I walked up to the main counter, where a weak-faced, bespectacled young man in a maroon jacket and black trousers stood. He looked me up and down, deciding that my dark lemon slacks and square-cut green shirt, my black skin and advanced age of forty-seven, would have a hard time making their way past his post to the elevators beyond.
“Yes?” he said.
“Asiette Moulon, s’il vous plaît,” I said in my best French. My best wasn’t very good or extensive but it was enough to confound the expectations of the young white American.
“What?”
“I’d like to speak to Asiette Moulon.” When he still didn’t know how to reply I added, “She’s the young woman sits on the other side of that red door right behind you.”
The young man actually turned to check if the door was still there.
“Who are you?” he said, turning back again.
“Easy Rawlins.”
“And what is your business?”
“She’s expecting me.”
On the way downtown I had stopped to call Jackson Blue. They patched him through on a ship-to-shore phone from Jean-Paul Villard’s yacht, where, Jackson told me, he and the CEO were having a meeting with their Spanish counterparts. I had told him what I needed and he had Asiette prepare the letter.
Asiette was a young Frenchwoman who was once nice to me when her fellow receptionist tried to turn me away. I told Jackson and he told Jean-Paul. Asiette, I was given to understand, had been promoted the next day.
“I need to know what it is that you want,” the sad-sack young man said.
Next to the red door was a window. Through that window I could see Asiette. She happened to look up and I waved.
“Don’t do that,” the young man said loud enough to alert a guard standing off to my right.
But I wasn’t worried. Asiette smiled and got up, opened the bright red door, and came to the protective young man’s side.
“Easy,” she said. “I ’ave everything you need. Come, come.”
She raised the plastic plank that barred the entrance and I walked through to her small office.
That was a transition period in American race and class relations. Only a few years earlier you could tell whether or not someone belonged by their clothes, gender, race, and age. At one time, quite recently, only white people, mostly men, in business attire would be allowed through the front doors of downtown offices. Those rules were slowly evaporating but they lingered in the memories, desires, and expectations of the old guard and their offspring.
“Easy,” Asiette said, “it is so good to ’ave you ’ere.”
The last time I’d seen the young receptionist she’d worn the modest sweater and skirt of a French shopgirl. Now she wore a formfitting dress designed to look like a peacock feather wrapped around her. She wore glasses now too.
“You lookin’ good, girl.”
She was slender, five three, with black hair, gray eyes, and skin that had come from an ancestry of white people many centuries in the making. Her smile was so intense that I thought she might have said yes if I asked her out for dinner—or a weekend in San Francisco.
But I was in enough confusion about romance and the girlfriend I already had.
“You got the letter?” I asked.
“ ’Ave a seat,” she said, indicating the green visitor’s chair positioned in front of her orange desk.
Her seat was yellow and she lowered herself into it with apparent pleasure.
“How’s it goin’?” I asked, just to be social.
“I love it ’ere,” she said. “Not some of the white people but there is so much more.”
“I guess so,” I said. “When you’re raised here it kinda weighs on ya. You don’t have much choice about who you like and what you are. Everybody thinks they know you before you walk in the door.”
“You understand so much. Can we ’ave lunch one day?”
Asiette must have figured out that I wouldn’t have asked the question.
“As soon as I’m off this job,” I said, and I meant it.
She pursed her lips and picked up a bright turquoise paper folder from the desk. This she handed to me.
The folder contained a single sheet of paper. The two-sentence letter, on official stationery, was typed and read, Mr. Goldsmith, This is my friend and associate, Mr. Ezekiel Rawlins. He has important business to discuss with you.
It was signed by Jean-Paul Villard. Jackson told me that he had a stack of blank letters signed by JP just in case Jackson needed his approval to get something done when the boss was not around.
When he was a young man you would have been a fool to trust Jackson with two scrawny chickens, but once he’d entered the world of Proxy Nine he had proven to be both honorable and faithful.
When I asked him about this primal change he said, I just give what I get, Easy, give what I get.
“You got something I can put this in?” I asked the adoring office manager.
She handed me a white envelope. I folded the letter, licked the paste fold, and sealed it.
“You will really call?” Asiette asked when I stood up.
“I got a girl but that doesn’t mean I can’t have lunch with a friend.”
I left her to speculate on my meaning.
From a phone booth on the corner I called Feather to tell her I might be home late.
“What you doin’?” my daughter asked.
“Trying to make your Ivy Prep tuition, girl.”
15
The gate to Goldsmith Armaments International was at the end of a dirt lane that branched off from Cherry Flats Road up toward Mt. Bliss. That was out in Arcadia in the farthermost reaches of the Valley.
There were two armed guards in tan and blue uniforms standing by a sentry hut set in front of a high fence that was crowned with barbed wire. The guards had a definite military manner about them.
One sentry, a golden-haired, thirty-something white man approached my car. He looked like a poster boy for push-up enthusiasts.
I rolled down the window.
“This is private property,” he said.
“My name is Ezekiel Rawlins,” I said as a sort of reply.
