Rose Gold (19 page)

Fifteen minutes after the gang of thugs had left my office I was walking down the western staircase remembering John Smith; certain that Death stalked every man at its own pace.

“Mr. Rawlins?” a man said. There was an odd accent to his words. It wasn’t Asian or European, New World Spanish or cop, certainly not Black American. The intonation was something like slanting sunshine or a stiff wind.

I turned to see a man with the skin coloring of a copper penny that had been a couple of years in circulation, and straight black hair that was too long for office work but nowhere near hippie. Somewhere in his thirties, the man had dark eyes that seemed to contain centuries. He was maybe five-ten and strong the way good rope is—slender and knotted.

“Yes?” I said as the aboriginal American approached me.

“My employer, Mrs. Foster Goldsmith, would like to have words with you.”

“And you are?”

“Teh-ha, but people call me Redbird.”

“Any particular species?”

That got the man named Redbird to smile. I could tell by the cast of his face that this was not a common occurrence.

“The words
spirit
and
species
have much in common,” he said.

Teh-ha Redbird wore crinkled but shiny black leather shoes, well-laundered black cotton slacks that had been ironed that morning, and a long-sleeved white dress shirt that was buttoned at the wrists and up to the neck but sported no tie. He was, I could tell by looking at him, more deadly than Art Sugar and all his men put together.

“What does Mrs. Goldsmith want?”

With a slight gesture of his head he told me that he didn’t know or, at least, wouldn’t say.

“And when is this meeting supposed to happen?” I asked.

“I can drive you there now.” It came to me that he spoke English like a language learned by some erudite foreign scholar.

He gestured down the street, where I saw parked the King of Cars: a late-model dark gray Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow. There were five or six gawkers already hanging around the automobile. I wondered if there had ever been such a fancy vehicle parked on that particular block.

“I got my Dodge,” I said. “It’s parked a few cars behind yours.”

“Then you can follow me.”

There didn’t seem to be much room or reason for argument, so I went to my car and Redbird to his. When the small crowd saw him coming they parted without rancor or even the hope of getting a ride. Redbird’s regal bearing demanded such obeisance.

We wended our way on surface streets from the black environs back to Wilshire Boulevard, downtown. We came to a comparatively small but elegant hotel called the Dumbarton. I could tell by the address that we were only eight blocks away from Light Lambert’s anonymous office building.

Redbird pulled his fancy car up to the entrance, where a nylon red carpet connected the front doors of the hotel to the curb. I pulled up after him and got out.

“Yes, sir?” a good-looking, sandy-haired young white lad asked. He wore the gray pants, silky blue shirt, and red vest uniform of the Dumbarton’s valets.

“I’m with him,” I said, pointing at Teh-ha, who was waiting for me at the doors.

“Oh,” the reedy young man said.

“The key is in the ignition,” I told him.

When I strolled up to my guide he turned and walked into the sumptuous hotel.

I followed.

The ceilings were high and the colors all royal and drenched. The paintings looked to be original nineteenth-century oils done by artists
who you could find in books but not, as a rule, in your larger museums. There were still lifes and portraits and landscapes. I remember one huge canvas that was mostly grays and blues rendering a large ocean-side port crowded with great galleons and sleek schooners. It made me momentarily homesick for Galveston.

Redbird and I were the subject of many stares from the white patrons and multiracial staff of the hotel but no one spoke to, much less molested, us. We made it to the gilded elevator doors and Redbird pressed the button.

“Mr. Redbird,” a man said in such a way as to demand attention, not to greet or recognize.

The white man was thin except for a slight paunch. His dark blue suit cost more than most Americans made in a month and half (before taxes), and his mustache was thin enough to slice bread. His authoritative posture suggested to me that he was an ex-policeman but not a beat cop. I would have bet for most of his career he’d been an officer, maybe even a captain. He’d retired and now worked directly for the rich people that had bought special favors from him when he was in power.

“Just Redbird,” my guide replied.

“Who’s your friend?”

“Mrs. Goldsmith’s guest.”

“Her guest?”

A silvery bell chimed and the elevator doors opened, making a sound like the sigh of a satisfied lion.

