Cinnamon Kiss (22 page)

“Is Daddy okay, Mommy?” Miriam asked.

“He’s fine, sweetie. Tonight he’s going to meet with Mr. Rawlins and then he’s coming up to the cabin where we can go fishing and swimming.”

“But I have my clarinet lesson tomorrow,” Miriam said.

“You’ll have to take a makeup,” Doreen explained.

The two boys were capering around, celebrating the holiday that had befallen their family.

I LEFT DOREEN packing suitcases and keeping the children on track.

On the way down to the Pixie Inn I tried not to get too far ahead of myself. Saul’s reaction to just a name increased my fears. I decided that Cinnamon had to be moved to a place where I knew that she’d be safe.

I parked down the block this time, just being cautious. There was a Mercedes-Benz parked on the motel lot. I didn’t like that. I liked it even less when I saw the words
Fletcher’s Mercedes-Benz of San Francisco
written on the license plate frame.

The door of Cinnamon’s room was ajar. I nudged it open with my toe.

He was lying facedown, the six-hundred-dollar suit now just a shroud. I turned him over with my foot. Leonard Haffernon, Esquire, was quite dead. The bullet had entered somewhere at the base of the skull and exited through the top of his head.

The exit wound was the size of a silver dollar.

A wave of prickles went down my left arm. Sweat sprouted from my palms.

His valise was on the bed. Its contents had been turned out. There was some change and a toenail clipper, a visitor’s pass to a San Francisco bank, and a silver flask. Any papers had been taken. The only potential perpetrator in evidence, once more, was me.

For a brief moment I was frozen there like a bug in a sudden frost. I was trying to glean from Haffernon’s face what had occurred. Did Cinnamon kill him and run?

Probably.

But why? And why had he been there?

A horn honked out on the street. That brought me back to my senses. I walked out of that room and into the parking lot, then down the street to my loud car and drove away.

I
drove for fifteen minutes, looking in the rearview mirror every ten seconds, before stopping at a gas station on a block of otherwise burned-out buildings. There was a phone booth next to the men’s toilet at the back.

“Etta, is that you?” I asked when she answered on the ninth ring.

“Is it my number you dialed?”

“Have you heard from Raymond?”

“And how are you this evenin’, Mr. Rawlins? I’m fine. I was layin’ up in the bed watchin’
Doctor Kildare
. How ’bout you?”

“I just stumbled on a dead white man never saw it comin’.”

“Oh,” Etta said. “No, Ray haven’t called.”

“Shit.”

“Primo did though.”

“When?”

“’Bout a hour. He said to tell you that a guy came by an’ left sumpin’ for ya.”

“What guy?”

“He didn’t say.”

“What did he leave?”

“He didn’t say that either. He just said to tell you. You in trouble, Easy?”

“Is the sky blue?”

“Not right now. It’s evenin’.”

“Then wait a bit. It’ll be there.”

Etta chuckled and so did I. She was no stranger to violent death. She’d once shot a white man, a killer, in the head because he was about to shoot me. If we couldn’t laugh in the face of death there’d be precious little humor for most black southerners.

“You take care, Easy.”

“Tell Mouse I need his advice.”

“When I see him.”

I SPED OVER to Primo’s place worried about having given his number to Philomena. Primo was a tough man, a Mexican by birth. He had spent his whole life traveling back and forth across the border and south of there. On one trip through Panama he’d met Flower, his wife. They lived in a house I owned and had more than a dozen kids. They took in stray children too, and animals of all kinds. Any grief I brought to them would cause pain for a thousand miles.

But Primo was sitting out in the large yard. He was laid back in a lawn chair, drinking a beer and watching six or seven grandchildren play in the diminishing light. Flower was up on the porch with a baby in her arms. I wondered if it was her baby or just a grandchild.

As I approached, half a dozen dogs ran at me growling and crying, wagging their tails and baring their fangs.

“Hi-ya!” Primo shouted at the animals.

The children ran forward, grabbing the dogs and pulling them back. A pure-bred Dalmatian eluded his child handler and jumped on me, pressing my chest with his forepaws.

