I shoved the log sheets into my pocket, thinking maybe if I could implicate the killer in Rega Tourneau’s death then I could call in the cops. After all, I was on a first-name basis with Gerald Jordan, the deputy chief of police. I could slip him those sheets and the police could do the rest.
“Easy?” Jackson asked.
“Yeah?”
“What’s wrong?”
That made me laugh. Jackson joined in. Jewelle came to sit behind him. She draped her arms around his neck.
“Nuthin’s wrong, Blue. I just gotta get past a few roadblocks is all. Few roadblocks.”
Jackson and Jewelle both knew to leave it at that.
*
*
*
2 9 9
W a lt e r M o s l e y
i w a s n ’ t t h i n k i n g
too clearly at that time. So much had happened and so little of it I could control. I had to have a face-to-face with Cicero’s employer. And in that meeting I had to make a decision. A week ago the only crime I’d considered was armed robbery, but now I’d graduated to premeditated murder.
Whatever the outcome it was getting late in the evening, and anyway I couldn’t wear the same funky clothes one day more. I figured that Joe Cicero had better things to do than to stake out my house so I went home.
I drove around the block twice, looking for any signs of the contract killer. He didn’t seem to be there. Maybe he was dead or at least out of action.
I took the bonds from the glove compartment of my hot rod and, with them under my arm, I strode toward my front yard.
Tacked to the door was a thick white envelope. I took it thinking that it had to have something to do with Axel or Cinnamon or maybe Joe Cicero.
I opened the door and walked into the living room. I flipped on the overhead light, threw the bonds on the couch, and opened the letter. It was from a lawyer representing Alicia and Nate Roman. They were suing me for causing them severe physical trauma and mental agony. They had received damage to their necks, hips, and spines, and she had severe lacerations to the head. There was only one broken bone but many more bruised ones. They had both seen the same doctor — an M.D.
named Brown. The cost for their deep suffering was one hundred thousand dollars — each.
I walked toward the kitchen intent on getting a glass of water.
At least I could do that without being shot at, spied on, or sued.
I saw his reflection in the glass door of the cabinet. He was coming fast but in that fragment of a second I realized first that 3 0 0
C i n n a m o n K i s s
the man was not Joe Cicero and second that, like Mouse, Cicero had sent a proxy to keep an eye out for his quarry. Then, when I was halfway turned around, he hit me with some kind of sap or blackjack and the world swirled down through a drain that had opened up at my feet.
i l o s t c o n s c i o u s n e s s but there was a part of my mind
that struggled to wake up. So in a dream I did wake up, in my own bed. Next to me was a dark-skinned black man. He opened his eyes at the same time I opened mine.
“Where’s Bonnie?” I asked him.
“She’s gone,” he said with a finality that sucked the air right out of my chest.
t h e m o r n i n g s u n
through the kitchen window woke me
but it was nausea that drove me to my feet. I went to the bathroom and sat next to the commode, waiting to throw up — but I never did.
I showered and shaved, primped and dressed.
The bonds were gone of course. I figured that I was lucky that Cicero had sent a proxy. I was also lucky that the bonds were right there to be stolen. Otherwise Joe would have come and caused me pain until I gave them up. Then he would have killed me.
I was a lucky bastard.
After my ablutions I called a number that was lodged in my memory. I have a facility for remembering numbers, always did.
She answered on the sixth ring, breathless.
“Yes?”
“That invitation still open?”
