Cinnamon Kiss

“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

C i n n a m o n K i s s

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.”

2 3 7

W a lt e r M o s l e y

“An’ how you plan to do that, Easy?” Mouse asked.

“We go to the horse’s ass. We go to Robert E. Lee. He’s the one brought us in. He should be able to find out what the problem is.”

“What if he’s the problem?” Christmas asked.

“Then we’ll have to be smart enough to fool him into showing us that fact. The real problem is getting to him. I got the feelin’

that Maya doesn’t want that conversation to come about.”

“That’s easy,” Saul told us. “Call him now, when she’s not at work.”

a f t e r a s m a l l s t r a t e g y discussion Saul dialed the

number. It rang five times, ten. He wanted to hang up but I wouldn’t let him. After at least fifty rings Lee answered his business phone.

“It’s Saul Lynx, Mr. Lee. I’m calling you at this late hour because I have some fears that Maya may not be trustworthy. . . .

The way I feel right now, sir, I wouldn’t want to work for you again. . . . But you have to understand we believe . . . Mr. Rawlins and I believe that Axel Bowers was murdered and that Mr.

Haffernon was too. . . . Yes . . . Easy has talked with Maya a few times since that initial meeting and he told her that he located Miss Cargill and that he’d spoken to Axel. Did she tell you about that? . . . I assume that she hasn’t. . . . Sir, we need to meet . . .

No, not at your house . . . Not in San Francisco. . . . There’s a bar called Mike’s on Slauson in Los Angeles. Easy and I want to meet you there.”

There was a lot of argument about the meeting but Lee finally gave in. The way we figured it, if there was a problem between Maya and Lee he would have some inkling of it beyond our insin-uations. If he doubted her loyalty he’d have to take the meeting.

2 3 8

C i n n a m o n K i s s

As if she could read the vibrations in the air Easter Dawn made tea and brought it to us just when the call was over. Her father didn’t chastise her for leaving her room.

I took the child on my lap and she sat there comfortably, listening to the men.

“I’ll go with you and Raymond back to L.A.,” Saul said.

“No. Go to your family, man. Ray and me can see to this.”

“What about you?” Christmas asked Mouse.

“Naw, man. It ain’t no war. Just one white boy think he bad. If I cain’t take that then I’m past help.”

Easter brought out her dolls after that and we all told her how beautiful they were. She basked in the attention of the four men and Christmas was glad for her. After he put her to bed we all left. Mouse asked Christmas could he leave his red El Dorado there for a few days. He wanted to be able to strategize with me on the ride.

When we approached my flashy Pontiac I felt that I was leaving something, a fellowship that I’d not known before. Maybe it was just sadness at leaving a home when I was homeless.

2 3 9

37

In the front yard Saul came up to us, shook Mouse by the hand, and then drew me away.

“Easy, I know I got you into this mess,” he said. “Maybe I should come along.”

“No, Saul, no. Neither you or me got the stomach for a man like this killer. Really Mouse would be better on this alone.”

“Well then why don’t you grab Jesus and come up and stay with us at the cabin?”

“Because EttaMae would kill me if I let her husband get shot out there. It already happened one time. I got to cover his back and you got to go to your family.”

Saul gave me his hangdog stare. He was a homely man, there’s no doubt about that. I held out a hand and he grabbed on to it.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Don’t be. I asked you for the job and you came through for 2 4 0

C i n n a m o n K i s s

me. If I’m very lucky I’ll come out of this alive and with the money for Feather’s doctors. If I’m just plain old lucky I’ll just get the money.”

Saul nodded and turned to leave. I touched his arm.

“Why’d you want me to come out here?” I asked him. I thought I knew but I wanted to see what he had to say.

“I did Christmas a favor once. He’s the kind of guy that takes a debt seriously. I wanted you to know him if you got into a bind.

He’ll do whatever it takes to make things right.”

i t w a s l a t e

on the highway ride home. After my accident and two near misses I was paying close attention to the road and the speedometer. Mouse and I smoked with the windows down and the chilly breezes whipping around us.

After quite a while I asked, “So what’s that Christmas Black’s story?”

“What you mean?” Mouse asked. He understood my question; he was just naturally cagey.

“Is that his real name?”

“I think it is. All the kids in his family named after holidays. I think that’s what he told me once.”

“What’s his story?” I asked again.

“He a terror,” Mouse said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“He kilt a whole town once.”

“A what?”

“Whole town. Men, women, chirren. All of ’em. Every last one.” Mouse sneered thinking about it. “He kilt the dogs and the water buffaloes an’ burnt down all the houses an’ half the trees an’ crops. Mothahfuckah kilt every last thing ’cept a couple’a chickens an’ one baby girl.”

2 4 1

W a lt e r M o s l e y

“In Vietnam?”

“I guess it was. He didn’t give the town a name. Maybe it was Cambodia or Laos maybe. Shit, the way he tell it, it could’a been anywhere. They just put that boy in a plane an’ give him a para-chute an’ a duffel bag full’a guns an’ bombs. Wherever he land people had to die.”

“How do you know him?”

“Met once down in Compton. There was some guys thought they was bad messin’ wit’ a friend’a his. The dudes called themselves my friends an’ so I looked into it. When I fount out what they was doin’ I jes’ smiled at Christmas. He taught ’em a lesson an’ we went out to eat sour pork an’ rice.”

I was sure that there was more to the story but Raymond didn’t brag about his crimes much anymore.

“So he left the army after killin’ that village?”

“Yeah. I guess if you do sumpin’ like that it’s a li’l hard to live wit’. For him.”

“You wouldn’t take it hard if you had to kill like that?”

“I wouldn’t never have to kill like that, Easy. I ain’t never gonna be in no mothahfuckah’s army, jumpin’ out no plane, killin’ li’l brown folk. If I kill a town it’a be for me. An’ if it’s for me then I’ma be fine wit’ it.”

I rolled up my window then, the chill of Raymond’s words being enough for me.

For a long while I remained silent, even in my mind.

When we got to L.A. I asked Raymond where he was going.

“Home,” he said.

“With Etta and LaMarque?”

“What other home you evah hear me talk about?”

That was how I learned that his exile was over.

“You know what to do at Mike’s?”

2 4 2

C i n n a m o n K i s s

“What, now I’m stupid too?”

“Come on, Ray. You know how serious I am about this.”

“Sure I know what to do. When you get there we gonna be ready for Mr. Lee.”

I dropped him off at maybe three in the morning. He gave me the keys for his place on Denker. I went there, scaled the stairs, and climbed into bed, fully dressed. The sheets smelled of Georgette. I inhaled her tomato garden bouquet and was suddenly awake. Not the wakefulness of a man aroused by the memory of a woman. Georgette’s scent had aroused me but I had Christmas Black’s story in my mind.

I was so close to death at that time that my senses were at-tuned to its intricacies. My country was sending out lone killers to murder women and children in far-flung nations. While I slept in the security of Mouse’s hideaway innocent people were dying. And the taxes I paid on my cigarettes and the taxes they took out of my paycheck were buying the bullets and gassing up the bombers.

It was a state of mind, sure, but that didn’t mean that I was wrong. All those years our people had struggled and prayed for freedom and now a man like Christmas, who came from a whole line of heroes, was just another killer like all those white men had been for us.

Is that what we labored for all those years? Was it just to have the right to step on some other poor soul’s neck? Were we any better than the white men who lynched us in the night if we killed Easter Dawn’s mother and father, sister and brother, cousins and friends? If we could kill like that, everything that we fought for would be called into question. If we became the white men we hated and who hated us, then we were nowhere, nowhere at all.

2 4 3

W a lt e r M o s l e y

The sorrow in my heart finally came to rest on Feather. I thought about her dying and so I picked up the phone and called the long-distance operator.

“Allo?” Bonnie said in the French accent that came out whenever she was on the job in either Europe or Africa.

“It’s me.”

“Oh . . . hi, baby.”

“Hey . . . how’s Feather doin’?”

“The doctors say that she’s very, very sick.” She paused for a moment to hold back the grief. I took in a great gulp of air. “But they believe that with the proper transfusions and herbs, they can arrest the infection. And you don’t have to worry about the money for a few months. They’ll wait that long.”

“Thank Mr. Cham for that,” I said with hardly any bitterness in the words.

“Easy.”

“Yeah?”

“We have to talk, honey.”

“Yes. Yes we do. But right now I got my hands full with tryin’

to get Feather’s hospital bills paid without havin’ medical bills of my own.”

“I, I got your message,” she said, not identifying the man who answered the phone. “Is everything okay?”

“All you got to do is call EttaMae before you come back to the house. There’s a man I got to talk to first.”

“It’s been hard on me too, Easy. I had to do what I’ve done just to get —”

“Is Feather there?”

“No. She’s in the hospital, in a room with three other children.”

“There a phone in there?”

“Yes.”

2 4 4

C i n n a m o n K i s s

“Can I have the number?”

“Easy.”

“The number, Bonnie. Whatever we feelin’ it cain’t touch what’s goin’ on with her.”

“ h e l l o ? ”

“It’s your daddy, sugar,” I said.

“Daddy! Daddy! Where are you?”

“At Uncle Raymond’s. How are you, baby?”

