Lambert sat on the sofa in a very erect posture.
“How do you know my name, Mr. Lambert? Do you have the front office bugged?”
“Raymond Alexander called and told me that you might be dropping by. And yes, I do have a microphone in the front room. Whenever somebody crosses the threshold it comes on for one hundred and eighty seconds.”
“You know Mouse?”
“I know everybody that needs it.”
I sat back, absorbing the strangely domestic office and the idea that Mouse had built a reputation that included apes and counterfeiters. I stayed quiet because, even though I had a simple question to ask, I got the impression that Light Lambert was a man of custom and ritual.
“I got a pocket full of nickels and dimes for my calls,” he said. “And even with that I replace my phones every six weeks.”
I was thinking that if I met Lambert at a party or on the street I would have guessed that he was an undertaker.
“Is Light your given name?” I asked.
That was the right question. He smiled broadly, sat back, and crossed his left leg over the right knee. I noticed that he wore black and white scaled snakeskin shoes and no socks.
“My old man was a drunk,” he said happily. “At least he was before I was born. But when the backwoods Tennessee midwife put me in his hands he stopped drinking and got a regular job in the coal mine. My mother, Lucretia Lambert, said that when he looked at me there was a light shining in his eyes, that he had seen the light and so that’s what she named me.”
“Now that’s a good story,” I said. I meant it.
“Our mutual friend tells me that you’re the most trustworthy man he’s ever known,” Light said, letting me know that he was ready to get down to business.
I nodded and smiled, still biding my time. Raymond meant that he could trust me. I wondered if Light was aware of that subtlety of language.
“If you were to take a Greyhound bus to twelve, thirteen cities around the Midwest, Easy, pick up a package from general delivery downtown and then make a series of deliveries, I could guarantee you a windfall of fifty thousand dollars. Six weeks tops.” He straightened his legs and sat forward, clasping his hands.
That little speech stopped me. I hadn’t come there looking for a job but I wasn’t a fool either. It was a safe deal. Mouse was better than Lloyd’s of London when it came to insurance. Add to that the fact that my experience with the law of late (and during the course of my entire life) had been that it was at least corrupt and often downright evil; I could be arrested for bank robbery or loitering and end up on the same damn chain gang.
“That might be the best job offer I’ve ever had, Mr. Lambert, Light, but I’m going to have to say no.” I held myself to a higher standard than public officials, the police, and even the government.
“No? You don’t want a job? Then why are you here?”
“I’m looking for a woman named Mary Donovan. Mouse told me that you might be able to point me in the right direction.”
Light sat back and put his right arm up on the collar of the couch. If his eyes were a binocular microscope, they would have just shifted from eighth to the six-hundredth power. Many thoughts went on behind that magnified vision. I’m sure that my death was one of the considerations.
“Mary got herself arrested,” he said after the long pause. “Then she got hooked up with the cop that busted her. She was on the bad list for a few weeks there. Then I had a talk with her and all was forgiven. Mary changed her name and moved out to Twentynine Palms … solo.”
“Sounds a little foolish of her to let you know where she ran to.”
“She has a best friend named Celia Wolf. Elvis and Wolf had a heart-to-heart. It was Celia who convinced us that Mary was out of the business but not out to get us.”
“She using her real name?”
“Mary Donovan isn’t her real name,” Lambert said with a grin. “Neither is Clarissa Anthony. But that’s what she goes by out in the desert.”
“I guess she’s a lucky girl,” I said.
“Her and that cop too,” Light agreed. “You know the people we work with don’t take prisoners.”
I nodded sagely and then said, “Thank you,” indicating the end of our talk.
“What do you want with Mary?” he asked.
“I was hired by an insurance man who she ran with for a month or two. I guess he kinda fell for her.”
“What insurance man?”
“Cedric Blain at Proxy Nine.”
“What do you plan to tell this man?”
“I think I’ll do him a favor and tell him I couldn’t find her.”
23
Light Lambert shook my hand and bade me good-bye at the blood orange outer door of his office suite; Elvis felt no compunction to stand. I didn’t mind. I didn’t give a damn about either of them, their business, or their senses of decorum. Going there was the way that a man like me transacts business.
I didn’t care about them but the story Lambert told put Mary Donovan, aka Clarissa Anthony, in a new light and my temporary partner, Melvin Suggs, in possible danger.
I called Suggs, got his answering machine, and suggested a rendezvous. Then I drove home.
At least I intended to drive home. I actually got all the way to my old house on Genesee before remembering that I now lived at a new address. It was this mistake that told me I was now fully committed to the case Roger Frisk had tapped me for. I sat there looking at my previous home with no feeling of alienation or loss. I was there simply because my mind was elsewhere.
Home for migrants like me truly was where I hung my hat, and, since Jack Kennedy’s bareheaded inauguration, I no longer wore hats.
Feather was curled up on the solitary chair in the echoey living room, reading the French edition of Elle magazine.
“Hi, Daddy.”
I kissed her forehead and sat on the edge of the couch.
“How was work?”
