Rose Gold (31 page)

“Do we have a deal, Bob?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

I unlocked his cuffs.

I noticed that Redbird was looking at him then. I was hoping that Bob didn’t do anything stupid because I didn’t think I could stop the native Californian if he attacked.

Bob went over to the cooler and looked inside.

“There’s enough food and drink in here,” he said. “So I guess I could stay. I will stay. You know them cops shot me and I didn’t do a damn thing to them.”

“How’s the wound?” I asked.

“It hurts.”

“Lie down on your stomach and let me see.”

I’m no doctor but I’d been around bullet wounds most of my life. There was no serious infection and the bullet hole was knitting nicely. I put on a new dressing and the chameleon-man thanked me.

A while later Melvin came back. He was wearing a wheat-colored suit that was somewhat wrinkled. His light yellow shirt could have used an iron too, but that was the way he always looked before shacking up with Mary Donovan.

“You took off his cuffs?” were the first words Suggs uttered.

“We got to be places, man, and if we get stuck he’s gonna have to get outta here on his own.”

“We could tell somebody where he is.”

“The cops?”

“Why not?”

“Because he’s suspected of murder and worse,” I said. “We don’t want our names in that.”

“He might be guilty,” Suggs argued.

“What you talkin’ ’bout, Mel? He couldn’t even rob that liquor store.”

Melvin knew I was right. He had spent time with Bob and he had a second sense about criminals.

“He might be a wanted man,” the almost-ex-cop countered, rather halfheartedly.

“When I’m finished he won’t be.”

“Do you know where Rosemary and this Delbert man are?” Redbird was standing over Bob, who was sitting up on the bed.

“I just know that they were at this house out in the Valley somewhere,” Bob said, “behind these high bushes.”

“We went there,” Redbird said. “They were gone.”

“Del’s people said that they had a place down in East L.A. somewhere but I don’t know where it’s at.”

“He got any family at all down there?” I asked.

“Naw. He was raised in foster homes all ovah the place. He always said that he hated every family ever took him in.”

“I could ask my contact to look up the foster care records,” Melvin said.

“We got to go” was my answer.

“Could you leave me them tan shorts you was wearin’, brother?” Bob asked Mel.

“Why? So you could run?”

“So I could walk around without my dick hangin’ out.”

Bob’s honesty made Redbird laugh loud and long.

Melvin followed my Dodge in his Pontiac. With Redbird at my side I led the way to Dino’s Diner on the main drag, such as it was, of 29 Palms. There were as many empty lots as there were buildings, and most of the buildings looked as if they might have been condemned sometime before the last administration. But Dino’s had some life to it. We parked in the little lot next to the boxy turquoise restaurant.

There were two old guys standing out front conversing in a dialect of English that I only had hints at understanding. Coming out from the front door of the diner was a corpulent woman in a rayon orange pantsuit. Her hair was also orange, as were her shoes. I couldn’t help wondering about her underwear.

“Jessop,” she said to one of the men, I couldn’t tell which.

“Me and tinker you, ma’am,” I think he said.

I’d say that the speaker was the older white man in blue jeans and white T-shirt but that description fit both men.

“All right then,” the woman in orange said and she stomped off, making the concrete sound like a hollow wood floor.

“What are we doin’ here?” Melvin asked. I think he was in a hurry to get back to his solitary drinking.

“It’s where we’re meetin’ my contact.”

“Do you need me?” Redbird asked.

“You got someplace better to be?”

“We need gas and I should call Lenore.”

“You want I should get you something to go?” I asked.

“There’s still some fruit in the basket.”

After taking my keys Redbird went to do his chores while Mel and I walked past the old codgers into the claustrophobically constricted
diner. There was a counter with five stools and three tables along the opposite wall. All the chairs and four of the stools were occupied and the two waitresses were working hard. There was a rectangular window cut in the wall on the other side of the counter. Through that space we could see the grizzled face of the short-order cook working over steaming foods.

“Number sixteen!” the cook cried as he threw up a plate of eggs over hard, oiled and boiled potatoes, and three strips of bacon that had been fried until they were almost black.

