will lead him to Frank.

Chapter 20

Jackson, Zeppo, and Easy go to Abe's liquor store. Easy is glad to have Zeppo along, because he draws attention. On the way there, Jackson tells Easy the story of Abe and Johnny: brothers from Poland who survived the Auschwitz concentration camp by working as barbers. They were even forced to cut off their own wives' and daughters' hair before they were killed in the gas chambers. Abe saved Johnny when he was so sick that he was going to be sent to the gas chambers himself. He hid him Johnny in a hole he dug in the wall and collected food to keep him alive. Easy remembers the Jews he saw after liberating a concentration camp with his troops; they were "Nothing more than skeletons, bleeding from their rectums and begging for food." Easy's friend, Sergeant Vincent LeRoy, became guardian to a twelve-year-old Jewish boy whom he named Tree Rat. Vincent and the other men fed Tree Rat chocolate and rich foods. Unfortunately, Tree Rat died because his stomach could not handle the richness of the foods. Easy feels a kinship to the Jews because they have the common ground of facing prejudice.

Jackson tells Easy that Johnny is crazy because of his experiences in the death camp. One night, Jackson brought a girl named Donna Frank down to the liquor store and Johnny paid her five dollars to have sex with him right in front of Jackson. Abe does not want Frank Green selling to him, but Johnny buys from Frank behind his brother-in-law's back every Thursday. Johnny greets Jackson, Easy, and Zeppo. Easy haggles with Johnny until he gets a deal for two cases of Jim Beam for fifty dollars. He also buys Zeppo some whiskey and gives Jackson five dollars. After they leave the store, Jackson asks Easy to come clean. He knows that Easy is up to something, and is not really having a party. But Easy lies and invites Jackson to his party, which eases his suspicions. They part ways. Easy thinks, "All I had to do was live for twenty-four hours, until Frank made his weekly rounds."

Analysis

Mosley uses the scene at the barbershop to further the plot while painting a fuller picture of Easy's community. Ernest's barber shop is the center of the community, making Ernest more than just a barber. Not only is he the men's confidant, he carries a great deal of respect because he maintains order among the community's toughest and least predictable characters. The people at Ernest's range from the barber himself to the gamblers to Easy to Zeppo. Zeppo is a particularly interesting character, because his scope and goals are very limited. Zeppo is disabled and an alcoholic. His life is a cycle of panhandling and drinking. His presence reminds us, and presumably Easy, that there are all sorts of small tales orbiting around his adventure.

In Abe's liquor shop, Mosley explores the similarities between blacks and Jews. Mosley himself is the son of a black Southern man and a Jewish mother of Eastern-European descent. When he creates Abe's liquor store, a Jewish-owned business in a black community, he allows himself to imagine his own ethnic backgrounds interacting in real time. Through Easy, Mosley explains that Jews and blacks understood one another because both were all too familiar with prejudice and mistreatment. Easy says, " ... Jews back then understood the American Negro; in Europe, the Jew had been a Negro for more than a thousand years." Because Johnny is Jewish, Easy and the other men are able to interact with him on a familiar, equal basis even though his skin is white. Each knows that the other is a minority, allowing him to respect the other.

Learning about Abe and Johnny's story allows Easy to bring up a new perspective about World War II, that of the Holocaust. Just like Easy, the Polish brothers-in-law have a heroic story of survival. Easy relates to the way they had to be brave to survive in the face of death. The only difference is that he was fighting the Nazis in combat while they were deceiving them inside Auschwitz, one of the most notorious Nazi death camps. Until he visits Abe's liquor store, Easy's stories about the war recount active combat and killing. When Easy considers the brother-in-laws' story, he reveals his experience of liberating a concentration camp. In this experience, Easy is not the one oppressed by enemy fire and racism within the army. He is the rescuer, helpless to help others.

Easy says: "I remembered the Jews. Nothing more than skeletons, bleeding from their rectums and begging for food. I remembered them waving their weak hands in front of themselves, trying to keep modest; then dropping dead right there before my eyes." Easy uses the story about the concentration camps to explain a level of respect between Jews and blacks. But the reader cannot help but notice how Easy's experiences of war, including this one, make his current situation pale in comparison. In earlier scenes, like Richard's murder scene, Easy's memories of war intensify his current feelings of disgust and fear. But his memories of the Jews and of Tree Rat make his current predicament seem small. Even though he is in danger, he feels close to success. Easy recalls: "All I had to do was live for twenty-four hours, until Frank made his weekly rounds."

