“There’s lots of black people doing things outside of America.”
“You spend mosta your time outside America?”
“We do lots of flights to Africa. Algeria, the Sudan.”
“How come you live here then?” I asked.
It was an innocent question but I struck a nerve there.
We were still standing at the front door so I said, “Here, have a seat.” Bonnie sat on the couch. The brown one that I bought after I bled all over the old sofa.
“You want some coffee?” I asked.
“Would you?”
When I returned from the kitchen she’d calmed down a little. She tasted the brew and smiled when she saw that I put in the right amounts of sugar and milk.
“I came here because of Roman Gasteau.” She said it all at once, in a hard voice. “I met him in Paris. I mean, I was introduced to him by Idabell. He was her brother-in-law. He was from Philadelphia but spent a lot of time in New York. Paris was my home base but I flew into New York twice a week. Ida told him where I stayed and he looked me up.”
“So how’d you wind up here?”
“I liked Roman. He was fun and he made me miss living in the States. He’d spent a little while with me in Paris but then he was offered a job in Los Angeles. A blackjack dealer’s job in Gardena.” She looked at me as if to say, So. “Idabell was here. It’s not too hard to change your route if you have seniority. All I had to do was wait a few months for a slot to open up.”
“So you came to L.A. on a lark?” I was unconvinced.
“It wasn’t like that. Not really. Roman and I had gotten close. He wanted me to come to L.A. I thought it was because he was too jealous to leave me in Paris. I was flattered. I didn’t know that he was using me to make visits to Paris to set up some deal.
“Roman was wonderful to be around. He was playful and smart—he was a great dancer. And he believed that people should be responsible to their community. There’s an elderly couple who live in his apartment building, the Blanders. He used to do their shopping and once or twice he even paid their rent.
“From everything I knew about him he seemed perfect. So of course I wanted to come out here, to be with him and live near Idabell.”
“And then he made you his mule,” I said.
“He said that he was importing French toys that he sold on the side. He wanted me to bring them in now and then so that the tariffs wouldn’t cut into his profit. It was only toys. A set of Italian boccie balls, a dollhouse.”
“An’ you didn’t know?”
“Not until I forgot once. I left this set of wooden carpet balls on the plane. I forgot. When I got home and Romny came over he went crazy. I told him that I’d go back in the morning, that the ground crew had probably put the package in my basket. It had my name on it.
“He struck me. He knocked me down. I was afraid that he was going to kick me when he pulled me up by the hair and told me that he’d kill me if I didn’t go down with him right then to get it. He dragged me down there at three in the morning. I told him that that would be suspicious but he didn’t care. I had to sign all kinds of forms and I think the customs agent was suspicious but he knew me and let it go…. Roman took the balls to his car and left me to take a bus home.”
Bonnie trembled with the memories. I didn’t doubt a word that she said.
“What happened then?” I asked.
“I broke off with him. I put in for a transfer back to Europe but I’m still waiting for an open slot.”
“Did he threaten you?”
She nodded.
“That why old man Gillian is ready with his shotgun?”
“I didn’t know if it was drugs or something else, Mr. Rawlins. It didn’t matter, because he hit me. My mother always told me that you can’t let any man treat you like that.” The steel in her eyes was fine by me.
“But you did talk to him again.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because of that croquet set. Because of that note Idabell wrote.”
I was pushing to see how far she would trust me.
“He came to my apartment after they beat him up.”
“Who?”
“The people he dealt with. He didn’t say who. He told me that they had made a deal for six deliveries but we’d only finished five—”
“So they were going to kill him,” I finished the sentence.
“And me,” she said. “He’d told them how he was getting the toys into the country. He said that they were going to kill me too unless I went along with it.”
“And you believed it?”