“The nurses are so nice, Daddy. And the other girls with me are very sick, sicker than me. And they don’t speak English but I’m learning French ’cause they’re just too tired to learn a new language. One girl is named Antoinette like the queen and one is Julia . . .”

She sounded so happy but after a short while she was tired again.

“ h e l l o ? ”

“It’s me, Jackson.”

“Easy, do you know what time it is?”

It was four forty-seven by my watch.

“Were you asleep?” I asked. Jackson Blue was a night owl.

He’d party until near dawn and then read Voltaire for breakfast.

“No, but Jewelle is.”

“Sorry. You made any progress on those bonds?”

“I put the numbers through a telex in the foreign department.

They good to go, man. Good to go.”

“How much?”

“The one you told me about is eight thousand four hunnert eighty-two dollars and thirty-nine cent. That’s before fees.”

A hundred thousand dollars, maybe a little more. I couldn’t 2 4 5

W a lt e r M o s l e y

see Haffernon putting his life on the line for money like that. So it had to be the letter.

“Jackson.”

“Yeah, Ease?”

“You ever hear of a guy name of Joe Cicero? They call him Chickpea.”

“Never heard of him but he got to be a literate son of a bitch.”

“Why you say that?”

“ ’Cause the first Cicero, the Roman statesman, was called Chickpea. That’s what Cicero means, only in the old Latin they had hard c’s so you called it ‘Kikero.’ ”

“Yeah. He got a kick all right.”

2 4 6

38

Idreamed that I was a dead man in a coffin underground.

Down there nobody could get to me but I could see everything. Feather was playing in the yard, Jesus and Benny had a child that looked like me. Bonnie lived with Joguye Cham on a mountaintop in Switzerland that somehow overlooked the continent of Africa. Across the street from the cemetery there was a jail and in it were all the people, living and dead, who had ever tried to harm my loved ones.

I’d fallen asleep on my back with my hands on my thighs. I woke up in the same position. I was completely rested and happy that Mouse’s dreams infected mine.

It was after two. I had no job so the calendar and the clock lost meaning to me. It was like when I was a youngblood, running the streets hunting down love and the rent.

My passion had cooled in that imagined grave. The cold earth 2 4 7

W a lt e r M o s l e y

had leached out the pain and rage in my heart. Feather had a chance and I had a hundred thousand dollars in pay-on-demand bonds. Maybe I’d lost my woman. But, I reasoned, that was like if a man had come awake after a bad accident. The doctors tell him that he’s lost an arm. It’s a bad thing. It hurts and maybe he sheds tears. But the arm is gone and he’s still there. That’s some kind of luck.

m i k e ’ s b a r was in a large building occupying what had once been a mortuary. It had one large room and four smaller ones for private parties and meetings. In the old days, before I ever moved to L.A., the undertakers had a speakeasy behind their coffin repository. Mourners would come in grieving and leave with new hope.

Mouse knew about the old-time club because people liked talking to him. So we took the private room that used to store coffins and he secreted himself behind the hidden door. From there he could spy on the meeting with Lee.

This plan had a few points to recommend it. First, if Lee got hinky Mouse could shoot him through the wall. Also Mouse had a good ear. Maybe Lee would say something that he understood better than I. But the best thing was to have Mouse at that meeting without Lee seeing him; there might come a day when Raymond would have to get close to Lee without being recognized.

I got to the bar at six-twenty, ten minutes before the meeting was to take place. Sam Cooke was singing on the jukebox about the chain gang. Mike, a terra-cotta-colored man, stood statuelike behind his marble-top bar.

“Easy,” he called as I came in the door.

I looked around for enemies but all I saw were men and 2 4 8

C i n n a m o n K i s s

women hunched over small tables, drinking and talking under a haze of tobacco smoke.

“He in there,” Mike told me when I settled at the bar.

“He say anything?”

“Nope. Just that you was comin’ an’ that a tiny little white man was comin’ too. Told me that there might be another white guy in snakeskin, that if I saw him to give him a sign.”

“When the little white guy gets here make sure he’s alone,” I said. “If he is then send him in.”

“I know the drill,” Mike said.

Mouse had done the bartender a favor some years before.

Mike once told me that he was living on borrowed time because of what Raymond had done.

“Any favor he ask I gotta do,” Mike had said. “You got to die one day.”

I remembered those last words as I walked into the small room that had once held a few dozen coffins.

i t w a s a b r i g h t r o o m with a square pine table that had

been treated with oak stain. The chairs were all of one general style, but if you looked closely you could see they weren’t an exact match. Mouse was bunged up in the back wall, behind white plasterboard. I wondered if Lee would appreciate the poetry of our deception. He had watched me from behind a similar wall in his own house.

Raymond didn’t talk to me. This was business.

I lit a cigarette and let it burn between my fingers while searching the room for living things. There were no plants in the sunless chamber, of course. But neither was there a solitary fly or mosquito, roach or black ant. The only visible, audible life in 2 4 9

W a lt e r M o s l e y

that room was me. It was more solitary than a coffin because at least in the ground you had gnawing worms for company.

There came a knock and before I could reply the door swung open. Red-skinned Mike stuck his head in and said, “He’s cool, Easy.” Then he moved back and Robert E. Lee entered.

Lee wore a big mohair overcoat and a black, short-brimmed Stetson. He looked from side to side and then stepped up to the table. His footsteps were loud for such a small man.

“Have a seat,” I said.

“Where’s Saul?”

“Hiding.”

“From you?”

I shook my head. “Me’n Saul are friends. He’s hiding from our enemies.”

“Saul told me that he’d be here.”

“You’re here, man. Have a seat and let’s talk some business.”

He knew he would have to hear me out. But the white man hesitated, pretending that he was weighing the pros and cons of my request.

“All right,” he said finally. Then he pulled out the chair opposite me and perched on the edge.

“I got the bonds,” I said. “Bowers is most likely dead. So’s Haffernon.”

“Haffernon was my employer,” Lee told me. “Turn over what you’ve got and we’ll both walk away.”

“What about my ten thousand?”

“I have no more employer,” he said by way of explanation.

“Then neither do I.”

“What do you want from me, Rawlins?”

“To make a deal. I get a piece of the action and you call Cicero off my ass.”

2 5 0

C i n n a m o n K i s s

“Cicero? Joe Cicero?”

The honesty of his fear made me understand that the situation was far more complex than I thought.

“I’d never do business with a man like that,” Lee said with in-cantatory emphasis, like he was warding off an evil spell I’d cast.

“How do you know the guy if you don’t work with him?” I asked. “I mean he’s not in the kind of business that advertises.”

“I know of him from the newspapers and some of my friends in the prosecutor’s office. He was tried for the torture and murder of a young socialite from Sausalito. Fremont. Patrick Fremont.”

“Well he’s been runnin’ around lookin’ for that briefcase you hired me to find. He told me that he killed Haffernon and Axel and that me and my family are the next ones on his list.”

“That’s your problem,” Lee said. He shifted as if he might stand and run.

“Come on, man. You the one hired me. All I got to do is tell Chickpea that you the one got the bonds, that Maya picked ’em up someplace. Then he be on your ass.”

“Saul said something about Maya on the phone,” Lee said.

“Do you know anything about that?”

“A few days ago she fired me,” I said.

“Nonsense.”

“Then she hired me again when I told her that I’d found Philomena but refused to share my information.”

“How can I believe anything you say, Mr. Rawlins? First you tell me that Joe Cicero is after the bonds, then you say that my client and your quarry are dead, that you have the bonds we were after, and that Maya has betrayed me. But you don’t offer one shred of evidence.”

“You never told me about no bonds, Bobby Lee,” I said, falling into the dialect that gave me strength.

2 5 1

W a lt e r M o s l e y

“Maybe you heard about them.”

“Sure I did . . . from the woman had ’em — Philomena Cargill. She gave ’em to me to keep Cicero from makin’ her dearly departed.”

Somewhere in the middle of the conversation Lee had changed from a self-important ass to something much closer to a detective — I could see it in his eyes.

“So you have these bonds?” he asked.

“Sure do.”

“Give them to me.”

“I don’t have ’em here, an’ even if I did you’d have to take ’em.

Because you didn’t tell me about half the shit I was gettin’ into.”

“Detectives take chances.”

“An’ if I take ’em,” I said, “then you gonna take ’em too.”

“You can’t threaten me, Rawlins.”

“Listen, babe, you just named after a dead general. With the shit I got I could threaten Ike himself.”

It was the certainty in my voice that tipped him to my side.

“You say Maya fired you?”

“Said that you’d concluded the case and that my services would no longer be needed.”

“But she didn’t tell you about the bonds?”

“No,” I said. “All she said was that we were through and that I could keep the money I already had.”

“I need proof,” Lee said.

“There was a murder at the Pixie Inn motel this afternoon.

The man found there is Haffernon.”

“Even if that’s so it doesn’t prove anything,” Lee said. “You could have killed him yourself.”

“Fine. Go on then. Leave. I tried to warn you. I tried.”

Lee remained seated, watching me closely.

2 5 2

C i n n a m o n K i s s

“I know some federal officials that could look into Cicero,” he said. “They could get him out of the action until the case is re-solved. And if we can pin these murders on him . . .”

“You sayin’ that we could be partners?”

“I need proof about Maya,” he said. “She’s been with me for many years. Many years.”

