Blonde Faith

20

Tomas Hight stayed on my mind all the way back to the city. He’d saved a life in that hall, but not necessarily my life; it was just as likely that one or more of his acquaintances would have been shot.

I thought about his one-room apartment. I owned two houses and three apartment buildings but still felt that he had more than I did. I thought he was more heroic too, but hadn’t I been the one to stand up first against those men?

It’s strange how you can know something and still not feel it, how you can covet the assets of others though you would never think of trading places with them.

THE ADDRESS TOURMALINE had given me for Christmas Black was on a street named Gray. It was a single block in the area between the black neighborhood and downtown. There were warehouses and small wholesale businesses all over that unzoned neighborhood. The building across the street from Christmas’s house was Cairo Cane Distributors.

There wasn’t a soul anywhere to be seen.

I had waited till midmorning to go to Christmas’s door because he was not the kind of man you wanted to take unawares. Black was at least as proficient a killer as Mouse. Added to that, he was crazy and paranoid; added to that, there really were people after him.

I parked in front of Cairo Cane but didn’t get out immediately. Black’s address was another cottage. The small yard was laid with green concrete. There was an attempt at a porch, though I doubted that there was enough room for a stool on that thin band of wood.

Flowerless flowerpots hung on either side of the front door.

I watched the house for five minutes and no one passed by.

The debacle at Tomas Hight’s house had made me temporarily cautious. I didn’t want to run out into another dangerous situation, and I needed to put the words together that I would say to Christmas when and if I found him.

The minutes went by, and my confidence returned.

For a while there I had forgotten the answer to the unasked question framed by fearful caution. Will I die? the mortal asks from the fear shared by all his kin. Yes, you will die, the answer comes from the infinite experience of our race. I might get hurt, be hungry, get old, contract some fatal disease. When my children uttered these fears, I told them not to worry, that nothing was going to happen. But in my life I knew better. The only way to end fear was to stop breathing, to stop moving forward . . . and there I was on a street named Gray under a bright sun with no one else in sight.

THE FRONT DOOR had been broken down and put back in place hastily. This was not a good omen. I clasped my hands and prepared to back away. I swayed, but my feet stayed planted on that faux porch.

There was nowhere else to go. If I didn’t want to be a detective, I should have gone back to the LAUSD and asked them to reinstate me as a school custodian. Medical insurance, retirement program, two weeks vacation . . .

Gripping the doorknob with a gloved hand, I levered the half-unhinged door open. This brought me to an entry chamber. The uncharacteristic foyer was probably why Christmas had taken the place. Anyone trying to come in on him would have been stymied by the second door, and at the same time the occupant would have been warned of his attacker.

I wrenched the front door back in place and strode through a short passageway into the living room, as the second door was also broken in.

The room had no windows and so was shrouded in darkness.

That’s where I found the first body.

Actually, I stumbled on his leg as I looked for a light switch on the wall. I almost fell. Then I waved my hand above my head and found the chain for an overhead lamp. When the light snapped on, I was looking into one of Glen Thorn’s bright gray eyes. His other eye had been destroyed by the ice pick that was lodged in his brain.

I looked quickly around the small room. It had pine floors with no carpet and a pair of small brown stuffed chairs. Between the chairs stood a round table with a whiskey glass set upon it. Below the table, taking up most of the floor space, was the body that had once housed Glen Thorn. He wasn’t wearing a uniform now, just black trousers, a red-and-black checkered shirt, and tennis shoes like the kids wore.

There was a pistol in his left hand.

The only neat thing about him, I now knew, was his appearance. I’d seen his filthy house and the literature he devoured. I saluted him because he had fooled me with his appearance. Glen Thorn had taught me something, and that was worth a last good-bye.

IT WAS A SHOTGUN HOUSE with a cottage facade. I went through the next door and found another body. This was the second MP who had accompanied the man who called himself Captain Clarence Miles. This corpse had been strangled, by hand. I could make out the finger marks along his throat and neck. Whereas Glen had no real expression on his face, this man’s eyes and mouth were strained with fear. I would have been scared too if I had been looking into the murderous visage of Christmas Black while he was throttling the life from me.

This room was a kitchen, the body it contained a conundrum. How could Christmas Black, no matter how proficient he was, kill two trained soldiers in two different rooms? There was nowhere to hide in the room where Glen Thorn had died. There wasn’t enough time for Christmas to jump out of some window and come back around. And even if he had used that trick, why leave a perfectly good weapon in the eye of his first victim when there might have been another assassin in the house?

I entered the next room with mounting trepidation. I expected to see Captain Miles, or whoever he was, on the floor with an arrow in his chest.

But the small bedroom was empty. There was just a mattress on the floor and a lamp. The bed was made in flawless military style. There was a window, but it was locked and barred. I looked around for the clues but found none.

Back in the living room, I noticed that one of the legs of the round table had a folded piece of paper underneath it. The table had been rocking, no doubt, something Christmas wouldn’t have stood for.

I expected the wedge to be a take-out menu or a matchbook, but it was a brochure from Beachland Savings in Santa Monica. It promised a free electric fan to anyone who opened a checking account with one hundred dollars or more.

I pocketed the pamphlet and reimagined the murder scene. I tried my best to imagine the second MP coming into the kitchen and being overwhelmed by Black. Even a Green Beret would make some noise killing a man with his bare hands. Where was Thorn when this was happening? Why not kill the first MP with the ice pick and then take the other one out with his hands? Why not use a gun?

The only answer was that there were two men in the first room when the MPs broke in. One of those men, probably Christmas, feigned running into the kitchen while his cohort stood pressed into a corner, as I had done in Tomas Hight’s hallway. Christmas grabbed his pursuer in the kitchen, or maybe he turned and then dragged the unsuspecting MP after him. The other man, Christmas’s cohort, then blindsided Glen Thorn, who must have been concentrating on the fleeing Black. Glen got an ice pick in the eye while his friend was being strangled in the kitchen.

None of that helped me. The only lesson to be learned was to stay out of the way of this juggernaut of death. But I wasn’t a willing student that day.

ON MY WAY OUT, I looked both ways down the street and sighed, relieved that I was in Los Angeles, where there was never anyone on the street to witness anything, not even a black man coming out of a broken door behind which was more mayhem than most honest Angelenos would see in a lifetime.