I missed having Bonnie to call. For the past few years I’d been able to talk to her about anything. That had been a new experience 2 6 4
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for me. Never before could I fully trust another human being. If it was five in the morning and I’d been out all night I could call her and she’d be there as fast as she could. She never asked why but I always explained. Being with her made me understand how lonely I’d been for all my wandering years. But being alone again made me feel that I was back in the company of an old friend.
I was worried about Feather’s survival but she had sounded good on the phone and there was already new blood flowing in her veins.
Blood and money were the currencies I dealt in. They were inseparable. This thought made me feel even more comfortable.
I figured that if I knew where I stood then I had a chance of getting where I was going.
i p a r k e d a c r o s s t h e s t r e e t from Raphael Reed’s
apartment building a little after seven. I had coffee in a paper cup. The brew was both bitter and weak but I drank it to stay awake. Maybe Cinnamon was with the young men. I could hope.
Sitting there I went over the details I had. I knew more about Lee’s case than anyone, but still there were big holes. Cicero was definitely the killer, but who held his reins? He couldn’t have been a player in the business. He could have worked for anybody: Cinnamon, Maya, even Lee, or maybe Haffernon.
Maybe Bowers hired him back in the beginning. It would be good to know the answers if the police came to see me.
Near nine Raphael’s friend Roget came out the front door of the turquoise building. He carried a medium-sized suitcase. He could have had a change of underwear in there, could have been going to visit his mother, but I was intrigued. And so when the high-yellow freckled boy climbed into a light blue Datsun I turned over my own engine.
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He led me all the way to Hollywood before parking in front of a boxy four-story house on Delgado. He walked up the driveway and into the backyard. After a moment I followed.
He went to the front door of a small house back there. He knocked and was admitted by someone I couldn’t see. I went back to the car. When I sat down exhaustion washed over me. I lay back on the seat for just a moment.
Two hours later the sun on my face woke me up.
The blue Datsun was gone.
s h e w a s w e a r i n g
a T-shirt, that’s all. The soft outline of her nipples pressed against the white cotton. The dark color pressed against it too.
After answering my knock she didn’t know whether to smile or to run.
“What do you want from me now?” she asked. “I gave you the bonds.”
“Can I come in?”
She backed away and I entered. It was yet another cramped cabinlike room. The normal-sized furniture crowded the small space. There was a couch and a round table upon which sat a portable T V. A radio on the window shelf played Mozart. Her musical taste shouldn’t have surprised me but it did.
On the table was an empty glass jar that once held nine Vienna sausages, a half-drunk tumbler of orange juice, and a depleted bag of barbecue potato chips.
“You want something to drink?” she asked me.
“Water be great,” I said.
She went through a tiny doorway. I heard the tap turn on and off and she returned with an aqua-colored plastic juice tumbler filled with water.
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I drank it down in one gulp.
“You want more?”
“Let’s talk,” I said.
She sat down on one end of the golden sofa. I took the other end.
“What do you want to know?”
“First — who knows you’re here?”
“Just Raphael and Roget. Now you.”
“Do they gossip?”
“Not about this. Raphael knows someone’s after me and Roget does whatever Raphael says.”
“Why’d you kill Haffernon?” It was an abrupt and brutal switch calculated to knock her off track. But it didn’t work.
“I didn’t,” she said evenly. “I found him there and ran but I didn’t kill him. No. Not me.”
What else could she say?
