“Yes sir. He does work in Europe and South America and Asia too.”
I noticed that he didn’t mention Africa. People rarely did when talking about the world in those days.
“Yes sir,” Saul Lynx said again. “He has entrée to every law en-forcement facility and many government offices. He’s a connois-seur of fine wines, women, and food. Speaks Chinese, both Mandarin and Cantonese, Spanish, French, and English, which means that he can converse with at least one person in almost every town, village, or hamlet in the world. He’s extremely well 3 7
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read. He thinks that he is the better of every, and any, man regardless of race or rank. And that means that his racism includes the whole human race.”
“Sounds like a doozy,” I said. “What’s he look like?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know? I thought that you’d done work for him before.”
“I have. But I never met him face-to-face. You see, Bobby Lee doesn’t like to sully himself with operatives. He has this woman named Maya Adamant who represents him to most clients and to almost all the PIs that do his legwork. She’s one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen. He spends most of his time hidden away in his mansion on Nob Hill.”
“Have you ever talked to him, in Chinese or otherwise?” I asked.
Saul shook his head.
“Have you seen his picture?”
“No.”
“How do you even know that this man exists?”
“I’ve met people who’ve met him — clients mainly. Some of them liked to talk about his talents and eccentricities.”
“You should meet with a man you work for,” I said.
“People work for Heinz Foods and Ford Motor Company and never meet them,” Saul argued.
“But they employ thousands. This dude is a small shop. He needs to at least say hello.”
“What difference would that make, Easy?” Saul asked.
“How can you work for a man don’t even have the courtesy to come out from his office and nod at you?”
“I received an envelope yesterday morning with twenty-five hundred dollars in it,” he said. “I get a thousand dollars just to 3 8
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deliver you your money and take a drive up to Frisco. Sometimes I work two weeks and don’t make half that.”
“Money isn’t everything, Saul.”
“It is when your daughter is at death’s door and only money can buy her back.”
I could see that Saul regretted his words as soon as they came out of his mouth. But I didn’t say anything. He was right. I didn’t have the luxury of criticizing that white man. Who cared if I ever met him? All I needed was his long green.
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Abeautiful day in San Francisco is the most beautiful day on earth. The sky is blue and white, Michelangelo at his best, and the air is so crystal clear it makes you feel that you can see more detail than you ever have before. The houses are wooden and white with bay windows. There was no trash in the street and the people, at least back then, were as friendly as the citizens of some country town.
If I hadn’t had Feather, and that enameled pin, on my mind I would have enjoyed our trip through the city.
On Lower Lombard we passed a peculiar couple walking down the street. The man wore faded red velvet pants with an open sheepskin vest that only partially covered his naked chest.
His long brown hair cascaded down upon broad, thin shoulders.
The woman next to him wore a loose, floral-patterned dress with nothing underneath. She had light brown hair with a dozen yel-4 0
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low flowers twined into her irregular braids. The two were walking, barefoot and slow, as if they had nowhere to be on that Thursday afternoon.
“Hippies,” Saul said.
“Is that what they look like?” I asked, amazed. “What do they do?”
“As little as possible. They smoke marijuana and live a dozen to a room, they call ’em crash pads. And they move around from place to place saying that owning property is wrong.”
“Like communists?” I asked. I had just finished reading Das Kapital when Feather got weak. I wanted to get at the truth about our enemies from the horse’s mouth but I didn’t have enough history to really understand.
“No,” Saul said, “not communists. They’re more like dropouts from life. They say they believe in free love.”
“Free love? Is that like they say, ‘That ain’t my baby, baby’?”
Saul laughed and we began the ascent to Nob Hill.
Near the top of that exclusive mount is a street called Cush-man. Saul took a right turn there, drove one block, and parked in front of a four-story mansion that rose up on a slope behind the sidewalk.
The walls were so white that it made me squint just looking at them. The windows seemed larger than others on the block and the conical turrets at the top were painted metallic gold. The first floor of the manor was a good fifteen feet above street level — the entrance was barred by a wrought iron gate.
Saul pushed a button and waited.
I looked out toward the city and appreciated the view. Then I felt the pang of guilt, knowing that Feather lay dying four hundred miles to the south.
“Yes?” a sultry woman’s voice asked over an invisible intercom.
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“It’s Saul and Mr. Rawlins.”
A buzzer sounded. Saul pulled open the gate and we entered onto an iron platform. The elevator vestibule was carved into the rock beneath the house. As soon as Saul closed the gate the platform began to move upward toward an opening at the first-floor level of the imposing structure. As we moved into the aperture a panel above us slid aside and we ascended into a large, well-appointed room.
The walls were mahogany bookshelves from floor to ceiling —
and the ceiling was at least sixteen feet high. Beautifully bound books took up every space. I was reminded of Jackson Blue’s beach house, which had cheap shelves everywhere. His books for the most part were ratty and soiled, but they were well read and his library was probably larger.
