When Cinnamon smiled at me I understood the danger she represented. She was more than pretty or lovely or even beautiful. There was something regal about her. I almost felt like bowing to show her how much I appreciated the largesse of her smile.
“They say that Hitler was a vegetarian too,” I said and the smile shriveled on her lips.
“So what?”
“Why don’t you tell me, Philomena?”
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After regarding me for a moment she said, “Why should I trust you?”
“Because I’m on your side,” I said. “I don’t want any harm coming to you and I’ll work to see that no one else hurts you either.”
“I don’t know any of that.”
“Sure you do,” I said. “You talked to Lena about me. She gave you my number. She told you that I’ve traded tough favors down around here for nearly twenty years.”
“She also said that she’s heard that people you’ve helped have wound up hurt and even dead sometimes.”
“That might be, but any girl bein’ followed by a snakeskin killer got to expect some danger,” I countered. “I’d be a fool if I told you everything’ll work out fine and you’d be a fool to believe it. But if you all mixed up with murder then you need somebody like me. It don’t matter that you got a business degree from UC
Berkeley and a boyfriend got Paul Klee paintings hangin’ on his walls. If somethin’ goes wrong you the first one they gonna look at. An’ if a white killer wanna kill somebody a black woman will be the first on his list. ’Cause you know the cops will ask if you had a boyfriend they could pin it on, an’ if you don’t they’ll call you a whore and close the book.”
Philomena listened very carefully to my speech. Her royal visage made me feel like some kind of minister to the crown.
“What do want from me?” she asked.
“What papers did Axel steal?”
“He didn’t steal anything. He found those papers in a safe-deposit box his father had. He kept them with memorabilia he had from Germany. When Mr. Bowers died, he left the key to Axel.”
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“If that’s so then why did Haffernon tell the man who hired me that Axel stole the papers from him?”
“Who hired you?”
I told her about Robert Lee and his Amazon assistant. She had never heard of either one.
“Haffernon and Mr. Bowers and another man were partners before the war. They worked in chemicals,” Philomena said.
“Who was their partner?”
“A man named Tourneau, Rega Tourneau. They did some bad things, illegal things during the war.”
“What kind of things?”
“Treason.”
“No.” I was still a good American back in those days. It was almost impossible for me to believe that American businessmen would betray the country that had made them rich.
“The papers are Swiss bearer bonds issued in 1943 for work done by the Karnak Chemical Company in Cairo,” Philomena said. “And even though the bonds themselves are only endorsed by the banks there’s a letter from top Nazi officials that details the expectations that the Nazis had of Karnak.”
“Whoa. And Axel wanted to cash the bonds?”
“No. He didn’t know what he wanted exactly, but he knew that something should be done to make amends for his father’s sins.”
“But Haffernon doesn’t want to pay the price,” I said. “What about this Tourneau guy?”
“I don’t know about him. Axel just said that he’s out of it.”
“Dead?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did his father’s company do for the Nazis?” I asked.
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“They developed special kinds of explosives that the Germans used for construction in a few of their slave labor camps.”
“And what do you get outta all’a this?” I asked.
“Me? I was just helping him.”
“No. I don’t hardly know you at all, girl, but I do know that you look out for number one. What’s Axel gonna do for you?”
Cinnamon let her left shoulder rise, ceding a point that was hardly worth the effort.
“He had friends in business. He was going to set me in a job somewhere. But he would have done that even if I hadn’t tried to help.”
I was suddenly aware of a slight dizziness.
“But it didn’t hurt,” I said. “You could work all you wanted.”
“What?” she asked.
I realized that the last part of what I said didn’t make sense.
I blinked, finding it hard to open my eyes again.
I shook my head but the cobwebs went nowhere.
“Philomena.”
“Yes?”
“Would you mind if I just laid out here a minute? I haven’t got much sleep lookin’ for you and I’m tired. Real tired.”
Her smile was a thing to behold.
“Maybe I could rest too,” she said. “I’ve been so scared alone in this room.”
“Let’s get a short nap and then we can finish talkin’ in a while.” I lay back on the bed as I spoke.
She said something. It seemed like a really long sentence but I couldn’t make out the words. I closed my eyes.
“Uh-huh,” I said out of courtesy and then I was asleep.
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In the dream I was kissing Bonnie. She whispered something sweet and kissed my forehead, then my lips. I tried to hold myself back, to tell her how angry I was. But every time her lips touched mine my mouth opened and her tongue washed away all my angry words.
“I need you,” she told me and I had to strain to hold back the tears.
She pressed her body against mine. I held her so tight that she pulled away for a moment, but then she was kissing me again.
“Thank God,” I whispered. “Thank God.”
I reached down into her panties and she moaned.
But when I felt her cold hand on my erection I realized that it wasn’t Bonnie. It wasn’t Bonnie because it wasn’t a dream and Bonnie was in Switzerland.
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Who was in my bed? Nobody. Another deeply felt kiss. I was in a motel room . . . with Cinnamon Cargill.
I raised up, pushing her away as I did so. Her T-shirt was up to her midriff. My erection was standing straighter than it had in some while. She reached out and stroked it lightly with two fingers. The groan came from my lips against my will.
I stood up, pushed the urgent cock back behind the zipper.
Cinnamon sat up and smiled.
“I was scared,” she explained. “I just lay down next to you and went to sleep.”
What could I say?
“I guess you must have kissed me in your sleep,” she said. “It was nice.”
“Yeah.” I wondered if it was me who cast the first kiss. “I’m sorry about that.”
“Nothing to be sorry about. It’s natural. I have protection.”
Even her sexy nonchalance was imperial.
“Where’d you get that?” I asked her. “You left with nothing.”
“I always have a backup in my wallet,” she said, sounding decidedly like a man.
“Let’s go get some breakfast,” I said.
A shadow of disappointment darkened her features for a moment and then she pulled on her pants, which she’d dropped on the floor next to my bed.
i w a n t e d b r e a k f a s t even though it was two in the afternoon. Philomena and I had slept for almost eight hours before we started making out.
Brenda’s Burgers had everything I needed: an all-day breakfast menu and a booth at the back of her tiny diner where you could talk without being overheard. It was a small restaurant 1 6 7
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with pitted floors and mismatched furniture. The cook and waiter was a dark-skinned mustachioed man with mistrustful eyes.
I ordered fried ham and buttermilk biscuits. Philomena wanted a steak with collard greens, mashed potatoes, and salad.
“I thought you were vegetarian?” I asked.