glasses that he claimed made him seem less threatening to white folks.
I didn’t see how anyone could be intimidated by Jackson in the first place. He was short and thin with almost jet skin. His mouth was always ready to grin and he’d jump at the sound of a door slamming. But from the moment he put on those glasses white people all over L.A. started offering him jobs. I often thought that when he donned those frames he became another mild-mannered person. But what did I know?
“Jackson,” Mouse hailed.
Jackson forced a grin and shook the killer’s hand.
“Mouse, Easy, how you boys doin’?”
“Hungry as a mothahfuckah,” Mouse said.
“I ordered already,” Jackson told him. “Porterhouse steaks and Beaujolais wine.”
“All right, boy. Shit, that bank treatin’ you fine.”
“Insurance company,” Jackson corrected.
2 0 5
W a lt e r M o s l e y
“They insure banks, right?” Mouse asked.
“Yeah. So, Easy, what’s up?”
“Can I sit down first, Jackson?”
“Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sit, sit, sit.”
The room was round too, with pastoral paintings on the wall.
Real oil paintings and a vase with silk roses on a podium next to the door.
“How’s life treatin’ you, Jackson?”
“All right, I guess.”
“Seems better than that. This is a fine place and they know your name at the door.”
“Yeah . . . I guess.”
I realized then that Jackson had been holding in tension. His face let go and there were traces of grief around his eyes and mouth.
“What’s wrong, man?” I asked.
“Nuthin’.”
“Is it Jewelle?”
“Naw, she fine. She managin’ a motel down in Malibu.”
“So what is it?”
“Nuthin’.”
“Come on, Jackson,” Mouse said then. “Easy an’ me got serious business, so get on wit’ it here. You look like the doctor just give you six months.”
For a moment I thought the bespectacled genius was going to break down and cry.
“Well,” he said, “if you have to know, it’s a computer tape.”
“You messed it up or somethin’?”
“Naw. I mean it’s messed up all right. It’s the TXT tape they drop on my desk ev’ry mornin’ at three twenty- five.”
“What’s a TXT tape?” I asked.
2 0 6
C i n n a m o n K i s s
“Transaction transmissions from all around the world . . .
financial transactions.”
“What about it?”
“Proxy got a hunnert banks for clients in the United States alone an’ twice that in European banks. They transfer stock investments for special customers for less than a broker do.”
“So what?” I asked.
“It’s anywhere from three hunnert thousand to four million dollars in transactions every day.”
That got a long whistle from Mouse.
Jackson began to sweat.
“Yeah,” Jackson said. “Every time I look at that thing my heart starts to thunderin’. It’s like if some fine-assed girl took off her clothes and jump in yo’ bed an’ then say, ‘I know you won’t take advantage’a me, now will you?’ ”
Mouse laughed. I did too.
“Listen, Jackson,” I said. “I need to know about Swiss bearer bonds.”