“Got it!” a sixty-something, impossibly black-haired woman in a pink and blue and white uniform yelled back.

“Can I help you?” another woman said.

She was standing at the cash register, looking down, making change.

Hearing something he didn’t quite understand, Melvin turned his head toward her.

She was blond with a delicate tan, wearing different makeup than she had in the picture he’d given me. And so for a moment Melvin was confused. The look on his face was like an old friend to Mary/Clarissa. Smiling at him, she began to untie her white apron.

“I was wondering how long it was going to take for you to come looking,” she said.

“Mary.”

“What’s goin’ on out there?” the cook’s head said from its hole in the wall.

“I’m quitting, Nate,” she said, folding the apron and handing it to the elder waitress.

“So this is the one,” the older woman said.

“That’s my Melvin.”

“He looks kinda wrinkled.”

“He cleans up just fine … when he’s got a reason.”

No longer able to hold himself back, Suggs took Mary in his arms and squeezed her till she made a not-unpleasant grunting sound.

“You break it you bought it,” she said.

“Hey,” Nate the short-order cook said. He had come into the room and had a twelve-inch iron skillet in his hand.

I took a step forward and said, “Lover boy’s a cop and I’m just
a badass. So call your sister or your girlfriend to take Claire’s shift because we’re outta here.”

Nate was probably ex-military. He’d been in enough brawls to know that what he had in front of him was a losing proposition.

“Fuck you,” he said.

I smiled and wandered out with Mary/Clarissa and her man.

“I got the car right here,” Mel was saying to her.

“Gimme a minute, will ya, Mel?” I said.

“I got to go, Easy.”

“Look, man, I’m the one brought you here. I just need a few words.”

“What is it?” he said after seating Mary/Clarissa in his Pontiac.

“Don’t tell her anything about this business with Bob and Rosemary Goldsmith. Especially not Rosemary.”

“Why would I?”

“Just don’t, okay?”

“Sure. Is that all?”

“I’m still gonna need a little help with this thing, Melvin. You owe me.”

He was like a teenager and she was Helen of Troy. He moved his head to catch a look at her. She smiled nicely and he turned back.

“Yeah,” he said, “I owe you. Just call whenever you need to. I’ll be there.”

As I watched them drive away I worried that I might not have helped him at all.

“Where are they going?” Redbird asked at my back.

“To scare the neighbors and raise the dead.”

“Lenore wants to talk with you.”

“On the phone?”

“In person.”

We made the Dumbarton in about an hour and a quarter. People still stared but the security staff left us alone.

“Your news is rather distressing, Mr. Rawlins,” Lenore Goldsmith said from the big chair with its back turned to the sky.

I was seated before her. Redbird stood behind her and to the left.

“I mean,” she continued, “you’re saying, you’re both saying that my daughter might have been party to her own disfigurement. I can’t believe that.”

“It might not be true,” I said. “But Bob says that she wanted to get in with this Delbert guy and Redbird told me the dictator story.”

“She despised the fact that the general used those men’s bones.”

“As much as she despises her father?”

“I don’t want this to be true,” she said. She was a woman who had in her life reversed many truths, changed natural laws that seemed immutable.

“All we can do is try to find out,” I said.

“What do you suggest we do next?”

“Not we,” I said, “me.”

“You’ll bring Redbird of course.”

“Maybe later,” I said. “I need to work on this alone for a bit.”

“But the time has been set for the ransom drop.”

“It has?”

“In forty-eight hours.”

“Where did you get that?”

“From Thomas Crispin, my husband’s personal assistant.”

“Do the police know this?”

“No one does. After Foster received—When they sent, they sent that, that …” She took a minute to gather her emotions and said, “There was a phone call.”

“From who?”

“Thomas didn’t know, but Foster gave the order to gather a million dollars in circulated bills and he did not want the authorities to find out.”

“Why not?”

“Not because he loves our daughter, you can be sure of that. He wants to protect himself from being exposed as a provocateur. He wants to get Rose away from those men and then, later, he’ll take care of them.”

“Why would he care about anybody talking about what he does for the government? They know, don’t they?”

