I had to smile. Usually when I was working I was the one who did the manipulating of people’s fears. But here Maya was trying to maneuver me.
“Thirty thousand dollars,” I said.
“What?”
“Thirty grand and I give you everything you want. But it gots to be thirty and it gots to be today. Tomorrow it goes up to thirty-five.”
“A dead man has no use for money, Ezekiel.”
“You’d be surprised, Maya.”
“Why would you think that Mr. Lee would be willing to pay such an outrageous figure?”
“First, I don’t think Mr. Lee knows a thing about this conversation. Second, I don’t know the exact amount on those bearer bonds —”
“What bearer bonds?”
“Don’t try an’ mess wit’ me, girl. I know about the bonds because I’ve talked to Philomena. So like I was sayin’ . . . I don’t know exactly how much they’re worth but I’m willing to wager that even after the thirty grand you and Joe Cicero will have enough left over to make me look like a bum.”
“I have no business with Cicero,” she said.
“But you know about the bonds.”
“Call me this evening on my home phone,” she said. “Call me then and we’ll talk.”
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*
*
*
t w e n t y m i n u t e s l a t e r Cinnamon walked up to her motel door. She was carrying a brown supermarket bag. It made me like her more to see that she was conserving her money, buying groceries instead of restaurant meals.
“Miss Cargill,” I called from across the street.
She turned and waved to me as if I were an old friend.
She used her key on the lock and walked in, leaving the door open for me. She was taking a box of chocolate-covered doughnuts from the bag when I came in.
“Have you heard anything about Axel?” were the first words she said.
“Not yet. I had a visit from your friend in the snakeskin jacket though.”
There was fear in her eyes, no mistaking that. But that didn’t make her innocent, just sensible.
“What did he say?”
“He wanted to know where you were.”
“And what did you tell him?”
“I pointed a gun at his eyeball and all he did was shrug. It’s a bad man who’s not even afraid of a gun in his face.”
“Did you shoot him?” she whispered.
“Somebody else asked me that,” I replied. “I sure hope that you’re not like him.”
“Did you shoot him?”
“No.”
The fear crept over her face like night over a broad plain.
“What are you gonna do, Philomena?”
“What do you mean?”
“Nobody is interested in you. It’s those bonds they want, and that letter.”
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“I promised Axel that I’d hold them for him.”
“Have you been calling him?” I asked.
“Yes. But he’s nowhere to be found.”
“Does he know how to get in touch with you?”
“Yes. Yes, he has Lena’s number.”
“What does that tell you, Philomena?” I asked, knowing that her boyfriend was long dead.
“But how can I be sure?”
“Those bonds are like a bull’s-eye on you, girl,” I said. “You need to use them to deal yourself out of danger.”
I didn’t feel guilty that getting those bonds might also net me thirty thousand dollars. I was trying to save Philomena’s life too.
You couldn’t put a price tag on that.
“I don’t know,” she said sadly, hanging her head. She sat down on the bed. “I promised Axel to make sure the world knew about those bonds if he failed.”
“What for?”
“Because they were wrong to do that work. Axel felt that it was a blight on him to live knowing that his father dealt with the Nazis.”
“But his father’s dead and he is too, probably. What good will it do you to join them?”
She clasped her hands together and began rocking back and forth.
Something about this motion made me think about her San Francisco apartment. That reminded me of something else.
“Who do you know in the Westerly Nursing Home?”
She looked up at me. There was no knowledge behind her eyes. She shook her head and stopped rocking.
“You called there from your home phone.”
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“I didn’t. Maybe Axel did. He stayed over sometimes. If he used my phone he’d pay for it later.”
I stared into those lovely eyes a moment longer.
“I don’t know anyone in a nursing home,” she said.
Whether she did or didn’t, I couldn’t tell. I moved on.
“Listen,” I said. “Think about how much those bonds will be worth to you dead. Think it over. Talk with whoever you trust.
I’m gonna write a number down on this paper here on the desk.”
“What is it?”
“It’s the phone number and address of a friend of mine —
Primo. He lives in a house down on One-sixteen. Call him, go to him if you’re scared. I’ll be back later on tonight. But remember, if you want to get on with your life you got to work this thing out.”
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33
Igot to Saul’s at a quarter to six. Doreen and I sat in the living room surrounded by their three kids. Their eight-year-old daughter, Miriam, was listening to a pink transistor radio that hung from her neck on a string necklace, also pink. She had brown hair that drooped down in ringlets and green eyes, a gift from her father. George, the five-year-old, had the T V on and he was jumping around on a threadbare patch of carpet, acting out some swashbuckling derring-do. Simon, the toddler, was wandering back and forth between his sister and brother, making sounds that wouldn’t be understood for another six months or so.
“So how long will Feather have to be in the clinic?” Doreen asked.
