“Good coffee.”
“Yeah,” I said. “She can burn.”
Saul gave me a questioning glance and then he smiled. He was a small man who always wore brown. That day it was cotton brown trousers with a brown, blue, and green sweater that had an argyle pattern on the chest. He was also wearing tennis shoes, so I supposed he was on a job.
Saul had a big shapeless nose and a face you would forget two minutes after you saw it. But he had emerald- colored eyes that Hollywood starlets would have paid a hundred thousand dollars to possess.
“I have a cousin-in-law named Ross Henry,” he said.
“Don’t we all.” I was responding to his tone more than his words.
Saul laughed.
“I’ve missed you, Easy.”
“Ross Henry,” I said.
“Yeah.” Saul put his cup and saucer down on the deck and leaned forward, clasping his hands. “Ross is a good kid, man really, he’s thirty-seven. But…he never learned how to make it in the white man’s world.”
I grunted and Saul grinned again. He lived among black people and understood the humor in his words.
“But it’s worse with Ross,” he said. “He had an argument at work with his boss which led to a scuffle. He broke the boss-man’s nose.”
“Then it’s lucky he lives up here,” I said. “’Cause down in Mississippi they just might have strung him to a tree.”
“Not so much Mississippi as it is Louisiana.” Saul shook his head.
“Say what?”
“Eggersly Oliphant,” Saul said. “Known to the world as ‘Gator.’ He owns and operates a six-lift garage down on Lincoln, near the beach.”
“Six lifts.” I was impressed.
“Not only that. He owns a small used-car lot across the street and a motel two blocks down. Oliphant is president of the Santa Monica Board of Commerce and a power broker in local politics. A northern Dixiecrat.”
“Ross broke Gator’s nose?” I asked.
“No. Gator’s tough. Very much so. It’s his cousin, a runty little man named Tilly. Tilly called Ross a name that white men shouldn’t use on black people and then he picked up a ten-pound monkey wrench. Ross figured that he had a reason and that the difference in size was made up for by the steel.”
“I’d have to agree with the brother on that,” I said.
“Maybe I would too,” Saul agreed. “But Ross went overboard. He kicked Tilly when he was down and made him lie there while he bad-talked him.”
“So now Ross is in trouble with Tilly or with Gator?”
“Gator. Well, really it’s with the SMPD.”
“For assault?”
Saul shook his head. “Robbery.”
“He robbed him?”
“No. They fired Ross on the spot. That night the garage safe, where they kept the proceeds from all of Oliphant’s businesses, was robbed.”
“And Ross did it?” I asked.
“Gator says so but Ross denies it.”
“But Eggersly is an important man and so the police arrested your wife’s cousin for the job.” It wasn’t hard to figure out.
Saul nodded. “It was definitely an inside job. That’s why Ross could even be arrested. Whoever it was knew exactly where the safe was and what tools they needed to crack it open.”
“What did they use?”
“An acetylene torch from the car lot.”
“And Ross worked there?” I asked.
“He worked all over,” Saul explained. “Ross is a natural mechanic. They used him wherever they had a need. He could fix the ventilation system at the motel and crack open an automatic transmission for the garage.”
“So the cops have it that he broke into the car lot, stole the torch, toted it over to the garage, and then burned the lock off the safe?”
“Actually,” Saul corrected, “it was an old safe. All the guy had to do was burn off the hinges.”
“How much?”
“Between cash receipts, checks, and past due bills, they reported forty-nine thousand and some change.”
“And all the cops got on Ross is that he broke a man’s nose and then they fired him?” I said. “I doubt if they could convict a man on that kinda evidence.”
