Cinnamon Kiss er-10

by Walter Mosley

  Then we made love again.

  Philomena would have married Axel if he’d asked her to. She would have had his children and hosted his acid parties with catered meals and champagne chasers.

  “But you never said you loved him,” I said.

  “Love is an old-fashioned concept,” she replied in university-ese. “The human race developed love to make families cohe-sive. It’s just a tool you put back in the closet when you’re done with it.”

  “And then you take it out again when someone else strikes your fancy?”

  Then we made love again.

  “Love is like a man’s thing,” she told me. “It gets all hot and bothered for a while there, but then after it’s over it goes to sleep.”

  “Not me,” I said. “Not tonight.”

  She smiled and the sun came up.

  I forced myself to get dressed and ready to go.

  “Do you have to leave?” she asked me.

  “Do you love me?” I asked.

  It is a question I had never asked a woman before that day. I had no idea that the words were in my chest, my heart. But that 2 7 6

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  was the reply to her question. If she had said yes I would have taken a different path, I’m sure. Maybe I would have taken her with me or maybe I would have cut my losses and run. Maybe we would have flown together on the bearer bonds to Switzerland, where I would have taken a flat above Bonnie and Joguye.

  “Sure I do,” she said with a one-shoulder shrug. She might as well have winked.

  I breathed a deep sigh of relief and went out the door.

  i p a r k e d m y l o w - r i d e r car across the street from an

  innocuous-looking place on Ozone, less than a block away from Santa Monica beach. It was a little after seven and there was some activity on the street. There were men in suits and old women with dogs on leashes, bicyclers showing off their calves in shorts, and bums shaking the sand from their clothes. Almost everyone was white but they didn’t mind me sitting there. They didn’t call for the police.

  I drank my coffee, ate my jelly doughnut. I tried to remember the last good meal I’d had. The chili at Primo’s, I thought. I felt clean. Cinnamon and I had taken four showers between our fevered bouts of not-love. My sex ached in my pants. I thought about her repudiation of love and my surprising deep need for it.

  I wondered if my life would ever settle back into the bliss I’d known with Bonnie and the hope for happiness I had discovered in Cinnamon’s arms.

  These thoughts pained me. I looked up and there was Jackson Blue walking out his front door, his useless spectacles on his face and a black briefcase dangling from his left hand.

  I rolled down the window and called his last name.

  He went down behind a parked car next to him. At one time seeing him jump like that would have made me grin. Many a 2 7 7

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  time I had startled Jackson just because he would react like that.

  He dove out windows, skipped around corners — but that day I wasn’t trying to scare my friend, I got no pleasure witnessing his frantic leap.

  “Jackson, it’s me . . . Easy.”

  Jackson’s head popped up. He grimaced but before he could complain I got out of the car with my hands held up in apology.

  “Sorry, man,” I said. “I just saw you and shouted without thinkin’.”

  The little coward pulled himself up and walked toward me, looking around to make sure there was no trap.

  “Hey, Ease. What’s wrong?”

  “I need help, Jackson.”

  “Look like you need three days in bed.”

  “That too.”

  “What can I do for ya?”

  “I just need you to ride with me, Blue. Ride with me for the day if you can.”

  “Where you ridin’?”

  “I got to find a white woman and then her daddy.”

  “What you need me for?” Jackson asked.

  “Company. That’s all. That and somebody to bounce ideas off of. I mean if you can get outta work.”

  “Oh yeah,” Jackson said in that false bravado he always used to camouflage his coward’s heart. “You know I’m at that place sometimes as late as the president. He come in my office and tell me to go home. All I gotta do is call an’ tell ’em I need a rest day an’ they say, See ya.”

  He clapped my shoulder, letting me know that he’d take the ride.

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  “But first we gotta go tell Jewelle,” he said. “You know babygirl gotta know where daddy gonna be.”

  We walked back to his door and Jackson used three keys on the locks. The crow’s nest entrance of his apartment looked down into a giant room. It was like staring down into a well made up to be some fairy-tale creature’s home.

  “Easy here, baby,” Jackson announced.

  She was standing at the window, looking out into a flower garden that they worked on in their spare time. She wore a pink housecoat with hair curlers in her hair like tiny, precariously perched oil drums.

  Jackson and I were in our mid-forties, old men compared to Jewelle, who was still shy of thirty. Her brown skin and long face were attractive enough, but what made her a beauty was the power in her eyes. Jewelle was a real estate genius. She’d taken my old manager’s property and turned it into nearly an empire. The riots had slowed her growth some but soon she’d be a millionaire and she and Jackson would live with the rich people up in Bel Air.

  Jewelle smiled as we descended the ladderlike stairs to their home. The walls were twenty-five feet high and every inch was covered in bookcases crammed with Jackson’s lifelong collection of books.

  He had eight encyclopedias and dictionaries in everything from Greek to Mandarin. He was better read than any professor but even with all that knowledge at his disposal he’d rather lie than tell the truth.

  “Hi, Easy,” Jewelle said. She loved older men. And she loved me particularly because I always helped when I could. I might have been the only man (or woman for that matter) in her life who gave her more than he took.