“After you,” Redbird said to me.

“Floor?” the elevator operator asked. But when he saw Redbird he said, “Oh, penthouse.”

The elevator door opened on a small dais of a room—nine feet square. With the lift behind us, a closed door ahead, the only furnishing was a marble stand on which stood a vase packed with a few dozen long-stemmed yellow roses.

Redbird surprised me by knocking on the door to the penthouse
suite. I had expected him to press some button or maybe use his key.

A moment later the fancy, carved mahogany door swung inward and a young Japanese woman wearing a little black dress and white gloves bowed as her ancestors had done for centuries, and backed away for us to enter.

The room we entered was huge. More than a thousand square feet, it abutted upon a glass wall beyond which was a patio half again the size of the room we were in. The ceilings were almost the height of Light Lambert’s double-floor office and the furnishings were expensive beyond the imagination of the ordinary upper-middle-class citizen.

I don’t have the most educated eye but I recognized the styles of furniture from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century paintings; mostly wood with royal blue and deep red fabric here and there.

In a large chair with its back turned to the window sat a medium-sized middle-aged white woman with black and gray hair that formed naturally into ringlets. Her beauty was accented by a careless indifference. She wore a one-piece cream-colored dress that would be unremarkable anywhere but in a room where only gowns and service uniforms belonged.

She stood as I approached her and I thought that she seemed like an aging Greek deity; the mother of Titans and grandmother to gods.

“Mr. Rawlins, ma’am,” Redbird said dispassionately.

“So pleased to meet you.” She held out a hand and so I shook it.

“Nice place,” I said.

“Have a seat.”

Redbird pulled up a chair that was nicely formed but certainly inferior to Mrs. Goldsmith’s throne. They held us at the same height, though, and so I wasn’t insulted.

“Mr. Hodge called,” the lady said to the Indian.

He did not respond.

“He said that he asked you a question and you refused to answer,” she continued.

“I answered everything he asked,” Redbird said.

“I’ve told you before that I need you to be courteous to the staff.”

“I give as I get, ma’am.”

At that moment a man from south of the border, possibly Mexico, came up to my chair. He was wearing a tuxedo and a starched white shirt held together at the throat by a hand-knotted black bow tie.

“May I get you something to drink, sir?” he asked with no discernible accent.

I was wondering how old a cognac I could get in a room like that. But I knew better.

“No, thank you.”

The butler looked to the lady. When she shook her head, ever so slightly, he nodded and left the room.

“You can go too, Teh-ha,” she said.

Thirty seconds later we were alone in the makeshift throne room.

Neither of us spoke for a minute or two but the silence wasn’t uncomfortable. It was a lovely room with a regal woman who surrounded herself with people of color. Maybe this was some kind of inverse racism but it didn’t bother me—not at that moment anyway.

“My daughter is trouble, Mr. Rawlins,” she said, ending our respite of bliss.

“It would seem so. Does she have any siblings?”

“An older brother, Clyde, who lives in Verona, and a younger sister, Angelique.”

“Where’s she?”

“Staying with my parents in Concord, Mass.,” she said with faint distaste in her voice. “But it’s only Rosemary who’s troubled. She is my blood, however, and I will do what is necessary to keep her safe. I won’t have her martyred for my husband’s simplistic sense of patriotism or because the police want some kind of revenge.” Virulent vituperation, even raw hatred, crept into her tone.

“How did I even get here, Mrs. Goldsmith?” I asked.

“Because you’re looking for Rose and I want to make sure that you help her.”

“Who told you that I’m looking for your daughter?”

“My husband runs the weapons manufacturing company. It is even named after him, but it is my family that owns the majority stock.
Even though Foster and I live apart, there are people who work for him that report to me.”

“I see.”

“What do you think about the accusations against my daughter and this Bob Mantle person?”

“They had nothing to do with the armored car robbery or the first shootout with the police, I’m pretty sure about that. The killing of the vice principal was probably somebody else but the liquor store robbery—”

“What robbery?”

I gave her the account I got from Melvin.

“Oh, no,” she said whenever her daughter was mentioned.

