A brown woman stood at the edge of the counter smoking a cigarette and staring off into space.
“Millie,” Mouse said in greeting.
“Mr. Alexander,” she replied.
“Coffee for me an’ my friend.” He took a seat nearest the door and I sat next to him. “What you eatin’, Ease?”
“I’ll take lemon filled.”
“Two lemon an’ two buttermilk,” Mouse said to Millie.
She was already pouring our coffees into large paper cups.
I needed the caffeine. The way I figured it Georgette and I hadn’t gotten to sleep until past three.
Our doughnuts came. We fired up cigarettes and drank coffee. Millie refilled our cups and then moved to the far end of the counter. I could tell that she was used to giving my friend his privacy.
“Thanks for talkin’ to me last night, Easy,” Mouse said.
“Sure.” I wasn’t used to gratitude from him.
“How you spell that guy’s name?”
“The Roman is c-i-c-e-r-o but he didn’t spell it for me.”
“I’ma use a pay phone in back to ask around,” he said. “Sit tight.”
“Early to be callin’ people isn’t it?”
“Early for a man workin’ for somebody else. But a self-employed man gotta get up when the cock crow.” With that 1 9 6
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he walked toward the back of the shop and through a green doorway.
I sat there smoking and thinking about Joe Cicero. It didn’t really make sense that he worked for Lee, because why would Lee fire me and then put a man on my tail? But there seemed to be a divide between Lee and his assistant. Maybe she had put Cicero on me. But again, why not just let me work for Lee and bring them what information I got? She was my only contact with the man.
A cool breeze blew on my back. I turned to see an older black man come in. His clothes were rumpled as if he had slept in them and he gave off an odor of dust as he went past. He sat two seats down from me and gestured to Millie (who never smiled) and murmured his order.
I put out my cigarette and thought about Haffernon. Maybe he hired Cicero. That could be. He was a powerful man. Then there was Philomena. But she had said that she was afraid of the snakeskin killer. That made me grin. The day I started believing what people told me would probably be the day I died.
The man next to me said something to the waitress. Nice day, I think.
And didn’t Philomena say something about a cousin? And of course there was Saul. Maybe he knew more than he was letting on. Maybe he stumbled across something and was trying to get around me. No. Not Saul. At least not yet.
“They havin’ a festival down Watts,” I overheard the man saying to Millie. She didn’t answer or maybe she whispered a reply or nodded.
Of course anyone who was involved in the business deal in Egypt might have hired Cicero. Anyone interested in those bearer bonds.
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“So you too lofty to talk to me, huh?” the man was saying to Millie.
His anger caught my attention and so I glanced in his direction. Millie was at the far end of the counter and the rumpled man was staring at me.
“Excuse me?” I said.
“You too lofty to speak?” he asked.
“I didn’t know you were talkin’ to me, man,” I said. “I thought you were speaking to the woman.”
“Yeah,” he said, not really replying, “I gots all kindsa time at sea with men from every station. Just ’cause my clothes is old don’t mean I’m dirt.”
“I didn’t mean to say that . . . I was just thinkin’.”
“In the merchant marines I seen it all,” he said. “War, mutiny, an’ so much money you choke a fuckin’ elephant wit’ it. I got chirren all over the world. In Guinea and New Zealand. I got a wife in Norway so china white an’ beautiful she’d make you cry.”
My mind was primed to wonder. I just moved it over to think about this man and all of his children and all of his women.
“Easy Rawlins,” I said. I held out my hand.
“Briny Thomas.” He took my hand and held on to it while peering into my eyes. “But you know the most important thing I ever learned in all my travels?”
“What’s that?”
“The only law that matters is yo’ own troof. You stick to what you think is right and when the day is done you will be satisfied.”
Mouse was coming out from the green doorway.
I pulled my hand away from Briny.
Raymond stopped between us.
“Move on down the row, man,” he said to the merchant marine. “Go on.”
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The old man had a good sense of character. He didn’t even think twice, just picked up his coffee and moved four seats down.
“You should’a kilt that mothahfuckah, Easy. You should’a kilt him.”
“Cicero?”
“My people tell me he’s a bad man — a very bad man. Called him a assassin. Did work for the government, they said, an’ then went out on his own.”
Mouse had been frowning while telling me about Cicero but then, suddenly, he smiled.
“This gonna be goooood. Man like that let you know what you made of.”
“Flesh and blood,” I said.
“That ain’t good enough, brother. You need some iron an’ gun-powder an’ maybe a little luck to get ya past a mothahfuckah like this here.”
Raymond was happy. The challenge of Joe Cicero made him feel alive. And I have to say that I wasn’t too worried either. It’s not that I took a government-trained assassin lightly. But I had other work to do and my survival wasn’t the most important thing on the list. If I died saving Feather then it was a good trade. So I smiled along with my friend.
Over his shoulder I saw Briny lift his coffee in a toast.
This gesture also gave me confidence.
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After six cups of coffee, four doughnuts apiece, and half a pack of cigarettes, we made our way back to Mouse’s pied-à-terre. He took the bedroom this time and I stretched out on the couch. That was a little shy of seven.
I didn’t get up again until almost eleven.
It was a great sleep. To begin with there was no light in the cabinlike living room, and the couch was both soft and firm, filled as it was with foam rubber. No one knew where I was and I had Mouse to ride with me when I finally had to go out in the world. I had to believe that Feather’s doctors would keep her alive and Bonnie didn’t enter my thoughts at all. It’s not that I was over her, but there’s only so much turmoil that a heart can keep focused on.
Bonnie was a problem that had to come later.
While I was getting dressed I heard the toilet flush. Mouse 2 0 0
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slept more lightly than a pride of lions. He once told me that he could hear a leaf thinking about falling from a tree.
He came out wearing a blue dress shirt under a herringbone jacket. His slacks were black. I went through to the restroom.
There I shaved and washed the stink from my body with a washrag because Mouse’s hideaway didn’t have a shower or a tub.
At the door, on the way out, he asked me, “You armed?”
“I got a thirty-eight in my pocket, a Luger in my belt, and that twenty-five you gave me in the band of my sock.”
He gave me an approving nod and led the way down the stairs.
i n 1 9 6 6 , L.A.’s downtown was mostly brick and mortar, plaster and stone. There were a few new towers of steel and glass but mostly squat red and brown buildings made up the business community.
I needed to gather some financial information and the best way to do that, I knew, was at the foot of the cowardly genius —
Jackson Blue.
Jackson had left his job at Tyler after going out on a mainte-nance call to Proxy Nine Insurance Group, a consortium of international bank insurers. Jackson had come in to fix their computer’s card reader and then (almost as an afterthought, to hear him tell it) he revamped the way they conducted their daily business. Their president, Federico Bignardi, was so impressed that he offered to double Jackson’s salary and put him in charge of their new data processing department.