Summary

Chapter 21

Easy goes to Joppy's bar, carrying lead pipes in his pockets for protection. He tells Joppy that he knows Daphne called him because of Joppy. Joppy tries to deny it, brushing off the trouble he has caused Easy. When Easy tells him that he is now after Frank Green, Joppy understands how serious the situation has become. Joppy knew Daphne because she would come into his bar with Frank when he delivered alcohol. He told Daphne he had some information about her and lied about knowing her to Mr. Albright, thinking he was doing Easy a favor by making him some money. When Daphne wanted to know why Mr. Albright was looking for him and also wanted help going to see Richard, Joppy gave her Easy's phone number. Joppy did not tell Easy that he knew Daphne because he wanted her for himself.

Easy tells Joppy, "That girl is the devil, man ... She got evil in every pocket." The two men make peace over whiskey and cigarettes. Joppy tells easy to run, but Easy knows that the best thing to do is win Frank Green's trust and have him and Mr. Albright "fight it out." Joppy says he does not know who killed Coretta and Howard Green, but he does know who killed Richard McGee. But he refuses to tell Easy, saying, "I can't see where it helps either of us for me to tell you."

When Easy returns home, the gate is unlocked. Frank Green punches him and shoves him through the door onto his couch, then pulls a knife on him. Easy tells Frank he can make them five hundred dollars, but Frank is ready to kill him. He pricks Easy's neck with his knife. Easy looks around for something with which to defend himself, but all he notices is that his wooden chair is next to the sofa, not where he usually keeps it. When Easy tells Frank that someone he knows is looking for Daphne Monet, it only makes him angrier. Suddenly Mouse appears, dressed gaily and with a gun pointed at Frank's back. The phone rings and Mouse answers it as though there is no violent struggle occurring before him. Then Mouse forces Frank to put down his knife. Easy explains that "Knifehand was a bad man but there wasn't a man in his right mind who knew Mouse who didn't give him respect."

When Frank will not tell Easy where Daphne is, Mouse pistol whips him. Easy begs him to stop, and the bleeding Frank takes the opportunity to escape. Easy tells Mouse he does not want his help, despite Mouse's insistence. Finally, he breaks down and tells Mouse how the night in Pariah torments him. He hates knowing that it was really Mouse who killed Daddy Reese and not Clifton. Easy agrees to let Mouse help him on the condition that Mouse follows his instructions. Easy gives Mouse all the information he has on where to find Mr. Albright, Odell, and Joppy. He sends Mouse to find Frank and decides to seek Daphne by himself.

Chapter 22

Easy leaves out some important details when he talks to Mouse. He does not tell him about the thirty thousand dollars Daphne stole because, he says, "he would have killed me for that much money." He also does not tell Mouse that he knows Mr. Carter or Mr. Carter's name. Mason and Miller intercept Easy and Mouse as they leave the house. Mouse tells them his name is Navrochet and gives them a phony home and work address before leaving. The officers escort Easy back into his house and make him sit in a chair while they question him. They ask him what he knows about Richard McGee, but Easy pretends not to know anything. They have a handwritten note from his night table that says "C. James." Easy also pretends not to know anything about Howard Green, Coretta James, and Matthew Teran. Teran called the police the night they arrested Easy. He wanted to know if Easy knew anything about who killed Howard Green, who was his driver. It was Mason and Miller who pointed Teran in Easy's direction. They tell Easy that Teran was found dead, shot through the heart, in his office that morning.

As Miller interrogates him, Easy notices a small crescent scar under his eye. He says, "It seemed to me that I always knew he had the scar. Like I knew it and I didn't know it at the same time." The officers take Easy back down to the police station where they fingerprint him, hoping to match his prints to one on the knife used to kill Richard McGee. Easy worries that the officers will frame him just to have a culprit, but when the fingerprint results come in, the officers let Easy go. Miller threatens Easy by saying: "We're going to bring you down for something, Ezekiel, you can bank on that." Mouse picks Easy up from the police station, having started Easy's car with some wires. He says he knows where Dupree is hiding. Easy tells Mouse to drive him somewhere before they go to see Dupree.

Analysis

In Chapters 21 and 22, Easy's sense of security is further threatened. When Frank Green, Miller, and Mason invade his home, they echo Mr. Albright's actions. But the threat to Easy's security goes beyond his property to those he considered friends and trustworthy confidants. The first of these is Joppy. In Chapter 1, Easy recalls his interactions with Joppy fondly. He is even jealous of Joppy's security in being a business owner and having a predictable life. Even though he tells us that Joppy is tough and frequents places like Ricardo's Pool Room, we have no reason to believe he is untrustworthy until Chapter 21.

Easy is so wary of Joppy that he carries weapons, lead pipes, in his pockets when he goes to see him. Their familiarity is gone until Joppy confesses and the men drink together to make peace. Still, we see that Joppy is a creature driven by a desire for self-preservation and advancement just like Easy. As we learn in later chapters, Joppy is unfortunate enough to pay for his desire with his life. Even though Easy leaves Joppy's bar secure that his friend is trustworthy again, his security is indeed threatened. As we learn later, Joppy is the one who killed Howard Green and Coretta with such rage that he disfigured them beyond recognition. As a character, Joppy is perhaps worse than Mr. Albright or Mouse. At least those characters wear their dishonesty and violence up front; Joppy pretends to be honest and decent when he is really a cold-blooded murderer.

