Cinnamon Kiss (6 page)

“I’d like to know a little bit more about you before divulging that information,” he said.

I sat back and turned my palms upward. “Shoot.”

“Where are you from?”

“A deep dark humanity down in Louisiana, a place where we never knew there was a depression because we never had the jobs to lose.”

“Education?”

“I read Mann’s
Magic Mountain
last month. The month before that I read
Invisible Man
.”

That got a smile.

“H. G. Wells?”

“Ellison,” I countered.

“You fought in the war?”

“On both fronts.”

Lee frowned and cocked his head. “The European and Japanese theaters?” he asked.

I shook my head and smiled.

“White people took their shots at me,” I said. “Most of them were German but there was an American or two in the mix.”

“Married?”

“No,” I said with maybe a little too much emphasis.

“I see. Are you a licensed PI, Mr. Rawlins?”

“Yes sir, I am.”

Holding out a child’s hand, he asked, “May I see it?”

“Don’t have it with me,” I said. “It’s in a frame on the wall in my office.”

Lee nodded, stopped to consider, and then nodded again—listening to an unseen angel on his right shoulder. Then he rose, barely taller standing than he was seated.

“Good day,” he said, making a paltry attempt at a bow.

Now I understood. From the moment I flushed him out of hiding he intended to dismiss my services. What I couldn’t understand was why he didn’t let me leave when I wanted to the first time.

“Fine with me.” I stood up too.

“Mr. Lee,” Maya said then. She also rose from her chair. “Please, sir.”

Please.
The conflict wasn’t between me and Lee—it was a fight between him and his assistant.

“He’s unlicensed,” Lee said, making a gesture like he was tossing something into the trash.

“He’s fully licensed,” she said. “I spoke with Mayor Yorty himself this morning. He told me that Mr. Rawlins has the complete support of the LAPD.”

I sat down.

There was too much information to sift through on my feet. This woman could get the mayor of Los Angeles on the phone, the mayor knew my name, and the Los Angeles cops were willing to say that they trusted me. Not one of those facts did I feel comfortable with.

Lee sighed.

“Mr. Lynx has always been our best operative in Los Angeles,” Maya said, “and he brought Mr. Rawlins to us.”

“How long ago did you first come to us, Mr. Lynx?” Lee asked.

“Six years ago, I guess.”

“And you never tried to extort your way into my presence?”

Saul didn’t say anything.

“And why should I put a man I don’t know on a case of this much importance?” Lee asked Maya.

“Because he’s the only man for the job and therefore he’s the best,” she said confidently.

“Why don’t you call Chief Parker and get him to find the girl?” Lee said.

“To begin with, he’s a public official and this is a private matter.” I felt that her words carried hidden meaning. “And you know as well as I do that white policemen in white socks and black shoes are never going to find Cargill.”

Lee stared at his employee for a moment and then sat down. Maya let out a deep breath and lowered, catlike, into her chair.

Saul was looking at us with his emerald eyes evident. For a deadpan like Saul this was an expression of bewilderment.

Lee was regarding his own clasped hands on the red lacquered desk. I got the feeling that he didn’t lose many arguments with the people he deigned to meet. It would take a few moments for him to swallow his pride.

“The man we’re looking for is named Axel Bowers,” Lee said at last. “He’s a liberal lawyer living in Berkeley, from a wealthy family. He has a storefront practice in San Francisco, where he and an associate attempt to help miscreants evade the law. He’s the one who stole from my client.”

“What’s the catch?” I asked.

“Bowers had a colored servant named Philomena Cargill, generally known as Cinnamon—because of the hue of her skin, I am told. This Cinnamon worked for Bowers as a housekeeper at first, but she had some education and started doing secretarial and assistant work also.

“When my client realized that Bowers had stolen from him he called his home to demand the return of his property. Miss Cargill answered and said that Bowers had left the country.

“The client came to me but by the time my people got there Miss Cargill had fled also. It is known that she came to Berkeley from Los Angeles, that she was raised near Watts. It is also known that she and Axel were very close, unprofessionally so.

