“I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
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Itold Raphael’s mother—a small, dark woman with big, brown, hopeful eyes — that I was Philomena Cargill’s uncle and that I needed to talk to her son about a pie-baking business that my niece and I were starting up in Oakland. All I hoped for was a phone number, but Althea was so happy about the chance for a job for her son that she gave me his address too.
This brought me to a three-story wooden apartment building on Santa Barbara Boulevard. It was a wide building that had be-gun to sag in the middle. Maybe that’s why the landlord painted it bright turquoise, to make it seem young and sprightly.
I walked up the sighing stairs to 2a. The door was painted with black and turquoise zebra stripes and the letters RR RR
were carved into the center.
The young man who answered my knock wore only black jeans. His body was slender and strong. His hair was long (but 1 4 5
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not hippie long) and straightened — then curled. He wasn’t very tall, and the sneer on his lips was almost comical.
“Yeeees?” he asked in such a way that he seemed to be suggesting something obscene.
I knew right then that this was the young man who’d hung up on me, the one I’d called from Philomena’s apartment.
“Raphael Reed?”
“And who are you?”
“Easy Rawlins,” I said.
“What can I do for you, Easy Rawlins?” he asked while ap-praising my stature and style.
“I think that a friend of yours may have been the victim of foul play.”
“What friend?”
“Cinnamon.”
It was all in the young man’s eyes. Suddenly the brash flirta-tion and sneering façade disappeared. Now there was a man standing before me, a man who was ready to take serious action depending on what I said next.
“Come in.”
It was a studio apartment. A Murphy bed had been pulled down from the wall. It was unmade and jumbled with dirty clothes and dishes. A black-and-white portable T V with bent-up rabbit-ear antennas sat on a maple chair at the foot of the bed.
There was no sofa, but three big chairs, upholstered with green carpeting, were set in a circle facing each other at the center of the room.
The room smelled strongly of perfumes and body odors. This scent of sex and sensuality was off-putting on a Saturday afternoon.
“Come on out, Roget,” Raphael said.
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A door opened and another young man, nearly a carbon copy of the first, emerged. They were the same height and had the same hairstyle. Roget also wore black jeans, no shirt, and a sneer. But where Raphael had the dark skin of his mother, Roget was the color of light brown sugar and had freckles on his nose and shoulders.
“Sit,” Raphael said to me.
We all went to the chairs in a circle. I liked the configuration but it still felt odd somehow.
“What about Philomena?” Raphael asked.
“Her boss disappeared,” I said. “A man named Adams hired me to find him. He also told me that Philomena had disappeared a couple of days later. I went to her apartment and found that she’d moved out without even taking her clothes.”
Raphael glanced at his friend, but Roget was inspecting his nails.
“So what?”
“You’re her friend,” I said. “Aren’t you worried?”
“Who says I’m her friend?”
“At Jordan you two shared notes on boys.”
“What the hell do you mean by that?” he asked.
I realized that I had gone too far, that no matter how much it seemed that these young men were homosexuals, I was not allowed to talk about it.
“Just that she had a lot of boyfriends,” I said.
Roget made a catty little grunt. It was the closest he came to speaking.
“Well,” Raphael said, “I haven’t even spoken to her since the day she graduated.”
“Valedictorian wasn’t she?”
“She sure was,” Raphael said with some pride in his tone.
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“Is Roget here a friend’a hers?”
“What?”
“She did call here didn’t she?” I asked.
“You the niggah called the other day,” Raphael said. “I thought I knew your voice.”
“Look, man. I’m not tryin’ to mess with you or your friends. I don’t care about anything but finding Bowers for the man hired me. I think that Philomena is in trouble, because why else would she leave her place without taking her clothes and personal things? If you know where she is tell her that I’m looking for her.”
“I don’t know where she is.”
“Take my number. If she calls give it to her.”
“I don’t need your number.”
I wondered if my daughter could die because of this petulant boy. The thought made me want to slap him. But I held my temper.
“You’re makin’ a mistake,” I said. “Your friend could get hurt — bad.”
Raphael’s lips formed a snarl and his head reared back, snake-like — but he didn’t say a word.
I got up and walked out, glad that I’d left my new stolen Luger at home.
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23
Idrove home carefully, making sure to check every traffic light — twice.
Once in my house I gave in to a kind of weariness. It’s not that I was tired, but there was nothing I could do. I’d done all I could about Philomena Cargill. And even though I’d chummed the waters for her I doubted that she was alive to take the bait.
Bonnie was off, probably with Joguye Cham, her prince.
And Feather would die unless I made thirty-five thousand dollars quickly. She might die anyway. She might already be dead.
I hadn’t had a drink in many years.
Liquor took a toll on me. But Johnnie Walker was still in the backseat of the car and I went to my front door more than once, intent on retrieving him.
And why not take up the bottle again? There was no one to disapprove. Oblivion called to me. I could navigate the tidal 1 4 9
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wave of my life on a full tank; I’d be a black Ulysses singing with the stars.
It was early evening when I went out the front door and to my borrowed car. I looked in the window at the slender brown bag on the backseat. I wanted to open the door but I couldn’t. Because even though there was no trace of Feather she still was there. Looking at the backseat I thought about her riding in the backseat of my Ford. She was laughing, leaning up against the seat as the young hippie Star had done, telling me and Jesus about her wild adventures on the playground and in the classroom. Sometimes she made up stories about her and Billy Chipkin crossing Olympic and going up to the County Art Museum.
There, she’d say, they had seen pictures of naked ladies and kings.
I remembered her sitting by my side in the front seat reading Little Women, snarling whenever I interrupted her with questions about what she wanted for dinner or when she was going to pick up her room.
Dozens of memories came between me and that door handle.
I got dizzy and sat down on the lawn. I put my head in my hands and pressed all ten fingers hard against my scalp.
“Go back in the house,” the voice that was me and not me said. “Go back an’ do it until she’s in her room dreamin’ again.
Then, when she safe, you can have that bottle all night long.”
The phone rang at that moment. It was a weak jingle, almost not there. I struggled to my feet, staggering as if Feather were already healed and I was drunk on the celebration. My pants were wet from the grass.
The weak bleating of the phone grew loud when I opened the door.
“Hello.”
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“So what’s it gonna be, Ease?” Mouse asked.
It made me laugh.
“I got to move on this, brother,” he continued. “Opportunity don’t wait around.”
“I’ll call you in the mornin’, Ray,” I said.