I ended with, “I’m sorry to be the one to have to tell you these things, Mrs. Goldsmith.”

“Call me Lenore, Mr. Rawlins.”

“My name’s Easy.”

“Easy,” she said with a sad smile. “Easy, tell me what else you have learned about Rosemary.”

As a rule I don’t tattle about my clients’ business to others. But in this case I wasn’t even sure who it was I was representing. Foster denied it and Frisk and Tout said that the money came from somewhere else. So I told Lenore about the various branches of government, Belle Mantle, her husband’s denial about hiring me, and also the ambush that took out my windshield.

“Are you a brave man, Easy?” she asked after hearing about the failed bushwhacking.

“I’m scared of bee stings, back-alley beatings, and bullets too.”

She smiled. “That’s very sensible. I need a sensible man representing my daughter in this thing. Will you be that man?”

“Sure.” I liked the idea of having a client that I could see. “But I can’t promise the results you might like.”

“I just need a wedge against anyone trying to harm Rose. She’s trouble but not really bad. How much will you charge?”

“I think in a case like this I’ll give a sliding rate.”

“What does that mean exactly?”

“If I bring Rosemary home and the cops don’t come after her I’ll ask twenty-five thousand. If I bring her back in one piece and she has to go to court but gets off easy I’ll ask fifteen. If the courts slam her then it’s only ten.”

“And if you can’t save her?”

“Then you won’t owe me a thing.”

These last words seemed like a pronouncement; so much so that Lenore Goldsmith lowered her head for a moment. But when her face raised up it was clear and strong.

“What do you need from me?” she asked.

“Some basic information about where she lived in Santa Barbara and the names of any people who might have some knowledge of her whereabouts, habits, and the like.”

“You will have it,” she said by way of agreement. “Teh-ha will be my contact with you.”

“Good. I like him.”

After maybe forty-five minutes of questions and note-taking, Lenore called out, “Teh-ha.”

A minute and a half later the rich woman’s wrangler appeared.

“Make sure that Mr. Rawlins, Easy, can reach you at any time. Give him anything he needs.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The man calling himself Redbird walked me to the front door of the penthouse suite and handed me a business card on which was printed four Los Angeles–area code phone numbers, one from the Bay Area, and another from Boston.

I was surprised that this man had a business card. This I realized was a kind of adopted chauvinism that had been inculcated in me by American TV, books, newspapers, and a deeply flawed education. I mean, why wouldn’t Teh-ha Redbird have a business card?

I scribbled what numbers I had on the back of one of his cards.

“I’ll be here in Los Angeles unless I get in touch,” he said and then he hesitated. He looked at me for a moment, gauging something. Coming to an unspoken conclusion, he held out a hand for me to shake.

This gesture felt like the unasked-for absolution from a bishop in a religion I had never heard of.

There was a huge tentlike open-air marketplace on Florence at that time. They sold fresh vegetables, fruit, and fish. It was out of my way
but I had standing plans for Wednesday nights, and so I went there and bought eighteen filleted sand dabs, a pound and a half of cranberries, and a bag of oranges.

I got home by six. Feather was there reading some magazine in the living room.

“Jackson call?” were my first words to her.

“Him and Jewelle will be here at seven thirty.”

“And Bonnie?”

“She had to take a friend’s place on an overnight flight.”

“How about your brother?”

“He’ll be early as usual unless Bennie has trouble with Essie.”

“Okay.”

I turned toward the kitchen of the house that was yet to be a home.

“Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“Can we find out where my mother’s mother and her son are?”

“You mean your grandmother and uncle.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Just as soon as I’m through with this case, baby.”

Carrying the load of thoughts both pedestrian and deep, I started cooking.

First I put the cranberries in a pot of boiling water with a cup filled with equal portions of white and brown sugar and the grated peel of two oranges. Then I took out a two-quart plastic container of cooked collard greens, garnished with salt pork, from the freezer. (I had moved the entire contents of the freezer from the old house to the new in a Styrofoam cooler.) I used a butter knife to wedge the greens out of the container and put them in a pot on a low heat. I put three cups of white rice in another pot, added five cups of water, a teaspoon of salt, and three tablespoons of sweet butter.