I felt like a condemned man but at least my last meal was a feast.
a f t e r i a t e I made noises about leaving, but Primo told me that I could use his den to take care of any business I needed to attend to.
In the little study I settled into his leather chair and opened the envelope left by Raphael.
There were twelve very official sheets of parchment imprinted with declarations in French, Italian, and German. Each page had a large sum printed on it and a red wax seal embossed at one corner or another. There was a very fancy signature at the bottom of each document. I couldn’t make out the name.
And there was a letter, a note really, written in German and signed H. W. Göring. In the text of the note the name H. Himm-ler appeared. The note was addressed to R. Tourneau. I didn’t need to know what the letter said. At any other time I would have burned it up and moved on with my life. But there was too much I didn’t understand to discard such an important document.
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I had what Lee wanted but I didn’t trust that Maya would pass on the information. I didn’t know how much the bonds were worth but I did know that they were said to be Swiss and that my daughter was in a Swiss hospital.
I called Jackson and gave him all the information I could about the bonds. He asked a few questions, directing me to codes and symbols that I would never have noticed on my own.
“It’d be better if I could check ’em myself, Ease,” Jackson said at one point.
But remembering his quandary over the TXT tape on his desk, I said, “I better hold on to these here, Jackson. There’s some bloodthirsty people out there willing to do anything to get at ’em.”
Jackson backed down and I made my second call.
He answered the phone on the first ring.
“Easy?”
“Yeah. Who’s this?”
“Christmas Black,” the man said. I couldn’t tell one thing about him. Not his age or his race.
“I’m up in Riverside,” Black said, “on Wayfarer’s Road. You know it?”
“Can’t say that I do.”
He gave me precise instructions that I wrote down.
“What do you have to do with all this?” I asked.
“I’m just a layover,” he said. “A place to gather the troops and regroup.”
After talking to Christmas I called EttaMae and left the particulars with her.
“Tell Mouse to come up when he gets the chance,” I said.
“What makes you think I’ll be talkin’ to him anytime soon?”
“Is the sky blue?” I asked.
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Itook Highway 101toward Riverside. The fact that I had a destination relaxed me some. The thousands of dollars in Swiss bonds on the seat beside me gave me heart. Haffernon’s body and Cinnamon’s involvement with his death were on my mind. And then there was the Nazi high command.
Like most Americans I hated Adolf Hitler and his crew of bloodthirsty killers. I hated their racism and their campaign to destroy any people not their own. In ’45 I was a concentration camp liberator. My friends and I killed a starving Jewish boy by feeding him a chocolate bar. We didn’t know that it would kill him. How could we?
Even as a black American I felt patriotic about the war and my role in it. That’s why I found it so hard to comprehend wealthy and white American businessmen trading with such villains.
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Between Feather and Bonnie, Haffernon and Axel, Cinnamon and Joe Cicero, it was a wonder that I didn’t go crazy. Maybe I did, a little bit, lose control at the edges.
c h r i s t m a s b l a c k
had given me very good directions. I skirted downtown Riverside and took a series of side streets until I came to a graded dirt road that was still a city street. The houses were a little farther apart than in Los Angeles. The yards were larger and there were no fences between them. Unchained dogs snapped at my tires as I drove past.
After a third of a mile or so I came to the dead end of Wayfarer’s Road. Right where the road terminated stood a small white house with a yellow light shining over the doorway. It was the embodiment of peace and domesticity. You’d expect your aged, widowed grandmother to live behind that door. She’d have pies and a boiled ham to greet you.
I knocked and a child called out in some Asian language.
The door swung inward and a tall black man stood there.
“Welcome, Mr. Rawlins,” he said. “Come in.”
He was six foot four at least but his shoulders would have been a good fit for a man six inches taller. His skin was medium brown and there was a whitish scar beneath his left eye. The brown in his eyes was lighter than was common in most Negroes. And his hair was as close-cropped as you can get without being bald.
“Mr. Black?”
He nodded and stepped back for me to enter. A few steps away stood a small Asian girlchild dressed in a fancy red kimono.
She bowed respectfully. She couldn’t have been more than six years old but she held herself with the poise and attitude of the 2 2 8
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woman of the house. Just seeing her I knew that there was no wife or girlfriend in the black man’s life.
“Easy Rawlins, meet Easter Dawn Black,” Christmas said.
“Pleased to meet you,” I said to the child.
“It is an honor to have you in our home, Mr. Rawlins,” Easter Dawn said with solemnity.
To her right was a door open onto a bedroom, probably hers.
On the other side was a cavernous sitting room that had a very western, almost cowboy feel to it. The girl gestured toward the sitting room and I followed her direction.
Behind Easter was a bronze mirror. In the reflection I could see the satisfaction in Christmas’s face. He was proud of this little girl who could not possibly have been of his blood.