“When it’s over we could set her up,” I offered. “Agree to give her the bonds or put her with Cinnamon and record what she says. I think those two would like each other. But I need you to do somethin’ about Cicero. That mothahfuckah make a marble statue sweat.”

Lee smiled. That gave me heart about him. In my many years I had come to understand that humor was the best test for intelligence in my fellow man. The fact that Lee gained respect for me because of a joke gave me hope that he would come to sensible conclusions.

“He really came to you?” Lee asked.

“Right up in my office. Told me to give up Cinnamon or else my family would be dead.”

“He mentioned her name?”

I nodded. “Philomena Cargill.”

“And you have the bonds?”

“Sure do.”

“How many?”

“Twelve.”

“Was there anything else with them?”

“They were in a brown envelope. No briefcase or anything.”

“Was there anything attached?”

“Like what?” I was holding back a little to see how much he was willing to give.

“Nothing,” he said. “So what do we do now?”

2 5 3

W a lt e r M o s l e y

“You go home. Gimme a way to get in touch with you and I will in two days. In that time figure out what you need on Maya and talk to who you need to about J.C.”

“And what do you do?”

“Keep from gettin’ killed the best I can, sit on those bonds while they accrue interest.”

He gave me a private phone number that only he answered.

He rose and so did I. We shook hands.

He was sweating under that heavy coat. He was probably armed under there. I would have been.

2 5 4

39

Thirty seconds after Lee left, a section of the wall to my left wobbled and then moved back. Mouse came out through the crack wearing a red suit and a black shirt. He was smiling.

“You didn’t tell me you had the bonds, Ease.”

“Sure I did. The same time I told Lee.”

The smile remained on Raymond’s face. He never minded a man holding his cards close to the vest. All that mattered to him was that in the end he got his proper share of the pot.

“What you think?” I asked as we emerged into the barroom.

“I like that dude. He got some nuts on him. An’ he smart too. I know that ’cause a minute after he walked in I figgered I’d have to shoot the mothahfuckah in the head he mess around.”

That was sixty seconds after Lee had left the room. We made 2 5 5

W a lt e r M o s l e y

it halfway to the bar. Mouse ordered scotch and I was about to ask for a Virgin Mary when six or seven cracks sounded outside.

“What was that?” Mike shouted.

I looked at Raymond. He had his long barreled .41 caliber pistol in his hand.

Then two explosions thundered from the street. Shotgun blasts.

I headed for the door, pulling the pistol from my pocket as I went. Mouse was ahead of me. He threw the door open, moving low and to his left. A motor revved and tires squealed. I saw a car (I couldn’t place the model) fishtailing away.

“Easy!” Mouse was leaning over Robert Lee, ripping open his overcoat and shirt.

There was a sawed-off shotgun next to the master detective’s right hand and blood coming freely from the right side of his neck. When Mouse tore the shirt I could see the police-issue bulletproof vest with at least five bullet holes.

Mouse grinned. “Oh yeah. Head shot the only way to go.”

He clasped his palm on the neck wound. Lee looked up at us, gasping. He was going into shock but wasn’t quite there yet.

“She betrayed me,” he said.

“Get the car, Easy. This boy needs some doctor on him.”

i s a t w i t h l e e in the backseat while Mouse drove Primo’s hot rod. I had the general’s namesake’s head and shoulders propped up on my lap while holding his own torn shirt against the wound.

“She betrayed me,” Lee said again.

“Maya?”

“I told her that I was coming to see Saul.”

“Did you say why?”

2 5 6

C i n n a m o n K i s s

His eyes were getting glassy. I wasn’t sure that he heard me.

“She doesn’t know, but if what you said, you said, you said . . .”

“Hold on, Bobby. Hold on.”

“She knew. She knew where we were meeting. I didn’t tell her what Saul said. I didn’t, but she betrayed me to that snake, that snake Cicero.”

He never closed his eyes but he passed out still and all. I couldn’t get another word out of him.

i t w a s a s l o w n i g h t in the emergency room. Lee was the only gunshot wound in the place. Maybe it was because of that, or maybe it was his being white that got him such quick service that day. They had him in a hospital bed and hooked up to three machines before I had even finished filling out the paperwork.

Five minutes after that the cops arrived.

When I saw the three uniforms come in I turned to Mouse, intent on telling him to ditch his gun. But he was nowhere to be seen. Mouse knew that those cops were coming before they did.

He was as elusive in the street as Willie Pepp had been in the ring.

“Are you the man that brought him in?” the head cop, a silver-haired sergeant, asked me right off.

The other uniforms performed a well-rehearsed flanking maneuver.

“Sure did. Easy Rawlins. We were meeting at Mike’s Bar and he’d just left. I heard shots and ran out . . . found him lying on the ground. There was a car racin’ off but I can’t even say for sure what color it was.”

“There was a report of a sawed-off shotgun on the ground.

Who did that belong to?”

2 5 7

W a lt e r M o s l e y

“I have no idea, Officer. I saw the gun but I left it . . . for evidence.”

I was too cool for that man. He was used to people being agi-tated after a shooting.

“You say you were having a drink with the victim?” he asked.

“I said I was having a meeting with him.”

“What kind of meeting?”

“I’m a detective, Sergeant. Private. Mr. Lee — that’s the victim — he’s a detective too.”

I handed him my license. He studied the card carefully, made a couple of notes in a black leather pocket notebook, and then handed it back.

“What were you working on?”

“A security background check on a Maya Adamant. She’s an operative who works with him from time to time.”

“And why did you flee the scene?”

“You ever been shot in the neck, Sergeant?”

“What?”

“I hope not, but if ever that should happen I’m sure that you would want somebody to take you to a doctor first off. ’Cause you know, man, ain’t no police report in the world worth bleedin’

to death out on Slauson.”

The sergeant wasn’t a bad guy. He was just doing his job.

“Did you see the shooter?” he asked.

“No sir. Just what I said about the car.”

“Did the victim . . .”

“Lee,” I said.

“Did he say anything?”

“No.”

“Did the shooter get shot?”

“I don’t know.”

2 5 8

C i n n a m o n K i s s

“They found blood halfway up the block,” the sergeant said.

“That’s why I ask.”

He peered into my face. I shook my head, hoping that Joe Cicero was dying somewhere.

A young white doctor with a pointy nose came up to us.

“Your friend is going to be fine,” he told me. “No major vascu-lar damage. The shot went through.”

“Can I speak to him?” the policeman asked the doctor.

“He’s in shock and under sedation,” the doctor said. He wouldn’t meet the policeman’s eye. I wondered what secrets he had to hide. “You won’t be able to talk to him until morning.”

Blocked there the cop turned back to me.

“Can you tell me anything else, Rawlins?”

I could have told him to call me mister but I didn’t.

“No, Sergeant. That’s all I know.”

“Do you think this woman you’re investigating might have something to do with it?”

“I couldn’t say.”

“You say you were investigating her.”

“My findings were inconclusive,” I said, falling out of dialect.

The cop stared at me a moment more and then gave up.

“I have your information. We may be calling you.”

I nodded and the police took the doctor somewhere for his report.

e v e r y t h i n g c a l m e d d o w n after half an hour or so. The police left, the doctor went on to other patients. Mouse was long gone.

I stayed around because I knew that someone wanted Lee dead, and so while he was unconscious I thought I’d watch over him. This wasn’t as selfless an act as it might have seemed. I still 2 5 9

W a lt e r M o s l e y

needed the haughty little detective to run interference with Cicero. I didn’t know if Lee had actually seen Cicero shoot at him, if Lee had shot him, and, if he had, if the wound would ulti-mately be fatal. I had to play it as if Cicero was still in the game and as deadly as ever.

The only thing worth reading in the magazine rack in the waiting room was a science fiction periodical called Worlds of Tomorrow. I found a story in it called “Under the Gaddyl.” It was a tale about man’s future, the white man’s future, where all of white humanity was enslaved under an alien race — the Gaddyl.

The purpose of the main character, a freed slave, was to emanci-pate his people. I read the story in a kind of wonderment. Here white people all over the country understood the problems that faced me and mine but somehow they had very little compassion for our plight.

I was thinking about that when a shadow fell over my page. I knew by the scent who it was.

“Hello, Miss Adamant,” I said without looking up.

“Mr. Rawlins.”

She took the seat next to me and leaned over, seemingly filled with concern.

“He knows you set him up. He told the cops that,” I said.

“What are you talking about?”

“He knows that you sent Cicero down to blow him away.”

“But I . . . I didn’t.”

She was good.

“If you don’t know nuthin’ about tonight then what the fuck you doin’ here? How the hell you know to find him in this emergency room?”

“I came down because I knew you or Saul would tell him about our conversations. I wanted to talk to him, to explain.”

2 6 0

C i n n a m o n K i s s

“So you were outside the bar?” I asked. “Watchin’ your boss get shot down?”

“No. I was at the Clarendon Hotel. I heard on the news about the shooting. I knew where the meeting was.”

“What about Cicero?” I asked.

Her face went blank. I could tell that this was her way of going inward and solving some problem. I was the problem.

“He called me,” she said.

“When?”

“After you came to see us. He wanted to talk to Mr. Lee but I told him that all information had to go through me. He said that we had interests in common, that he wanted to find Philomena Cargill and a document that Axel had given her.”

“And what did you say?”

“I told him that I didn’t know where she was.”

