“Yes, Daddy.”
Melba belonged with that crew. Her skin was the color of a reddish-brown plantain. Her breasts were small but her butt was quite large. She balanced precariously on high heels that were on their way to becoming stilts. The black dress was midthigh and she walked with a circular movement which made even that pedestrian activity seem like dancing.
She brought a black phone on an extremely long cord. If she’d wanted to she could have dragged it all the way to Bob the Baptist’s chair.
She offered the phone to Hennie.
He declined, saying, “Dial Raymond.”
She did so, though she seemed to have some difficulty maintaining her balance and dialing at the same time.
The moments lagged by.
“Mr. Alexander?” she asked in her child’s voice. “Hold on, I got Daddy on the line.”
She handed the receiver to Hennie. He took it while staring at my forehead.
“Raymond? . . . I got Easy Rawlins here sayin’ that you need findin’. . . . Uh-huh . . . uh-huh. . . . You got that thing covered for Julius? . . . All right then. Talk to you.”
He handed the receiver back to Melba and she sashayed away.
“You know the funeral parlor down on Denker?” Hennie asked me.
1 8 3
W a lt e r M o s l e y
“Powell’s?”
“Yeah. There’s a red house next door that got a garage behind it. Raymond’s in the apartment above that.”
“Thank you,” I said taking in a deep draft of smoke.
“And don’t come here no more if I don’t ask ya,” he added.
“So you sayin’ that if I’m lookin’ for Raymond don’t ask you?” I asked innocently.
And Hennie winced. I liked that. I liked it a lot.
i d r o v e
from Hennie’s to Powell’s funeral parlor. I marched down the driveway to the garage next door. But there I stopped.
The door was ajar and those stairs were daring me to come on. It was twilight and the world around me was slowly blending into gray. Going to Mouse over this problem would, I knew, create problems of its own. With no exaggeration Mouse was one of the most dangerous individuals on the face of the earth.
And so I stopped to consider.
But I didn’t have a choice.
Still, I took the stairs one at a time.
The apartment door was also partly open. That was a bad sign.
I heard women’s voices inside. They were laughing and cooing.
“Raymond?” I said.
“Come on in, Easy.”
The sitting room was the size of a tourist-class cabin on an ocean liner. The only place to sit comfortably was a plush red couch. Mouse had the middle cushion and two large, shapely women took up the sides.
“Well, well, well. There you are at last. Where you been?”
“Gettin’ into trouble,” I said.
Mouse grinned.
1 8 4
C i n n a m o n K i s s
“This is Georgette,” he said, waving a hand at the woman on his right. “Georgette, this Easy Rawlins.”
She stood up and stuck out her hand.
“Hi, Easy. Pleased to meet you.”
She was tall for a woman, five eight or so, the color of tree bark. She hadn’t made twenty-five, which was why the weight she carried seemed to defy the pull of gravity. For all her size her waist was slender, but that wasn’t her most arresting feature.
Georgette gave off the most amazing odor. It was like the smell of a whole acre of tomato plants — earthy and pungent. I took the hand and raised it to my lips so that I could get my nose up next to her skin.
She giggled and I remembered that I was single.
“And this here is Pinky,” Mouse said.
Pinky’s body was similar to her friend’s but she was lighter skinned. She didn’t stand up but only waved her hand and gave me a half smile.