Frank Green shakes Easy's sense of security to the core by attacking him in his own house. Mouse restores Easy's sense of security by beating Frank Green. But more than that, he promises Easy that he will follow his commands. Easy knows that he can never 'tame' Mouse, but feels especially safe knowing the Mouse respects him enough to help him on his own terms. But even Mouse cannot prevent Mason and Miller from shaking Easy's confidence again. Like Mr. Albright and Frank Green, they symbolically challenge Easy's security and independence by interrogating him in his own house. Then they challenge it legally by taking him back down to the police station to try to pin Richard McGee's murder on him. Even with Mouse close by, Easy is on his own.

Easy's interactions with Mason and Miller bring up the topic of race once again. With this second arrest, Easy feels the injustice of the situation more sharply. The officers are not just following routine; they are after him specifically. Easy worries that Miller and Mason will simply frame him in order to look good. After all, "You never could tell when it came to the cops and a colored neighborhood ... The police didn't care about crime among Negroes ... The difference was that two white men had died also." The police are not concerned with Coretta and Howard Green's deaths -- brutal as they were -- because black people's deaths don't bother them. They are only concerned because Richard McGee and Matthew Teran are dead. Of course, the great irony is that while Howard and Coretta were more or less moral people, Richard and Teran are both pedophiles and abusers. The truly corrupt whites in the story have "justice" on their side even after death.

Chapters 21 and 22 also give us insight into Mouse's character. Mouse takes great pleasure in injuring Frank Green, perhaps as much as he takes pleasure in saving his friend. He is so casual about violence that he even answers Easy's telephone in the middle of the confrontation. Mouse is equally cool about lying to Mason and Miller in order to get them off his back. Easy also reminds us that Mouse is animalistic in his actions and desires. After all, he neglects to tell Mouse about the thirty-thousand dollars because he knows that Mouse would lose all reason and control and kill anyone to get the money. As Easy explains, Mouse cares about money more than anything: Mouse forgave him easily for sleeping with EttaMae when she and Mouse were engaged, "But if I'd touched his money he'd have killed me straightaway."

Summary

Chapter 23

Mouse drives Easy to Portland Court, a small apartment complex near Joppy's place where Junior Fornay lives. When Junior refuses to open the door for Easy, Mouse steps up to intimidate him. After that, Junior lets them in and offers them beer and cigarettes. Easy shows Junior a Zapatas cigarette stub, which is what he picked up off the floor at Richard McGee's house. Easy says he knows the cigarette is Junior's. He is the only one cheap enough to smoke Zapatas and Easy can tell that the cigarette was dropped to the floor without being stamped out, as is Junior's habit. Easy asks Junior why he killed Richard, but Junior denies having done so. Easy says he knows that Hattie had him carry Richard home after he passed out drunk outside John's, and that Richard paid him for Coretta's name. He tells Junior about the fingerprint on the knife.

When Junior still refuses to confess, he has Mouse point the gun at Junior and threatens to kill him. Finally, Junior confesses that Richard paid him twenty-five dollars for information on Daphne and one hundred if he would drive him home and tell him how to find her. Junior did so, and told Richard that he last saw Daphne with Coretta James. Then Richard told Junior he would only pay him after he went to tell Frank Green that he had information about Daphne. Junior was enraged and killed Richard with a butcher knife. Disgusted, Easy leads Mouse out of Junior's place.

Chapter 24

Mouse and Easy go to visit Dupree at his hideout, his sister Bula's house. Dupree has two black eyes from his police interrogation. He is distraught over Coretta's pointless murder. At dinner, Mouse and Dupree get drunk on whiskey until the latter falls unconscious. Easy remains sober. When Easy tells Mouse he's drunk, Mouse pulls a pistol and threatens to kill Easy, only to pass out. Easy leaves Mouse and Dupree to their drunken slumber, takes one of Mouse's pistols and leaves a note saying he has done so.

Easy drives home and cautiously enters his house. Just as he gets to the door, Daphne calls. She tells him to meet her at a motel. Easy leaves a note for Mouse saying that he is staying with his friend, Primo. Mouse cannot read anything except his name, so Easy marks the letter with the words, "Raymond Alexander," and hopes he has Dupree with him when he finds the note. Easy drives to meet Daphne with newfound joy. He remembers, "I didn't know why I was going alone to get the girl in the blue dress. But for the first time in quite a while I was happy and expectant."