If she could have, Maya would have stopped right there. But I moved my hands around in a helpless manner like Boris Karloff ’s Frankenstein’s monster did just after he murdered the little girl.

“He said that he wanted to meet with you and did I know where you were,” she added.

“Me?”

“He said that if anybody could find Philomena that you could.”

“How did he know about me?” I asked.

“He didn’t say.”

“You didn’t tell him?”

“No.”

“How did he know how to call you in the first place?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you tell anyone that I was working for you?” I asked.

2 6 1

W a lt e r M o s l e y

“No.”

“Did your boss?”

“I do all the talking about business,” she said with a hint of contempt in her voice.

“And so you told Cicero where I was?”

“I didn’t know. But when Mr. Lee said that he was coming down to meet Saul I called Cicero. I had been trying to get in touch with Mr. Lynx but he didn’t answer his phones. I told Cicero where Saul would be, thinking that he might help him find you.”

“And what would you get out of that?”

“Cicero has a reputation,” she replied.

“Yeah,” I said. “Assassin. Torturer.”

“That may be. But he is always known to meet his side of a bargain. I told him what I wanted for the information and he agreed.”

“You wanted the bonds,” I said.

“Yes.”

I didn’t say anything, just stared at her.

“That little bastard pays me seven dollars an hour with no benefits. He makes more than a quarter million a year,” she said in defense from my gaze, “and I do almost everything. I’m on duty twenty-four hours a day. He calls me home from vacations.

He makes me talk to everybody, do the books, do all the business. I make all of the major decisions while he sits behind his desk and plays with his toy soldiers.”

“Sounds like a good enough reason to kill him,” I said.

“No. If I got the bonds I could cash them in and set up a retirement fund. That’s all I wanted.”

“Is that why you and Lee were feuding when Saul and I were there?”

2 6 2

C i n n a m o n K i s s

“Yes. Mr. Lee didn’t want to take the case but . . . but I hoped to be able to get hold of the bonds, and so I had talked him into it. He was looking for a way out of it, he didn’t like the smell of Haffernon. When you demanded to meet him he almost let it go.”

“So why would Cicero want to kill Lee?”

“I don’t know but I would suspect that whatever job he was working on, Lee’s death had to be part of it.”

“Maybe yours too,” I suggested.

She blanched at the notion.

2 6 3

40

After our chat I asked Maya to come up with me to the nurses’ station. There I introduced her to the pointy-nosed doctor and to Mrs. Bernard, the bespectacled head nurse.

“This is Miss Maya Adamant,” I said. “She’ll tell you that she’s a friend of Mr. Lee’s, but the police suspect her in his shooting.

They don’t have proof, but you probably shouldn’t let her run around here unsupervised.”

The stunned look on their faces was worth it.

Maya smiled at them and said, “It’s a misunderstanding. I work for Mr. Lee. At any rate I’ll wait until he’s conscious and then you can ask him if he wants to talk to me.”

t h e m o r n i n g w a s c h i l l y but I didn’t feel so bad.

I missed having Bonnie to call. For the past few years I’d been able to talk to her about anything. That had been a new experience 2 6 4

C i n n a m o n K i s s

for me. Never before could I fully trust another human being. If it was five in the morning and I’d been out all night I could call her and she’d be there as fast as she could. She never asked why but I always explained. Being with her made me understand how lonely I’d been for all my wandering years. But being alone again made me feel that I was back in the company of an old friend.

I was worried about Feather’s survival but she had sounded good on the phone and there was already new blood flowing in her veins.

Blood and money were the currencies I dealt in. They were inseparable. This thought made me feel even more comfortable.

I figured that if I knew where I stood then I had a chance of getting where I was going.

i p a r k e d a c r o s s t h e s t r e e t from Raphael Reed’s

apartment building a little after seven. I had coffee in a paper cup. The brew was both bitter and weak but I drank it to stay awake. Maybe Cinnamon was with the young men. I could hope.

Sitting there I went over the details I had. I knew more about Lee’s case than anyone, but still there were big holes. Cicero was definitely the killer, but who held his reins? He couldn’t have been a player in the business. He could have worked for anybody: Cinnamon, Maya, even Lee, or maybe Haffernon.

Maybe Bowers hired him back in the beginning. It would be good to know the answers if the police came to see me.

Near nine Raphael’s friend Roget came out the front door of the turquoise building. He carried a medium-sized suitcase. He could have had a change of underwear in there, could have been going to visit his mother, but I was intrigued. And so when the high-yellow freckled boy climbed into a light blue Datsun I turned over my own engine.

2 6 5

W a lt e r M o s l e y

He led me all the way to Hollywood before parking in front of a boxy four-story house on Delgado. He walked up the driveway and into the backyard. After a moment I followed.

He went to the front door of a small house back there. He knocked and was admitted by someone I couldn’t see. I went back to the car. When I sat down exhaustion washed over me. I lay back on the seat for just a moment.

Two hours later the sun on my face woke me up.

The blue Datsun was gone.

s h e w a s w e a r i n g

a T-shirt, that’s all. The soft outline of her nipples pressed against the white cotton. The dark color pressed against it too.

After answering my knock she didn’t know whether to smile or to run.

“What do you want from me now?” she asked. “I gave you the bonds.”

“Can I come in?”

She backed away and I entered. It was yet another cramped cabinlike room. The normal-sized furniture crowded the small space. There was a couch and a round table upon which sat a portable T V. A radio on the window shelf played Mozart. Her musical taste shouldn’t have surprised me but it did.

On the table was an empty glass jar that once held nine Vienna sausages, a half-drunk tumbler of orange juice, and a depleted bag of barbecue potato chips.

“You want something to drink?” she asked me.

“Water be great,” I said.

She went through a tiny doorway. I heard the tap turn on and off and she returned with an aqua-colored plastic juice tumbler filled with water.

2 6 6

C i n n a m o n K i s s

I drank it down in one gulp.

“You want more?”

“Let’s talk,” I said.

She sat down on one end of the golden sofa. I took the other end.

“What do you want to know?”

“First — who knows you’re here?”

“Just Raphael and Roget. Now you.”

“Do they gossip?”

“Not about this. Raphael knows someone’s after me and Roget does whatever Raphael says.”

“Why’d you kill Haffernon?” It was an abrupt and brutal switch calculated to knock her off track. But it didn’t work.

“I didn’t,” she said evenly. “I found him there and ran but I didn’t kill him. No. Not me.”

What else could she say?

“How does that work?” I asked. “You find a dead man in your own room but don’t know how he got killed?”

“It’s the truth.”

I shook my head.

“You look tired,” she said, sympathy blending in with her words.

“How’d Haffernon get to your room?”

“I called him.”

“When?”

“Right after I met you. I called him and told him that I wanted to get rid of the bonds. I asked him would he buy them off me for face value.”

“And what about the letter?”

“He’d get that too.”

“When was this meeting supposed to happen?”

2 6 7

W a lt e r M o s l e y

“Today. This afternoon.”

“So how does he show up dead on your floor yesterday?”

“After the last time I talked to you I realized that Haffernon could just send that man in the snakeskin jacket to kill me and take the bonds, so I went to Raphael and asked him to take the bonds to your friend.”

“Why?”

“Because even though I hardly know you, you seem to be the most trustworthy person I’ve met, and anyway . . .” Her words trailed off as better judgment took the wheel.

“Anyway what?”

“I figured that you wouldn’t know what to do with the bonds and so I didn’t have to worry about you cashing them.”

That made me laugh.

“What’s so funny?”

I told her about Jackson Blue, that he was willing at that moment to cash them in. I could see the surprise on her face.

“My Uncle Thor once told me that for every one thing you learn you forget something else,” I said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That while they were teaching you all’a that smart white world knowledge at Berkeley you were forgetting where you came from and how we survived all these years. We might’a acted stupid but you know you moved so far away that you startin’ to think the act is true.”

Cinnamon smiled. The smile became a grin.

“Tell me exactly what happened with Haffernon,” I said.

“It’s like I said. I called him and made an appointment for him to meet me at the motel —”

“At what time?”

2 6 8

C i n n a m o n K i s s

“Today at four,” she said. “Then I got nervous and went to give the bonds to Raphael to give to your friend —”

“What time was that?”

“Right after I talked to you. I got back by about five. That’s when I saw him on the floor. He’d been early, real early.”

“But who could have killed him if you didn’t?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “It wasn’t me. But when I talked to him he said that he wasn’t the only interested party, that what Axel planned to do would sink many innocent people.”

I thought about the bullet that killed Haffernon. It had entered at the base of the skull and gone out through the top. He was a tall man. In all probability either a very short man or a woman had done him in.

“Did you give your real name at the motel?”

“No. I didn’t. I called myself Mary Lornen. That’s the names of two people I knew up north.”

Proof is a funny thing. For policemen and for lawyers it depends on tangible evidence: fingerprints, eyewitnesses, irrefut-able logic, or self-incrimination. But for me evidence is like morning mist over a complex terrain. You see the landscape and then it’s gone. And all you can do is try to remember and watch your step.

The fact that Philomena had delivered those bonds to Primo meant something. It gave me doubts about her guilt. While I was having these thoughts Philomena moved across the couch.

“Kiss me,” she commanded.

