“No, sir. The police told me not to contact you under any circumstances. But I’m suspicious by nature. I haven’t read about the supposed kidnapping in the newspaper. And even though I’m aware of some of the crimes this Uhuru Nolicé is supposed to have committed, I haven’t ever heard about him before either.”
“So you don’t believe the police?”
It was an odd interrogation. Goldsmith had no intention of sitting or of offering me a seat. I decided that this was some kind of superstition; that if he treated me in a civil manner he couldn’t have me shot on the way out.
“Not necessarily,” I said.
“And what do you want from me?” he asked.
“Like I said, somebody paid me six thousand dollars to start this investigation. I figure that was you. And if I’m working for you it’s only right that we meet face-to-face.”
Goldsmith’s eyebrows creased slightly.
“And there’s another thing,” I added.
“What’s that?”
“I have a daughter of my own and I wouldn’t want somebody out looking for her that I hadn’t met.”
“I’ve never served in the armed forces, Mr. Rawlins, but I’m military just the same,” Goldsmith said. “I live a Spartan life and work in armaments. I taught Rose how to make her bed when she was six years old. I told her that when a man or woman makes their own bed they sleep in it too.”
His words were facts tinged with lament.
“So you’re saying that you don’t want me to find her?” I asked.
The gun-maker gave me a long hard look then. He was angry about something; maybe it was my question.
“Have you ever killed anyone, Mr. Rawlins?”
“Why? Have you?”
“Not by direct physical contact,” he said as if he had been practicing a legal defense. “I have never shot, stabbed, bludgeoned, or asphyxiated another human being. There are people out there, however, who blame me for the deaths of thousands. They think because I make bombs that I am responsible for how those bombs are used. If a child is shot in the DMZ or Johannesburg with one of my guns they lay the crime at my feet. What about you?”
“Are you asking me if I blame you for people killed with your weapons?”
“I’m asking you if you have ever killed anyone.”
“Why?”
“Like you said, I want to know what kind of man is out there looking for my daughter.”
Less than two months had passed since I last killed a man. Keith Handel was a thug and a killer, a ruthless man who would, who had murdered his own confederates for money. I thought he was trying to kill me. If he got the upper hand he probably would have. But that night I was lucky. I strangled him while he was trying to do the same to me.
“In the war,” I said.
“Is war your excuse?”
“Where I come from people don’t have any use for excuses.”
That got me another minute-long stare.
“Is there anything else I can do for you, Mr. Rawlins?”
“You could answer my question.”
“Let me be very clear,” he said. “I did not summon you or go to your house on Moving Day, as you call it. I didn’t give you any money or suggest these things you say about my daughter are true. You are in the employ of the Los Angeles Police Department. So I suggest you address your questions and bring your findings to them.”
Looking at Old Stony’s hard facade, I wondered if stainless steel could rot.
He had, I believed, given me the answers to my questions, but I didn’t understand their meaning.
The door behind me opened and I didn’t have to look to know that Red and Mr. Push-up had somehow been summoned to see me out.
17
As we climbed out from Goldsmith’s underground lair—Red, Mr. Push-up, Gregory Teeg, and I—I wondered about what crime had been committed. It could be that this was a simple kidnapping for ransom. It could be that Goldsmith’s desk was actually a prehistoric boar trained to stand still and act the part of an inanimate piece of office furniture.
I was breathing pretty hard at the halfway mark of our ascent. This exertion made me crave a cigarette. When we were outside of the concrete bunker I pulled out a Pall Mall and a box of matches.
“No smoking on the property,” copper-hued Teeg said.
“Why not?”
“Too many combustibles and flammables in the air.”
I made it home by six forty-five. Feather was there in the bare living room, sitting in the chair and reading a book. She had rooted out our old brass lamp and a dark side table made from elm.
“What you readin’?”
“La Condition Humaine,” she said. “Man’s Fate by André Malraux.”
“In French?”
“I don’t really understand it but I can read the words pretty much. Bonnie gave it to me.”
“You hungry?”
“There’s chicken and dumplings on the stove,” she said, putting the book down and standing up to kiss me.
She’d also made a green salad in the French style with a garlicky vinaigrette dressing. I sat at the rectangular table in the eight-sided room and my daughter served. Both my children had matured early. They were smart and focused from childhood, responsible and willing to help. These traits might have had something to do with my child-rearing but I couldn’t explain it. I was a single parent who was often out in the world rather than at home. I had moved my kids around, kicked the woman we all loved out of the house, and was subject to sour moods. I had nearly killed myself and subjected Feather to a prolonged and spotty resurrection.
“How was it out at the Nishios’?” I asked when we were both seated.
“Nice. They have a big family and they all work together making clothes for Bryant’s Department Store in Beverly Hills. They have aunts and girl cousins and wives all there working. Mr. Nishio is the only man, he answers the phone and cuts fabric. Me and Peggy sewed yellow trim into the hems of black cloth dresses. I even learned a few things to say in Japanese.”
“That sounds nice,” I said.