Analysis

In Chapters 23 and 24, Easy's life begins more and more to resemble a detective's. He says in Chapter 18 that the two days when he sought Frank Green in alleys and bars "more than any other time that made [him] a detective." Indeed, Easy does his first bit of crime solving when he uses evidence from Richard McGee's murder scene to finger Junior as the man's killer. He even coolly orders Mouse to shoot Junior in order to intimidate him into confessing. When Mouse and Dupree fall asleep drunk, Easy borrows a gun and heads out to find Daphne, having turned from an ordinary man into a budding professional. Easy's lust for adventure is beginning to show itself as a talent that carries him through the other mysteries of the Easy Rawlins series.

Money surfaces again in these chapters as the mystery's motivating factor. Junior killed Richard McGee because of money. Junior turns on Richard in rage when the latter tells him he will pay him as promised only after he completes one more task. In essence, each murder victim in the novel dies because of money. Joppy seeks out Howard and Coretta because Daphne pays him to do so, and his visits escalate to murder. Daphne kills Teran because he is cruel, but at the core all her actions are motivated by her having stolen the thirty thousand dollars. In the end, Mouse kills Joppy and Mr. Albright so that he and Easy can have a share of that sum.

During his confession, Junior shows himself to be more of an animal than even Mouse. In fact, in the novel only Joppy manages to be more animalistic and brutal than Junior. It is Junior's animal nature that makes him so dangerous. But when given a chance to put Junior out as one might do to a rabid dog, Easy refuses. He sees Junior as a different kind of animal after his confession, a pathetic and bumbling one, "brave enough to stab an unarmed drunk, but Junior couldn't stand up for his crimes."

The interaction between Easy and Mouse when the latter is drunk represents their relationship as a whole. Before the scene, Easy mentions more than once that Mouse will kill him if he distrusts him or if enough money is involved. But up until this point, Mouse has been nothing but protective and helpful towards Easy. Yet when lubricated with alcohol, Mouse's true personality rears its head. Mouse is so drunk that he is barely aware that it is Easy he is threatening to shoot. Easy uses this to his advantage, making Mouse believe that he is aiming for someone else and that Easy is just talking him down. The scene is tragicomic, since Mouse's actions are almost cartoon-like in their extremeness. Yet at its heart, the two friends' interaction is simply tragic. Easy tells Mouse, "Let him live, Ray, an' he be scared'a you whenever you walk in the room." Even though Mouse thinks he is talking about someone else, this statement is true for Easy. He is scared of Mouse, even if he allows him to be his confidant and collaborator.

Summary

Chapter 25

Easy arrives at the Sunridge motel, in a Mexican neighborhood on the south side of L.A. Mrs. Guitierra, the woman running the motel, distrusts him and tells him that there are no men allowed in the rooms. After he insists, she tells him where to find Daphne. Easy runs to her door, which she answers in a bathrobe. While they are talking, Mrs. Guitierra comes to the door with two men. They leave only when Daphne tells them Easy is her friend and that he will wait for her in his car. Easy tells Daphne Mr. Carter wants her back and Mr. Albright wants the money she stole. Daphne retorts that she is never going back to him. Easy tells Daphne to come with him.

After paying her rent, they drive to Primo's old, wrecked mansion. Primo is a short, old Mexican man Easy knows from his days as a gardener. He explains that they had the freedom to be friends "... Back in 1948, before Mexicans and black people started hating each other. Back then, before ancestry had been discovered, a Mexican and a Negro considered themselves the same. That is to say, just another couple of unlucky stiffs holding the short end of the stick." Easy pays Primo ten dollars for two nights' stay in the mansion. He then shows Daphne the scar on his neck from Frank's knife and his bruises from the police interrogation. His rage disables him, so Daphne leads him to the bathroom where she helps him undress and get into a bath. He has a feeling that death is coming for him, but doesn't care.

Chapter 26

Daphne has Easy naked and totally at ease in the bathtub. She washes him in a doting and sexual manner. In retrospect, Easy proclaims his unusual attraction to Daphne: "I never felt drawn to a woman the way I was to Daphne Money. Most beautiful women make me feel like I want to touch them, own them. But Daphne made me look inside myself. She'd whisper a sweet word and I was brought back to the first time I felt love and loss. I was remembering my mother's death, back when I was only eight..." When she is finished washing Easy, Daphne strips naked too and leads Easy into the bedroom, whispering bold erotic suggestions that surprise him. They make love passionately and even violently all through the night. In retrospect, Easy says he cannot call Daphne crazy. Yet she released a desperate passion in him. As he describes it, "My heart and chest opened as wide as the sky for that woman."

Eventually, Easy pries himself out of Daphne's arms and gets down to business. After some coaxing, she reveals what she knows about Howard Green. Mr. Carter, whom she calls Todd, did not want Matthew Teran to run for mayor because Daphne had told him about Teran's Mexican boy, whom he bought from Richard. Daphne and Richard were dating before she left him for Mr. Carter. After that, Richard teamed up with Teran and Howard Green to try to "cause [her] trouble" as revenge on Mr. Carter. Howard Green knew something about Daphne, but she will not say what; he died because of that information.