“That’s my guard dog,” Primo said.

He put out a hand, which I shook as the dog licked my forearm.

“Love thy neighbor,” I said.

Primo liked my sense of humor. He laughed out loud.

“Flower,” he called. “Your boyfriend is here.”

“Send him to my bedroom when you finish twisting his ears,” she responded.

“I wish I had time to sit, man,” I said.

“But you want them papers.” Primo finished my sentence.

“Papers?”

All the children, dogs, and adults crowded through the front door and into the house. There was shouting and laughing and fur floating in the air.

While Primo went into the back room looking for my delivery, Flower came very close to me. She stared in my face without saying anything.

She was a very black, beautiful woman. Her features were stern, almost masculine, most of the time, but when she smiled she honored the name her father had blessed her with.

At that moment she had on her serious face.

“How is she, Easy?”

“Very sick,” I said. “Very sick.”

“She will live,” Flower told me. “She will live and you will have a beautiful granddaughter from her.”

I touched Flower’s face and she took my hand in hers.

The dogs stopped barking and the children hushed. I looked up and saw Primo standing there, smiling at me.

“Here it is,” he said, handing me a brown envelope large enough to contain unfolded pages of typing paper.

“Who left this?”

“A black boy. Funny, you know?”

Raphael.

“What did he say?”

“That this was what you wanted and he hopes you do what’s right.”

I stood there thinking with all the brown children and red-tongued dogs panting around me.

“Stay and eat,” Flower said.

“I got to go.”

“No. You are hungry. Sit. It will only take a few moments and then you will have the strength to do whatever it is you’re doing.”

THAT WAS A TOUGH PERIOD in my life. There’s no doubt about it. I was on the run in my own city, homeless if I wanted to live. Feather’s well-being was never far from my heart, but the road to her salvation was being piled with the bodies of dead white men. And you have to understand the impact of the death of a white man on a black southerner like me. In the south if a black man killed a white man he was dead. If the police saw him on the street they shot first and asked questions …never. If he gave himself up he was killed in his cell. If the constable wasn’t a murdering man then a mob would come and lynch the poor son of a bitch. And failing all that, if a black man ever made it to trial and was convicted of killing a white man—even in self-defense, even if it was to save another white man—that convict would spend the rest of his days incarcerated. There would be no parole, no commutation of sentence, no extenuating circumstances, no time off for good behavior.

There was no room in my heart except for hope that Feather would live. Hovering above that hope was the retribution of the white race for my just seeing two of their dead sons.

But even with all of that trouble I have to take time to recall Flower’s simple meal.

She gave me a large bowl filled with chunks of pork loin simmered in a pasilla chili sauce. She’d boiled the chilies without removing the seeds so I began to sweat with the first bite. There was cumin and oregano in the sauce and pieces of avocado too. On the side I had three homemade wheat flour tortillas and a large glass of lightly sweetened lemonade.

I felt like a condemned man but at least my last meal was a feast.

AFTER I ATE I made noises about leaving, but Primo told me that I could use his den to take care of any business I needed to attend to.

In the little study I settled into his leather chair and opened the envelope left by Raphael.

There were twelve very official sheets of parchment imprinted with declarations in French, Italian, and German. Each page had a large sum printed on it and a red wax seal embossed at one corner or another. There was a very fancy signature at the bottom of each document. I couldn’t make out the name.

And there was a letter, a note really, written in German and signed H. W. Göring. In the text of the note the name H. Himmler appeared. The note was addressed to R. Tourneau. I didn’t need to know what the letter said. At any other time I would have burned it up and moved on with my life. But there was too much I didn’t understand to discard such an important document.

I had what Lee wanted but I didn’t trust that Maya would pass on the information. I didn’t know how much the bonds were worth but I did know that they were said to be Swiss and that my daughter was in a Swiss hospital.

I called Jackson and gave him all the information I could about the bonds. He asked a few questions, directing me to codes and symbols that I would never have noticed on my own.