“What I need for you to do is find Miss Cargill and locate Bowers and the contents of the briefcase.”

“So you want Bowers too?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Why? Doesn’t sound like you’re planning to prosecute.”

“Do you accept the task as I have presented it?” he asked in return.

“I’d like to know where these people live in San Francisco and Berkeley,” I said.

“Neither of them is in the Bay Area, I can assure you of that,” the little Napoleon said. “Bowers is out of the country and Cargill is in Los Angeles. We’ve tried to contact her family but all attempts have failed.”

“She might have friends here who know where she went,” I suggested.

“We are pursuing that avenue, Mr. Rawlins. You are to go to L.A. and search for the girl there.”

“Girl,” I repeated. “How old is she?”

Lee glanced at Maya.

“Early twenties,” the knockout replied.

“Anything else?” Lee asked.

“Family?” I said. “Previous address, photograph, distinguishing habits or features?”

“You’re the best in Los Angeles,” Lee said. “Mr. Lynx assures us of that. Maya will give you any information she deems necessary. Other than that, I’m sure you will find the answers to all of your questions and ours. Do you accept?”

“Sure,” I said. “Why not? Philomena Cargill also known as Cinnamon, somewhere on the streets of L.A.”

Robert E. Lee rose from his chair. He turned his back on us and made his way through the hole in the wall. The panel closed behind him.

I turned to Maya Adamant and said, “That’s one helluva boss you got there.”

“Shall we go?” was her reply.

F
irst I want to check something out,” I said. I crossed the room, approaching the small out-of-the-way frame. It was a partially faded daguerreotype-like photograph, imprinted on a pane of glass. It looked to be the detective’s namesake. The general was in full uniform. He had, at some point during the exposure, looked down, maybe at a piece of lint on his magnificent coat. The result was the image of a two-headed man. The more tangible face stared with grim conviction at the lens while the other was peering downward, unaware of history.

I was intrigued by the antique photograph because of its vulnerability. It was as if the detective wanted to honor the past general in both victory and defeat.

“Shall we go, Mr. Rawlins?” Maya Adamant said again.

I realized that she was worried about Lee getting mad if he saw me getting too intimate with his sanctorum.

“Sure.”

IN THE LIBRARY Maya gave me a business card.

“These are my numbers,” she said, “both at home and at work.”

Saul had been forgotten. He’d merely been their, or was it her, pipeline to a Watts connection.

“What’s the disagreement between you and your boss?” I asked.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure you do. He went through that whole song and dance about getting rid of me because he wanted you to beg him. What’s that all about?”

“You would be better served, Mr. Rawlins, by using your detecting skills to find Philomena Cargill.”

There was an almost physical connection between us. It was like we’d known each other in a most fundamental way—so much so that I nearly leaned forward to kiss her. She saw this and moved her head back half an inch. But even then she smiled.

We went down to the library. I gave her my office phone number.

“When will you be there?” she asked me.

“Doesn’t matter.”

“You have a secretary?”

“Electronic,” I said, more for her master than for her.

“I don’t understand.”

“I got a tape recorder attached to my phone. It records a message and plays it back when I get in.”

OUTSIDE THE SUN was dazzling. A cool breeze blew over Nob Hill.

“What the hell was that all about?” Saul said as soon as we were back at his car.

“What?”

“I don’t know. You choose. Making Lee come out to talk to you. Looking at Maya like that.”

“You got to admit that Miss Adamant is a good-looker.”

“I have to admit that you need this job.”

“Listen, Saul. I won’t work for a guy that refuses to meet me face-to-face. You know what’ll happen if the cops come breakin’ down my door and I can’t even say that I ever talked to the man.”

“I brought you there, Easy. I wouldn’t put you in jeopardy like that.”

“
You
wouldn’t. I know that because I know you. But hear me, man, that black son’a yours will be out on his own one day. And when he is he will tell you that every other white man he meets will sell an innocent black man down the river before he will turn on a white crook.”