Feather came into my mind then and I tripped on the Indian blanket used as a throw rug. I would have fallen but Black was quick. He rushed forward and grabbed my arm.
“Thanks,” I said.
The sitting room had a fifteen-foot ceiling, something you would never have expected upon seeing the seemingly small house from the road. Beyond that room was a kitchen with a loft above it, neither room separated by walls.
“Sit,” Black said.
I sat down on one of the two wood-framed couches that he had facing each other.
He sat opposite me and flashed a brief smile.
“Tea?” Easter asked me.
“No thank you,” I said.
“Coffee?”
“Naw. I would never get to sleep then.”
“Ice water?”
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“Are you going to keep on offering me drinks till you find one I want?” I asked her.
That was the first time she smiled. The beauty of her beaming face hurt me more than Bonnie and a dozen African princes ever could.
“Beer?” she asked.
“I’ll take the water, honey.”
“Daddy?”
“Whiskey and lime, baby.”
The child walked away with perfect posture and regal bearing.
I had no idea where she could have come from or how she got there.
“Adopted daughter,” Black said. “I got her when she was a tiny thing.”
“She’s a beautiful princess,” I said. “I have a girl too. Nothing like this one but I’m sure they’d be the best of friends.”
“Easter Dawn doesn’t have many friends. I’m schooling her here at home. You can’t trust strangers with the people you love.”
This felt like a deeply held secret that Christmas was letting me in on. I began to think that his bright eyes might have the light of madness behind them.
“Where you from?” I asked because he had no southern accent.
“Massachusetts,” he said. “Newton, outside of Boston. You ever be
en there?”
“Boston once. I had a army buddy took me there after we were let go in Baltimore, after the war. Your family from there?”
“Crispus Attucks was one of my ancestors,” Black said, nodding but not in a prideful way. “He was the son of a prince and a runaway slave. But most importantly he was a soldier.”
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There was a finality to every sentence he spoke. It was as if he was also royalty and not used to ordinary conversation.
“Attucks, huh?” I said, trying to find my way to a conversation.
“That’s the Revolutionary War there.”
“My family’s menfolk have been in every American war,” he said, again with a remoteness that made him seem unstable.
“Eighteen-twelve, Spanish-American, of course the Civil War. I myself have fought in Europe, and against Japan, the Koreans, and the Vietnamese.”
“Here, Mr. Rawlins,” Easter Dawn said. She was standing at my elbow holding a glass of water in one hand and her father’s whiskey in the other.
Judging from her slender brown face and flat features I suspected that Easter had come from Black’s last campaign.
She carried her father’s whiskey over to him.
“Thanks, honey,” he said, suddenly human and present.
“Easter here come from Vietnam?” I asked.
“She’s my little girl,” he said. “That’s all we care about here.”
Okay.
“What was your rank?” I asked.
“After a while it didn’t matter,” he said. “I was a colonel in Nam. But we were working in groups of one. You have no rank if there’s nobody else there. Covered with mud and out for blood, we were just savages. Now how’s a savage rate a rank?”
He shone those mad orbs at me and I believe that I forgot all the problems I came to his door with. Easter Dawn went to his side and leaned against his knee.
He looked down at her, placing a gigantic hand on her head. I could tell that it was a light touch because she pressed back into the caress.
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“War has changed over my lifetime, Mr. Rawlins,” Christmas Black said. “At one time I knew who the enemy was. That was clear as the nose on your face. But now . . . now they send us out to kill men never did anything to us, never thought one way or the other about America or the American way of life. When I realized that I was slaughtering innocent men and women I knew that the soldiering line had to come to an end with me.”
Christmas Black could never hang out with the guys on a street corner. Every word he said was the last word on the subject. I liked the man and I knew he was crazy. The thing I didn’t know was why I was there.
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Iwas nursing my water, trying to think of some reply to a man who had just confessed to murder and gone on to his quest for redemption.
Lucky for me there came a knock at the door.
“It’s Uncle Saul,” Easter Dawn said. She didn’t exactly shout but you could hear the excitement in her voice. She didn’t exactly run either but rather rushed toward the front of the house.
“E.D.,” Christmas said with authority.
The girl stopped in her tracks.
“What did I tell you about answering that door?” her father asked.
“Never open the door without finding out who it is,” she said dutifully.
“Okay then.”
She hurried on, followed by her father. I trailed after them.
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“Who is it!” Easter Dawn shouted at the door.
“It’s the big bad wolf,” Saul Lynx replied in a playful voice he reserved for children.
The door flew open and Saul came in carrying a box wrapped in pink paper.
Easter Dawn put both hands behind her back and gripped them tightly to keep from jumping at him. He bent down and picked her up with one arm.
“How’s my girl?”
“Fine,” she said, obviously trying hard to restrain herself from asking what was in the box.
