Cinnamon Kiss (5 page)

On Lower Lombard we passed a peculiar couple walking down the street. The man wore faded red velvet pants with an open sheepskin vest that only partially covered his naked chest. His long brown hair cascaded down upon broad, thin shoulders. The woman next to him wore a loose, floral-patterned dress with nothing underneath. She had light brown hair with a dozen yellow flowers twined into her irregular braids. The two were walking, barefoot and slow, as if they had nowhere to be on that Thursday afternoon.

“Hippies,” Saul said.

“Is that what they look like?” I asked, amazed. “What do they do?”

“As little as possible. They smoke marijuana and live a dozen to a room, they call ’em crash pads. And they move around from place to place saying that owning property is wrong.”

“Like communists?” I asked. I had just finished reading
Das Kapital
when Feather got weak. I wanted to get at the truth about our enemies from the horse’s mouth but I didn’t have enough history to really understand.

“No,” Saul said, “not communists. They’re more like dropouts from life. They say they believe in free love.”

“Free love? Is that like they say, ‘That ain’t my baby, baby’?”

Saul laughed and we began the ascent to Nob Hill.

Near the top of that exclusive mount is a street called Cushman. Saul took a right turn there, drove one block, and parked in front of a four-story mansion that rose up on a slope behind the sidewalk.

The walls were so white that it made me squint just looking at them. The windows seemed larger than others on the block and the conical turrets at the top were painted metallic gold. The first floor of the manor was a good fifteen feet above street level—the entrance was barred by a wrought iron gate.

Saul pushed a button and waited.

I looked out toward the city and appreciated the view. Then I felt the pang of guilt, knowing that Feather lay dying four hundred miles to the south.

“Yes?” a sultry woman’s voice asked over an invisible intercom.

“It’s Saul and Mr. Rawlins.”

A buzzer sounded. Saul pulled open the gate and we entered onto an iron platform. The elevator vestibule was carved into the rock beneath the house. As soon as Saul closed the gate the platform began to move upward toward an opening at the first-floor level of the imposing structure. As we moved into the aperture a panel above us slid aside and we ascended into a large, well-appointed room.

The walls were mahogany bookshelves from floor to ceiling—and the ceiling was at least sixteen feet high. Beautifully bound books took up every space. I was reminded of Jackson Blue’s beach house, which had cheap shelves everywhere. His books for the most part were ratty and soiled, but they were well read and his library was probably larger.

Appearing before us as we rose was a white woman with tanned skin and copper hair. She wore a Chinese-style dress made of royal blue silk. It fitted her form and had no sleeves. Her eyes were somewhere between defiant and taunting and her bare arms had the strength of a woman who did things for herself. Her face was full and she had a black woman’s lips. The bones of her face made her features point downward like a lovely, earthward-bound arrowhead. Her eyes were light brown and a smile flitted around her lips as she regarded me regarding her beauty.

She would have been tall even if she were a man—nearly six feet. But unlike most tall women of that day, she didn’t let her shoulders slump and her backbone was erect. I made up my mind then and there that I would get on naked terms with her if it was at all possible.

She nodded and smiled and I believe she read the intentions in my gaze.

“Maya Adamant,” Saul Lynx said, “this is Ezekiel Rawlins.”

“Easy,” I said, extending a hand.

She held my hand a moment longer than necessary and then moved back so that we could step off of the platform.

“Saul,” she said. “Come in. Would you like a drink?”

“No, Maya. We’re in kind of a hurry. Easy’s daughter is sick and we need to get back as soon as possible.”

“Oh,” she said with a frown. “I hope it’s not serious.”

“It’s a blood condition,” I said, not intending to be so honest. “Not quite an infection but it really isn’t a virus either. The doctors in L.A. don’t know what to do.”

“There’s a clinic in Switzerland …,” she said, searching for the name.

“The Bonatelle,” I added.

Her smile broadened, as if I had just passed some kind of test. “Yes. That’s it. Have you spoken to them?”

“That’s why I’m here, Miss Adamant. The clinic needs cash and so I need to work.”