That silenced my friend for a moment. I had waited years to be able to slip that piece of intelligence into his ear.

“Well what did you think about Lee?” he asked.

“I don’t trust him.”

“You think he’s bent?”

“I don’t know about that but he seems like the kinda fool get you down a dark alley and then forget to send your backup.”

“Forget? Bobby Lee doesn’t forget a thing. He’s one of the smartest men in the world.”

“That might be,” I replied, “but he thinks he’s even smarter than what he is. And you and I both know that if a man is too proud then he’s gonna fall. And if I’m right under him…”

Saul respected me. I could see in his eye that he was halfway convinced by my argument. Now that he’d met Lee he had reservations of his own.

“Well,” he said, “I guess you got to do it anyway, right? I mean that’s your little girl.”

I nodded and gazed southward at a huge bank of fog descending on the city.

“I guess we better be getting back,” Saul said.

“You go on. I’m gonna stick around town and see about these people here.”

“But all they need you to do is find Philomena Cargill.”

“I don’t know that she’s in L.A. Neither does Lee.”

SAUL HAD TO GET BACK home. He was due to meet with a client the next morning. I had him drop me off at a Hertz rental car lot.

It only took them an hour and a half to call Los Angeles to validate my BankAmericard.

“You always call the bank to check out a credit card?” I asked the blue-suited and white salesman.

“Certainly,” he replied. He had a fat face, thinning hair, and a slender frame.

“Seems to defeat the purpose of a credit card.”

“You can never be too careful,” he told me.

“I look at it the other way around,” I said. “The way I see it you can never be careful enough.”

The salesman squinted at me then. He understood that I was making fun of him—he just didn’t get the joke.

AN OAKLAND PHONE BOOK at the Hertz office told me that Axel Bowers lived on Berkeley’s Derby Street. The Bay Area street map in my glove compartment put it a block or so up from Telegraph. I drove my rented Ford across the Bay Bridge and parked a block away from the alleged thief’s house.

Derby was a major education for me. Everything about that block was in transition. But not the way neighborhoods usually change. It wasn’t black folks moving in and whites moving out or a downward turn in the local economy so that homes once filled with middle-class families were turning into rooming houses for the working poor.

This neighborhood was transforming as if under a magic spell.

The houses had gone from the standard white and green, blue, and yellow to a wide range of pastels. Pinks, aquas, violets, and fiery oranges. Even the cars were painted like rainbows or with rude images or long speeches etched by madmen. Music of every kind poured from open windows. Some women wore long tie-dyed gowns like fairy princesses and others wore nearly nothing at all. Half of the men were shirtless and almost all of them had long hair like women. Their beards went untrimmed. American flags were plastered into windows and tacked to walls in a decidedly unpatriotic manner. Many of the young women carried babies.

It was the most integrated neighborhood I had ever seen. There were whites and blacks and browns and even one or two Asian faces.

It seemed to me that I had wandered into a country where war had come and all the stores and public services had been shut down; a land where the population was being forced into a more primitive state.

I stopped in front of one big lavender house because I heard something and someone that I recognized. “Show Me Baby,” the signature blues song of my old friend Alabama Slim, was blasting from the front door. ’Bama was crooning from the speakers. ’Bama. I didn’t think that there were ten white people in the United States who knew his work. But there he was, singing for a street filled with hairy men and women of all races in a country that was no longer the land of his birth.

BOWERS’S HOUSE, a single-story wood box, was the most normal-looking one on the block. Its plank walls were still white, but the trim was a fire-engine red and the front door was decorated with a plaster mosaic set with broken tiles, shards of glass, marbles, trinkets, and various semiprecious stones: rough garnets, pink quartz, and turquoise.

I rang the bell and used the brass skull knocker but no one answered. Then I went down the side of the house, toward the back. There I came across a normal-looking green door that had a pane of glass set in it. Through this window I could see a small room that had a broom leaning in a corner and rubber boots on the floor. A floral-pattern apron hung from a peg on the wall.