“Oh,” she said. “What happened to your face?”
“Something hit the windshield of the Barracuda and it shattered.”
“That’s terrible.”
“Blessing in disguise,” I said. “I turned it in and got a new car doesn’t hit you like a neon sign.”
“Oh well,” Feather said, putting the old car from her mind.
The house seemed empty, not only because of the sparse furnishings; it was also a new space that felt unlived in. This brought about a certain quality of intimacy that we’d never experienced in the home we knew so well.
“Daddy?”
I knew from her tone that something serious was up.
“Yeah?”
“You said that you were going to tell me about my real parents.”
I think it was her making dinner that defeated me. She was a young woman asking a man she trusted to tell her the truth.
The story of Feather’s parents’ lives, and deaths, was X-rated. She shouldn’t have heard it until she’d reached her twenty-first year, not her twelfth, but I knew I couldn’t avoid it for a decade more.
“It’s a sad story,” I said.
“Are they dead?”
We sat there in the dinette for more than two hours. I told her about Vernor Garnett, her maternal grandfather, who killed her mother and her father. I said that it was because he was an important man and was embarrassed by his daughter Robin’s wild lifestyle. I didn’t say it was because Robin had had a Negro daughter and tried to extort money out of Vernor to hide that fact.
“I was on another case,” I told her truthfully, “and came across those killings. After it was all over I found you with a friend of your mother’s. Vernor was going to prison and your grandmother and her son Milo had left for the East Coast. I didn’t want you with the county so me and Juice took you in.”
“Is my grandfather still in prison?” Feather asked
.
“He died.”
“And my grandmother?”
“She knew about the crimes but the law couldn’t, or wouldn’t, prosecute her. She moved back east, like I said, I don’t know where.”
Feather got up from her chair and sat on my lap—there were tears in her eyes. I held her and she held me; both of us orphans on a dark street at night.
After some time I carried her up to her bedroom. She changed into her nightgown in the bathroom, crawled into her bed weeping, and I sat there beside her bed until an hour after she’d fallen asleep.
The phone rang at seven minutes after midnight. So much had happened that I forgot about the possible appointment.
“Hello?”
“Ease,” Mouse said. “What’s happenin’?”
“It’s all fucked up, Raymond,” I said to my oldest and deadliest friend.
I went on to tell him about Frisk and Manning, Mantle and Rosemary Goldsmith—who I had begun to think of as Rose Gold. I mentioned Uhuru Nolicé and almost getting killed on Crenshaw.
“Who is this Uhuru whatever?” Mouse asked.
“It’s an alias that Mantle’s using.” I went on to tell him about the shootout with the police, the so-called assassination, and the armored car job Manning had mentioned.
“That’s some bullshit right there,” Mouse said.
“What you mean, Ray? I read about all those crimes in the papers. You sayin’ they didn’t happen? Men shot at me in my car.”
“Did they hit you?”
“No.”
“Then they weren’t real killers, now were they?”
“They might have meant to kill me and missed.”
“Look, Easy, I don’t know about this Bob Mantle dude. I mean I seen him fight before but I don’t know about his politics or whatever. I do know that those three cops got shot was killed by Art Sugar and his crew. Art was runnin’ drugs and there was a shootout over on Slauson. I know that ’cause Art’s right hand in Chinatown, Lem Leung, wanted me to help him get on a slow boat to Hong Kong.”
I didn’t ask if Mouse had helped the middleman on his journey; nobody was paying me for that.
“I guess he could’a shot that vice principal,” Mouse continued, “but the armored car job couldn’t have been your boy because I know the people did it. They offered me a piece but you know I don’t shit where I eat.”
Raymond Alexander had his finger on the pulse of crime in L.A., and elsewhere. He wouldn’t have lied or passed on possibly faulty information, not to me. But if Bob Mantle couldn’t have committed at least two of those crimes, then why was the LAPD so sure of it? Why didn’t Stony Goldsmith show any real concern for his daughter?
“Easy,” Mouse was saying with an edge to his voice.
“What?”
“Do you?”
“Do I what?”
“I asked if you needed me to come back there.”
I was lost in the tangle of the case, or the possible case.
“No, Ray. No. I just have to muddle through this shit.”
“I don’t know about Mantle,” he said, “but if you get mixed up with Art Sugar your ass be in a sling.”
“I’ll tell Etta if I get in over my head.”
“Okay.”
“I have another question, though.”
“Shoot.”
“You ever hear of a woman named Mary Donovan?”
“Not that I remember. What she do?”
“Makes her nut movin’ boodle. At least she used to.”
“What denomination?” Mouse knew the right words when need be.
“C-notes. Not very good ones, I think.”
“Talk to this dude named Lambert, Light Lambert.” He gave me the address. “Light’s got his thumb all the way up in the counterfeit pie.”
“Thanks, Ray.”
“Try and stay alive till I get home, Easy. I found this new soul food restaurant make you think you was in Lake Charles.”