“It’d be better if I could check ’em myself, Ease,” Jackson said at one point.

But remembering his quandary over the TXT tape on his desk, I said, “I better hold on to these here, Jackson. There’s some bloodthirsty people out there willing to do anything to get at ’em.”

Jackson backed down and I made my second call.

He answered the phone on the first ring.

“Easy?”

“Yeah. Who’s this?”

“Christmas Black,” the man said. I couldn’t tell one thing about him. Not his age or his race.

“I’m up in Riverside,” Black said, “on Wayfarer’s Road. You know it?”

“Can’t say that I do.”

He gave me precise instructions that I wrote down.

“What do you have to do with all this?” I asked.

“I’m just a layover,” he said. “A place to gather the troops and regroup.”

After talking to Christmas I called EttaMae and left the particulars with her.

“Tell Mouse to come up when he gets the chance,” I said.

“What makes you think I’ll be talkin’ to him anytime soon?”

“Is the sky blue?” I asked.

I
took Highway 101 toward Riverside. The fact that I had a destination relaxed me some. The thousands of dollars in Swiss bonds on the seat beside me gave me heart. Haffernon’s body and Cinnamon’s involvement with his death were on my mind. And then there was the Nazi high command.

Like most Americans I hated Adolf Hitler and his crew of bloodthirsty killers. I hated their racism and their campaign to destroy any people not their own. In ’45 I was a concentration camp liberator. My friends and I killed a starving Jewish boy by feeding him a chocolate bar. We didn’t know that it would kill him. How could we?

Even as a black American I felt patriotic about the war and my role in it. That’s why I found it so hard to comprehend wealthy and white American businessmen trading with such villains.

Between Feather and Bonnie, Haffernon and Axel, Cinnamon and Joe Cicero, it was a wonder that I didn’t go crazy. Maybe I did, a little bit, lose control at the edges.

CHRISTMAS BLACK had given me very good directions. I skirted downtown Riverside and took a series of side streets until I came to a graded dirt road that was still a city street. The houses were a little farther apart than in Los Angeles. The yards were larger and there were no fences between them. Unchained dogs snapped at my tires as I drove past.

After a third of a mile or so I came to the dead end of Wayfarer’s Road. Right where the road terminated stood a small white house with a yellow light shining over the doorway. It was the embodiment of peace and domesticity. You’d expect your aged, widowed grandmother to live behind that door. She’d have pies and a boiled ham to greet you.

I knocked and a child called out in some Asian language.

The door swung inward and a tall black man stood there.

“Welcome, Mr. Rawlins,” he said. “Come in.”

He was six foot four at least but his shoulders would have been a good fit for a man six inches taller. His skin was medium brown and there was a whitish scar beneath his left eye. The brown in his eyes was lighter than was common in most Negroes. And his hair was as close-cropped as you can get without being bald.

“Mr. Black?”

He nodded and stepped back for me to enter. A few steps away stood a small Asian girlchild dressed in a fancy red kimono. She bowed respectfully. She couldn’t have been more than six years old but she held herself with the poise and attitude of the woman of the house. Just seeing her I knew that there was no wife or girlfriend in the black man’s life.

“Easy Rawlins, meet Easter Dawn Black,” Christmas said.

“Pleased to meet you,” I said to the child.

“It is an honor to have you in our home, Mr. Rawlins,” Easter Dawn said with solemnity.

To her right was a door open onto a bedroom, probably hers. On the other side was a cavernous sitting room that had a very western, almost cowboy feel to it. The girl gestured toward the sitting room and I followed her direction.

Behind Easter was a bronze mirror. In the reflection I could see the satisfaction in Christmas’s face. He was proud of this little girl who could not possibly have been of his blood.

Feather came into my mind then and I tripped on the Indian blanket used as a throw rug. I would have fallen but Black was quick. He rushed forward and grabbed my arm.

“Thanks,” I said.

The sitting room had a fifteen-foot ceiling, something you would never have expected upon seeing the seemingly small house from the road. Beyond that room was a kitchen with a loft above it, neither room separated by walls.