t h e p o l i c e were still parked across the street when we came out.
“Why you didn’t push her, Easy?” Jackson asked. “You could see that she was wantin’ to know what you knew.”
“She told me where he was already, Mr. Art Collector.”
“When she do that?”
“While we were talkin’.”
“An’ where did she say to go?”
“The Westerly Nursing Home.”
“And where is that?”
“Somewhere not too far from here I bet.”
“Easy,” Jackson said. “You know you a mothahfuckah, man. I mean you like magic an’ shit.”
Jackson might not have known that a compliment from him was probably the highest accolade that I was ever likely to receive.
I smiled and leaned over to wave at the policemen in their prowler.
Then we drove a block south and I stopped at a phone booth, where I looked up Westerly.
2 8 6
44
Why you drivin’west, Easy?” Jackson asked me.
We were on Santa Monica Boulevard.
“Goin’ back to Ozone to pick up your car, man.”
“Why?”
“Because the cops all over Beverly Hills got the description of this here hot rod.”
“Oh yeah. Right.”
o n t h e w a y to the nursing home Jackson stopped so that he could buy a potted white orchid.
“For Jewelle?” I asked him.
“For a old white man,” Jackson said with a grin.
He was embarrassed that he didn’t pick up on why we needed to switch cars and so he came up with the trick to get us in the nursing home.
2 8 7
W a lt e r M o s l e y
We decided to send Jackson in with the flowers and to see how far he could get. The ideal notion would be for Jackson to tell the old man that we had pictures of him in Germany hump-ing young women and girls. Failing that he might find a way to get us in on the sly. Every mansion we’d ever known had a back door and some poor soul held a key.
I wasn’t sure that Rega Tourneau was mastermind of the problems I was trying to solve, but he was the centerpiece. And if he knew anything, I was going to do my best to find out what it was.
Westerly was a big estate a few long blocks above Sunset.
There was a twelve-foot brick wall around the green grounds and an equally tall wrought iron gate for an entrance. We drove past it once and then I parked a few woodsy blocks away.
For a disguise Jackson buttoned the top button of his shirt, turned the lapels of his jacket up, and put on his glasses.
“Jackson, you really think this is gonna work? I mean here you wearin’ a two-hundred-dollar suit. They gonna know somethin’s up.”
“They gonna see my skin before they see anything, Easy. Then the flowers, then the glasses. By the time they get to the suit they minds be made up.”
After he left I lay down across the backseat.
There was an ache behind my eyes and my testicles felt swollen. Back when I was younger that pain would have been a point of pride. I would have worked it into street conversation.
But I was too old to mask pain with bluster.
After a few moments I fell into a deep slumber.
Haffernon was standing there next to me. We were locked in a bitter argument. He told me that if he hadn’t done business with the Nazis then someone else would have.
“That’s how money works, fool,” he said.
2 8 8
C i n n a m o n K i s s
“But you’re an American,” I argued.
“How could you of all people say something like that?” he asked with real wonder. “Your grandparents were the property of a white man. You can’t ever walk in my shoes. But still you believe in the ground I stand on?”
I felt a rage growing in my chest. I would have smashed his face if a gun muzzle hadn’t pressed up against the base of his skull. Haffernon felt the pressure but before he could respond the gun fired. The top of his head erupted with blood and brain and bone.
The killer turned and ran. I couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman, only that he (or she) was of slight stature. I ran after the assassin but somebody grabbed my arm.
“Let me go!” I shouted.
“Easy! Easy, wake up!”
Jackson was shaking my arm, waking me just before I caught the killer. I wanted to slap Jackson’s grinning face. It took me a moment to realize that it was a dream and that I’d never find a killer that way.
But still . . .
“What you got, Jackson?”
“Rega Tourneau is dead.”
“Dead?”
“Died in his sleep last night. Heart failure, they said. They thought that I was bringing the flowers for the funeral.”
“Dead?”
“The lady at the front desk told me that he’d been doin’ just fine. He’d had a lot of visitors lately. The doctors felt that maybe it was too much excitement.”
“What visitors?”
“You got a couple’a hunnert dollars, Easy?”
2 8 9
W a lt e r M o s l e y
“What?” Now awake, I was thinking about Rega Tourneau dying so conveniently. It had to be murder. And there I was again, scoping out the scene of the crime.
“Two hunnert dollars,” Jackson said again.
“Why?”
“Terrance Tippitoe.”
“Who?”
“He’s one’a the attendants up in there. While I was waitin’ to see the receptionist we talked. Afterwards I told him I thought I knew how he could make some scratch. He be off at three.”
“Thanks, Mr. Blue. That’s just what I needed.”
“Let’s go get lunch,” he suggested.
“You just ate a little while ago.”
“I know this real good place,” he said.
I flopped back down and he started the car. I closed my eyes but sleep did not come.
“ y e a h , e a s y , ” Jackson was saying.
I was stabbing at a green salad while he chowed down on a T-bone steak at Mulligan’s on Olympic. We had a booth in a corner. Jackson was drinking beer, proud of his work at the Westerly Nursing Home. But after the third beer his self-esteem turned sour.
“I used to be afraid,” he said. “All the time, day and night. I used to couldn’t go to sleep ’cause there was always some fear in my mind. Some man gonna find out how I cheated him or slept wit’ his wife or girlfriend. Some mothahfuckah hear I got ten bucks an’ he gonna stove my head in to get it.”
“But now you got a good job and it’s all fine.”
“Job ain’t shit, Easy. I mean, I like it. Shoot, I love it. But the job ain’t what calms my mind. That’s all Jewelle there.”
2 9 0
C i n n a m o n K i s s
He snorted and wiped his nose with the back of his hand.
“What’s the matter, Jackson?”
“I know it cain’t last, that’s what.”
“Why not? Jewelle love you more than she loved Mofass and she loved him more than anything before he died.”
“ ’Cause I’m bound to fuck it up, man. Bound to. Some woman gonna crawl up in my bed, some fool gonna let me hold onta his money. I been a niggah too long, Easy. Too long.”
I was worried about Feather, riding on a river of sorrow and rage named Bonnie Shay, scared to death of Joe Cicero, and faced with a puzzle that made no sense. Because of all that I appreciated Jackson’s sorrowful honesty. For the first time ever I felt a real kinship with him. We’d known each other for well over twenty-five years but that was the first time I felt true friendship for him.
“No, Jackson,” I said. “None’a that’s gonna happen.”
“Why not?”
“Because I won’t let it happen. I won’t let you fuck up. I won’t let you mess with Jewelle. All you got to do is call me and tell me if you’re feelin’ weak. That’s all you got to do.”
“You do that for me?”
“Damn straight. Call me anytime day or night. I will be there for you, Jackson.”
“What for? I mean . . . what I ever do for you?”
“We all need a brother,” I said. “It’s just my turn, that’s all.”