2 6 9

41

Cinnamon’s kiss was a spiritual thing. It was like the sudden and unexpected appeasement between the east and west. A barrier fell away, forgiveness flooded my heart, and somewhere I was granted redemption for all my transgressions.

“I need this,” she whispered. “It doesn’t have to mean anything.”

She pressed her breasts against me, positioning me so that I was leaning back on the arm of the sofa. Then she grabbed my ankles and pulled hard so that, with my help, she got me flat on my back.

She lifted the white T-shirt to straddle me. When she did so I caught a glimpse of her protruding pubic hair. I felt like a child seeing something that had been kept from him for what seemed like an eternity.

“Wh-what do you need?” I said, embarrassed by my stutter.

2 7 0

C i n n a m o n K i s s

She moved down to my shins and reached up to catch the waist of my pants. With a quick tug she had both my pants and boxers down to my knees. Then she came up again.

Just before settling back down she said, “I need your warmth.”

The feel of her hot sex sitting down on mine gave the hiss of her words a deeper meaning.

“Pull up your shirt,” she said.

She began rocking gently back and forth and to the sides, doing things with my erection, which lay flat against my belly, that I would never have thought of on my own. I watched closely, looking for passion. But she was in control. The feeling was inside and she was keeping it there. She laid her hands upon my chest. I could see a finger against my erect nipple but I couldn’t feel it.

“Was he your lover?” I asked. It was the last thing on my mind.

“Axel?”

“Sure.”

“Sure,” she repeated.

“What were you guys doing?”

“You mean how did we do it?”

“No. Those bonds. That letter.”

“He loved me,” she said. “He wanted to help me cross over from where everybody else was.”

I understood every word, every inflection. She moved side to side and I felt her excitement down between my thighs even if it didn’t show on her face.

“You love him?”

“If I tell you about him will you tell me something?”

I nodded and gulped.

“What do you want to know?” she asked.

2 7 1

W a lt e r M o s l e y

“Do you love him?” I asked even though there was another question in my mind.

“It’s more than that,” she whispered with a sneer and an evil twist of her hips. “He reached out and saved my life. He took me in his house and then left me there with all those treasures. He introduced me to friends and family and never walked into a room where I couldn’t go with him. And he never gave me a dime I didn’t work for and he did what I told him to do.”

The idea of a man obeying this woman brought a sound from my chest that I’d not heard before, not even from some infant that was all feelings and desire.

“He let me help him,” she said. “He recognized that I was smart and educated and that I could understand him better than all those old white men and women that made him ashamed.”

“Were you helping him with those bonds?” I asked, again a question I didn’t care to ask.

“That was him. That was his devil.”

She lifted off of me and cold concern rose in my face. She smiled and came back down.

“My turn,” she said with a swivel.

“What?”

“What’s making you so sad?” she asked.

In a flood of words I told her about Feather and about Bonnie, who was saving her while in the arms of an African prince in the Alps. It sounded like a bad movie but the words kept coming. It was almost as if I couldn’t inhale before finishing the tale.

Her fingernail got caught on my nipple. A shock made me jump and press hard against her sex.

“Oh!” she said and then snagged the nipple again.

She’d found another way to pleasure us both. My breath was coming harder.

2 7 2

C i n n a m o n K i s s

In between her rocking and snagging she said, “All men feel that women do them wrong. They feel like that all the time. But that’s just silly. Here you got a woman givin’ up everything to save your little girl and all you can think about is a passing fancy or even maybe another lover. What do you think they’re doin’

right now?”

I reached out and pinched one of her nipples and then the other.

She liked that but only showed it by inhaling deeply.

And to show me that it wasn’t too overwhelming she began to speak again.

“It’s like when Axel’s older cousin Nina got jealous of me bein’

in his bed. She loved him in another way; like Bonnie loves you.

You shouldn’t be jealous of her. You should be happy that she can give your little girl life.”

Those were the words I had wanted to hear, needed to hear for days. I opened my mouth but she spoke first.

“No,” she said, pinching my nipples hard and then pounding down, her sex against mine. “No. No more. Come to me.”

I came all at once, before I was ready. She smiled but didn’t slow the hammerlike rhythm against my erection. It hurt but I didn’t throw her off or complain. And after a few seconds I had another orgasm. I guess that’s what it was. It happened somewhere inside my body. All of a sudden there was a dam I didn’t know about and it broke open and everyone in its path was drowned.

w h e n i a w o k e ,

the woman who might have been a murderer was lying along my side with her head nestled against my shoulder. I knew almost nothing about Philomena Cargill and yet she had touched me in a place I couldn’t even have imagined 2 7 3

W a lt e r M o s l e y

on my own. Was she like this for all men? A fertility goddess come from Africa somewhere to bedevil mortal men with something they could never know without her? Her hand was on my limp sex. But as soon as I saw it I began to get hard again.

“We should get cleaned up,” she said, awakening to my arousal.

“Yeah. Yeah.”

There was a jury-rigged shower nozzle attached to the wall above the small bathtub in the restroom. We washed each other.

Physically I was as excited as I had been on the couch but my mind was free.

“Where does Axel’s cousin live?” I asked.

“Down in L.A. somewhere.” In her mind she was still in Berkeley.

“And is she related to the family business somehow?”

“Nina’s father was the man who started the company. He’s Tourneau, Rega Tourneau.”

“Was he part of the company before the war?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Is he still alive?”

She began to lather my pubic hair, working deftly around the erection. “He’s very old. Ninety I think. Nobody in the family likes him.”

After the shower I was still straining with excitement. Cinnamon stood in front of me, smiling, and asked, “Are you going to leave now?”

I wanted to leave because I knew somehow that I’d lose something of my soul if I let her make love to me again.

“No,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

2 7 4

42

Ididn’t leave Philomena’s until early the next morning. It had been a long time since I’d spent a night like that. Georgette was wonderful and passionate but Cinnamon Cargill was the spice of sex with no impediments of love at all. Where Georgette kissed me and told me that she wanted to take me home forever, Cinnamon just sneered and used sex like a surgeon’s knife. She never said one nice or kind thing, though physically she loved me like I was her only man.

When she’d leave the room to go to the toilet she seemed surprised, and not necessarily happy, to see me when she returned.

She told me all about old Rega Tourneau. He was the family patriarch, born in the last century. He had married Axel’s father’s aunt and so there was some family connection there — though not by blood.

“The old man had a sour temperament,” Philomena said.

2 7 5

W a lt e r M o s l e y

“When he was a boy he was caught in a boiler explosion that scarred his face and blinded his eye.”

When he retired he became reclusive and removed.

He had a disagreement with Nina about the man she married.

Rega didn’t like him and so he disowned his daughter. As far as Philomena knew, Nina was still out of the will.

Nina Tourneau eventually separated from her husband and tried to become an artist down in Southern California somewhere. When that failed she became an art dealer.

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

C i n n a m o n K i s s

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

W a lt e r M o s l e y

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.

2 7 8

C i n n a m o n K i s s

“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.

2 7 9

W a lt e r M o s l e y

“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.”

2 8 0

43

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

The problem was that the place he 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.”

2 8 1

W a lt e r M o s l e y

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.

2 8 2

C i n n a m o n K i s s

“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?”

2 8 3

W a lt e r M o s l e y

“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.

2 8 4

C i n n a m o n K i s s

“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?”

2 8 5

W a lt e r M o s l e y

“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 asked. “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.

2 8 6

44

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.

2 8 7

W a lt e r M o s l e y

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.

For a disguise Jackson buttoned the top button of his shirt, turned the lapels of his jacket up, and put on his glasses.

“Jackson, you really think this is gonna work? I mean here you wearin’ a two-hundred-dollar suit. They gonna know somethin’s up.”

“They gonna see my skin before they see anything, Easy. Then the flowers, then the glasses. By the time they get to the suit they minds be made up.”

After he left I lay down across the backseat.

There was an ache behind my eyes and my testicles felt swollen. Back when I was younger that pain would have been a point of pride. I would have worked it into street conversation.

But I was too old to mask pain with bluster.

After a few moments I fell into a deep slumber.

Haffernon was standing there next to me. We were locked in a bitter argument. He told me that if he hadn’t done business with the Nazis then someone else would have.

“That’s how money works, fool,” he said.

2 8 8

C i n n a m o n K i s s

“But you’re an American,” I argued.

“How could you of all people say something like that?” he asked with real wonder. “Your grandparents were the property of a white man. You can’t ever walk in my shoes. But still you believe in the ground I stand on?”

I felt a rage growing in my chest. I would have smashed his face if a gun muzzle hadn’t pressed up against the base of his skull. Haffernon felt the pressure but before he could respond the gun fired. The top of his head erupted with blood and brain and bone.

The killer turned and ran. I couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman, only that he (or she) was of slight stature. I ran after the assassin but somebody grabbed my arm.

“Let me go!” I shouted.

“Easy! Easy, wake up!”

Jackson was shaking my arm, waking me just before I caught the killer. I wanted to slap Jackson’s grinning face. It took me a moment to realize that it was a dream and that I’d never find a killer that way.

But still . . .

“What you got, Jackson?”

“Rega Tourneau is dead.”

“Dead?”

“Died in his sleep last night. Heart failure, they said. They thought that I was bringing the flowers for the funeral.”

“Dead?”

“The lady at the front desk told me that he’d been doin’ just fine. He’d had a lot of visitors lately. The doctors felt that maybe it was too much excitement.”