Feather was asleep but I could tell she was having nightmares; the blankets and top sheet were on the floor. I covered her up and kissed her forehead, wondering if I should have lied to her about her mother and father.
I had just lain down on my bed when I realized that a streetlamp was shining in my eyes. There was no shade or curtain to block it, so I accepted the glare and turned on my side. In the morning I would fix everything—or die trying.
18
Coffee brewing in the morning brought me closer to feeling at home in the new house. Sunlight danced on the white walls and played interesting patterns through the mild prism of glass in my shadeless windows. I put on my tan linen suit, a milk-chocolate-colored turtleneck shirt, and finally, after deep consideration, decided on dark green shoes.
My brown leather jewelry box was on the dresser. Feather had put it there, no doubt. I opened it to see if there was anything that caught my fancy for the day and the job at hand. There was in the upper corner of the second level of the box a thick platinum ring festooned with a three-carat emerald. That ring once belonged to Mouse. When I saw it on his hand I told him how much I admired it.
“Take it, Easy,” he sang, tugging the bauble from his middle finger. “It don’t fit me too good anyway.”
It was too small even for my pinky but I took it. Mouse got sour when people turned down his gifts.
Something about the jewel seemed to resonate with the Rose Gold case and so I put the ring in my pocket.
I liked to think that I was a modern child of the twentieth century but the superstitions of Louisiana were snagged in the crevices of my brain. It felt like I needed a good luck charm from a powerful deity, and Mouse’s juju was some of the strongest I knew.
Feather was in the kitchen making bacon and eggs, and Bisquick waffles on a machine that had been packed away for years. She was wearing blue jeans and a checkered blue and white shirt shot through with black lines that complicated, or maybe exhilarated, the design. The shirt had once belonged to her brother.
“That coffee I’m smellin’?”
“I’m using the percolator that Bonnie brought back from Marseille. But I got the French press out if you want that kind.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “You goin’ to work with your friend again today?”
“I thought I could use the money to buy a new bike.”
I took a seat in the dinette, wondering if I should get a round or an octangular table for that room.
“Are you in trouble, Daddy?” my daughter asked, putting the breakfast plate and thick white coffee mug down in front of me.
Her question told me many things. First and foremost, she was saying to me that she’d accepted my story about her parents and my part in that tale. She would take her time and consider the details and one day she’d come back to me with more questions—and requests. But she could also see that the job I had undertaken had gotten under my skin and into my unconscious mind. I looked like I was in trouble because trouble had colored my mood.
“No,” I said. “Why?”
“You always get that serious look on your face and stare out into space when there’s trouble.”
“How’d you come up with that theory?”
“Juice used to tell me when I was a kid.”
“You’re still a kid.”
“Are you okay?”
“You remember those men that came over the house while we were moving?”
“Yeah.”
“They were the police. They’re looking for some guy and want me to find him.”
“What do they want him for?”
“He knows a woman who’s the daughter of a rich man. She’s missing and they want to ask him if he’s seen her anywhere.”
Frenchie sauntered into the room then. Feather picked him up and sat down across from me with the dog in her lap.
“Aren’t you eating?” I asked.
“I already did.”
Somewhere in the world I had a blood daughter: Edna, whom I sired with Regina. Regina had left
me for an old friend of mine from Houston. I wondered if Edna was as wonderful a child as the one keeping me company before she got on with the business of her life.
“Bye, Daddy,” Feather said at the curb before crossing the street to Peggy Nishio’s house.
“Look both ways.”
She laughed at my trying to make her stay a child.
Peggy was outside waiting for her, smiling and waving.
Walking back to my front door, I glanced to the right and saw two white men in suits and ties coming toward the house. They were both the same height and hue, they had virtually identical haircuts, and probably tipped the scales within two pounds of each other. They reached the path of hand-cut granite brick, paused a moment, and then headed for me.
I considered backing into the house, slamming the door, and making it out the back. I had already placed a pistol on the high shelf of the kitchen cabinet. I could grab that on the way.
The idea of the gun called up the image of Stony Goldsmith sitting in a hole in the ground and stockpiling weapons. This thought arrested me. I turned my head to catch a last glimpse of Feather but she and Peggy had already gone into the Nishio home.
“Mr. Rawlins?” one of the men, who wore a dark gray suit, said.
“Yes?” I answered, addressing both the fraternal twins.
“I’m Agent Sorkin and this is my associate Agent Bruce. We’re from the FBI.”
“Do tell.” I took a step backward so that I was standing inside the front doorway.
“We have been informed that you are looking for Rosemary Goldsmith.”
“By whom?”
“That’s not important,” Agent Bruce, who wore a suit of dark blue, said.
“It is to me.”
“May we come in?” Sorkin asked.
Neither man, at any point in our conversation, smiled.
“No you may not.”
“We have to talk to you about this case, Mr. Rawlins,” Bruce told me.
“That’s your problem. You need to talk to me but I don’t need to talk to you.”
“You are getting involved in an ongoing federal investigation,” Sorkin replied. “If you don’t tell us what you’re doing we can have you arrested for interfering.”
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