Her chest expanded then and an expression of delight came over her face.

“Come with me,” she said.

She led us toward a wide, carpeted staircase that stood at the far end of the library.

Saul looked at me and hunched his shoulders.

“I’ve never been above this floor before,” he whispered.

THE ROOM ABOVE was just as large as the one we had left. But where the library was dark with no windows, this room had a nearly white pine floor and three bay windows along each wall.

There were maybe a dozen large tables in this sun-drenched space. On each was a battle scene from the Civil War. In each tableau there were scores of small, hand-carved wooden figurines engaged in battle. The individual soldiers—tending cannon, engaged in hand-to-hand combat, down and wounded, down and dead—were compelling. The figurines had been carved for maximum emotional effect. On one table there was a platoon of Negro Union soldiers engaging a Confederate band.

“Amazing, aren’t they?” Maya asked from behind me. “Mr. Lee carves each one in a workroom in the attic. He has studied every aspect of the Civil War and has written a dozen monographs on the subject. He owns thousands of original documents from that period.”

“One wonders when he has time to be a detective with all that,” I said.

For a moment there was a deadness in Maya’s expression. I felt that I had hit a nerve, that maybe Bobby Lee really was a figment of someone’s imagination.

“Come into the office, Mr. Rawlins. Saul.”

We followed her past the miniature scenes of murder and mayhem made mythic. I wondered if anyone would ever make a carving of me slaughtering that young German soldier in the snow in suburban Düsseldorf.

MAYA LED US through a hand-carved yellow door that was painted with images of a naked island woman.

“Gauguin,” I said as she pushed the gaudy door open. “Your boss does paintings too?”

“This door is an original,” she said.

“Whoa” came unbidden from my lips.

The office was a nearly empty, windowless room with cherry floors. Along the white walls were a dozen tall lamps with frosted glass globes around the bulbs. These lamps were set before as many floor-to-ceiling cherry beams imbedded in the plaster walls. All the lights were on.

In the center of the room was an antique red lacquered Chinese desk that had four broad-bottomed chairs facing it, with one behind for our absentee host.

“Sit,” Maya Adamant said.

She settled in one of the visitors’ chairs and Saul and I followed suit.

“We’re looking for a woman,” she began, all business now.

“Who’s we?” I asked.

This brought on a disapproving frown.

“Mr. Lee.”

“That’s a
he
not a
we,
” I said.

“All right,” she acquiesced. “Mr. Lee wants —”

“Do you own this house, Miss Adamant?”

Another frown. “No.”

“Easy,” Saul warned.

I held up my hand for his silence.

“You know, my mother, before she died, told me that I should never enter a man’s house without paying my respects.”

“I’ll be sure to tell Mr. Lee that you said hello,” she told me.

“It was a double thing with my mother,” I said, continuing with my train of thought. “On the one hand you didn’t want a man thinking that you were in his domicile doing mischief with his property or his wife —”

“Mr. Lee is not married,” Maya put in.

“And on the other hand,” I went on, “being of the darker persuasion, you wouldn’t want to be treated like a nigger or a slave.”

“Mr. Lee doesn’t meet with anyone who works for him,” she informed me.

“Come on, Easy,” Saul added. “I told you that.”

Ignoring my friend, I said, “And I don’t work for anyone I don’t meet with.”

“You’ve taken his money,” Maya reminded me.

“And I drove four hundred miles to tell him thank you.”

“I really don’t see the problem, Mr. Rawlins. I can brief you on the job at hand.”

“I could sit with you on a southern beach until the earth does a full circle, Miss Adamant. And I’m sure that I’d rather speak to you than to a man named after the number one Rebel general. But you have your orders from him and I got my mother’s demands. My mother is dead and so she can’t change her mind.”

In my peripheral vision I could see Saul throw his hands up in the air.

“I can’t take you to him,” Maya said with finality.

I stood up from my fine Chinese chair saying, “And I can’t raise the dead.”

