As we climbed out from Goldsmith’s underground lair—Red, Mr. Push-up, Gregory Teeg, and I—I wondered about what crime had been committed. It could be that this was a simple kidnapping for ransom. It could be that Goldsmith’s desk was actually a prehistoric boar trained to stand still and act the part of an inanimate piece of office furniture.
I was breathing pretty hard at the halfway mark of our ascent. This exertion made me crave a cigarette. When we were outside of the concrete bunker I pulled out a Pall Mall and a box of matches.
“No smoking on the property,” copper-hued Teeg said.
“Why not?”
“Too many combustibles and flammables in the air.”
I made it home by six forty-five. Feather was there in the bare living room, sitting in the chair and reading a book. She had rooted out our old brass lamp and a dark side table made from elm.
“What you readin’?”
“La Condition Humaine,” she said. “Man’s Fate by André Malraux.”
“In French?”
“I don’t really understand it but I can read the words pretty much. Bonnie gave it to me.”
“You hungry?”
“There’s chicken and dumplings on the stove,” she said, putting the book down and standing up to kiss me.
She’d also made a green salad in the French style with a garlicky vinaigrette dressing. I sat at the rectangular table in the eight-sided room and my daughter served. Both my children had matured early. They were smart and focused from childhood, responsible and willing to help. These traits might have had something to do with my child-rearing but I couldn’t explain it. I was a single parent who was often out in the world rather than at home. I had moved my kids around, kicked the woman we all loved out of the house, and was subject to sour moods. I had nearly killed myself and subjected Feather to a prolonged and spotty resurrection.
“How was it out at the Nishios’?” I asked when we were both seated.
“Nice. They have a big family and they all work together making clothes for Bryant’s Department Store in Beverly Hills. They have aunts and girl cousins and wives all there working. Mr. Nishio is the only man, he answers the phone and cuts fabric. Me and Peggy sewed yellow trim into the hems of black cloth dresses. I even learned a few things to say in Japanese.”
“That sounds nice,” I said.
“Oh,” she said. “What happened to your face?”
“Something hit the windshield of the Barracuda and it shattered.”
“That’s terrible.”
“Blessing in disguise,” I said. “I turned it in and got a new car doesn’t hit you like a neon sign.”
“Oh well,” Feather said, putting the old car from her mind.
The house seemed empty, not only because of the sparse furnishings; it was also a new space that felt unlived in. This brought about a certain quality of intimacy that we’d never experienced in the home we knew so well.
“Daddy?”
I knew from her tone that something serious was up.
“Yeah?”
“You said that you were going to tell me about my real parents.”
I think it was her making dinner that defeated me. She was a young woman asking a man she trusted to tell her the truth.
The story of Feather’s parents’ lives, and deaths, was X-rated. She shouldn’t have heard it until she’d reached her twenty-first year, not her twelfth, but I knew I couldn’t avoid it for a decade more.
“It’s a sad story,” I said.
“Are they dead?”
We sat there in the dinette for more than two hours. I told her about Vernor Garnett, her maternal grandfather, who killed her mother and her father. I said that it was because he was an important man and was embarrassed by his daughter Robin’s wild lifestyle. I didn’t say it was because Robin had had a Negro daughter and tried to extort money out of Vernor to hide that fact.
“I was on another case,” I told her truthfully, “and came across those killings. After it was all over I found you with a friend of your mother’s. Vernor was going to prison and your grandmother and her son Milo had left for the East Coast. I didn’t want you with the county so me and Juice took you in.”
“Is my grandfather still in prison?” Feather asked.
“He died.”
“And my grandmother?”
“She knew about the crimes but the law couldn’t, or wouldn’t, prosecute her. She moved back east, like I said, I don’t know where.”
Feather got up from her chair and sat on my lap—there were tears in her eyes. I held her and she held me; both of us orphans on a dark street at night.
After some time I carried her up to her bedroom. She changed into her nightgown in the bathroom, crawled into her bed weeping, and I sat there beside her bed until an hour after she’d fallen asleep.
The phone rang at seven minutes after midnight. So much had happened that I forgot about the possible appointment.
“Hello?”
“Ease,” Mouse said. “What’s happenin’?”
“It’s all fucked up, Raymond,” I said to my oldest and deadliest friend.
I went on to tell him about Frisk and Manning, Mantle and Rosemary Goldsmith—who I had begun to think of as Rose Gold. I mentioned Uhuru Nolicé and almost getting killed on Crenshaw.
“Who is this Uhuru whatever?” Mouse asked.
“It’s an alias that Mantle’s using.” I went on to tell him about the shootout with the police, the so-called assassination, and the armored car job Manning had mentioned.
“That’s some bullshit right there,” Mouse said.
“What you mean, Ray? I read about all those crimes in the papers. You sayin’ they didn’t happen? Men shot at me in my car.”
“Did they hit you?”
“No.”
“Then they weren’t real killers, now were they?”
“They might have meant to kill me and missed.”
“Look, Easy, I don’t know about this Bob Mantle dude. I mean I seen him fight before but I don’t know about his politics or whatever. I do know that those three cops got shot was killed by Art Sugar and his crew. Art was runnin’ drugs and there was a shootout over on Slauson. I know that ’cause Art’s right hand in Chinatown, Lem Leung, wanted me to help him get on a slow boat to Hong Kong.”
I didn’t ask if Mouse had helped the middleman on his journey; nobody was paying me for that.
“I guess he could’a shot that vice principal,” Mouse continued, “but the armored car job couldn’t have been your boy because I know the people did it. They offered me a piece but you know I don’t shit where I eat.”
Raymond Alexander had his finger on the pulse of crime in L.A., and elsewhere. He wouldn’t have lied or passed on possibly faulty information, not to me. But if Bob Mantle couldn’t have committed at least two of those crimes, then why was the LAPD so sure of it? Why didn’t Stony Goldsmith show any real concern for his daughter?
“Easy,” Mouse was saying with an edge to his voice.
“What?”
“Do you?”
“Do I what?”
“I asked if you needed me to come back there.”
I was lost in the tangle of the case, or the possible case.
“No, Ray. No. I just have to muddle through this shit.”
“I don’t know about Mantle,” he said, “but if you get mixed up with Art Sugar your ass be in a sling.”
“I’ll tell Etta if I get in over my head.”
“Okay.”
“I have another question, though.”
“Shoot.”
“You ever hear of a woman named Mary Donovan?”
“Not that I remember. What she do?”
“Makes her nut movin’ boodle. At least she used to.”
“What denomination?” Mouse knew the right words when need be.
“C-notes. Not very good ones, I think.”
“Talk to this dude named Lambert, Light Lambert.” He gave me the address. “Light’s got his thumb all the way up in the counterfeit pie.”
“Thanks, Ray.”
“Try and stay alive till I get home, Easy. I found this new soul food restaurant make you think you was in Lake Charles.”
Feather was asleep but I could tell she was having nightmares; the blankets and top sheet were on the floor. I covered her up and kissed her forehead, wondering if I should have lied to her about her mother and father.
I had just lain down on my bed when I realized that a streetlamp was shining in my eyes. There was no shade or curtain to block it, so I accepted the glare and turned on my side. In the morning I would fix everything—or die trying.