“You have no idea who you’re messing with,” he said, believing the threatening gaze had worked.
“Do you know Philomena?” I asked.
“What information do you have about me and Axel?”
“All I know is that a hippie I met said that Axel has been spending time in Cairo. That same man said that Axel had asked you about his father and Egypt.”
His right eye twitched. I was sure that there were Supreme Court justices who couldn’t have had that effect on Leonard Haffernon. I lost control of myself and smirked.
“Who do you work for, Mr. Rawlins?” he asked again.
“Are you a collector, Mr. Haffernon?”
“What?”
“That hippie told me that Axel collected Nazi memorabilia.
Daggers, photographs. Do you collect anything like that?”
Haffernon stood then.
“Please leave.”
I stood also. “Sure.”
I sauntered toward the door not sure of why I was being so tough on this powerful white man. I had baited him out of instinct. I wondered if I was being a fool.
o u t s i d e h i s o f f i c e I asked Dina for a pencil and paper.
I wrote down my name and the phone of my motel and handed it to her. She looked up at me in wonder, a small smile on her lips.
“I wish it was for you,” I said. “But give it to your boss. When he calms down he might want to give me a call.”
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16
Iate a very late lunch at a stand-up fried clam booth on Fish-erman’s Wharf. It was beautiful there. The smell of the ocean and the fish market reminded me of Galveston when I was a boy. At any other time in my life those few scraps of fried flour over chewy clam flesh would have been soothing. But I didn’t want to feel good until I knew that Feather was going to be okay. She and Jesus were all I had left.
I went to a pay phone and made the collect call.
Benny answered and accepted.
“Hi, Mr. Rawlins,” she said, a little breathless.
“Where’s Bonnie, Benita?”
“She went out shoppin’ for a wheelchair to take Feather with.
Me an’ Juice just hangin’ out here an’ makin’ sure Feather okay.
She sleep. You want me to wake her up?”
“No, honey. Let her sleep.”
1 0 3
W a lt e r M o s l e y
“You wanna talk to Juice?”
“You know, Benita, I really like you,” I said.
“I like you too, Mr. Rawlins.”
“And I know how messed up you were when Mouse did you like he did.”
She didn’t say anything to that.
“And I care very deeply about my children . . .” I let the words trail off.
For a few moments there was silence on the line. And then in a whisper Benita Flag said, “I love ’im, Mr. Rawlins. I do. He’s just a boy, I know, but he better than any man I ever met. He sweet an’
he know how to treat me. I didn’t mean to do nuthin’ wrong.”
“That’s okay, girl,” I said. “I know what it is to fall.”
“So you not mad?”
“Let him down easy if you have to,” I said. “That’s all I can ask.”
“Okay.”
“And tell Feather I had to stay another day but that I will bring her back a big present because I had to be late.”
We said our good-byes and I went to my car.
o n t h e w a y b a c k
to the motel I picked up a couple of newspapers to keep my mind occupied.