“Might be as long as six months.”
“Six months?” Miriam cried. “I could go visit her if she’s lonely.”
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“It’s in Switzerland,” I explained to the good girl.
“We could go to ’itzerland,” George said, bravely swinging his imaginary sword.
“It’s way far away in the Valley,” Miriam told her brother.
“I know that,” George said. “We could still go.”
“Can we go, Mom?” Miriam asked Doreen.
“We’ll see.”
It was then that the phone rang.
“Daddy!” George yelled.
“No, George,” Doreen said but the boy leaped for the phone on the coffee table.
Doreen put out her hand and George bounced backward, falling on his backside. As Doreen was saying hello, George began to howl. I saw her mouth Saul’s name but I couldn’t hear what she was saying because Simon was crying too and Miriam was shouting for them both to be quiet.
Doreen gestured toward the kitchen. I knew they had an extension in there and so I went on through, closing the door behind me.
“Hello!” I yelled. “I got it, Doreen!”
When she hung up the sound of the crying subsided somewhat.
“Easy,” Saul said. “What’s wrong?”
“I got a visit from a guy yesterday,” I said. “He knew that I was working on the Lee case. He told me to give him what I knew or he’d kill me and my family too.”
“What was this guy’s name?”
“Cicero.”
“Joe Cicero?”
“You know him?”
“Don’t go home, Easy. Don’t go to your office or your job. Call 2 1 7
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this number.” He gave me an area code and a number, which I wrote down on a not
epad decorated with pink bunnies. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. Put my wife back on the line.”
When I went back into the T V room the children had quieted down.
“Saul wants to talk to you, Doreen,” I said and she took up the phone.
“Daddy!” George cried.
“Dada,” Simon echoed.
Miriam watched her mother’s eyes. So did I.
We both saw Mrs. Lynx’s expression change from attentive interest to fear. Instead of answering she kept nodding her head.
She reached for her pocketbook on the coffee table.
“I wanna talk to Daddy,” George complained.
Doreen gave him one stern look and he shut right up.
“Okay,” Doreen said. “All right. I will. Be careful, Saul.”
She hung up the phone and stood in one fluid movement.
“Holiday time,” she said in a forced happy voice. “We’re all going to Nana’s cabin in Mammoth.”
“Yah,” George cried.
Simon laughed but Miriam had a grim look on her face. She was getting older and understood that something was wrong.
“Saul said that he’d be at the meeting place by nine tonight,”
Doreen told me. “He’s in San Diego but he said that he’d drive straight there.”
“What meeting place? He just gave me a number.”
“Call it and they will tell you where to go.”
“Is Daddy okay, Mommy?” Miriam asked.
“He’s fine, sweetie. Tonight he’s going to meet with Mr. Rawlins and then he’s coming up to the cabin where we can go fish-ing and swimming.”
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“But I have my clarinet lesson tomorrow,” Miriam said.
“You’ll have to take a makeup,” Doreen explained.
The two boys were capering around, celebrating the holiday that had befallen their family.
i l e f t d o r e e n
packing suitcases and keeping the children on track.
On the way down to the Pixie Inn I tried not to get too far ahead of myself. Saul’s reaction to just a name increased my fears. I decided that Cinnamon had to be moved to a place where I knew that she’d be safe.
I parked down the block this time, just being cautious. There was a Mercedes-Benz parked on the motel lot. I didn’t like that.
I liked it even less when I saw the words Fletcher’s Mercedes-Benz of San Francisco written on the license plate frame.
The door of Cinnamon’s room was ajar. I nudged it open with my toe.
He was lying facedown, the six-hundred-dollar suit now just a shroud. I turned him over with my foot. Leonard Haffernon, Es-quire, was quite dead. The bullet had entered somewhere at the base of the skull and exited through the top of his head.
The exit wound was the size of a silver dollar.
A wave of prickles went down my left arm. Sweat sprouted from my palms.
His valise was on the bed. Its contents had been turned out.
There was some change and a toenail clipper, a visitor’s pass to a San Francisco bank, and a silver flask. Any papers had been taken.
The only potential perpetrator in evidence, once more, was me.
For a brief moment I was frozen there like a bug in a sudden frost. I was trying to glean from Haffernon’s face what had occurred. Did Cinnamon kill him and run?
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Probably.
But why? And why had he been there?
A horn honked out on the street. That brought me back to my senses. I walked out of that room and into the parking lot, then down the street to my loud car and drove away.
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34
Idrove for fifteen minutes, looking in the rearview mirror every ten seconds, before stopping at a gas station on a block of otherwise burned-out buildings. There was a phone booth next to the men’s toilet at the back.
“Etta, is that you?” I asked when she answered on the ninth ring.
“Is it my number you dialed?”
“Have you heard from Raymond?”