Appearing before us as we rose was a white woman with tanned skin and copper hair. She wore a Chinese-style dress made of royal blue silk. It fitted her form and had no sleeves.
Her eyes were somewhere between defiant and taunting and her bare arms had the strength of a woman who did things for herself. Her face was full and she had a black woman’s lips. The bones of her face made her features point downward like a lovely, earthward-bound arrowhead. Her eyes were light brown and a smile flitted around her lips as she regarded me regarding her beauty.
She would have been tall even if she were a man — nearly six feet. But unlike most tall women of that day, she didn’t let her shoulders slump and her backbone was erect. I made up my mind then and there that I would get on naked terms with her if it was at all possible.
She nodded and smiled and I believe she read the intentions in my gaze.
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“Maya Adamant,” Saul Lynx said, “this is Ezekiel Rawlins.”
“Easy,” I said, extending a hand.
She held my hand a moment longer than necessary and then moved back so that we could step off of the platform.
“Saul,” she said. “Come in. Would you like a drink?”
“No, Maya. We’re in kind of a hurry. Easy’s daughter is sick and we need to get back as soon as possible.”
“Oh,” she said with a frown. “I hope it’s not serious.”
“It’s a blood condition,” I said, not intending to be so honest.
“Not quite an infection but it really isn’t a virus either. The doctors in L.A. don’t know what to do.”
“There’s a clinic in Switzerland . . . ,” she said, searching for the name.
“The Bonatelle,” I added.
Her smile broadened, as if I had just passed some kind of test.
“Yes. That’s it. Have you spoken to them?”
“That’s why I’m here, Miss Adamant. The clinic needs cash and so I need to work.”
Her chest expanded then and an expression of delight came over her face.
“Come with me,” she said.
She led us toward a wide, carpeted staircase that stood at the far end of the library.
Saul looked at me and hunched his shoulders.
“I’ve never been above this floor before,” he whispered.
t h e r o o m a b o v e
was just as large as the one we had left.
But where the library was dark with no windows, this room had a nearly white pine floor and three bay windows along each wall.
There were maybe a dozen large tables in this sun-drenched space. On each was a battle scene from the Civil War. In each 4 3
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tableau there were scores of small, hand-carved wooden figurines engaged in battle. The individual soldiers — tending cannon, engaged in hand-to-hand combat, down and wounded, down and dead — were compelling. The figurines had been carved for maximum emotional effect. On one table there was a platoon of Negro Union soldiers engaging a Confederate band.
“Amazing, aren’t they?” Maya asked from behind me. “Mr.
Lee carves each one in a workroom in the attic. He has studied every aspect of the Civil War and has written a dozen mono-graphs on the subject. He owns thousands of original documents from that period.”
“One wonders when he has time to be a detective with all that,” I said.
For a moment there was a deadness in Maya’s expression. I felt that I had hit a nerve, that maybe Bobby Lee really was a fig-ment of someone’s imagination.
“Come into the office, Mr. Rawlins. Saul.”
We followed her past the miniature scenes of murder and mayhem made mythic. I wondered if anyone would ever make a carving of me slaughtering that young German soldier in the snow in suburban Düsseldorf.
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through a hand-carved yellow door that was painted with images of a naked island woman.
“Gauguin,” I said as she pushed the gaudy door open. “Your boss does paintings too?”
“This door is an original,” she said.
“Whoa” came unbidden from my lips.
The office was a nearly empty, windowless room with cherry floors. Along the white walls were a dozen tall lamps with frosted glass globes around the bulbs. These lamps were set before as 4 4
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many floor-to-ceiling cherry beams imbedded in the plaster walls. All the lights were on.
In the center of the room was an antique red lacquered Chinese desk that had four broad-bottomed chairs facing it, with one behind for our absentee host.
“Sit,” Maya Adamant said.
She settled in one of the visitors’ chairs and Saul and I followed suit.
“We’re looking for a woman,” she began, all business now.
“Who’s we?” I asked.
This brought on a disapproving frown.
“Mr. Lee.”
“That’s a he not a we, ” I said.
“All right,” she acquiesced. “Mr. Lee wants —”
“Do you own this house, Miss Adamant?”
Another frown. “No.”
“Easy,” Saul warned.
I held up my hand for his silence.
“You know, my mother, before she died, told me that I should never enter a man’s house without paying my respects.”
“I’ll be sure to tell Mr. Lee that you said hello,” she told me.
“It was a double thing with my mother,” I said, continuing with my train of thought. “On the one hand you didn’t want a man thinking that you were in his domicile doing mischief with his property or his wife —”
“Mr. Lee is not married,” Maya put in.
“And on the other hand,” I went on, “being of the darker per-suasion, you wouldn’t want to be treated like a nigger or a slave.”