Christmas came up to them and put a hand on Saul’s shoulder.
“How you doin’?” the black philosopher-king asked.
“Been better,” Saul said.
By this time the girl had moved around until she had snagged the box.
“Is it for me?” she pleaded.
“You know it is,” Saul said and then he put her down. “Hey, Easy. I see you made it.”
“That reminds me,” I said. “I gave Ray this address too. He should be by a little bit later.”
“Who’s that?” our host asked.
“Friend’a mine. Good guy in a pinch.”
“Let’s go in,” Christmas said.
Easter ran before us, opening the present as she went.
s a u l s a t
next to the war veteran and I sat across from them with my water.
“Joe ‘Chickpea’ Cicero” were the first words out of Saul’s mouth.
“The most dangerous man that anybody can think of. He’s a killer for hire, an arsonist, a kidnapper, and he’s also a torturer —”
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“What’s that mean?” I asked.
“It’s widely known that if someone has a secret that you need to get at, all you have to do is hire Chickpea. He promises an answer to your question within seventy-two hours.”
I glanced at Christmas. If he was frightened it certainly didn’t show on his face.
“He’s bad,” Black agreed. “But not as bad as his rep. It’s like a lot of white men. They can only see excellence in one of their own.”
Excellence, I thought.
“That might be,” Saul said. “But he’s plenty dangerous enough for me.”
Easter Dawn brought in a beer, which she offered to her Uncle Saul.
“Thanks, honey,” Saul said.
“Easter, this is man talk,” Christmas told the girl.
“But I wanted to show Mr. Rawlins my new doll,” she said.
“Okay. But hurry up.”
Easter ran out and then back again with a tallish figurine of an Asian woman standing on a platform and stabilized by a metal rod.
“You see,” she said to me. “She has eyes like mine.”
“I see.”
The doll wore an elaborate black-and-gold robe that had a dragon stitched into it.
“That’s a dragon lady,” Saul told her, “the most important woman in the whole clan.”
The child’s eyes got bigger as she studied her treasure.
“You’re spoiling her with all those dolls,” Christmas said.
I was thinking about the assassin.
“No he’s not, Daddy,” Easter said.
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“How many do you have now?”
“Only nine, and I have room for a lot more on the shelves you made me.”
“Go on now and play with them,” her unlikely father said. “I’ll come say good night in an hour.”
Decorum regained, Easter left the room and the men went back to barbarism.
“What’s Cicero got to do with this?” Christmas asked.
“I don’t know.” Saul was wearing a tan suit with a brown T-shirt.
Christmas Black raised his head as if he’d heard something. A moment later there was a knock at the door.
“Stay in your room, E.D.,” Christmas called.
We all went to the door together.
I had my hand on the .38 in my pocket.
Black pulled the door open and there stood Raymond.
“Christmas Day,” Mouse hailed.
“Silent Knight,” our host replied.
They shook hands and gave each other nods filled with mutual respect. I was impressed because Mouse’s esteem was an event more rare than a tropical manifestation of the northern lights.
; On our way back to the couches I felt my load lighten. With Raymond and someone he considered an equal on our side I didn’t think that anyone would be too much for us.
I revealed as much of the story as I dared to. I told them about the state of Axel’s house but not about finding his corpse.
For that I relied on their imaginations when they heard about the meeting between Chickpea and Axel. I told them about Maya’s calls and about finding Haffernon in Philomena’s room. I 2 3 6
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told them about the existence of the bonds and the letter, but not that I had them.
“How much the bonds worth?” Raymond wanted to know.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Thousands.”
“You think this Haffernon’s the top man?” Christmas asked.
“Maybe. It’s hard to tell. But if Haffernon was the boss, then who killed him? He is the one hired Lee. I’m sure of that.”
“Lee has at least twenty operatives at his beck and call,” Saul said.
“And if anybody’s behind Haffernon,” I added, “they’ll have a whole army at their disposal.”
“What’s the objective, gentlemen?” Christmas asked.
“Kill ’em all,” Mouse said simply.
Christmas’s lower lip jutted out maybe an eighth of an inch.
His head bobbed about the same distance.
“No.” That was me. “We don’t know which one of them it is.”
“But if we do kill ’em all then the problem be ovah no mattah which one it was.”
Christmas laughed for the first time.
Saul gave a nervous grin.
I said, “There’s still the money, Ray.”
“Money don’t mean much if they put you in the ground, Ease.”
“I can’t go out killing people for no reason,” Saul said.
“There’s a reason,” Christmas replied. “They suckered you in and now your life’s on the line. The cops wouldn’t touch this one and if they did they’d put you in jail. There’s your reason.”
“Yeah,” I said, because once you invited men like Christmas and Mouse into the room Death had to have a seat at the table too. “But not before we find out what’s what.”
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