The other guard had reached his partner’s side. He was also white but had red hair and the beefy figure of a weight lifter.
“You’ll have to turn it around,” Red said.
“I have an appointment with Mr. Goldsmith,” I countered.
This suspended conversation for a full fifteen seconds.
Finally I said, “Jean-Paul Villard of Proxy Nine called to schedule the meeting.”
Mr. Push-up unbuttoned the leather flap on the holster that secured his pistol, while Red went back to the little hut to make the call.
Some minutes passed. This gave me time to scan the environs. The vegetation out there was brown as it almost always was in August. The dry desert air and the unrelenting sunshine dominated in the summer months.
“There’s no Ezekiel Rawlings on the schedule,” Red said, returning from the hut.
“No ‘g’ and did you call his office?”
“You aren’t on the board.”
“The appointment was made two hours ago,” I argued in my most civilized manner. “Does your board get updated more than once a day?”
Red frowned. I was sure that this look was often a precursor to violence.
I shrugged and gazed out the windshield at the heat-blasted foliage.
Red went back to the hut while Mr. Push-up fingered the butt of his gun.
Five minutes more and Red returned.
“What do you have for Mr. Goldsmith?” he asked.
“I have to speak to him in person. That’s what I was told.”
“He’s busy. So whatever it is you have for him you will give to me.”
“No.”
“What?”
“It’s a simple word, man. Not worth repeating.”
Red gave me that look again and then went back to the hut. His partner backed up a few
steps to keep an eye on me and the path behind.
Fifteen minutes later a Jeep drove down from a sheltering stand of eucalyptus trees. Red and Mr. Push-up opened the gate for the military car to emerge. It carried four more men, three of whom were also in uniform.
I was asked by Red to get out of the car.
I did so peacefully. For some reason five armed guards and their tall boss in business attire didn’t bother me. After all, I was the emissary of JP Villard, one of the most influential businessmen in the world.
“Rawlins?” the man in the gray business suit said.
“Mr. Rawlins.”
“My name is Gregory Teeg. I’m security supervisor. What do you have for Mr. Goldsmith?”
“It’s for Mr. Goldsmith.”
“He told me to get whatever it is you have.”
“You got a phone in the little outhouse over there, right?” I said.
“Yes.”
“Then you get JP Villard on the line and ask him to tell me if that’s okay. Because I work for him, not you—not Mr. Goldsmith either,” I added, though, strictly speaking, this was probably not the case.
Teeg was a white man with dark skin and wavy, copper-colored hair. He was slender and used to having his way in the orbit of his world.
“If I have to call anybody, you will be the one to answer,” Teeg said.
I didn’t quite understand what he meant, so I said nothing.
“Well?” he asked after a minute or so.
“Well what, man? I told you—I have a message for your boss. Your boss, not mine. Now either you gonna let me in or you not.”
I wondered, maybe for the first time ever, at that moment, what it would be like to live in a world where a goodly number of the residents didn’t hate or fear me. Teeg and Red and Mr. Push-up would have liked to knock me down and step on my face. It didn’t matter what I said or how I acted. If I wanted my way I had to accept their hatred. That fact had been such an integral part of my life that I had never really questioned it. Even then the question was toothless.
“Get in the Jeep,” Teeg said, interrupting my silent, useless philosophizing.
“I’ll follow you in my car.”
“Get in the Jeep if you want to see Goldsmith.” Then he said to one of the men that had accompanied him, “Give these two your access keys,” referring to Red and Mr. Push-up.
The three men who came with Teeg took up the post and the two guards who had met me accompanied us in the roofless vehicle.
Beyond the stand of eucalyptus trees there was a hill. Through the hill was an earthen, minelike tunnel that delivered us to another more solidly built metal gate set in a wall of metal and concrete.
The Jeep parked with six or seven of its brethren in front of the wall. Teeg, Red, Mr. Push-up, and I got out.
When we walked up to face the barred metal gate, my heart started beating fast. I wasn’t feeling fear, but somewhere in the primitive part of my brain I was preparing for conflict.
The gate rolled to the left and, on foot, we entered the adult wonderland of weapons manufacturing. It was a large field of concrete bunkers and dead earth. Here and there, men in uniform and men in light-colored smocks moved from one bunker to another. All the men were white, and there were only men.
A scent in the air told me that something was burning. In the distance was a mountain. My mouth was watering and there was sweat sprouting at the back of my neck. After a quarter mile of marching we reached a large concrete hut that was scarred by gunfire. The rounds of live ammunition had penetrated between eight and twelve inches into the obdurate stone hide. This wounded building was the size of a big tent in the army. It was thirty feet across and five yards high. The double steel doors that secured this space opened when Red and Mr. Push-up used their keys on either side.
The doors revealed a dark and cavernous space. We all stood there—looking in.
“After you, Mr. Rawlins,” Gregory Teeg said.