“Mr. Lee doesn’t meet with anyone who works for him,” she informed me.
“Come on, Easy,” Saul added. “I told you that.”
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Ignoring my friend, I said, “And I don’t work for anyone I don’t meet with.”
“You’ve taken his money,” Maya reminded me.
“And I drove four hundred miles to tell him thank you.”
“I really don’t see the problem, Mr. Rawlins. I can brief you on the job at hand.”
“I could sit with you on a southern beach until the earth does a full circle, Miss Adamant. And I’m sure that I’d rather speak to you than to a man named after the number one Rebel general.
But you have your orders from him and I got my mother’s demands. My mother is dead and so she can’t change her mind.”
In my peripheral vision I could see Saul throw his hands up in the air.
“I can’t take you to him,” Maya said with finality.
I stood up from my fine Chinese chair saying, “And I can’t raise the dead.”
I made ready to leave, knowing that I was being a fool. I needed that money and I knew how powerful white men could act. But still I couldn’t help myself. Hell, there was an armored car waiting for me in the state of Texas.
Thinking about the robbery, everything that could go wrong came back to me. So, standing there before my chair, I was torn between walking out and apologizing.
“Hold up there,” a man’s voice commanded.
I turned to see that a panel in the wall behind the lacquered desk had become a doorway.
A man emerged from the darkness, a very short man.
“I am Robert E. Lee,” the little man said.
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He wasn’t over five feet tall. He might not have made the full sixty inches. He wore navy blue pants and a black coat cut in the fashion of a nineteenth-century general’s jacket.
He had short black hair and wispy sideburns, a completely round head, and the large dark eyes of a baby who had wisdom past its years.
He marched up to the chair behind the desk and sat with an air that could only be described as pompous.
It was obvious that he had been watching us since we entered the office. I suspected that he had probably been monitoring our conversation from the moment we entered the house. But the little general wasn’t embarrassed by this exposure. He touched something on his desk and the portal behind him slid shut.
“It’s like the house of the future at Disneyland,” I said.
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“I’ve never been,” he said with an insincere smile plastered to his lips.
“You should go sometime. Might give you some tips.”
“You’ve met me, Mr. Rawlins,” Robert E. Lee said. “We’ve had mindless banter. Is that enough for your mother?”
An instant rage rose up in my heart. I had never loved anyone in life as much as I did my mother — at least not until the birth of my blood daughter and then when Jesus and Feather found their way into my home. The idea that this arrogant little man would refer to my mother in that tone made me want to slap him. But I held myself in check. After all, I had mentioned my mother’s admonition and Feather needed my best effort if she was going to live.
“So why am I here?” I asked.
“You’d need a practicing existentialist to answer a question like that,” he said. “All I can do is explain the job at hand. Mr.
Lynx . . .”
“Yes sir,” Saul said. “May I say that it’s an honor to meet you.”
“Thank you. Do you vouch for Mr. Rawlins?”
“He’s among the best, sir. And he is the best in certain parts of town, especially if that town is Los Angeles.”
“You realize that you will be held accountable
for his actions?”
Lee referred to me as if I weren’t there. A moment before, that would have angered me, but now I was amused. His effort was petty. I turned to Maya Adamant and winked.
“I’d trust Ezekiel Rawlins with my life,” Saul replied. There was deep certainty in his voice.
“I’m my own man, Mr. Lee,” I said. “If you want to work with me, then fine. If not I have things to do in L.A.”
“Or in Montreux,” he added, proving my suspicions about the eavesdropping devices throughout the house.
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“The job,” I prodded.
Lee pressed his lips outward and then pulled them in. He looked at me with those infant orbs and came to a decision.
“I have been retained by a wealthy man living outside Danville to discover the whereabouts of a business associate who went missing five days ago. This associate has absconded with a briefcase that contains certain documents that must be returned as soon as possible. If I can locate this man and return the contents of that briefcase before midnight of next Friday I will receive a handsome fee and you, if you are instrumental in the acquisition of that property, will receive ten thousand dollars on top of the monies you’ve already been paid.”
“Who’s the client?” I asked.
“His name is unimportant,” Lee replied.
I knew from the way he lifted his chin that my potential employer meant to show me who was boss. This was nothing new to me. I had tussled with almost every boss I’d ever had over the state of my employment and the disposition of my dignity.
And almost every boss I’d ever had had been a white man.
“What’s in the briefcase?”
“White papers, printed in ink and sealed with red wax.”
I turned my head to regard Saul. Beyond him, on the far wall, next to a lamp, was a small framed photograph. I couldn’t make out the details from that distance. It was the only decoration on the walls and it was in an odd place.
“Is your client the original owner of these white papers, printed in ink and sealed with red wax?”
“As far as I know my client is the owner of the briefcase in question and its contents.”
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