“What visitors?”

“You got a couple’a hunnert dollars, Easy?”

2 8 9

W a lt e r M o s l e y

“What?” Now awake, I was thinking about Rega Tourneau dying so conveniently. It had to be murder. And there I was again, scoping out the scene of the crime.

“Two hunnert dollars,” Jackson said again.

“Why?”

“Terrance Tippitoe.”

“Who?”

“He’s one’a the attendants up in there. While I was waitin’ to see the receptionist we talked. Afterwards I told him I thought I knew how he could make some scratch. He be off at three.”

“Thanks, Mr. Blue. That’s just what I needed.”

“Let’s go get lunch,” he suggested.

“You just ate a little while ago.”

“I know this real good place,” he said.

I flopped back down and he started the car. I closed my eyes but sleep did not come.

“ y e a h , e a s y , ” Jackson was saying.

I was stabbing at a green salad while he chowed down on a T-bone steak at Mulligan’s on Olympic. We had a booth in a corner. Jackson was drinking beer, proud of his work at the Westerly Nursing Home. But after the third beer his self-esteem turned sour.

“I used to be afraid,” he said. “All the time, day and night. I used to couldn’t go to sleep ’cause there was always some fear in my mind. Some man gonna find out how I cheated him or slept wit’ his wife or girlfriend. Some mothahfuckah hear I got ten bucks an’ he gonna stove my head in to get it.”

“But now you got a good job and it’s all fine.”

“Job ain’t shit, Easy. I mean, I like it. Shoot, I love it. But the job ain’t what calms my mind. That’s all Jewelle there.”

2 9 0

C i n n a m o n K i s s

He snorted and wiped his nose with the back of his hand.

“What’s the matter, Jackson?”

“I know it cain’t last, that’s what.”

“Why not? Jewelle love you more than she loved Mofass and she loved him more than anything before he died.”

“ ’Cause I’m bound to fuck it up, man. Bound to. Some woman gonna crawl up in my bed, some fool gonna let me hold onta his money. I been a niggah too long, Easy. Too long.”

I was worried about Feather, riding on a river of sorrow and rage named Bonnie Shay, scared to death of Joe Cicero, and faced with a puzzle that made no sense. Because of all that I appreciated Jackson’s sorrowful honesty. For the first time ever I felt a real kinship with him. We’d known each other for well over twenty-five years but that was the first time I felt true friendship for him.

“No, Jackson,” I said. “None’a that’s gonna happen.”

“Why not?”

“Because I won’t let it happen. I won’t let you fuck up. I won’t let you mess with Jewelle. All you got to do is call me and tell me if you’re feelin’ weak. That’s all you got to do.”

“You do that for me?”

“Damn straight. Call me anytime day or night. I will be there for you, Jackson.”

“What for? I mean . . . what I ever do for you?”

“We all need a brother,” I said. “It’s just my turn, that’s all.”

t e r r a n c e t i p p i t o e

was a small, dark-colored man who

had small eyes that had witnessed fifty or more years of hard times. He had told Jackson to meet him at a bus stop on Sunset at three-oh-five. We were there waiting. Jackson made the introductions (my name was John Jefferson and his was George 2 9 1

W a lt e r M o s l e y

Paine). I set out what I needed. For his participation I’d give him two hundred dollars.

Terrance was pulling down a dollar thirty-five an hour at that time and since I hadn’t asked him to kill anyone he nodded and grinned and said, “Yes sir, Mr. Jefferson. I’m your man.”

A time was made for Jackson to meet Terrance a few hours later.

Before Jackson and I separated back in Santa Monica, he agreed to lend me the two hundred.

The world was a different place that afternoon.

2 9 2

45

Iwent back to the hospital and got directions at the main desk to Bobby Lee’s new room. Sitting in a chair beside Lee’s door was an ugly white man with eyebrows, lips, and nose all at least three times too big for his doughy face. Even seated he was a big man. And despite his bulky woolen overcoat I could appreciate the strength of his limbs.

As I approached the door the Neanderthal sat up. His move-ments were graceful and fluid, as if he were some behemoth rising from a primordial swamp.

“Howdy,” I said in the friendly manner that many Texas hicks used. I didn’t want to fight this man at any time, for any reason.

He just looked at me.

“Easy Rawlins to see Robert E. Lee,” I said.

“Right this way,” the brute replied in a melodious baritone. He rose from the chair like Nemo’s Nautilus rising from the depths.

2 9 3

W a lt e r M o s l e y

Opening the door he gestured for me to go through. He tagged along behind — an elephant following his brother’s tail.

Lee was sitting up in the bed wearing a nightshirt that wasn’t hospital issue. It had white-on-white brocade along the buttons and a stylish collar. Seated next to him was Maya Adamant. She wore tight-fitting coral pants and a red silk blouse. Her hair was tied back and her visage was nothing if not triumphant.

They were holding hands.

“You two kiss and make up after the little tiff and trifling attempt at murder?”

I felt the presence of the bodyguard behind me. But what did I care? It was gospel I spoke.

“I told Robert everything,” Maya said. “I have no secrets from him.”

“And you believe her?” I asked Lee.

“Yes. I’ve realized a lot of things being so close to death. Lying here I’ve come to understand that my life has had no meaning for me. I mean, I’ve done a lot of important things for others. I’ve solved crimes and saved lives, but you know if someone is on a path to hell you can’t save them.”

His mouth was still under the sway of the drugs they’d given him but I perceived a clear mind underneath the weave of me-andering thoughts.

“She sent Joe Cicero to our meeting,” I said. “Then Joe emptied a clip into your chest. He almost killed you.”

“She didn’t know that he’d do that. Her only desire was to get the bonds. She’s a woman without a man. She has to look out for herself.”

“Wasn’t it your job to get the bonds and give them to Haffernon?”

“He only wanted the letter.”

2 9 4

C i n n a m o n K i s s

Those five words proved to me that Lee’s mind was running on all six cylinders. If I had become used to the idea of that letter, then I might not have noticed him slipping it in there.

“What letter?” I asked.

Lee studied my face.

“It doesn’t matter now,” he said. “Haffernon is dead. I’ve received notice.”

It was my turn to stare.

“The only problem now is Joe Cicero,” Lee said. “And Carl here is working on that problem.”

“Cicero can’t be in this alone,” I said. “He has to be working for someone. And that someone can always find another Chickpea.”

Lee smiled.

“I must apologize to you, Mr. Rawlins. When you first walked into my offices I believed that you were just a brash fool intent on pulling the wool over my eyes; that you only desired to make me do your bidding because I was a white man in a big house.

But now I see the subtlety of your mind. You’re a top-notch thinker, and more than that — you’re a man.”

I can’t say that the accolades didn’t tweak my vanity, but I knew that Lee was both devious and a fool, and that was a bad combination to be swayed by.

“Can I speak to you alone?” I asked the detective.

He considered a moment and then nodded.

“Carl, Maya,” he said in dismissal.

“Boss . . .” Big Carl complained.

“It’s okay. Mr. Rawlins isn’t a bad man. Are you, Easy?”

“Depends on who you’re askin’.”

“Go on you two,” Lee said. “I’ll be fine.”

Maya gave me a worried look as she went out. That was more of a compliment than all her boss’s words.

2 9 5

W a lt e r M o s l e y

After the door was shut I asked, “Are you stupid or do you just not care that that woman sent an assassin after you?”

“She didn’t know what he intended.”

“How can you be sure of that? I mean you act like you can read minds, but you and I both know that there ain’t no way you can predict a woman like that.”

“I can see that some woman has gotten under your skin,” he said, leveling his eyes like cannon.

That threw me, made me realize that Bonnie was on my mind when I was talking about Maya. I could even see the similarities between the two women.

“This is not about my personal life, Mr. Lee. It’s about Joe Cicero and your assistant sending him after you, after me. Now you and I both know that he’d have taken the same shots at me if I’d gone through that door first. And I don’t have no bulletproof vest.”

“If what you told me is correct he needed you to gather information.”

“Then he’d have grabbed me, tortured me.”

“But that did not happen. You’re alive and now Joe Cicero will be under the gun. I shot him you know.”

“How bad?” I asked.

“It’s hard to say. He jerked backward and fired again. I let off another shell but he was running by then.”

“Can’t say that he’s dead. Can’t be sure. And even if you could, and even if Carl gets him or the police or anybody else —

that still doesn’t account for who’s doing all this.”

“The case is over, Mr. Rawlins. Haffernon is dead.”

“You see?” I said. “You see? That’s where you’re wrong. You think life is like one’a those Civil War enactments you got up in your house. People gettin’ killed here, Bobby Lee. Killed. And 2 9 6

C i n n a m o n K i s s

they’re dyin’ ’cause’a what Haffernon hired you for. They’re not gonna stop dyin’ just because you call the game over.”

I have to say that Lee seemed to be listening. There was no argument on his lips, no dismissal in his demeanor.

“Maybe you’re right, Mr. Rawlins. But what do you want me to do?”

“Maybe you could work the Cicero-Maya connection. Maybe she could pretend that she still wants to work with him. Somehow we get on him and he leads us to his source.”

“No.”

“No? How can you just say no? We could at least ask her if it makes sense. Shit, man, this is serious business here.”

“It’s too dangerous.”

