me as if I were a prisoner or a criminal when I hadn’t done anything but ask to see his boss. I wanted to yell and pull out my gun and start shooting.
But all I did was sit there staring up at the white ceiling.
I thought about that coat of paint upon the plaster. It meant that at one time a man in a white jumpsuit had stood on a ladder in the middle of that room running a roller or maybe waving a brush above his head. That was another room but the same, at another time when there was no tension but only labor. That man probably had children at home, I decided. His hard work turned into food and clothing for them.
That white ceiling made me happy. After a moment I forgot about my bodyguard and the woman who couldn’t see the man standing in front of her but only the man she had been trained to see.
“Mr. Rawlins?” a man said.
He was tall, slender, and very erect. The dark blue suit he wore would have made the down payment on my car. His scarlet tie was a thing of beauty and the gray at his temples would remind anyone of their father — even me.
“Mr. Haffernon?” I rose.
The bodyguard stiffened.
“That will be all, Robert,” Haffernon said, not even deigning to look at his serf.
Robert turned away without complaint and disappeared behind the door that had spawned him.
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“Follow me,” Haffernon said.
He led me back past the elevator and through a double door.
Here we entered into a wide hallway. The floors were bright ash and the doors along the way were too. These doors opened into anterooms where men and women assistants talked and typed and wrote. Beyond each assistant was a closed door behind which, I imagined, lawyers talked and typed and wrote.
At the end of the hall were large glass doors that we went through.
Haffernon had three female assistants. One, a buxom forty-year-old with horn-rimmed glasses and a flouncy full-length dress, came up to him reading from a clipboard.
“The Clarks had to reschedule for Friday, sir. He’s had an emergency dental problem. He says that he’ll need to rest after that.”
“Fine,” Haffernon said. “Call my wife and tell her that I will be coming to the opera after all.”
“Yes sir,” the woman said. “Mr. Phillipo decided to leave the country. His company will settle.”
“Good, Dina. I can’t be interrupted for anything except family.”
“Yes sir.”
She opened a door behind the three desks and Haffernon stepped in. In passing I caught the assistant’s eye and gave her a quick nod. She smiled at me and let her head drift to the side, letting me know that the counterculture had infiltrated every pore of the city.
h a f f e r n o n h a d a b i g d e s k under a picture window but he took me into a corner where he had a rose-colored couch with a matching stuffed chair. He took the chair and waved me onto the sofa.
“What is your business with me, Mr. Rawlins?” he asked.
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I hesitated, relishing the fact that I had this man by the short hairs. I knew this because he had told Dina not to bother him for anything but the blood of blood. When powerful white men like that make time for you there’s something serious going on.
“What problem did Axel Bowers come to you with?” I asked.
“Who are you, Mr. Rawlins?”
“Private detective from down in L.A.,” I said, feeling somehow like a fraud but knowing I was not.
“And what do Axel’s . . . problems, as you call them, have to do with your client?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m looking for Axel and your name popped up. Have you seen Mr. Bowers lately?”
“Who are you working for?”
“Confidential,” I said with the apology in my face.
“You walk in here, ask me about the son of one of my best friends and business associates, and refuse to tell me who wants to know?”
“I’m looking for a woman named Philomena Cargill,” I said.
“She’s a black woman, lover of your friend’s son. He’s gone. She’s gone. It came to my attention that you and he were in negotia-tions about something that had to do with his father. I figured that if he was off looking into that problem that you might know where he was. He, in turn, might know about Philomena.”
Haffernon sat back in his chair and clasped his hands. His stare was a spectacle to behold. He had cornflower- blue eyes and black brows that arced like descending birds of prey.
This was a white man whom other white men feared. He was wealthy and powerful. He was used to getting his way. Maybe if I hadn’t been fighting for my daughter’s life I would have felt the weight of that stare. But as it was I felt safe from any threat he could make. My greatest fear flowed in a little girl’s veins.
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