While inhaling I considered lying. I held the breath for a beat and then let it go.
“I think Philomena Cargill is in trouble. Some people hired me to find her up in Frisco, and even though I didn’t, what I did find makes me think that she might need some help.”
“Why are these people looking for Cindy?” Lena asked.
“Her boss walked off with something that didn’t belong to him. At least that’s what they told me. He disappeared and then, a little while later, she did too.”
“And why are you coming to me?”
“I found a postcard from you in Philomena’s apartment.”
“You broke into her place?”
“No. As a matter of fact that’s one of the reasons I’m worried about her. They had her place up for rent. She’d left everything behind.”
I let these words sink in. Lena lifted her gaze above the glasses as if to get a better view of my heart. I have no idea what her nearly blind eyes saw.
“I don’t know where she is, Easy,” Lena said. “The last I heard she was in San Francisco working for a man named Bowers.”
“Are her parents here?”
“When her father died her mother moved to Chicago to live with a sister.”
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“Brothers? Sisters?”
“Her brothers are both in the service, Vietnam. Her sister married a Chinese man and they moved to Jamaica.”
There was something Lena wasn’t telling me.
“What’s she like — Cinnamon?”
“Reach over in that drawer in the end table,” she said, waving in that general direction.
The drawer was filled with papers, ballpoint pens, and pencils.
“Under all that,” she said. “It’s a frame.”
The small gilded frame held a three-by-five photo of a pretty young woman in a graduation cap and gown. She was smiling like I would have liked my daughter to do on her graduation day.
The photograph was black-and-white but you could almost see the reddish hue to her skin through the shading. There was a certainty in her eyes. She knew what she was seeing.
“She’s the kind of woman that men hate because she’s not afraid to be out there in a man’s world. Broke all’a the records at Jordan High School. Made it to the top of her class at University of California at Berkeley. Ready to fly, that child is . . .”
“She honest?”
“Let me tell you something, young man,” Lena said. “The reason I know her is that she worked in my restaurant in the last two years. She was just a girl but sharp and true. She loved to work and learn. I wished my own son had her wits. After the restaurant closed she came to see me every week to learn from what I knew. She was no crook.”
“Did she have any close friends down here?”
“I didn’t know her friends. She saw boys but they were never serious. The young men around here don’t value a woman with brains and talent.”
“Do you know how I can find her?” I asked, giving up subtlety.
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“No.”
Maybe I thought she was lying because all I could see was the opaque reflective surface of her glasses.
“If you hear from her will you tell her that I’m looking for the documents Bowers took?”
“What documents?”
“All I know is that he took some papers that have red seals on them. But I’m not worried about them as much as I’m worried about Miss Cargill’s safety.”
Lena nodded. If she did know where Philomena was she’d be sure to give her the message. I wrote down my home and office numbers. And then I helped Lena put away the groceries.
Her refrigerator was empty except for two hard-boiled eggs.
“With my legs the way they are it’s hard for me to get out shopping very much,” she said, apologizing for her meager fare.
I nodded and smiled.
“I come down to my office at least twice a week, Lena. I can always make a supermarket run for you.”
She patted my forearm and said, “Bless you.”
There are all kinds of freedom in America — free speech, the right to bear arms — but when the years have piled up so high on their back that they can’t stand up straight anymore, many Americans find out they also have the freedom to starve.
a t a p h o n e b o o t h
down the street from Lena’s house I looked up a number and then made a call.
“Hello?” a man answered.
“Billy?”
“Hey, Easy. She ain’t here.”
“You know when she’ll be in?”
“She at work, man.”
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“On Saturday?”
“They pay her to sit down in her office when the band comes in for practice. She opens up the music building at nine and then closes it at three. Not bad for time and a half.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll go over and see her there.”
“Bye, Easy. Take care.”
Jordan High School had a sprawling campus. There were over three thousand students enrolled. I came in through the athletic gate and made my way toward the boiler room. That’s where Helen McCoy made her private office. She was the building supervisor of the school, a position two grades above the one I’d just left.
Helen was short and redheaded, smart as they come, and tougher than most men. I had seen her kill a man in Third Ward one night. He’d slapped her face and then balled up a fist. When she pressed five inches of a Texas jackknife into his chest he sat down on the floor — dying as he did so.
“Hi, Easy,” she said with a smile.
She was sitting at a long table next to the boiler, writing on a small white card. There was a large stack of blank cards on her left and a smaller stack on the right. The right-side cards had already been written on.
“Party?” I asked.
“My daughter Vanessa’s gettin’ married. These the invitations.
You gettin’ one.”
I sat down and waited.
When Helen finished writing the card she sat back and smiled, indicating that I had her attention.
“Philomena ‘Cinnamon’ Cargill,” I said. “I hear she was a student here some years ago.”
“Li’l young,” Helen suggested.
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“It’s my other job,” I said. “I’m lookin’ for her for somebody.”
“Grapevine says you quit the board.”
“Sabbatical.”
“Don’t shit me, Easy. You quit.”
I didn’t argue.
“Smart girl, that Philomena,” Helen said. “Lettered in track and archery. Gave the big speech at her graduation. She was wild too.”
“Wild how?”
“She wasn’t shy of boys, that one. One time I found her in the boys’ locker room after hours with Maurice Johnson. Her drawers was down and her hands was busy.” Helen grinned. She’d been wild herself.
“I was told that her father died and her mother left for Chicago,”
I said. “You know anybody else she might be in touch with?”
“She had a school friend named Raphael Reed. He was funny, if you know what I mean, so he never got jealous of her runnin’
around.”
“That all?”
“All I can think of.”
“You think you could go down and pull Reed’s records for me?”
Helen considered my request.
“We known each other a long time haven’t we, Easy?”
“Sure have.”
“You the one got me this job.”
“And you moved up past me in grade in two years.”
“I don’t have no job on the side to distract me,” she said.
I nodded, submitting to her logic.
“You know I ain’t s’posed t’ give the public information on students or faculty.”
“I know that.”
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She laughed then. “I guess we all do things we ain’t s’posed to do sometimes.”
“Can’t help it,” I agreed.
“Wait here,” she said, patting the table with her knife hand.