“I had lots of fun,” she said. “Peggy’s mom taught me all these Japanese jokes and curses that the old folks say; that and the song about the sun maiden.”
“Nice song?”
“I didn’t understand the words but her mom told me that it’s about a beautiful young woman whose husband was a fisherman that got lost in a storm. She was so heartbroken that the gods gave her a boat of light and every day she sails it across the sky looking for her lost husband. It’s a way to make the day seem so beautiful but sad too.”
I smiled and thanked whatever gods there were that brought me my lovely little girl.
“I’m having dinner with Bonnie tonight,” I said.
“I know. She told me.”
“You wanna come?”
“Peggy and her mom invited me over and you and Bonnie need to spend some time together.”
Since the age of six, Jesus had seen it as his duty to watch over and protect me from myself. At some point he had passed the baton of responsibility on to his sister. She knew that Bonnie and I were having problems without anyone telling her.
It took me a while to get dressed. It was a date and I had to look good but I didn’t want to be too formal. Even though Bonnie and I were back together again—there was some distance there. She’d broken off her engagement to the Ashanti prince Joguye Cham and we saw each other often, but the bedroom was sometimes like a court where judgment was considered but never passed.
I decided on a pair of caramel pants and an auburn sweater. Under the sweater I wore a red T-shirt—maybe as a sign of my obscured passions.
McGirt’s Steak House was on Third Street a block west of La Cienega. It was an old establishment and its employees were unconcerned with the race of its patrons. I got there at six thirty. Bonnie was already there, seated at our favorite table. She stood up and kissed me.
Even with my unsettled heart I was in love with Bonnie. She was ten years younger than I with dark skin and the almond-shaped eyes of western Africa. She was beautiful to me and to the rest of the world
but not necessarily for the same reasons. She had a nice figure on a strong frame. Her face was both beautiful and handsome. Her hair was straightened because her employer, Air France, looked down on the popular “natural” hairdos that many black women wore.
Any man or woman who saw Bonnie would be impressed with her beauty, but for me everything started with her smile. When Bonnie laughed she turned into an adolescent girl who loved life so much that the feeling infected the hearts of those around her. That happiness was like a private doorway to the woman I loved.
The fact that I’d almost lost her stalked me.
“The waiter is bringing two Virgin Marys,” she said, “and two rib-eyes on the bone done medium rare.”
Her voice contained the lilt of the English Caribbean. The tone was both soft and strong.
I kissed her again and she gave me a quizzical look.
“Sit,” she said.
When we were installed side by side, she smiled and I looked down.
“Feather says that you’re on a case,” she said.
“Yeah. It’s a beast.”
I spent a while telling her the situations, lies, threats, and dangers that I had already experienced.
“Maybe you should let it drop,” she said after asking a few questions about the players and my impressions.
“There’s no maybe to it,” I said. “But I’m gonna have to pay for those improvements to my properties sooner or later, and Feather has her heart set on Ivy Prep.”
“I could help with her tuition.”
It was the first time Bonnie had offered to combine her finances with mine.
“She’s not your responsibility,” I said.
“I love that child every bit as much as you do.”
“Listen, Bonnie, I know that I haven’t been a prize lately.”
“You’re my man, Easy.”
“I haven’t proved it.”
“You’re here.”
“You know what I mean.”
“You almost died,” she said, “and I was engaged to another man. Getting back from changes like that takes a while.”
She took my hand and the waiter brought our drinks.
When he was gone I said, “Melvin Suggs is going to drop by here sometime after eight.”
“Something about the case?”
“Yeah.”
I couldn’t remember Bonnie ever losing her temper or getting angry with me. She must have done it at some point because I knew that she had the potential for rage, but all I could remember was her understanding and love.
Melvin got there a little before nine. He was dressed in a gold suit with a dark blue dress shirt. These were clothes that he bought after meeting the counterfeit distributer, Mary Donovan. But when he was with her he was neater. Now the shirt was loose and the jacket wrinkled. He’d been drinking; I could tell that by the dour look in his eyes.
“You remember Melvin, honey,” I said as the brooding cop sat down in a chair that the waiter pulled out.
“Detective Suggs,” she greeted him.
“Not for long,” he said.
“Anything to drink?” the waiter asked.
“Triple shot. Sour mash,” Suggs snapped.
The waiter left and we three were quiet for a moment.
“Goddamned rookie stopped me on the way here,” Melvin said as if answering a question. “Gave me a fuckin’ ticket even though I showed him my shield. Me! A fuckin’ ticket.”
“I should be going,” Bonnie said.
She was leaving because she knew how uncomfortable I felt about men cursing around women, especially women I cared for. Melvin’s language didn’t bother her. She was used to drunks and unguarded language because she worked first class on international flights week in and week out.
I walked her to her car. She drove a dark red late-model Citroën.
I kissed her lips and she pulled me close.
“I love you, Ezekiel Rawlins. I love you and I won’t let the past take you from me, not again.”
“I won’t either,” I said, my voice betraying the uncertainty in my heart.
