“I haven’t seen Axel for over a week,” she said, looking directly into my gaze.
“Where is he?”
“He said that he was going to Algeria but I can never be sure.”
“Algeria? I met a guy who told me that Axel was all over the world. Egypt, Paris, Berlin . . . Now you tell me he’s in Algeria.
There’s got to be some money somewhere.”
“Axel’s family supports this office. They’re quite wealthy. Ac-8 8
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tually his parents are dead. Now I guess it’s Axel’s money that runs our firm. But it was his father who gave us our start.” She was still looking at me. In this light she was more Mansfield than Poindexter.
“Do you know when he might be back?”
“No. Why? I thought you were looking for Cinnamon.”
“Well . . . the way I hear it Philomena and Axel had a thing going on. Actually that’s why I’m here.”
“I don’t understand,” she said with a smile that was far away from Axel and Philomena.
“Philomena’s parents are racists,” I explained, “not like you and me. They don’t think that blacks and whites should be mix-ing. Well . . . they told Philomena that she was out of the family because of the relationship she had with your partner, but now that she hasn’t called in over two months they’re having second thoughts. She won’t talk to them and so they hired me to come make their case.”
“And you’re really a private detective?” she asked, cocking one eyebrow.
I took out my wallet and handed her the license. I hadn’t shown it to Lee out of spite. She glanced at it but I could see that she stopped to read the name and identify the photo.
“Why don’t you just go to Cinnamon’s apartment?” Cynthia suggested.
“I was told that she was living with Axel on Derby. I went there but no one was around.”
“I have an address for her,” Cynthia told me. Then she hesitated. “You aren’t lying to me are you?”
“What would I have to lie about?”
“I wouldn’t know.” Her smile was suggestive but her eyes had not yet decided upon the nature of the proposal.
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“No ma’am,” I said. “I just need to find Philomena and tell her that her parents are willing to accept her as she is.”
Cynthia took out a sheet of paper and scrawled an address in very large characters, taking up the whole page.
“This is her address,” she said, handing me the leaf. “I live in Daly City. Do you know the Bay Area, Mr. Rawlins?”
“Not very well.”
“I’ll put my number on the back. Maybe if you’re free for dinner I could show you around. I mean — as long as you’re in town.”
Yes sir. Twenty years younger and I’d have bushy hair down to my knees.
9 0
14
Philomena’s apartment was on Avery Street, at Post, in the Fillmore District, on the fourth floor of an old brick building that had been christened The Opal Shrine. A sign above the front door told me that there were apartments available and that I could inquire at apartment 1a. There was no elevator so I climbed to the fourth floor to knock at the door of apartment 4e, the number given me by Cynthia Aubec.
There was no answer so I went back down to the first floor and tried the super’s door.
He was a coffee-brown man with hair that might have been dyed cotton. He was smiling when he opened the door, a cloud of marijuana smoke attending him.
“Yes sir?” he said with a sly grin. “What can I do for you?”
“Apartment four-e.”
“Fo’ty fi’e a mont’, gas an’ ’lectric not included. Got to clean it 9 1
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out yo’ own self an’ it’s a extra ten for dogs. You can have a cat for free.” He smiled again and I couldn’t help but like him.
“I think I used to know a girl lived there. Cindy, Cinnamon . . . somethin’.”
“Cinnamon,” he said, still grinning like a coyote. “That girl had a butt on her. An’ from what I hear she knew how to use it too.”
“She move?”
“Gone’s more like it,” he said. “First’a the mont’ came and the rent wasn’t in my box. She ain’t come back. I’ont know where she is.”
“You call the cops?”
“Are you crazy? Cops? The on’y reason you call a cop is if you white or already behind bars.”
I did like him.
“Can I see it?” I asked.
He reached over to his left, next to the door, and produced a brass key tethered to a multicolored flat string.
I took the key and grinned in thanks. He grinned you’re welcome. The door closed and I was on my way back upstairs.
p h i l o m e n a c a r g i l l
had left the apartment fully fur-
nished, though I was sure that the super had emptied it of all loose change, jewelry, and other valuables. Most of the posses-sions I was interested in were still there. She had a bookcase filled with books and papers and a pile of Wall Street Journal s on the floor next to the two-burner stove. There was a small diary tacked up on the wall next to the phone and a stack of bills and some other mail on the kitchen table.
I pulled a chair up to the table and looked out of the window onto Post Street. San Francisco was much more of a city than 9 2
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L.A. was back in ’66. It had tall buildings and people who walked when they could and who talked to each other.
There was a ceramic bear on the table. He was half filled with crystallized honey. There was a teacup that had been left out. In it were the dried dregs of jasmine tea — nothing like the flavor left on Axel’s dressing table.
There were also two dog-eared books out, The Wealth of Nations and Das Kapital. On the first page of Marx’s opus she had written, Marx seems to be at odds with himself over the effect that capitalism has on human nature. On the one hand he says that it is the dialectical force of history that forms the economic system, but on the other he seems to feel that certain human beings (capitalists) are evil by nature. But if we are pressed forward by empirical forces, then aren’t we all innocent? Or at least equally guilty? I was impressed by her argument. I had had similar thoughts when reading about the Mr. Moneybags capitalist in Marx’s major work.
She had a big pine bed and all her plates, saucers, and cups were made from red glass. The floor was clean and her clothes, at least a lot of them, still hung in the closet. That bothered me. It was as if she just didn’t come home one day rather than moved out.
The trash can was empty.
The bathroom cabinet was filled with condoms and the same lubricant used by Bowers.
He’d died instantly, between lighting a cigarette and the first drag. She had seemingly disappeared in the same way.
I decided to search the entire apartment from top to bottom.
The super, I figured, was downstairs with his joint. I didn’t have to worry about him worrying about me.
The more I explored the more I feared for the bright young woman’s safety. I found a drawer filled with makeup and soaps.
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She had a dozen panties and four bras in her underwear drawer.
There were sewing kits and cheap fountain pens, sanitary nap-kins and sunglasses — all left behind.
Luckily there was no brass elephant grinning at me from the closet, no trunk filled with pornography and the accoutrements of war.
After about an hour I was convinced that Philomena Cargill was dead. It was only then that I began to sift through her mail.