“Take a look,” the shorter cop said to the taller one.
The partner wasn’t wearing a cap. He had brown hair and a long face like Stan Laurel’s, but vacant of any sympathy. He glared at the card, looked up at Jackson, then stared at the picture ID again.
“Well?” the short cop asked, his pistol pointed somewhere around my intestines.
“It says he’s senior vice president, Jackson Blue.”
“Shit.”
“That’s what it says, Sy. It’s his picture too.”
I glanced at Jackson. He was smiling. A man who spent an entire lifetime being afraid of his own shadow, smiling in the face of two white men with guns. It was the middle of the night but it was indeed a new day.
“Can I help you, officers?” someone asked.
Another white man, this one in a brown and tan private security uniform, had come out of the central doors of the block-wide building.
“Mr. Smollett,” Sy said. “This man here says he’s some kinda vice president.”
“That’s Mr. Blue,” Smollett said with deference. “He’s the vice president. Only man above him on this continent is the CEO.”
The hatless cop handed Jackson’s ID back. Sy lifted his pistol so that it was aimed at the middle of my forehead.
“What about this one?” Sy asked.
I knew from long experience that only the slightest shift in the situation could leave me dead on the pavement.
“Is he with you, sir?” Smollett asked Jackson.
“Yes, he is, Mr. Smollett. Easy here is my research partner.”
“Researching what?” Officer Sy asked. He could have crushed diamonds with the weight of that question.
“That’s privileged information, officer,” Jackson said in a condescending tone.
I wished he wouldn’t be so brave with a gun being leveled at me.
“Sy,” the other cop said. “Put the gun down, man.”
That was a life-on-the-line moment. Sy wanted to put me down. His whole world had been dashed by Smollett calling Jackson sir. He was further vexed by his partner, who was saying, Put your gun down because I can’t have your back in this.
The Civil War had ended more than a century before but the remnants could still be felt, still killed over on any street corner in the country.
Sy gazed deeply into my eyes. I tried my best to look like just some other guy. A few seconds ticked by and then the officer of the law lowered his gun.
The twenty-seventh floor of the P9 building was a huge library. When we walked in a hundred lights sprang to life. There were literally thousands of books on the shelves. The odd thing about them was that they were all the same size, in the same dark green bindings.
“You got every property in LA County in these?” I asked Jackson.
“Every property, property owner, and tax history of every parcel in the entire United States,” my friend corrected.
“How’s that even possible?”
“Seven maids with seven mops,” he replied.
He searched down the volume I needed. I, in turn, looked up a series of lots at the eastern end of the San Fernando Valley.
47
Lot AL3-47 occupied a lowland field about a mile and a half beyond the cabin where Craig Kilian stabbed Reynolds Ketch. As advertised, the bunker-like storage facility contained hand tools used for the cultivation of orange trees.
P9’s library was good enough to guide me, but it wasn’t perfect. I took the same footpath that led to the cabin and then kept going toward the shed. Arriving at the unit, I saw that there was a long dirt path leading there from the far side of the Blood Grove plantation. Parked at the end of the path was a bright red four-door Buick Electra.
My hand went automatically to the high-velocity .22 in my pocket and I crouched down into the tall grasses I’d trudged through. I could see the structure; therefore, logic had it, whoever owned that car might have seen me.
For at least ten minutes I stayed still, my palm sweating against the butt of the small-caliber gun. Nothing stirred. The unit was still and mute.
I had a decision to make. If I had gone unnoticed I might be able to get the drop on whoever it was in the little storage unit. But if they had seen me they could execute an ambush. If I tried to backtrack they might follow and bushwhack me from behind.
There were other options. I could circle around back, set the building on fire, and wait for the driver to rush out. But the stolen money could very well be in the unit. I didn’t think that Mr. Jericho or Eddie Brock would appreciate me turning their wealth to ashes.
I could wait for hours and hours as I often did in war.
Or I could carefully approach the little hut, armed and ready.
My patience had worn thin, so I decided on the straightforward option.