“As I told you, Mr. Rawlins, my family owns the controlling interest in Goldsmith Armaments International. If it got into the papers that he was involved in foreign intrigue, they would lose face and the faith in his ability to lead.”

“Then why wouldn’t you or Rosemary just tell them about him?”

“It’s not the fact of his actions,” Lenore Goldsmith said, as if talking to a child, “but the public spectacle. Rose knows that.”

“And what if your family found out that Rosemary was in it with the kidnappers?”

“That’s different. That’s a family issue. Rosemary is of our blood and therefore above business concerns.”

I spent a few moments digesting this worldview.

“This man Crispin is loyal to you?” I asked.

“Completely. He’s been with my family his entire life. Both his parents worked for us.”

“Will he know what your husband is planning?”

“I believe so.”

“Look, Mrs. Goldsmith, I like you, and Redbird here is top-notch. But the people I have to deal with are particular. When we get down to the line I’ll bring Redbird in, I promise I will. Just give me one day to look into things on my own. In the meantime Redbird can coordinate with your inside man.”

Lenore Goldsmith wasn’t used to being put off or left out but she was also the kind of person who knew when she had to concede.

“This time tomorrow?” she said.

“If not earlier.”

Driving south and east of L.A.’s downtown, I felt relieved to be alone. Redbird was a good partner and a solid man to have as a backup, and he didn’t talk too much either but I needed more than silence; I had to have solitude to pull together the edges of the broad cloth that comprised the problems presented by the gulf between Rosemary Goldsmith and Bob Mantle.

I stopped at a phone booth on Slauson, looked up an address, and wrote it down.

I decided against calling Sister Godfreys. I didn’t want to spook or warn her so I drove over to her address on Wadsworth Avenue off of Florence Boulevard. She lived in a white plaster box that had four apartments—two upper and two on the first floor.

I checked the outside mailbox, walked in the front door, up the stairs, and then knocked on the door to the left.

Without asking who it was, she pulled the door open. She was tall and meaty (not to say fat), wearing a red T-shirt, coral shorts, and an auburn wig that stood high on her head, making her look like a backup singer in an all-girl Motown soul band. She was a sensual woman with dark skin and prominent features. Her expression was careless and friendly—qualities I found very attractive in women. Just looking at her, I wished that Bonnie wasn’t winging her way to Asia.

“Yes?” she said.

“Easy Rawlins, ma’am. I’m here representing Belle Mantle.”

“Oh. How is Belle? You know I haven’t seen her since me an’ Bobby broke up. She was nice but I moved since then and I didn’t even think she knew where I lived at.”

She stacked the facts one on top of the other like red bricks but there was no mortar of suspicion.

“Bob’s gone missing,” I said, “and she asked me to help find him.”

I handed her my PI’s license.

Upon reading the little card she said, “I don’t understand.”

“I’m a private detective and Belle is my client. She thinks that Bob might be in trouble. She told me that you two broke up but I said you might know something.”

“It’s that Rosemary Goldsmith, idn’t it?”

“May I come in, Miss Godfreys?”

“Um. I guess it’s all right. I mean you really are working for Belle, aren’t you?”

“I just came from her house over on Hoover. She showed me his room with all the pictures of the costumes Bob loved on the wall.”

“Okay, Mr. Rawlins. Come on in. But I don’t have nuthin’ to offer you to drink or eat or nuthin’.”

She had two folding pine chairs and an oak bench for furniture in the otherwise empty sitting room. It was like the living room in my new house but I suspected that she wasn’t going out to buy new furniture anytime soon. I thought it was a shame that a woman as young and beautiful as Sister found herself in such stark circumstances.

“Take a chair, Mr. Rawlins,” she said. “It’s more comfortable.”

When we were seated I looked around the bare chamber. There were no paintings or prints on the walls, no plants on the window ledges. The floor was pine and finished, swept and bare.

“I don’t have nuthin’ to drink but water,” she said. “I could get you a glass if you want.”

“No thanks, Miss Godfreys. I’m kind of in a hurry to find your ex. You said something about somebody—a woman?”