Cinnamon Kiss er-10

by Walter Mosley

  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.”

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  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.”

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  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.

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  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.

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  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.

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  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?”

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  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.

  Document Outline

  Also by Walter Mosley

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