It was a small building, a tarpaper-and-pine toolshed, surrounded on three sides by shrubbery. The path to the front door was laid in brick. Upon that brick was the body of Kirkland Larker. He’d been shot a few times in the chest. There wasn’t much blood, so he’d probably died immediately.
His skin was still warm to the touch.
There was an expression of innocent surprise on the veteran’s face. He looked like many dead boys I’d seen on the long road to Berlin.
Next to Kirkland’s corpse was a metal footlocker. It didn’t take much imagination to see that Lola had known where the storage shed was located. She’d called him or his accomplice, telling them to go there and collect the blood money.
Whoever she called got there, but the money was well hidden just in case someone from the orchard needed a pair of pruning shears. Unlucky Kirkland and his armed confederate had been searching for a while. They knew I was coming. One of them knew I was there.
A sound, from off to the left, somewhere in the shrubbery.
Ever since Craig Kilian had come so silently into my office I had been remembering the war and the things I had to be able to do. The sound might have been nothing, but I pivoted, went down on one knee and aimed. The shot was no more than a pop. Before I registered the bullet thudding into the door behind, I fired twice.
She screamed once and the shooting stopped.
The woman I first knew as Donata Delphine was leaned up against a broad bush that held her like a thick, springy pillow. She was bleeding from the chest and in pain.
I took off my T-shirt, balled it up, and pressed it against the wound. The .32 pistol was in her hand but she didn’t have the strength to lift it. I took it from her anyway.
“Help,” she pleaded.
“Don’t talk,” I said.
“We can still make a deal.”
“After we stop the bleeding.”
“Help me and we can split the money,” she offered, a dying soul trying to make a deal with the devil.
“Like you did with Kirk?” Thick black blood seeped through my fingers.
“Please,” she said, and then she died.
There I was on my knees trying to save another enemy combatant on a very different field of battle. I wondered what happened to the German soldier I didn’t kill. I wondered if I would survive this operation.
That same afternoon Rufus Tyler, aka Charcoal Joe, set up a meeting between me and Mr. Jericho at an Italian bar on Angeles Street downtown. We sat at a small round table while Orrin Cause watched us intently from a stool at the bar.
“You have something for me?” were Jericho’s first words.
I told him the truth: ten minutes earlier I had called Brock and told him where the treasure tomb was located.
“I gave him the long way round,” I said. Then I dictated the driving directions.
“And the money?” Jericho asked.
“It’s in four green metal footlockers in the storage unit.”
“All of it?”
“As far as I can tell.”
“How much more do you want for this?”
“Breath will do me just fine.”
Jericho smiled.
I winced and said, “And there’s a couple of other things.”
“What?” he asked.
“First there’s a guy named Oliver Shellbourne, a real estate developer downtown.”
“What about him?”
“He’s been trying to bully a friend of mine to give up on a property. Her name is Jewelle Blue and I’d like you or one of your associates to ask Mr. Shellbourne to stand down.”
“Done. What else?”
“The woman stole your money and her fool got themselves killed up there. I didn’t sign up for grave-digging duty.”
Jericho peered at me. It felt as if he was looking into my soul; like some hell-spawn angel deciding whether or not I could be turned.
Finally he said, “You didn’t ask for this, Mr. Rawlins. Go on home. The details will sort themselves out.”
Details.
The next morning Brock Oldstein was found shot in the temple, sitting behind the steering wheel of a tan Volkswagen Bug on El Molino Avenue in Pasadena. The afternoon edition of the LA Herald Examiner reported that Dennis Plennery was arrested in a jail cell for the San Bernardino armored car job. He was being charged with the murder of the three guards and suspected in the deaths of his two partners—Reynolds Ketch and Alonzo Griggs, both of Los Angeles.
Craig Kilian’s death had already been reported as a criminal death perpetrated by an unidentified assailant.
Forty-eight hours after the shootout at Blood Grove I got a phone call at my office.
“Hello,” I said carelessly, putting down an article about the intelligence of octopuses.
“Mr. Rawlins?”
I hesitated and then said, “Miss Kilian.”