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  “Hey, J.J. What’s up?”

  “Thinkin’ about buying up property in a neighborhood in L.A.

  proper,” she said. “Lotta Koreans movin’ in there. The value’s bound to rise.”

  “Me an’ Easy gonna take a personal day,” Jackson said.

  “What kinda personal day?” Jewelle asked suspiciously.

  “Nobody dangerous, nothing illegal,” I said.

  Jewelle loved Jackson because he was the only man she’d ever met who could outthink her. Anything she’d ask — he had the answer. It’s said that some women are attracted to men’s minds.

  She was the only one I ever knew personally.

  “What about your job, baby?” she asked.

  “Easy want some company, J.J.,” Jackson told her. “When the last time you hear him say sumpin’ like that to me?”

  I could see that they’d talked about me quite a bit. I could almost make out the echoes of those conversations in that cavernous room.

  Jewelle nodded and Jackson took off his tie. When he went to the phone to make a call Jewelle sidled up next to me.

  “You in trouble, Easy?” she asked.

  “So bad that you can’t even imagine it, J.J.”

  “I don’t want Jackson in there with you.”

  “It’s not like that, honey,” I told her. “Really . . . he just gonna ride with me. Maybe give me an idea or two.”

  Jackson came back to us then.

  “I called the president at his house,” the whiz kid said proudly.

  “He told me to take all the time I needed. Now all you got to do is feed me some breakfast and I’m ret-to-go.”

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  43

  Jackson made us go to a little diner that looked over the beach.

  The problem was that the place h
e chose, the Sea Cove Inn, was where Bonnie and I used to go in the mornings sometimes.

  But I made it through. I had waffles and bacon. Jackson gobbled French toast and sausages, fried eggs and a whole quart of orange juice. He had both the body and the appetite of a boy.

  The waitress, an older white woman, knew Jackson and they talked about dogs — she was the owner of some rare breed.

  While they gabbed I went to the pay phone and called EttaMae.

  “Yes? Who is it?”

  “Easy, Etta.”

  “Hold on.”

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  She put the receiver down and a moment later Mouse picked it up.

  “You in jail, Easy?” he asked inside of a big yawn.

  “At the beach.”

  “How’s Jackson?”

  “He’s somethin’.”

  “Your boy Cicero is what a head doctor girlfriend I once had called a psy-ko-path. I think that’s what she called me too. Anyway he been killin’ an’ causin’ pain up an’ down the coast for years. They say he was a rich kid but his folks disowned him after his first murder. I know where he been livin’ at down here but he ain’t been there for days. I got a guy watchin’ the place but I don’t think he gonna show.”

  “Crazy, huh?”

  “Everybody say it. Mothahfuckah cover his tracks with bone an’ blood. You know I be doin’ the country a favor to pop that boy there.”

  “Yeah,” I said, thinking that deadly force was the only way to deal with Joe Cicero. A man like that was dangerous as long as he drew breath. Even if he was in prison he could get at you.

  “What you want me to do, Easy?”

  “Sit tight, Ray. If you get the word on Cicero give me a call.”

  “Where at?”

  “I’ll call Etta tonight at six and tomorrow morning at nine.

  Leave me something with her.”

  “You got it, brother.”

  He was about to hang up when I said, “Hey, Ray.”

  “What?”

  “Do you ever get scared’a shit like this?” I knew the answer. I just didn’t want to get off the phone yet.

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  “Naw, man. I mean this some serious shit right here. It’a be a lot easier takin’ down that armored car. That’s all mapped out. All you gotta do is follow the dots on a job like that. This here make ya think. Think fast. But you know I like that.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It sure does make you think.”

  “Okay then, Easy,” Mouse said. “Call me when you wanna.

  I’ma be here waitin’ for you or my spy.”

  “Thanks, Ray.”

  w e h a d j u s t f i n i s h e d rutting on the cold tiles next to the bathtub when Philomena told me about the gallery where Nina Tourneau worked. She enjoyed giving me information after a bout of hard sex. The force of making love seemed to give her strength. By the time we were finished I don’t think she was that worried about dying.

  The gallery was on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. I put my pistols in the trunk and my PI license in my shirt pocket. Even dressed fine as we were Jackson and I were still driving a hot rod car in the morning, and even though he had a corporate look I was a little too sporty to be going to a respectable job.

  I parked in front of the gallery, Merton’s Fine Art.

  There was the sound of faraway chimes when we entered. A white woman wearing a deep green suit came through a doorway at the far end of the long room. When she saw us a perplexity in-vaded her features. She said something into the room behind her and then marched forward with an insincere smile plastered on her lips.

  “May I help you?” she asked, doubtful that she could.

  “Are you Nina Tourneau?”

  “Yes?”

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  “My name’s Easy Rawlins, ma’am,” I said, holding out my city-issued identification. “I’m representing a man named Lee from up in San Francisco. He’s trying to locate a relative of yours.”

  Nothing I said, nor my ID, managed to erase the doubt from her face.

  “And who would that be?” she asked.