I made ready to leave, knowing that I was being a fool. I needed that money and I knew how powerful white men could act. But still I couldn’t help myself. Hell, there was an armored car waiting for me in the state of Texas.

Thinking about the robbery, everything that could go wrong came back to me. So, standing there before my chair, I was torn between walking out and apologizing.

“Hold up there,” a man’s voice commanded.

I turned to see that a panel in the wall behind the lacquered desk had become a doorway.

A man emerged from the darkness, a very short man.

“I am Robert E. Lee,” the little man said.

H
e wasn’t over five feet tall. He might not have made the full sixty inches. He wore navy blue pants and a black coat cut in the fashion of a nineteenth-century general’s jacket. He had short black hair and wispy sideburns, a completely round head, and the large dark eyes of a baby who had wisdom past its years.

He marched up to the chair behind the desk and sat with an air that could only be described as pompous.

It was obvious that he had been watching us since we entered the office. I suspected that he had probably been monitoring our conversation from the moment we entered the house. But the little general wasn’t embarrassed by this exposure. He touched something on his desk and the portal behind him slid shut.

“It’s like the house of the future at Disneyland,” I said.

“I’ve never been,” he said with an insincere smile plastered to his lips.

“You should go sometime. Might give you some tips.”

“You’ve met me, Mr. Rawlins,” Robert E. Lee said. “We’ve had mindless banter. Is that enough for your mother?”

An instant rage rose up in my heart. I had never loved anyone in life as much as I did my mother—at least not until the birth of my blood daughter and then when Jesus and Feather found their way into my home. The idea that this arrogant little man would refer to my mother in that tone made me want to slap him. But I held myself in check. After all, I had mentioned my mother’s admonition and Feather needed my best effort if she was going to live.

“So why am I here?” I asked.

“You’d need a practicing existentialist to answer a question like that,” he said. “All I can do is explain the job at hand. Mr. Lynx…”

“Yes sir,” Saul said. “May I say that it’s an honor to meet you.”

“Thank you. Do you vouch for Mr. Rawlins?”

“He’s among the best, sir. And he is the best in certain parts of town, especially if that town is Los Angeles.”

“You realize that you will be held accountable for his actions?”

Lee referred to me as if I weren’t there. A moment before, that would have angered me, but now I was amused. His effort was petty. I turned to Maya Adamant and winked.

“I’d trust Ezekiel Rawlins with my life,” Saul replied. There was deep certainty in his voice.

“I’m my own man, Mr. Lee,” I said. “If you want to work with me, then fine. If not I have things to do in L.A.”

“Or in Montreux,” he added, proving my suspicions about the eavesdropping devices throughout the house.

“The job,” I prodded.

Lee pressed his lips outward and then pulled them in. He looked at me with those infant orbs and came to a decision.

“I have been retained by a wealthy man living outside Danville to discover the whereabouts of a business associate who went missing five days ago. This associate has absconded with a briefcase that contains certain documents that must be returned as soon as possible. If I can locate this man and return the contents of that briefcase before midnight of next Friday I will receive a handsome fee and you, if you are instrumental in the acquisition of that property, will receive ten thousand dollars on top of the monies you’ve already been paid.”

“Who’s the client?” I asked.

“His name is unimportant,” Lee replied.

I knew from the way he lifted his chin that my potential employer meant to show me who was boss. This was nothing new to me. I had tussled with almost every boss I’d ever had over the state of my employment and the disposition of my dignity.

And almost every boss I’d ever had had been a white man.

“What’s in the briefcase?”

“White papers, printed in ink and sealed with red wax.”

I turned my head to regard Saul. Beyond him, on the far wall, next to a lamp, was a small framed photograph. I couldn’t make out the details from that distance. It was the only decoration on the walls and it was in an odd place.

“Is your client the original owner of these white papers, printed in ink and sealed with red wax?”

“As far as I know my client is the owner of the briefcase in question and its contents.”

Lee was biding his time, waiting for something. In my opinion he was acting like a buffoon but those eyes made me wary.

“What is the name of the man who stole the briefcase?”

Lee balked then. He brought his fingers together, forming a triangle.