“What’s dangerous is tellin’ a hit man where your boss is goin’

and not lettin’ your boss in on the change of plan. What’s dangerous is walkin’ out of a bar and havin’ some man you never met open fire on your ass.”

“I can’t put Maya in danger.”

“Why not?”

“Because we’re to be married.”

2 9 7

46

Ileft the hospital in a fog. How could he do that? Get engaged to a woman who not forty-eight hours before almost got him killed?

“She almost took your life,” I’d said to him, floundering for sense.

“But she’s always loved me and I never knew. A beautiful woman like that. And look at the way I was treating her.”

“She could’a quit. She could’a demanded a raise. She could’a taken her damn phone off the hook. Why the fuck does she have to send a killer after you?”

“She was wrong. Haven’t you ever been wrong, Mr. Rawlins?”

o n t h e d r i v e b a c k

to Santa Monica I was angry. Here I was so hurt by Bonnie, who with one hand was trying to save my little girl’s life and with the other caressing her new lover. Now 2 9 8

C i n n a m o n K i s s

Lee forgives attempted murder and then rewards it with a promise of marriage.

I opened all the windows and smoked one cigarette after another. The radio blasted out pop songs that had sad words and up beats. I could have run my car into a brick wall right then. I wanted to.

“ h e r e w e g o ,

Easy,” Jackson said. “Here’s all the names in the register for the last week.”

Terrance Tippitoe hadn’t been subtle in his approach. He’d torn out the seven sheets of paper in the guest log and folded them in four.

I perused the documents for maybe twenty-five seconds, not more, and I knew who the mastermind was. I knew why and I knew how. But I still didn’t see a way out unless I too became a murderer.

“What is it, Easy?” Jackson asked.

I shoved the log sheets into my pocket, thinking maybe if I could implicate the killer in Rega Tourneau’s death then I could call in the cops. After all, I was on a first-name basis with Gerald Jordan, the deputy chief of police. I could slip him those sheets and the police could do the rest.

“Easy?” Jackson asked.

“Yeah?”

“What’s wrong?”

That made me laugh. Jackson joined in. Jewelle came to sit behind him. She draped her arms around his neck.

“Nuthin’s wrong, Blue. I just gotta get past a few roadblocks is all. Few roadblocks.”

Jackson and Jewelle both knew to leave it at that.

*

*

*

2 9 9

W a lt e r M o s l e y

i w a s n ’ t t h i n k i n g

too clearly at that time. So much had happened and so little of it I could control. I had to have a face-to-face with Cicero’s employer. And in that meeting I had to make a decision. A week ago the only crime I’d considered was armed robbery, but now I’d graduated to premeditated murder.

Whatever the outcome it was getting late in the evening, and anyway I couldn’t wear the same funky clothes one day more. I figured that Joe Cicero had better things to do than to stake out my house so I went home.

I drove around the block twice, looking for any signs of the contract killer. He didn’t seem to be there. Maybe he was dead or at least out of action.

I took the bonds from the glove compartment of my hot rod and, with them under my arm, I strode toward my front yard.

Tacked to the door was a thick white envelope. I took it thinking that it had to have something to do with Axel or Cinnamon or maybe Joe Cicero.

I opened the door and walked into the living room. I flipped on the overhead light, threw the bonds on the couch, and opened the letter. It was from a lawyer representing Alicia and Nate Roman. They were suing me for causing them severe physical trauma and mental agony. They had received damage to their necks, hips, and spines, and she had severe lacerations to the head. There was only one broken bone but many more bruised ones. They had both seen the same doctor — an M.D.

named Brown. The cost for their deep suffering was one hundred thousand dollars — each.

I walked toward the kitchen intent on getting a glass of water.

At least I could do that without being shot at, spied on, or sued.

I saw his reflection in the glass door of the cabinet. He was coming fast but in that fragment of a second I realized first that 3 0 0

C i n n a m o n K i s s

the man was not Joe Cicero and second that, like Mouse, Cicero had sent a proxy to keep an eye out for his quarry. Then, when I was halfway turned around, he hit me with some kind of sap or blackjack and the world swirled down through a drain that had opened up at my feet.

i l o s t c o n s c i o u s n e s s but there was a part of my mind

that struggled to wake up. So in a dream I did wake up, in my own bed. Next to me was a dark-skinned black man. He opened his eyes at the same time I opened mine.

“Where’s Bonnie?” I asked him.

“She’s gone,” he said with a finality that sucked the air right out of my chest.

t h e m o r n i n g s u n

through the kitchen window woke me

but it was nausea that drove me to my feet. I went to the bathroom and sat next to the commode, waiting to throw up — but I never did.

I showered and shaved, primped and dressed.

The bonds were gone of course. I figured that I was lucky that Cicero had sent a proxy. I was also lucky that the bonds were right there to be stolen. Otherwise Joe would have come and caused me pain until I gave them up. Then he would have killed me.

I was a lucky bastard.

After my ablutions I called a number that was lodged in my memory. I have a facility for remembering numbers, always did.

She answered on the sixth ring, breathless.

“Yes?”

“That invitation still open?”

“Easy?” Cynthia Aubec said. “I thought I’d never hear from you again.”

3 0 1

W a lt e r M o s l e y

“That might be construed as a threat, counselor.”

“No. I thought you didn’t like me.”

“I like you all right,” I said. “I like you even though you lied to me.”

“Lied? Lied about what?”

“You acted like you weren’t related to Axel but here I see that you signed into the Westerly Nursing Home to visit Rega Tourneau. Cynthia Tourneau-Aubec.”

“Tourneau’s my mother’s maiden name. Aubec was my father,”

she said.

“Nina’s your mother?”

“You seem to know everything about me.”

“Did you know what Axel was trying to do?”

“He was wrong, Mr. Rawlins. These are our parents, our families. What’s done is done.”

“Is that why you killed him?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Axel told me that he was going to Algeria. I don’t have any reason to think that he’s dead.”

“You worked in the prosecutor’s office when Joe Cicero was on trial, didn’t you?”

She didn’t answer.

“And you visited your grandfather only a few hours before he was found dead.”

“He was very old. Very sick. His death was really a blessing.”

“Maybe he wanted to confess before he died. About trips to the Third Reich and pornographic pictures of him with twelve-year-olds.”

“Where are you?” she asked.

“In L.A. At my house.”

“Come up here . . . to my house. We’ll talk this out.”

3 0 2

C i n n a m o n K i s s

“What is it, Cindy? Were you in your grandfather’s will? Were you afraid that the government would take away all of that wealth if the truth came out?”

“You don’t understand. Between the drugs and his crazy friends Axel only wanted to destroy.”

“What about Haffernon? Was he getting cold feet? Is that why you killed him? Maybe he thought that dealing with a twenty-year-old treason beef would be easier than if he was caught murdering Philomena.”

“Come here to me, Easy. We can work this out. I like you.”

“What’s in it for me?” I asked. It was a simple question but I had complex feelings behind it.

“My mother was disowned,” she said. “But the old man put me back in the will recently. I’m going to be very rich soon.”

I hesitated for the appropriate amount of time, as if I were considering her request. Then I said, “When?”

“Tomorrow at noon.”

“Nuthin’ funny, right?”

“I just want to explain myself, to help you. That’s all.”

“Okay. Okay I’ll come. But I don’t want Joe Cicero to be there.”

“Don’t worry about him. He won’t be bothering anyone.”

“Okay then. Tomorrow at twelve.”

i w a s o n a f l i g h t

to San Francisco within the hour. I rented a car and made it to an address in Daly City that I’d never been to before. All of this took about four hours.

It was a small home with a pink door and a blue porch.

The door was ajar and so I walked in.

Cynthia Aubec lay on her back in the center of the hardwood floor. There was a bullet hole in her forehead. Standing over her 3 0 3

W a lt e r M o s l e y

was Joe Cicero. His right arm was bandaged and in a sling. In his left hand was a pistol outfitted with a large silencing muzzle.

He must have been killing her as I was walking up the path to her door.

My pistol lay impotent in my pocket. Cicero smiled as he raised his gun to point at my forehead. I knew he was thinking about when I had the drop on him; that he wouldn’t make the same mistake that I had.

“Well, well, well,” he said. “Here I thought I’d have to chase you down, and then you come walking in like a Christmas goose.”

With my eyes only I glanced to the sides. There was no sign of the man who had sapped me the night before.

Beyond the young woman’s corpse was a small coffee table upon which sat two teacups. She’d served him tea before he shot her. The thought was grotesque but I knew I wouldn’t have long to contemplate it.

“Lee is going to put the cops on you for the Bowers killing and for Haffernon,” I said, hoping somehow to stave off my own death.

“I didn’t kill them. She did,” he said, waving his pistol at her.

“But you were at Bowers’s house,” I said. “You threatened him.”

“You know about that, huh? She hired me to get the bonds from Bowers. When I told her what he’d said she took it in her own hands.” He coughed and I glanced at the teacups. A tremor of hope thrummed in the center of my chest.

“Haffernon too?”

He nodded. There was something off about the movement of his head, as if he weren’t in full control.

“Why?” I asked, playing for time.

“He was getting weak. Didn’t want to do what they had to do 3 0 4

C i n n a m o n K i s s

to keep their nasty little secret. That’s why I had to kill her. I knew that” — he coughed again — “sooner or later she’d have to come after me. Nobody could know or the whole house of cards would fall. That’s why I work for a living. A rich family will take your soul.”

