“Yeah.” I wondered if it was me who cast the first kiss. “I’m sorry about that.”
“Nothing to be sorry about. It’s natural. I have protection.”
Even her sexy nonchalance was imperial.
“Where’d you get that?” I asked her. “You left with nothing.”
“I always have a backup in my wallet,” she said, sounding decidedly like a man.
“Let’s go get some breakfast,” I said.
A shadow of disappointment darkened her features for a moment and then she pulled on her pants, which she’d dropped on the floor next to my bed.
i w a n t e d b r e a k f a s t even though it was two in the afternoon. Philomena and I had slept for almost eight hours before we started making out.
Brenda’s Burgers had everything I needed: an all-day breakfast menu and a booth at the back of her tiny diner where you could talk without being overheard. It was a small restaurant 1 6 7
W a lt e r M o s l e y
with pitted floors and mismatched furniture. The cook and waiter was a dark-skinned mustachioed man with mistrustful eyes.
I ordered fried ham and buttermilk biscuits. Philomena wanted a steak with collard greens, mashed potatoes, and salad.
“I thought you were vegetarian?” I asked.
“Need to keep up my strength,” she replied.
I was a little off because the erection hadn’t gone all the way down. My heart was thrumming and every time she smiled I wanted to suggest going back to her room and finishing off what we had started.
“What’s wrong?” she asked me.
“Nuthin’. Why you ask?”
“You seem kind of nervous.”
“This is just the way I am,” I said.
“Okay.”
“Tell me about the man in the snakeskin jacket,” I said, watching the cook eye us from behind the kitchen window.
“He came to Axel’s house one day last week. I was in the hallway that led to the bedroom but I could see them through a crack in the double doors.”
“They didn’t know you were there?”
“Axel knew but the other guy didn’t. He told Axel that he needed the papers his father left. Axel told him that they’d been given to a third party who would make them public upon his death.”
Watching her, listening to her story made me sweat. Maybe it was the heat from the kitchen but I didn’t think so. Neither did I feel my temperature came from anything having to do with sex.
“Did he threaten Axel?”
“Yes. He said, ‘A man can get hurt if he doesn’t know when to fold.’ ”
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“He’s right about that,” I said, wanting to stave off the details of Axel’s murder.
“He was a frightening man. Axel was scared but he stood up to him.”
“What happened then?”
“The man left.”
“He didn’t . . . hurt Axel?”
“No. But he put the fear of God into him. He told me to get out of there, not even to go home. He gave me the money he had in his pocket and said to go down to L.A. until he figured out what to do.”
“Why you?” I asked. “He wasn’t after you.”
“Axel and I were close.” There was a brazen look on Cinnamon’s face, as if she were daring me to question her choice of lovers.
“So you have the papers,” I said.
She didn’t deny it.
“Those papers can get you killed,” I said.
“I’ve been trying to call Axel for days,” she said, agreeing with me in her tone. “I called his cousin but Harmon hadn’t heard from him and there’s no answer at his house.”
“How about his office?”
“He never tells them anything.”
“How many people know where you are now?” I asked.
“No one.”