Daphne tells Easy that Joppy beat Howard Green and Coretta James to death. Howard had told Daphne that if she did not follow Teran's instructions, they would "ruin" her. She offered Joppy one thousand dollars to make sure Mr. Albright could not find her and to talk with Howard. Daphne thinks that Joppy killed Howard when their conversation became heated. Then Joppy killed Coretta when Daphne told him that Coretta was in touch with her. He did not kill Daphne because she hadn't paid him yet and because he respected Frank. Easy tries to get Daphne to talk to Mr. Carter, but she refuses on the grounds that she loves him and therefore cannot stand to be near him. She offers Easy two thousand dollars to take her to Frank. They get dressed silently. Easy asks Daphne why she called him the day before. She replies, "I love you, Easy. I knew it from the first moment we met."

Analysis

In these chapters, Easy finds himself unwittingly in the grasp of the very woman he knows is the source of his and everyone else's troubles. Daphne's ability to seduce him so easily is a testament to her skill as a deceiver. Each character in the novel has a different way of surviving. Easy's is to listen to the voice in his head. Odell's is to run away. Joppy, Junior, and Mouse resort to violence in order to solve their problems. Unlike all of them, Daphne has learned to shape-shift in order to get what she wants in a given situation. It is because of this, more than the fact that she is seen as "evil," that makes her a "devil."

Mosley uses more animal symbolism to explain Daphne's erratic yet skillful behavior. Easy says, "Daphne was like the chameleon lizard. She changed for her man. If he was a mild white man who was afraid to complain to the waiter she'd pull his head to her bosom and pat him. If he was a poor black man who had soaked up pain and rage for a lifetime, she washed his wounds with a rough rag and licked the blood till it staunched." Daphne changes her voice, story, and even her whole personality in order to achieve her goals. Her eyes are a synecdoche for her whole personality, as they change from blue to green at different times. They are simultaneously mesmerizing and dangerous, representing her personality as a whole.

It is only because Daphne is so mesmerizing and skilled at giving men what they want that Easy lets down his guard with her, forgetting that Mr. Albright and others want him dead. We see Daphne's skill at charming men firsthand when Easy gets worked up recounting all the hardship he has been through. Daphne plays the role of the mother, undressing and bathing him. She quickly turns to lover when she leads him out of the bathtub into a night of pleasure and pain.

Their sexual play and intercourse is rough and desperate. Mosley conveys their desperation through strong diction such as "yelled," "screamed," and "wrestled." Daphne wants Easy to hurt as much as she wants him to feel good, because she wants complete power over him. Easy realizes quickly that Daphne is after something deeper than physical satisfaction. Beyond their sexual contact, Easy is fascinated by the needy essence in Daphne that makes her change who she is constantly. He romanticizes, "... Beneath her bold language, Daphne seemed to be asking me for something. And all I wanted was to reach as far down in my soul as I could to find it." Indeed, beyond her more sinister notions, Daphne wants Easy to simply let her be who she is. She refers to nameless people who "won't let us be ourselves." Daphne says that these people "never want us to feel this good or close like this." As we learn later, different social pressures make her hide at least two major elements of her life; that she is part black and that she is a victim of sexual abuse. Together, Easy and Daphne can let out their inner torment through the medium of sex.

Easy and Daphne are able to have such an intimate encounter only in a neutral and secretive setting such as Primo's. There, Easy is not bogged down by thoughts of his precious house and garden, nor is he made to feel inferior by the formality of an office. On more or less equal ground, Daphne and Easy do not feel pressured to be anything or anyone but themselves. When they have sex, Daphne seems as genuinely at ease as Easy. Yet the moment their lovemaking ends and they begin to talk business, Daphne regains her taunting, deceptive nature. When she tells Easy she loves him, she also says, "it'll be gone when we get back," meaning the magical spell of intimacy they have shared. Even though Daphne shows her vulnerability, she is clearly in control.

Summary

Chapter 27

Easy and Daphne go to Chow's Chow, a Chinese diner run by a man named Mr. Ling. Easy thinks that he might love Daphne. She asks him if he has ever been to the zoo. He says he hasn't, but Daphne explains that one can learn from caged animals. She remembers the first time her father took her to the zoo in New Orleans, where she was born. It was her fourteenth birthday. She watched a spider monkey swing across the ceiling like a crazed person. She recalls, "I felt just like that ape. Swinging wildly from one wall to another; pretending I had somewhere to go. But I was trapped in my life just like that monkey." Daphne liked watching the birds and other animals who "were more free." The last cage they visited held the zebras. Daphne held her father's hand tightly while they watched two zebras have sexual intercourse.

