“But they employ thousands. This dude is a small shop. He needs to at least say hello.”
“What difference would that make, Easy?” Saul asked.
“How can you work for a man don’t even have the courtesy to come out from his office and nod at you?”
“I received an envelope yesterday morning with twenty-five hundred dollars in it,” he said. “I get a thousand dollars just to 3 8
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deliver you your money and take a drive up to Frisco. Sometimes I work two weeks and don’t make half that.”
“Money isn’t everything, Saul.”
“It is when your daughter is at death’s door and only money can buy her back.”
I could see that Saul regretted his words as soon as they came out of his mouth. But I didn’t say anything. He was right. I didn’t have the luxury of criticizing that white man. Who cared if I ever met him? All I needed was his long green.
3 9
7
Abeautiful day in San Francisco is the most beautiful day on earth. The sky is blue and white, Michelangelo at his best, and the air is so crystal clear it makes you feel that you can see more detail than you ever have before. The houses are wooden and white with bay windows. There was no trash in the street and the people, at least back then, were as friendly as the citizens of some country town.
If I hadn’t had Feather, and that enameled pin, on my mind I would have enjoyed our trip through the city.
On Lower Lombard we passed a peculiar couple walking down the street. The man wore faded red velvet pants with an open sheepskin vest that only partially covered his naked chest.
His long brown hair cascaded down upon broad, thin shoulders.
The woman next to him wore a loose, floral-patterned dress with nothing underneath. She had light brown hair with a dozen yel-4 0
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low flowers twined into her irregular braids. The two were walking, barefoot and slow, as if they had nowhere to be on that Thursday afternoon.
“Hippies,” Saul said.
“Is that what they look like?” I asked, amazed. “What do they do?”
“As little as possible. They smoke marijuana and live a dozen to a room, they call ’em crash pads. And they move around from place to place saying that owning property is wrong.”
“Like communists?” I asked. I had just finished reading Das Kapital when Feather got weak. I wanted to get at the truth about our enemies from the horse’s mouth but I didn’t have enough history to really understand.
“No,” Saul said, “not communists. They’re more like dropouts from life. They say they believe in free love.”
“Free love? Is that like they say, ‘That ain’t my baby, baby’?”
Saul laughed and we began the ascent to Nob Hill.
Near the top of that exclusive mount is a street called Cush-man. Saul took a right turn there, drove one block, and parked in front of a four-story mansion that rose up on a slope behind the sidewalk.
The walls were so white that it made me squint just looking at them. The windows seemed larger than others on the block and the conical turrets at the top were painted metallic gold. The first floor of the manor was a good fifteen feet above street level — the entrance was barred by a wrought iron gate.
Saul pushed a button and waited.
I looked out toward the city and appreciated the view. Then I felt the pang of guilt, knowing that Feather lay dying four hundred miles to the south.
“Yes?” a sultry woman’s voice asked over an invisible intercom.
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“It’s Saul and Mr. Rawlins.”
A buzzer sounded. Saul pulled open the gate and we entered onto an iron platform. The elevator vestibule was carved into the rock beneath the house. As soon as Saul closed the gate the platform began to move upward toward an opening at the first-floor level of the imposing structure. As we moved into the aperture a panel above us slid aside and we ascended into a large, well-appointed room.
The walls were mahogany bookshelves from floor to ceiling —
and the ceiling was at least sixteen feet high. Beautifully bound books took up every space. I was reminded of Jackson Blue’s beach house, which had cheap shelves everywhere. His books for the most part were ratty and soiled, but they were well read and his library was probably larger.
Appearing before us as we rose was a white woman with tanned skin and copper hair. She wore a Chinese-style dress made of royal blue silk. It fitted her form and had no sleeves.
Her eyes were somewhere between defiant and taunting and her bare arms had the strength of a woman who did things for herself. Her face was full and she had a black woman’s lips. The bones of her face made her features point downward like a lovely, earthward-bound arrowhead. Her eyes were light brown and a smile flitted around her lips as she regarded me regarding her beauty.
She would have been tall even if she were a man — nearly six feet. But unlike most tall women of that day, she didn’t let her shoulders slump and her backbone was erect. I made up my mind then and there that I would get on naked terms with her if it was at all possible.
She nodded and smiled and I believe she read the intentions in my gaze.
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“Maya Adamant,” Saul Lynx said, “this is Ezekiel Rawlins.”
“Easy,” I said, extending a hand.
She held my hand a moment longer than necessary and then moved back so that we could step off of the platform.
“Saul,” she said. “Come in. Would you like a drink?”
“No, Maya. We’re in kind of a hurry. Easy’s daughter is sick and we need to get back as soon as possible.”
“Oh,” she said with a frown. “I hope it’s not serious.”
“It’s a blood condition,” I said, not intending to be so honest.
“Not quite an infection but it really isn’t a virus either. The doctors in L.A. don’t know what to do.”
“There’s a clinic in Switzerland . . . ,” she said, searching for the name.
“The Bonatelle,” I added.
Her smile broadened, as if I had just passed some kind of test.
“Yes. That’s it. Have you spoken to them?”
“That’s why I’m here, Miss Adamant. The clinic needs cash and so I need to work.”
Her chest expanded then and an expression of delight came over her face.
“Come with me,” she said.
She led us toward a wide, carpeted staircase that stood at the far end of the library.
Saul looked at me and hunched his shoulders.
“I’ve never been above this floor before,” he whispered.
t h e r o o m a b o v e
was just as large as the one we had left.
But where the library was dark with no windows, this room had a nearly white pine floor and three bay windows along each wall.
There were maybe a dozen large tables in this sun-drenched space. On each was a battle scene from the Civil War. In each 4 3
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tableau there were scores of small, hand-carved wooden figurines engaged in battle. The individual soldiers — tending cannon, engaged in hand-to-hand combat, down and wounded, down and dead — were compelling. The figurines had been carved for maximum emotional effect. On one table there was a platoon of Negro Union soldiers engaging a Confederate band.
“Amazing, aren’t they?” Maya asked from behind me. “Mr.
Lee carves each one in a workroom in the attic. He has studied every aspect of the Civil War and has written a dozen mono-graphs on the subject. He owns thousands of original documents from that period.”
“One wonders when he has time to be a detective with all that,” I said.
For a moment there was a deadness in Maya’s expression. I felt that I had hit a nerve, that maybe Bobby Lee really was a fig-ment of someone’s imagination.
“Come into the office, Mr. Rawlins. Saul.”