“Hi, Easy, um . . . did you go up to that storage place?”
“I did.”
“Did you find anything?”
“No. I think there might have been something there, though.”
“Oh? Why?”
“There was a trapdoor hidden under a big wood box. But somebody had moved the crate and cut off the padlock on the trapdoor. The space underneath was empty and it looked like something heavy had been dragged across the floor. You didn’t tell anybody about me asking you about the place, did you?”
“No. Of course not.” She sighed. “I suppose that’s it, then.”
“Yes, ma’am. I guess it is,” I said. “Sorry about Craig.”
Lola gasped and hung up.
I was pretty sure that she’d been in contact with Donata Delphine, that together, along with Larker, they made the plot to sideline Craig while they planned to get at the stolen monies. The one thing they were unable to understand was the bond between Larker and Craig. Kirkland had broken into the hazardous materials garage, taken the money, and handed it over to his friend. They were comrades and certain not to betray each other.
The only problem was putting me on the case.
Lola bet everything and lost it all.
Neither Kirkland Larker nor Donata Delphine was ever heard from again. Every now and then I think that the closest I ever came to death was at the hands of that woman. She was a nearly perfect predator in a world that scared the shit out of me.
48
It was 6:50 a.m. the next morning when I knocked on my backyard neighbors’ front door. I waited maybe thirty seconds before Stache answered. He was shirtless, shoeless, and more than a little perturbed that a black man in a powder-blue sports coat was standing on his porch.
“Yeah?” the hippie grumbled.
“Excuse me,” I said. “You don’t know me but I have an office in the building on the other side of your backyard. Third floor.”
“So?”
“I get there early in the morning and open my window to get some fresh air. Usually I see you coming out the back door with a watering can.”
“Okay,” he said, wondering.
A woman in a red robe appeared a few feet behind him.
“What is it, Rick?” she asked.
“Hold up, Linda,” Rick said, looking at me.
“Well,” I continued, “I can see not only your place but the whole block, and I have been noticing lately, maybe the last two weeks or so, a dark sedan parked a few houses down. The men sitting in that car wear shorts and bright shirts but they also have on black leather shoes.”
Linda had come up beside Rick by then. She had red hair and a face beautiful enough to adorn a Renaissance painting.
Rick’s brown eyes were working out the warning.
“Well,” I said again. “I just thought I’d say that. Recently I found out that I’ve got a hippie in my family.”
“Um, uh, thanks,” Rick said.
I nodded and smiled, then turned away.
Niska made it in at nine to nine to find me once more sitting at her reception desk.
“Hi, Mr. Rawlins. Anybody else here?”
“Saul asked me and Whisper to come up north to help him out. He said we’d both be back down by Friday.” I stood up then and moved aside.
“And how have you been while I was gone?” she asked once back in her chair.
“I thought spending the time alone would be restful. I was wrong. How was the retreat?”
“It was okay, I guess. Did you get the money from Mr. Zuma?” our receptionist/office manager asked.
I told her about my experiences with the collateral Rolls and how many times I had to discuss my temporary ownership with the police.
“That’s awful,” she said when I’d gotten through the tale. “Did you pick up another job while I was gone?”
I thought about Kilian and his mother, Brock and Jericho, the police and the FBI.
“No,” I said. “Didn’t you like the meditation retreat?”
“I met this guy. He’s kinda cute.”
That night Feather and I planned a vacation up to San Francisco. We’d bring her uncle and Dagmar too, if she was still with him by then.
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About the Author
Walter Mosley is one of America’s most celebrated and beloved writers. A Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America, he has won numerous awards, including the Anisfield-Wolf Award, a Grammy, a PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award, several NAACP Image Awards, and a lifetime achievement award from the National Book Foundation. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages. His short fiction has appeared in a wide array of publications, including The New Yorker, GQ, Esquire, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, and Playboy, and his nonfiction has been published in the New York Times Book Review, the New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, and The Nation. He is the author of the Easy Rawlins series, including, most recently, Charcoal Joe. He lives in New York City.
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