She went to one of the two single beds and sat with the sack on her lap. After closing the door I put the cloth bag I’d brought on the bed across from her and sat next to it.
There were three lamps in the room. They were all on but the light was dim at best.
Philomena tore open the sandwich and took a big bite out of it.
“I’m a vegetarian usually,” she said with her mouth full, “but this bacon is good.”
While she ate I poured her a plastic cup full of coffee.
“I put milk in it,” I said as she took the cup from me.
“I don’t care if you put vinegar in it. I need this. I left my house with only forty dollars in my purse. It’s all gone now.”
She didn’t speak again until the cup was drained and the sandwich was gone.
“What’s in the other bag?” she asked. I believe she was hoping for another sandwich.
“Two dresses, some panties, and tennis shoes.”
She came to sit on the other side of the bag, taking out the clothes and examining them with an expert feminine eye.
“The dress is perfect,” she said. “And the shoes’ll do. Where’d you get these?”
“My son’s girlfriend left them. She’s a skinny thing too.”
When Cinnamon smiled at me I understood the danger she represented. She was more than pretty or lovely or even beautiful. There was something regal about her. I almost felt like bowing to show her how much I appreciated the largesse of her smile.
“They say that Hitler was a vegetarian too,” I said and the smile shriveled on her lips.
“So what?”
“Why don’t you tell me, Philomena?”
1 6 2
C i n n a m o n K i s s
After regarding me for a moment she said, “Why should I trust you?”
“Because I’m on your side,” I said. “I don’t want any harm coming to you and I’ll work to see that no one else hurts you either.”
“I don’t know any of that.”
“Sure you do,” I said. “You talked to Lena about me. She gave you my number. She told you that I’ve traded tough favors down around here for nearly twenty years.”
“She also said that she’s heard that people you’ve helped have wound up hurt and even dead sometimes.”
“That might be, but any girl bein’ followed by a snakeskin killer got to expect some danger,” I countered. “I’d be a fool if I told you everything’ll work out fine and you’d be a fool to believe it. But if you all mixed up with murder then you need somebody like me. It don’t matter that you got a business degree from UC
Berkeley and a boyfriend got Paul Klee paintings hangin’ on his walls. If somethin’ goes wrong you the first one they gonna look at. An’ if a white killer wanna kill somebody a black woman will be the first on his list. ’Cause you know the cops will ask if you had a boyfriend they could pin it on, an’ if you don’t they’ll call you a whore and close the book.”
Philomena listened very carefully to my speech. Her royal visage made me feel like some kind of minister to the crown.
“What do want from me?” she asked.
“What papers did Axel steal?”
“He didn’t steal anything. He found those papers in a safe-deposit box his father had. He kept them with memorabilia he had from Germany. When Mr. Bowers died, he left the key to Axel.”
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W a lt e r M o s l e y
“If that’s so then why did Haffernon tell the man who hired me that Axel stole the papers from him?”
“Who hired you?”
I told her about Robert Lee and his Amazon assistant. She had never heard of either one.
“Haffernon and Mr. Bowers and another man were partners before the war. They worked in chemicals,” Philomena said.
“Who was their partner?”
“A man named Tourneau, Rega Tourneau. They did some bad things, illegal things during the war.”
“What kind of things?”
“Treason.”
“No.” I was still a good American back in those days. It was almost impossible for me to believe that American businessmen would betray the country that had made them rich.
“The papers are Swiss bearer bonds issued in 1943 for work done by the Karnak Chemical Company in Cairo,” Philomena said. “And even though the bonds themselves are only endorsed by the banks there’s a letter from top Nazi officials that details the expectations that the Nazis had of Karnak.”