  Nina Tourneau was somewhere in her late fifties, though cosmetics and spas made her look about mid-forty. Her elegant face had most definitely been beautiful in her youth. But now the cobwebs of age were gathering beneath the skin.

  “A Mr. Rega Tourneau,” I said.

  The name took its toll on the art dealer’s reserve.

  Jackson in the meanwhile had been looking at the pale oil paintings along the wall. The colors were more like pastels than oils really and the details were vague, as if the paintings were yet to be finished.

  “These paintin’s here, they like uh,” Jackson said, snapping his fingers. “What you call it? Um . . . derivative, that’s it. These paintin’s derivative of Puvis de Chavannes.”

  “What did you say?” she asked him.

  “Chavannes,” he repeated. “The man Van Gogh loved so damn much. I never liked the paintin’s myself. An’ I sure don’t see why some modern-day painter would want to do like him.”

  “You know art?” she asked, amazed.

  At that moment the chimes sounded again. I didn’t have to look to know that the police were coming in. When Nina whispered into the back room I was sure that it was to tell her secretary to call the police. After the riots people called the police if two black men stopped on a street corner to say hello — much less if they walked into a Beverly Hills gallery with paintings based on old European culture.

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  “Stay where you are,” one of the cops said. “Keep your hands where I can see them.”

  “Oh yeah,” Jackson said to Nina. “I read all about them things. You know it’s El Greco, the Greek, that I love though.

  That suckah paint like he was suckled with Picasso but he older than the hills.”

  “Shut up,” one of the two young cops said.

  They both had guns out. One of them grabbed Jackson by his arm.

  “I’m sorry, Officers,” Nina Tourneau said then. “But there’s been a mistake. I didn’t recognize Mr. Rawlins and his associate when they came in. I told Carlyle to watch out. He must have thought I wanted him to call you. There’s nothing wrong.”

  The cops didn’t believe her at first. I don’t blame them. She seemed nervous, upset. They put cuffs on both Jackson and me and one of them took Nina in the back room to assure her that she was safe. But she kept to her story and finally they set us free. They told us that we’d be under surveillance and then left to sit in their cruiser across the street.

  “Why are you looking for my father?” Nina asked after they’d gone.

  “I’m not,” I said. “It’s Robert Lee, detective extraordinaire from Frisco, lookin’ for him. He gave me some money and I’m just puttin’ in the time.”

  Miss Tourneau looked at us for a while and then shook her head.

  “My father’s an old man, Mr. Rawlins. He’s in a rest home. If your client wishes to speak to me you can give him the number of this gallery and I will be happy to talk with him.”

  She stared me in the eye while saying this.

  “He disowned you, didn’t he?”

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  “I don’t see where that’s any of your business,” she said.

  I smiled and gave her a slight nod.

  “Come on, Jackson,” I said.

  He shrugged like a child and turned toward the door.

  “Excuse me, sir,” Nina Tourneau said to Jackson. “Do you collect?”

  You could see the question was a novel thought to my friend.

  His face lit up and he said, “Lemme have your card. Maybe I’ll buy somethin’ one day.”

  t h e p o l i c e were still parked across the street when we came out.

  “Why you didn’t push her, Easy?” Jackson ask
ed. “You could see that she was wantin’ to know what you knew.”

  “She told me where he was already, Mr. Art Collector.”

  “When she do that?”

  “While we were talkin’.”

  “An’ where did she say to go?”

  “The Westerly Nursing Home.”

  “And where is that?”

  “Somewhere not too far from here I bet.”

  “Easy,” Jackson said. “You know you a mothahfuckah, man. I mean you like magic an’ shit.”

  Jackson might not have known that a compliment from him was probably the highest accolade that I was ever likely to receive.

  I smiled and leaned over to wave at the policemen in their prowler.

  Then we drove a block south and I stopped at a phone booth, where I looked up Westerly.

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  Why you drivin’west, Easy?” Jackson asked me.

  We were on Santa Monica Boulevard.

  “Goin’ back to Ozone to pick up your car, man.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the cops all over Beverly Hills got the description of this here hot rod.”

  “Oh yeah. Right.”

  o n t h e w a y to the nursing home Jackson stopped so that he could buy a potted white orchid.

  “For Jewelle?” I asked him.

  “For a old white man,” Jackson said with a grin.

  He was embarrassed that he didn’t pick up on why we needed to switch cars and so he came up with the trick to get us in the nursing home.

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  We decided to send Jackson in with the flowers and to see how far he could get. The ideal notion would be for Jackson to tell the old man that we had pictures of him in Germany hump-ing young women and girls. Failing that he might find a way to get us in on the sly. Every mansion we’d ever known had a back door and some poor soul held a key.

  I wasn’t sure that Rega Tourneau was mastermind of the problems I was trying to solve, but he was the centerpiece. And if he knew anything, I was going to do my best to find out what it was.

  Westerly was a big estate a few long blocks above Sunset.

  There was a twelve-foot brick wall around the green grounds and an equally tall wrought iron gate for an entrance. We drove past it once and then I parked a few woodsy blocks away.