“And how are you this evenin’, Mr. Rawlins? I’m fine. I was layin’ up in the bed watchin’ Doctor Kildare. How ’bout you?”
“I just stumbled on a dead white man never saw it comin’.”
“Oh,” Etta said. “No, Ray haven’t called.”
“Shit.”
“Primo did though.”
“When?”
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“ ’Bout a hour. He said to tell you that a guy came by an’ left sumpin’ for ya.”
“What guy?”
“He didn’t say.”
“What did he leave?”
“He didn’t say that either. He just said to tell you. You in trouble, Easy?”
“Is the sky blue?”
“Not right now. It’s evenin’.”
“Then wait a bit. It’ll be there.”
Etta chuckled and so did I. She was no stranger to violent death. She’d once shot a white man, a killer, in the head because he was about to shoot me. If we couldn’t laugh in the face of death there’d be precious little humor for most black southerners.
“You take care, Easy.”
“Tell Mouse I need his advice.”
“When I see him.”
i s p e d o v e r to Primo’s place worried about having given his number to Philomena. Primo was a tough man, a Mexican by birth. He had spent his whole life traveling back and forth across the border and south of there. On one trip through Panama he’d met Flower, his wife. They lived in a house I owned and had more than a dozen kids. They took in stray children too, and animals of all kinds. Any grief I brought to them would cause pain for a thousand miles.
But Primo was sitting out in the large yard. He was laid back in a lawn chair, drinking a beer and watching six or seven grand-children play in the diminishing light. Flower was up on the porch with a baby in her arms. I wondered if it was her baby or just a grandchild.
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As I approached, half a dozen dogs ran at me growling and crying, wagging their tails and baring their fangs.
“Hi-ya!” Primo shouted at the animals.
The children ran forward, grabbing the dogs and pulling them back. A pure-bred Dalmatian eluded his child handler and jumped on me, pressing my chest with his forepaws.
“That’s my guard dog,” Primo said.
He put out a hand, which I shook as the dog licked my forearm.
“Love thy neighbor,” I said.
Primo liked my sense of humor. He laughed out loud.
“Flower,” he called. “Your boyfriend is here.”
“Send him to my bedroom when you finish twisting his ears,”
she responded.
“I wish I had time to sit, man,” I said.
“But you want them papers.” Primo finished my sentence.
“Papers?”
All the children, dogs, and adults crowded through the front door and into the house. There was shouting and laughing and fur floating in the air.
While Primo went into the back room looking for my delivery, Flower came very close to me. She stared in my face without saying anything.
She was a very black, beautiful woman. Her features were stern, almost masculine, most of the time, but when she smiled she honored the name her father had blessed her with.
At that moment she had on her serious face.
“How is she, Easy?”
“Very sick,” I said. “Very sick.”
“She will live,” Flower told me. “She will live and you will have a beautiful granddaughter from her.”
I touched Flower’s face and she took my hand in hers.
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The dogs stopped barking and the children hushed. I looked up and saw Primo standing there, smiling at me.
“Here it is,�
� he said, handing me a brown envelope large enough to contain unfolded pages of typing paper.
“Who left this?”
“A black boy. Funny, you know?”
Raphael.
“What did he say?”
“That this was what you wanted and he hopes you do what’s right.”
I stood there thinking with all the brown children and red-tongued dogs panting around me.
“Stay and eat,” Flower said.
“I got to go.”
“No. You are hungry. Sit. It will only take a few moments and then you will have the strength to do whatever it is you’re doing.”
t h a t w a s a t o u g h p e r i o d in my life. There’s no doubt
about it. I was on the run in my own city, homeless if I wanted to live. Feather’s well-being was never far from my heart, but the road to her salvation was being piled with the bodies of dead white men. And you have to understand the impact of the death of a white man on a black southerner like me. In the south if a black man killed a white man he was dead. If the police saw him on the street they shot first and asked questions . . . never. If he gave himself up he was killed in his cell. If the constable wasn’t a murdering man then a mob would come and lynch the poor son of a bitch. And failing all that, if a black man ever made it to trial and was convicted of killing a white man — even in self-defense, even if it was to save another white man — that convict would spend the rest of his days incarcerated. There would be 2 2 4
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no parole, no commutation of sentence, no extenuating circumstances, no time off for good behavior.
There was no room in my heart except for hope that Feather would live. Hovering above that hope was the retribution of the white race for my just seeing two of their dead sons.
But even with all of that trouble I have to take time to recall Flower’s simple meal.
She gave me a large bowl filled with chunks of pork loin sim-mered in a pasilla chili sauce. She’d boiled the chilies without removing the seeds so I began to sweat with the first bite. There was cumin and oregano in the sauce and pieces of avocado too.
On the side I had three homemade wheat flour tortillas and a large glass of lightly sweetened lemonade.
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