When they returned to the car, Daphne's father kissed her "on the lips, like lovers do." Then she cradled his head to console her father, who was disgusted with himself. Daphne's father raped her throughout that year. But Daphne thinks of the incest fondly, as though she and her father were legitimate lovers. When she senses Easy's disgust, she says, "He bought me presents and gave me money, but I'd've loved him anyway."

After a while, Daphne's father left and never returned. Daphne explains that her father had to leave, because that is what people must do when they "know somebody that well." It is the same reason she left Mr. Carter. Easy finds himself jealous. He says, "I hated Carter then. I wanted to know Daphne like he did. I wanted her, even if knowing her meant that I couldn't have her." As they return to Primo's, Easy decides that he will forget his attraction to Daphne and turn her over to Mr. Carter. When they reach the room, Mr. Albright is waiting for them. Easy reaches for his gun, but he is thrown to the floor when "an explosion [goes] off in [his] head."

Chapter 28

While he is unconscious, Easy dreams that he is back in World War II. He is on a battleship in the middle of D-Day, loading anti-aircraft shells into cannons when Mouse pulls him out of the line and tells him that "ain't no reason t'die in a white man's war!" Easy is patriotic but believes Mouse. Yet before he can make a move, a bomb hits the ship and they begin to sink. Easy is thrown overboard and starts to drown. Easy awakens to the cold bucket of water that Primo is pouring over his face.

Primo tells Easy that Joppy and Mr. Albright arrived at the house about three hours earlier, but he does not remember seeing Daphne. Easy calls for Mouse at Bula's, but learns that he left in the morning. Not knowing what else to do, Easy drives back into town. The voice in his head tells him to be brave, to find Daphne and shoot Joppy and Mr. Albright. When he cannot find the two men at their places, Easy calls information and finds Mr. Albright's home address in Malibu.

Analysis

In Chapter 27, Mosley brings his use of animal symbolism and perversity together with Daphne's recounting of her childhood sexual abuse. Even before her father began to abuse her, Daphne identified with the trapped ape in his cage, being ridiculed by those below. But she clarifies that she did not feel sympathy for the animal, only for herself. She recounts, "I cried and my father took me out of there. He thought that I was just sensitive to that poor creature. But I didn't care about a stupid animal." Easy does not know it at the time, Daphne felt this way partially because she is mixed-race and therefore fascinating and even threatening to people.

Watching the zebras having sexual intercourse awakens a dangerous and perverse animal nature in Daphne's father. Mosley's writing is rich and raw to match the passion that the scene awakens in the man. Just as Teran keeps his Mexican boy in a storage space in his car, Daphne's father kept her like a pet of whom he could take advantage. At the same time, her father was all Daphne had. She clung to him like the Mexican boy did to the abusive Teran and defends him even all these years later.

Hearing Daphne's sad story makes Easy want her even more. Whereas before his greatest longing was for the conventional, a house and garden, now he longs more than anything for this twisted, shape-shifting woman. When Daphne tells Easy that Mr. Carter knows her better than anyone, he says jealously, "I hated Carter then. I wanted to know Daphne like he did. I wanted her, even if knowing her meant that I couldn't have her." In capturing his heart, Daphne undoes some of Easy's hard-won independence. Yet he quickly regains his instinct for survival and decides to betray her whereabouts to Mr. Carter. His focus shifts back to money, which he justifies by claiming, "Daphne was too deep for me."

Because the novel is told in first person, the end of Chapter 28 is mysterious. We know only what Easy knows. Therefore, we do not know whether he has been shot, pistol whipped, or otherwise disabled. We know only that "an explosion [goes] off in [his] head" and that he passes out on the floor. The limitations of first-person narrative allow Mosley to withhold tantalizing information from the reader, who feels as though he is walking in the hero's shoes.

In Chapter 28, we again see how Easy's experiences as a soldier shape his understanding of fear and violence. While he is unconscious, he dreams that he is back in World War II, but the scene represents his current situation. When Mouse advises him not to die for white men's advancement, Easy's conscience is telling him that it is not worth dying to get Mr. Carter what he wants. But it is too late for Easy to save himself as the ship begins to sink, just as Easy fears that it is too late for him to extricate himself from the mystery. Now that he has taken himself to the very heart of the mystery, into Daphne Monet's very arms, he has no choice but to barrel forwards, just as he did in the war.

