“Naw. The first day I brought him home he called Raymond Mr. Alexander. You know Ray always been a sucker for a white boy with manners.”
We both laughed.
Etta reached into her purse and pulled out the Luger that had been under the seat of my Ford. She put it on the desk.
“Primo got your car out the pound. He left his Pontiac parked out back.” She brought out a silver key and placed it next to the pistol. “He said that he’ll have your Ford ready in two weeks.”
I had friends in the world. For a moment there I had more than an inkling that things would turn out okay.
Etta stood up.
“Oh yeah,” she said. “Here.”
She reached into her purse and came out with a roll of twenty-dollar bills.
“Raymond told me to give you this.”
I took the money even though I knew he’d see it as a down payment on the heist he wanted me to join him in.
*
*
*
1 3 3
W a lt e r M o s l e y
t h e ’ 5 6 p o n t i a c p r i m o left for me was aqua-colored with red flames painted down the passenger’s side and across the hood. It wasn’t the kind of car I could shadow with but at least it had wheels.
Sitting upright in the passenger’s seat was the teddy bear I’d bought in San Francisco. It had been forgotten in our rush to the airport. Primo must have found it along with the pistol.
When I got home there was a note from Benny on the kitchen table. She and Jesus were going to Catalina Island for two days.
They were going to camp on the beach but there was a number for the harbormaster of the dock where they were staying. I could call him if there was an emergency.
I showered and shaved, shined my shoes, and made a pan of scrambled eggs and diced andouille sausages. After eating and a good scrubbing I felt ready to try to find any trail that Cinnamon Cargill might have left. I dressed in black slacks and a peach-colored Hawaiian shirt and sat down to the phone.
“ h e l l o ? ” She answered the phone after three rings.
“Alva?” I said.
“Oh.” There was a brief pause.
I knew what her hesitation meant. I had saved her son from being killed in a police ambush a few years before. At that time she had been married to John, one of my oldest and closest friends.
In order to save Brawly I’d had to shoot him in the leg. The doctors said that he’d have that limp for the rest of his life.
“Hello, Mr. Rawlins.” I’d given up getting her to call me Easy.
“I need to speak to Lena Macalister. She’s a friend of yours isn’t she?”
More silence on the line. And then: “I don’t usually give out my friends’ numbers without their permission, Mr. Rawlins.”
1 3 4
C i n n a m o n K i s s
“I need her address, Alva. This is serious.”
We both knew that she couldn’t refuse me. Her boy had survived to shuffle in the sun because of me.
She hemmed and hawed a few minutes more but then came across with the address.
“Thanks,” I said when she finally relented. “Say hi to Brawly for me.”
She hung up the phone in my ear.
I was going toward my East L.A. hot rod when the next-door neighbor, Nathaniel Pulley, hailed me.
“Mr. Rawlins.”
He was a short white man with a potbelly and no muscle whatsoever. His blond hair had kept its color but was thinning just the same. Nathaniel was the assistant manager of the Bank of Palms in Santa Monica. It was a small position at a minuscule financial institution but Pulley saw himself as a lion of finance.
He was a liberal and in his largesse he treated me as an equal.
I’m sure he bragged to his wife and children about how wonderful he was to consider a janitor among his friends.
“Afternoon, Nathaniel,” I said.