It came to me that this monolith, more than anything else, resembled a crypt. I would have been afraid to enter had I not already died once that year. I took the step through and lights, very bright ones, came on on all sides. My escort crammed in around me. The only thing in the room was a stairwell with iron steps that led down, down, down.
Each tier had twenty steps and then you turned around for another stage. Every three stages down there was a door with a sign marking that portal’s province. There were signs for PROJECTILES, CORROSIVES, EXPLOSIVES, COMBUSTION AGENTS, and even a door labeled POISON GAS. This last title angered me. I had seen thousands of bodies firsthand that had been treated with Nazi-manufactured Zyklon B gas. I didn’t want to believe that I lived in a country that could imagine any use for that kind of technology.
All the weapons-oriented doors were made from metal that had been painted lime green. But the eleventh entrance down was double-doored mahogany with brass knobs and no sign. Using special keys again, Red and Mr. Push-up unlocked and opened this fancy portal. Mr. Teeg and I went through but the guards remained outside.
The room we entered had a high ceiling consisting of long fluorescent light fixtures and white soundproofing tiles. The floor was laid with emerald green and blood red linoleum, and the walls were made from concrete, painted deep green. It was a large room, thirty by forty, and empty except for a small desk on the opposite side from where we entered. The desk sat by a pine door no larger than the lid of a poor man’s coffin.
Behind the too-small desk sat a balding white man who wore a nice dark suit. The man had glasses that were highly reflective. Even when we’d gotten to him I could only see his eyes in glimpses.
“Foster Goldsmith,” Gregory Teeg said, gesturing at the sitting man. “Easy Rawlins.”
“Hello,” the man said. “What can I do for you?”
My heart was still pounding. I was acutely aware of how far down under the ground I’d come. I was in a very serious situation and still the men I was with were like little boys playing games.
“Why you want to insult me like that, brother?” I told the sitting man.
“Excuse me?” he said.
“It’s the man on the other side of that skinny door I need to see.”
“I am Foster Goldsmith.”
“In this big empty room? At that small-assed desk? I don’t think so.”
“Give me what you have,” the bespectacled drone said. Despite his appearance he did a very good job of sounding like he was in charge.
“My mother used to tell me that if I paid attention I would learn something each and every day of my life,” I said. “She said that if I did that I would grow into wisdom like Methuselah or Moses. On this day it’s your turn to learn that even though you see a black man standin’ in front’a you, you shouldn’t assume that he doesn’t read the newspaper just like you do, that he hasn’t seen pictures of old Stony many, many times. If you remember that fact maybe your children won’t end up slavin’ for mine.”
“I am the man you seek,” he said. That’s the job he was being paid for right then.
“You had plastic surgery to make you bald and pudgy?”
“Send him in here, Mr. Crispin,” a voice said over an intercom speaker. The spectacled man had been about to argue further but abandoned his lie when the order came through. He stood up and opened the slim pine door.
He didn’t need to tell me where to go.
16
The room I entered was long and deep, brightly lit and jumbled. There were four very long worktables along walls that revealed no other door. The tables were strewn with tools, a wide variety of mechanical parts, grease rags, and guns in pieces and whole; there were rifle barrels, bullet clips, and telescopic sites mixed among oil cans and vises, toolboxes, and other metal items all having something to do with the mechanics of death-dealing.
Toward the back wall stood a huge asymmetrical desk that was made from metal and looked like some gargantuan gray and extinct member of the pig family. Upon the desk were blueprints,
files, a few paper coffee cups that had soaked through along the seams, and at least a dozen telephones.
Behind this desk sat a man who was maybe sixty but solid. This man stood up as I approached.
Foster “Stony” Goldsmith might have also been constructed from steel. His hair, skin, eyes, and even his suit were all various shades from silver to gunmetal gray. His posture was solid and his hands soiled with the materials from his worktables.
“That’s a whole lotta phones,” I said.
“Makes you wonder why JP Villard didn’t call me in person,” Goldsmith said. “He has the numbers of four of them.”
I took the envelope from my pocket and handed it across the broad back of the porcine desk.
He tore open the letter and read it closely. Then he looked up, suddenly intrigued by my presence.
“What could you possibly have to say to me?” he asked. “And why would the CEO of Proxy Nine need me to listen?”
“Rosemary.”
It was a pleasure to see that the captain of industry could be rocked by just a word. He gazed at the letter in his hand, questioning its origins, and then looked up at me with the same query in mind.
“Where do you come from?”
I went into the story that had been going through my mind for the last twenty-four hours. I told him about Moving Day and Roger Frisk, about Tout Manning and being shot at in front of Benoit’s Gym.
“Why would the police come to you?” Goldsmith asked.
“I’m a private detective. Not too many my shade of brown in L.A. The cops find that I can get work done where they cannot. Also I know things about the world outside my neighborhood.”
“What kind of things?” he asked.
“Like that the man sitting outside your door wasn’t you.”
“Tom Crispin is so close to me that he could finish my sentences.”
“Well,” I said with a shrug, “I’m talking to you.”
“And the police sent you here?”
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