Summary

Chapter 29

Easy drives to Malibu to find Mr. Albright. When he reaches the house, he notices that it is far away from civilization, so that "any death cry would go unheard." As Easy approaches, he has a newfound thirst for life. A fire blazes in the fireplace, and Daphne is naked on the couch with Mr. Albright and Joppy standing over her. Joppy is stripped to the waist. Mr. Albright tells her, "You don't want any more of that now do you, honey?" She spits at him and he grabs her by the throat, threatening to kill her if she does not get him the thirty thousand dollars. Easy lets his emotions get the best of him and crawls through the window. But Mr. Albright senses his presence before Easy can take aim, and the two men get into a gun battle. Joppy runs out of the room. Daphne is crying. Just then, Mouse intervenes and shoots Mr. Albright. But the white man still manages to escape and drive away in his Cadillac. Easy remembers being extremely grateful to Mouse. He says, "I got up and took the little man in my arms. I hugged him like I would hug a woman." Joppy is on the kitchen floor, where Mouse has him hog-tied with an extension cord. He is bleeding from the top of his head. They drag him into the living room and tie him to a chair.

Daphne watches on, totally frightened. Mouse tells Daphne she can have her clothes back as soon as she cuts him and Easy a deal. He wants part of the thirty thousand dollars. Easy notices that Mouse calls Daphne "Ruby." When she refuses to share the money on the grounds that it is hers and Frank's, Mouse tells her Frank is dead. Daphne is filled with new energy and she demands to know whether this is true. She calls Mouse "Raymond," his given name. Mouse replies, "Now am I gonna lie to you, Ruby? Your brother is dead." Easy is so confused, he feels as though he the ground is shifting beneath him. Daphne is a white woman, so how could she be Frank's sister? Mouse says he thinks Joppy beat Frank to death, which Joppy denies. Mouse explains to Easy that Daphne -- Ruby -- is Frank's half-sister. He has known her and Frank longer than he's known Easy. Joppy tries to interject that he did not hurt Frank, and that he teamed up with Albright only because he discovered that Daphne was lying about having money. Mouse retorts by shooting Joppy in the groin and then the eye, killing him. Mouse tosses Daphne her clothes and leaves the house.

Daphne begs Easy to shoot Mouse, but he refuses to do that or to give her his gun. As Mouse, Easy, and Daphne drive back to town, Daphne confirms that she was the one who shot Teran. She initially went to him just to ask him to leave her alone. She even offered him the thirty thousand dollars as a bribe. But Teran just laughed with his hands down the Mexican boy's pants. So she killed him and rescued the boy. After Daphne fetches the money from a YWCA locker, Mouse divides it in three, ten thousand for each of them. Easy waits with Daphne for a cab. He asks her to stay with him, but she tells him not to touch her. Daphne says she was a different person when they had sex. She tells him, "I'm not Daphne. My given name is Ruby Hanks and I was born in Lake Charles, Louisiana. I'm different than you because I'm two people. I'm her and I'm me. I never went to that zoo, she did. She was there and that's where she lost her father. I had a different father. He came home and fell in my bed about as many times as he fell in my mother's. He did that until one night Frank killed him." She asks Easy to bury Frank and to help the Mexican boy. She leaves Easy without touching him at all, not even a handshake.

Easy asks Mouse why he killed Joppy. Mouse says he did it in revenge for all of Easy's hardship and to show Daphne he was serious. He also confesses that he killed Frank to protect Easy. Easy recalls, "This time it was Mouse reminding me of DeWitt Albright." Mouse tells Easy that he is just like Ruby, who wants to be white. He explains, "She can love a white man but all he can love is the white girl he think she is." Mouse says that Easy thinks like a white man just as Daphne looks like a white woman. He ends by saying, "But brother you don't know that you both poor niggers. And a nigger ain't never gonna be happy 'less he accept what he is."

Chapter 30

DeWitt Albright drives all the way to Santa Barbara before finally bleeding to death. Easy says, "I could hardly believe it. A man like DeWitt Albright didn't die, couldn't die. It frightened me even to think of a world that could kill a man like that; what could a world like that do to me?" Easy drives Mouse to the bus station. Mouse says he is going to give all his share of the money to Etta so that she will take him back. After he drops Mouse off, Easy goes to Daphne's apartment where he finds the Mexican boy eating flour from a bag in an appallingly filthy condition. "His underwear hadn't been changed in weeks and mucus was caked in his nose and on his face." Easy cleans up the boy and takes him to Primo, who promises to find him a home.

Then Easy goes to Mr. Carter's office. He tells Mr. Carter that Daphne is gone, and that Mr. Albright told him about the murders Joppy and Frank had committed. He also tells him about Frank's death, and that Joppy has "disappeared." What bothers Mr. Carter the most is learning that Easy knows Daphne is "colored." But Easy tells him that Daphne had to leave him because she loved him too much. Then Easy asks for Mr. Carter's help. Easy is the only suspect the police have for the murders, and he needs Mr. Carter to help clear his name. Mr. Carter cooperates because Easy was the one who let Daphne live. That afternoon, Mr. Carter takes Easy to City Hall, where he talks to the assistant to the chief of police and the deputy mayor, Lawrence Wrightsmith, along with officers Mason and Miller.