She kissed me again, showing no such doubt.
I watched her get in the car and drive off. I waited there, in that little pocket of peace, for a minute or two before returning to the war.
24
“I need you to sober up, Melvin.”
He’d ordered a second triple shot and was putting it away with grim determination.
“You’re not my mother,” he replied.
“Maybe not but I think I know how to find that girl of yours.”
“Where?”
“I need to talk to some people first.”
“Who are they? I’ll go talk to ’em.”
“No, Mel, not while you’re in this condition. I got to know I’m talkin’ to a responsible adult. Anyway, I need to do a little more investigation before I let an L.A. bull loose in the Mafia china shop.”
“Don’t you fuck with me, Rawlins.”
“Let me take you home and sober you up, Detective. It’s not just you got troubles. I need a partner firin’ on all eight cylinders.”
“Where’s your new house?” he asked.
“I’ll drive.”
“I got my car right here.”
“You’re lucky that the cop who stopped you didn’t take you in on drunk driving, Mel. Your car can wait till morning.”
“Good evening, Detective Suggs,” Feather said when we came in the front door.
She usually waited up for me if I hadn’t called; just one of the duties passed on to her by her brother.
“Hey, Feather,” he said. “You gettin’ taller and more grown every day.”
“I like your suit,” she said.
At that moment Frenchie came in complaining loudly in canine parlance. He not only barked but yelled and snarled too. I also think I detected a bit of glee in the dog’s expletives; he was glad to have somebody to hate.
“Take your dog in the kitchen, honey,” I said, “and make Detective Suggs a pot of strong percolator coffee.”
“Okay, Daddy.” She lifted the twisting, protesting dog up in her arms and walked off. I took Melvin upstairs and showed him the master bathroom.
“There’s the tub,” I said. “Use it. I’ll take your things downstairs and bring you a robe and some pajamas. They won’t fit you right but they’ll cover what needs covering.”
“What you gonna do with my clothes?”
“Wash what I can and press the rest.”
There’s domesticity even in police work. Stains and smells, patches of blood from wounds and busted noses—all had to be cleaned and set and put away. The new house came with a washer and dryer in a back room that was somewhat like a walled-in porch. I threw Melvin’s underwear in the washer and examined his suit and shirt for stains. They were pretty clean.
“I’ll iron them in the morning before I go with Peggy,” Feather said.
“Thanks, honey. I’ll stay up and put his drawers in the dryer.”
For some reason these words earned me a kiss.
“I love you, Daddy. You didn’t have to take me in or anything. You didn’t have to love me but you did.”
“And I do.”
Feather was up and out before I opened my eyes the next morning. Melvin’s clothes were ironed, hanging from a hook intended for a painting, on an upstairs wall next to the stairs. It struck me that that suit of clothes might be considered art in some avant-garde circles: Homicide Detective’s Suit.
I set the coffee brewing in the kitchen and then went to the living room to check on the suspended detective. Melvin was asleep on the couch. He was snoring at a volume that might challenge a mama tiger’s purr. I sat down in the lone chair and watched him for a few minutes, thinking about the case. I needed an in with the police and I was unsure about Frisk and Manning. They could have been on the up-and-up. But even if they were sincere in their desire to save young Miss Goldsmith, that didn’t mean that they had my welfare at heart.
On the other hand, I didn’t want to get Suggs deeper in trouble with the force; and, for that matter, I didn’t want to put him in an unmarked grave next to Mary Donovan/Clarissa Anthony.
“How you doin’, Easy?” I hadn’t noticed his eyes opening.
“I need to catch you up on what’s been goin’ on.”
“You gonna tell me where I can find Mary?”
“Just as soon as I know.”
“When’s that gonna be?”
“Three days tops.”
I could see the thoughts moving furtively behind the grizzled policeman’s beautiful doe eyes. He was too smart and too sensitive for the LAPD and probably had few friends among fellow cops. Policemen socialized only with one another and so he was a pariah even before the suspension. He didn’t like me being in charge but I was one of the only friends he was likely to have.
“What’s this shit with Bob Mantle?” he asked.
I told him everything that he needed to know.
“The FBI makes sense because it’s a potentially high-profile kidnapping,” he said. “And the State Department has to get a toe in the door because it’s political radicals and a weapons manufacturer. The best thing you can do is fly down to Mexico City and jump on a cruise ship sailing south from there.”
“If you had asked me about a cop hookin’ up with a female mule for a counterfeiter I’d say the same.”
Melvin squinted; maybe he would have gotten angry but then the doorbell rang.
I put my finger to my lips but it wasn’t necessary. Melvin knew what side of the law we were on. Quietly I walked with him to the entrance hall and then pointed the way that led back to the laundry room.
I counted to three and opened the front door on Tout Manning. He was wearing a suit that looked to be stitched from the skin of a brown toad that wanted to be red.
“Mr. Manning.”
“There was a shootout on a Hundred and Tenth near Central last night,” he said. He rushed past me into the house as if he expected to see something I was trying to hide.
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