I hesitated for the appropriate amount of time, as if I were considering her request. Then I said, “When?”
“Tomorrow at noon.”
“Nuthin’ funny, right?”
“I just want to explain myself, to help you. That’s all.”
“Okay. Okay I’ll come. But I don’t want Joe Cicero to be there.”
“Don’t worry about him. He won’t be bothering anyone.”
“Okay then. Tomorrow at twelve.”
i w a s o n a f l i g h t
to San Francisco within the hour. I rented a car and made it to an address in Daly City that I’d never been to before. All of this took about four hours.
It was a small home with a pink door and a blue porch.
The door was ajar and so I walked in.
Cynthia Aubec lay on her back in the center of the hardwood floor. There was a bullet hole in her forehead. Standing over her 3 0 3
W a lt e r M o s l e y
was Joe Cicero. His right arm was bandaged and in a sling. In his left hand was a pistol outfitted with a large silencing muzzle.
He must have been killing her as I was walking up the path to her door.
My pistol lay impotent in my pocket. Cicero smiled as he raised his gun to point at my forehead. I knew he was thinking about when I had the drop on him; that he wouldn’t make the same mistake that I had.
“Well, well, well,” he said. “Here I thought I’d have to chase you down, and then you come walking in like a Christmas goose.”
With my eyes only I glanced to the sides. There was no sign of the man who had sapped me the night before.
Beyond the young woman’s corpse was a small coffee table upon which sat two teacups. She’d served him tea before he shot her. The thought was grotesque but I knew I wouldn’t have long to contemplate it.
“Lee is going to put the cops on you for the Bowers killing and for Haffernon,” I said, hoping somehow to stave off my own death.
“I didn’t kill them. She did,” he said, waving his pistol at her.
“But you were at Bowers’s house,” I said. “You threatened him.”
“You know about that, huh? She hired me to get the bonds from Bowers. When I told her what he’d said she took it in her own hands.” He coughed and I glanced at the teacups. A tremor of hope thrummed in the center of my chest.
“Haffernon too?”
He nodded. There was something off about the movement of his head, as if he weren’t in full control.
“Why?” I asked, playing for time.
“He was getting weak. Didn’t want to do what they had to do 3 0 4
C i n n a m o n K i s s
to keep their nasty little secret. That’s why I had to kill her. I knew that” — he coughed again — “sooner or later she’d have to come after me. Nobody could know or the whole house of cards would fall. That’s why I work for a living. A rich family will take your soul.”
“Why not?” I asked, as bland as could be. “Why couldn’t anybody know?”
“Money,” he said with a knowing, crooked nod. “Sometimes it was just that she wanted her inheritance. Sometimes she was angry at the kid for taking all that wealth for granted when she and her mother had been living hand to mouth.”
He straightened his shooting arm.
“And she knew you from your trial about the torture?”
“You do your homework, nigger,” he said and then coughed.
Blood spattered out onto his lips, but because he had no free hand he couldn’t rub it off to see.
I leaped to the left and he fired. He was good. He was a right-hander and dying but he still hit me in the shoulder. I used the momentum to fall through a doorway to my left. Screaming from the pain, I made it to my feet. I was halfway down the hall when I heard him behind me. He fired again but I didn’t feel anything.
I fell anyway.
As I looked back I saw him staggering forward, shooting once, and then he fell. He didn’t move again.
I was on the floor next to a bathroom. I went in, trying not to touch any surface. I got a towel from the rack next to the tub and used it to staunch the bleeding from my shoulder.
When the blood was merely seeping I checked Cicero. He was dead. In his jacket pocket was an envelope containing twenty-five thousand dollars. In a folder on the coffee table I found the bonds and the letter.
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There were many photographs on the shelves and window-sills. Some were of Cynthia and her mother, Nina Tourneau. One was Cynthia as a child on the lap of her beloved grandfather —
pornographer, child molester, and Nazi traitor.
I took the bonds, leaving the letter for the cops to mull over.
The teacups had the same strong smell that the cup had at Axel’s house. Only one had been drunk from.
3 0 6
47
Idrove my rental car for hours, but it seemed like several days, bleeding on the steering wheel and down my chest. I drove one-handed half the time, using the stiffening fingers of my right hand to press the towel against the shoulder wound.
It was a minor miracle that I made it to Christmas Black’s Riverside home. I don’t remember getting out of the car or ringing the bell. Maybe they found me there, passed out over the wheel.
I came to three days later. Easter Dawn was sitting in a big chair next to my bed, reading from a picture book. I don’t know if she knew how to read or if she was just interpreting the pictures into stories. When I opened my eyes she jumped up and ran from the room.
“Daddy! Daddy! Mr. Rawlins is awake!”
Christmas came into the room wearing black jeans and a drab green T-shirt. His boots were definitely army issue.
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W a lt e r M o s l e y
“How you doin’, soldier?” he asked.
“Ready for my discharge,” I said in a voice so weak that even I didn’t hear it.
Christmas held up my head and trickled water into my mouth. I wanted to get up and call Switzerland but I couldn’t even lift a hand.
“You bled a lot,” Christmas said. “Almost died. Lucky I got some friends in the hospital down in Oxnard. I got you medicine and a few pints of red.”
“Call Mouse,” I said as loudly as I could.
Then I passed out.
The next time I woke up, Mama Jo was sitting next to me. She had just taken some foul-smelling substance away from my nose.
“Uh!” I grunted. “What was that?”
“I can see you gonna be okay, Easy Rawlins,” big, black, handsome Mama Jo said.
“I feel better. How long have I been here?”
“Six days.”
“Six? Did anybody call Bonnie?”
“She called Etta. Feather’s doin’ good, the doctors said. They won’t know nuthin’ for eight weeks more though. Etta said that you and Raymond were doing some business down in Texas.”
Mouse sauntered in with his glittering smile.
“Hey, Easy,” he said. “Christmas got all yo’ money an’ bonds and shit in the draw next to yo’ bed.”
“Give the bonds to Jackson,” I told him. “Let him cash ’em and we’ll split ’em three ways.”
Mouse smiled. He liked a good deal.
“I’ll let you boys talk business,” Jo said. She rose from the chair and I watched in awe, as always impressed by her size and bearing.
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C i n n a m o n K i s s
Mouse pulled up a chair and told me what he knew.
Joe Cicero made the T V news with his murder of Cynthia Aubec and her poisoning of him.
“They say anything about a letter they found?” I asked.
“No. No letter, just mutual murder, that’s what they called it.”
That night Saul Lynx arrived in a rented ambulance and drove me home.
Benita Flag and Jesus were there to nurse me.
Two weeks after it was all over I was still convalescing. Mouse came over and sat with me under the big tree in the backyard.
“You don’t have to worry about them people no more, Ease,”
he said after we’d been gossiping for a while.
“What people?”