“Why not?” I asked, as bland as could be. “Why couldn’t anybody know?”

“Money,” he said with a knowing, crooked nod. “Sometimes it was just that she wanted her inheritance. Sometimes she was angry at the kid for taking all that wealth for granted when she and her mother had been living hand to mouth.”

He straightened his shooting arm.

“And she knew you from your trial about the torture?”

“You do your homework, nigger,” he said and then coughed.

Blood spattered out onto his lips, but because he had no free hand he couldn’t rub it off to see.

I leaped to the left and he fired. He was good. He was a right-hander and dying but he still hit me in the shoulder. I used the momentum to fall through a doorway to my left. Screaming from the pain, I made it to my feet. I was halfway down the hall when I heard him behind me. He fired again but I didn’t feel anything.

I fell anyway.

As I looked back I saw him staggering forward, shooting once, and then he fell. He didn’t move again.

I was on the floor next to a bathroom. I went in, trying not to touch any surface. I got a towel from the rack next to the tub and used it to staunch the bleeding from my shoulder.

When the blood was merely seeping I checked Cicero. He was dead. In his jacket pocket was an envelope containing twenty-five thousand dollars. In a folder on the coffee table I found the bonds and the letter.

3 0 5

W a lt e r M o s l e y

There were many photographs on the shelves and window-sills. Some were of Cynthia and her mother, Nina Tourneau. One was Cynthia as a child on the lap of her beloved grandfather —

pornographer, child molester, and Nazi traitor.

I took the bonds, leaving the letter for the cops to mull over.

The teacups had the same strong smell that the cup had at Axel’s house. Only one had been drunk from.

3 0 6

47

Idrove my rental car for hours, but it seemed like several days, bleeding on the steering wheel and down my chest. I drove one-handed half the time, using the stiffening fingers of my right hand to press the towel against the shoulder wound.

It was a minor miracle that I made it to Christmas Black’s Riverside home. I don’t remember getting out of the car or ringing the bell. Maybe they found me there, passed out over the wheel.

I came to three days later. Easter Dawn was sitting in a big chair next to my bed, reading from a picture book. I don’t know if she knew how to read or if she was just interpreting the pictures into stories. When I opened my eyes she jumped up and ran from the room.

“Daddy! Daddy! Mr. Rawlins is awake!”

Christmas came into the room wearing black jeans and a drab green T-shirt. His boots were definitely army issue.

3 0 7

W a lt e r M o s l e y

“How you doin’, soldier?” he asked.

“Ready for my discharge,” I said in a voice so weak that even I didn’t hear it.

Christmas held up my head and trickled water into my mouth. I wanted to get up and call Switzerland but I couldn’t even lift a hand.

“You bled a lot,” Christmas said. “Almost died. Lucky I got some friends in the hospital down in Oxnard. I got you medicine and a few pints of red.”

“Call Mouse,” I said as loudly as I could.

Then I passed out.

The next time I woke up, Mama Jo was sitting next to me. She had just taken some foul-smelling substance away from my nose.

“Uh!” I grunted. “What was that?”

“I can see you gonna be okay, Easy Rawlins,” big, black, handsome Mama Jo said.

“I feel better. How long have I been here?”

“Six days.”

“Six? Did anybody call Bonnie?”

“She called Etta. Feather’s doin’ good, the doctors said. They won’t know nuthin’ for eight weeks more though. Etta said that you and Raymond were doing some business down in Texas.”

Mouse sauntered in with his glittering smile.

“Hey, Easy,” he said. “Christmas got all yo’ money an’ bonds and shit in the draw next to yo’ bed.”

“Give the bonds to Jackson,” I told him. “Let him cash ’em and we’ll split ’em three ways.”

Mouse smiled. He liked a good deal.

“I’ll let you boys talk business,” Jo said. She rose from the chair and I watched in awe, as always impressed by her size and bearing.

3 0 8

C i n n a m o n K i s s

Mouse pulled up a chair and told me what he knew.

Joe Cicero made the T V news with his murder of Cynthia Aubec and her poisoning of him.

“They say anything about a letter they found?” I asked.

“No. No letter, just mutual murder, that’s what they called it.”

That night Saul Lynx arrived in a rented ambulance and drove me home.

Benita Flag and Jesus were there to nurse me.

Two weeks after it was all over I was still convalescing. Mouse came over and sat with me under the big tree in the backyard.

“You don’t have to worry about them people no more, Ease,”

he said after we’d been gossiping for a while.

“What people?”

“The Romans.”

For a moment I was confused, and then I remembered the accident and the lawsuit.

“Yeah,” he said. “Benita showed me the papers an’ I went ovah to talk to ’em. I told ’em about Feather and about you bein’ so tore up. I gave ’em five thousand off the top’a what Jackson cleared and told ’em that you was a good detective and if they ever needed help that you would be there for ’em. After that they decided to drop that suit.”

There weren’t many people in Watts who wouldn’t do what Ray asked. No one wanted to be on his bad side.

t h e y f o u n d a x e l Bowers in his ashram and tied Aubec to that crime too. The papers made it an incestuous sex scandal.

Who knows, maybe it was. Dream Dog was even interviewed.

He told the reporters about the sex and drug parties. In 1966 that was reason enough, in the public mind, for murder.

A few days later I received a card from Maya and Bobby Lee.

3 0 9

W a lt e r M o s l e y

They were on their honeymoon in Monaco. Lee had connections with the royal family there. He said that I should call him if I ever needed employment — or advice. That was the closest Lee would ever come to an offer of friendship.

I sent the twenty-five thousand on to Switzerland. Feather called me once a week. Bonnie called two times but I always found an excuse to get off the line. I didn’t tell them about my getting shot. There was no use in worrying Feather or making Bonnie feel bad either.

I lived off of the money Jackson got from the bonds and wondered who at Haffernon’s firm bought off the letter. But I didn’t worry too much about it. I was alive and Feather was on her way to recovery. Even if the moral spirit of my country was rotten to the core at least I had played a part in her salvation — my beautiful child.

i t w a s a m o n t h

after the shooting that I got a letter from New York. With it was a tiny clipping saying that an inquiry had opened concerning the American-owned Karnak Chemical Company and their dealings with Germany during the war. Information had come to light about the sale of munitions directly to Germany from Karnak. If the allegations turned out to be true a full investigation would be launched.

The letter read:

Dear Mr. Rawlins:

Thank you for whatever you did. I read about our reptilian friend in the Bay Area. I just wanted you to see that Axel had an ace up his sleeve. He probably gathered the information in Egypt and Germany and sent it to the government before he told anybody about 3 1 0

C i n n a m o n K i s s

the Swiss bonds. I think he wanted me to have them if anything happened to him. He couldn’t know how slow the government would work.

It was nice meeting you. I have a low-level job at an investment firm here in New York.

I’m sure that I will get promoted soon.

If you’re ever out here come by and see me.

“love”

Cinnamon

There was a dark red lipstick kiss at the bottom of the letter.

I sent her the two books I had taken from her apartment and a brief note thanking her for being so unusual.

f i v e w e e k s l a t e r Bonnie and Feather came home.

Feather had been a little butterball before the illness. She was just a wraith when she got on that plane to Switzerland. But now she was at least four inches taller and dressed like a woman. She was even taller than Jesus.

After kissing me and hugging my neck she regained her com-posure and said, “Bonjour, Papa. Comment ça va?”

“Bien, ma fille,” I replied, remembering the words I learned while killing men across France.

w e a l l s t a y e d u p

late into the night talking. Jesus was even animated. He had learned some French from Bonnie over time and so now he and Feather conversed in a foreign language.

Her recovery and return made him almost giddy with joy.

Finally there was just Bonnie and me sitting next to each other on the couch.

“Easy?”

3 1 1

W a lt e r M o s l e y

“Yeah, honey?”

“Can we talk about it now?”

There was fever in my blood and a tidal wave in my mind but I said, “Talk about what?”

“I only called Joguye because Feather was sick and I knew that he had connections,” she began.

I was thinking about Robert E. Lee and Maya Adamant.

“When I saw him I remembered how we’d felt about each other, and . . . and we did spend a lot of time together in Montreux. I know you must have been hurt but I also spent the time making up my mind —”

I put up my hand to stop her. I must have done it with some emphasis, because she flinched.

“I’m gonna stop you right there, honey,” I said. “I’m gonna stop you, because I don’t wanna hear it.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s not either me or him,” I told the love of my life. “It’s either me or not me. That’s what I’ve come to in this time you were gone. When we talked at the airport you should’a said right then that it was always me, would always be. I don’t care if you slept with him or not, not really. But the truth is he got a foot-print in your heart. That kinda mark don’t wash out.”

“What are you saying, Easy?” She reached out for me. She touched me but I wasn’t there.

“You can take your stuff whenever you want. I love you but I got to let you go.”

j e s u s a n d b e n i t a

moved her the next day. I didn’t know where she went. The kids did. I think they saw her sometimes, but they never talked to me about it.

3 1 2

W A L T E R M O S L E Y is the author of the acclaimed Easy Rawlins series of mysteries and numerous other works of fiction and nonfiction. He has received a Grammy Award and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, among other honors. He was born in Los Angeles and lives in New York.