Easy begins his story truthfully, but then tells the officials that Matthew Teran wanted Howard Green and Frank Green to kill Mr. Carter for ruining his chances at the mayor's race. But when they found thirty thousand dollars in Mr. Carter's office, they left without killing him. He makes it seem as though everyone involved was looking for Frank Green instead of Daphne Monet. He explains that Frank probably killed Teran to avenge Howard Green's death. After two hours of questioning, Easy still holds to his story and they let him go until the inquest, where he will be required to answer a few more questions before he case is closed. Miller stops Easy on his way out of City Hall. He demands to know whom Easy has left out of his story. This person is, of course, Junior, whose fingerprint the police have been unable to match. When Miller threatens to ruin Easy's life, he points the officer in Junior's direction. Easy recalls, "It might be the last moment of my adult life, spent free, was in that walk down the City Hall stairwell."

Chapter 31

We find Easy three months later, watering his garden while Odell looks on. Odell tells Easy that it makes him suspicious that Easy has not been looking for work. Easy tells Odell that he works for himself now, renting out a house he bought and working as a private eye. One of his clients is Mary White. When Ronald finally left her a few months before, Easy helped him find his way home. He also saved Ricardo from Rosetta's abuse by contacting the pool hall owner's sister. Of the dangers of his job, Easy quips, " ... You know a man could end up dead just crossin' the street. Least this way I say I earned it." Later that evening, Easy asks Odell: "If you know a man is wrong, I mean, if you know he did somethin' bad but you don't turn him in to the law because he's your friend, do you think that's right?" Odell replies, "All you got is your friends, Easy." Without using names, Easy asks if Odell thinks it is wrong that he turned Junior in and not Mouse. Odell says, "I guess you figure that that other guy got ahold of some bad luck." The two friends sit and laugh together at this joke.

Analysis

The major revelation of Chapter 29 brings a new meaning to the theme of race and racial prejudice. For the whole of the mystery, Easy has believed -- as have others -- that Daphne is white. The only strange thing about her physically is her eye color, which shifts between blue and green and echoes her chameleon-like personality. Since Daphne and Frank are half-siblings, it is possible that Daphne does not actually have any black blood. She and Frank might share one white parent, making her technically white and him a mulatto. By her very identity, Daphne calls into question whether race is genetic or cultural. She is physically Caucasian, she enjoys black music and the company of black men. Still, she has been connected to white men like Richard McGee and Mr. Carter.

Daphne's ambiguous racial background helps explain her propensity to shape-shift and switch her personality. She acts like a chameleon because she feels like one, white in the way the world sees her and black in her kinship with Frank. Knowing Daphne's racial background makes her tale about the zebras even more poignant. Before leaving his sight, she tells Easy that her father never did take her to the zoo, but simply raped her at home until Frank killed him. If this is true, Daphne fabricated the story about the zebras. That Daphne would create such a desperate story about zebras speaks to her feelings of racial ambiguity. The zebras are both black and white; put differently, they are neither black nor white. Daphne is like a zebra, unable to blend fully with a white or black background despite her shape-shifting capacity. Not fitting in makes Daphne feel less human, as does her childhood sexual abuse. All she can do is follow her instinct, no matter who she hurts, steals from, or kills on the way.

The uneducated Mouse points out the significance of Daphne's predicament to Easy. He tells Easy that like Daphne, he is confused about his identity. But Mouse thinks that part of being black is being able to maim and kill. We know this because he tells Easy that he "acts white" when Easy tries to tell him that killing Joppy was gratuitous. Mouse thinks that his and Easy's attitudes toward violence separate them in a manner relating to race. In reality, their differing attitudes are the products of their temperaments and experiences. Mouse is naturally animalistic, as we know. He has lived his whole life feeling beaten down by others, and believes that violence and money are the best solutions to problems. Mosley's narrative does not judge Mouse. Yet it shows us the hopeless desperation of his life. Mouse has internalized the racist assumption that black people are murderous animals. Easy, on the other hand, understands the delicate games of death and race that drive his world. He does not accept himself as a "nigger" in Mouse's use of the word -- he is a man, not an animal, and though he finds himself in a racist, unfair world, he does what he can to preserve his humanity.

By the end of the novel, Easy has gained a powerful ally in Mr. Carter. Whereas during their first meeting, Mr. Carter subjected Easy to "the worst kind of racism," once Mr. Carter knows that Easy helped Daphne, he is willing to see him as a human being with legitimate problems instead of "a prized dog." Mr. Carter acts as a foil for Easy -- his dependance on Daphne sets of Easy's own dream of independence. Mr. Carter has financial security, but he wants desperately to depend on Daphne to comfort him and stand up for him. Easy needs no such crutch.

By the end of