Coffee brewing in the morning brought me closer to feeling at home in the new house. Sunlight danced on the white walls and played interesting patterns through the mild prism of glass in my shadeless windows. I put on my tan linen suit, a milk-chocolate-colored turtleneck shirt, and finally, after deep consideration, decided on dark green shoes.
My brown leather jewelry box was on the dresser. Feather had put it there, no doubt. I opened it to see if there was anything that caught my fancy for the day and the job at hand. There was in the upper corner of the second level of the box a thick platinum ring festooned with a three-carat emerald. That ring once belonged to Mouse. When I saw it on his hand I told him how much I admired it.
“Take it, Easy,” he sang, tugging the bauble from his middle finger. “It don’t fit me too good anyway.”
It was too small even for my pinky but I took it. Mouse got sour when people turned down his gifts.
Something about the jewel seemed to resonate with the Rose Gold case and so I put the ring in my pocket.
I liked to think that I was a modern child of the twentieth century but the superstitions of Louisiana were snagged in the crevices of my brain. It felt like I needed a good luck charm from a powerful deity, and Mouse’s juju was some of the strongest I knew.
Feather was in the kitchen making bacon and eggs, and Bisquick waffles on a machine that had been packed away for years. She was wearing blue jeans and a checkered blue and white shirt shot through with black lines that complicated, or maybe exhilarated, the design. The shirt had once belonged to her brother.
“That coffee I’m smellin’?”
“I’m using the percolator that Bonnie brought back from Marseille. But I got the French press out if you want that kind.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “You goin’ to work with your friend again today?”
“I thought I could use the money to buy a new bike.”
I took a seat in the dinette, wondering if I should get a round or an octangular table for that room.
“Are you in trouble, Daddy?” my daughter asked, putting the breakfast plate and thick white coffee mug down in front of me.
Her question told me many things. First and foremost, she was saying to me that she’d accepted my story about her parents and my part in that tale. She would take her time and consider the details and one day she’d come back to me with more questions—and requests. But she could also see that the job I had undertaken had gotten under my skin and into my unconscious mind. I looked like I was in trouble because trouble had colored my mood.
“No,” I said. “Why?”
“You always get that serious look on your face and stare out into space when there’s trouble.”
“How’d you come up with that theory?”
“Juice used to tell me when I was a kid.”
“You’re still a kid.”
“Are you okay?”
“You remember those men that came over the house while we were moving?”
“Yeah.”
“They were the police. They’re looking for some guy and want me to find him.”
“What do they want him for?”
“He knows a woman who’s the daughter of a rich man. She’s missing and they want to ask him if he’s seen her anywhere.”
Frenchie sauntered into the room then. Feather picked him up and sat down across from me with the dog in her lap.
“I already did.”
Somewhere in the world I had a blood daughter: Edna, whom I sired with Regina. Regina had left me for an old friend of mine from Houston. I wondered if Edna was as wonderful a child as the one keeping me company before she got on with the business of her life.
“Bye, Daddy,” Feather said at the curb before crossing the street to Peggy Nishio’s house.
“Look both ways.”
She laughed at my trying to make her stay a child.
Peggy was outside waiting for her, smiling and waving.
Walking back to my front door, I glanced to the right and saw two white men in suits and ties coming toward the house. They were both the same height and hue, they had virtually identical haircuts, and probably tipped the scales within two pounds of each other. They reached the path of hand-cut granite brick, paused a moment, and then headed for me.
I considered backing into the house, slamming the door, and making it out the back. I had already placed a pistol on the high shelf of the kitchen cabinet. I could grab that on the way.
The idea of the gun called up the image of Stony Goldsmith sitting in a hole in the ground and stockpiling weapons. This thought arrested me. I turned my head to catch a last glimpse of Feather but she and Peggy had already gone into the Nishio home.
“Mr. Rawlins?” one of the men, who wore a dark gray suit, said.
“Yes?” I answered, addressing both the fraternal twins.
“I’m Agent Sorkin and this is my associate Agent Bruce. We’re from the FBI.”
“Do tell.” I took a step backward so that I was standing inside the front doorway.
“We have been informed that you are looking for Rosemary Goldsmith.”
“By whom?”
“That’s not important,” Agent Bruce, who wore a suit of dark blue, said.
“May we come in?” Sorkin asked.
Neither man, at any point in our conversation, smiled.
“No you may not.”
“We have to talk to you about this case, Mr. Rawlins,” Bruce told me.
“That’s your problem. You need to talk to me but I don’t need to talk to you.”
“You are getting involved in an ongoing federal investigation,” Sorkin replied. “If you don’t tell us what you’re doing we can have you arrested for interfering.”
“Okay. If you got a warrant or I committed some kinda crime, you got to do your duty. But I’m a citizen and I will not be bullied by the loose talk of strangers.”
“This case involves kidnapping and national security,” Bruce said because it was his turn. “You have a duty here.”
“How did you find me?” I asked.
“We got your address from the LAPD.”
“Really?” I was sure that neither Frisk nor Manning had given them my address.
“May we come in?” Sorkin asked.
“No.”
“Have you been in contact with a man named Robert Mantle?”
Robert.
“I have not.”
“Who hired you to look for Miss Goldsmith?” Bruce asked.
“I didn’t say that I’m looking for her, and even if I was I have no idea of any supposed client’s name. I don’t even know if you’re really FBI agents.”
“You don’t want to run afoul of the government, Mr. Rawlins,” Agent Sorkin told me.
I figure that he and his partner were in their early thirties, college graduates who had a taste for law enforcement but didn’t like doughnuts. Sorkin’s flat pronunciation marked him as coming from the nation’s heartland, and his consternation told of a deeply held belief that his culture was the true America whereas mine was that of Other. He, and Agent Bruce, would never understand how I might rightfully refuse their superiority, their official status, or their birthright.
“Is there anything else?” I asked.
“Are you going to answer my questions?”
“I am not.”
The FBI agents, who never showed me their ID, turned their heads to regard each other. Should they arrest me? Should they push me into the house and force me to answer their questions? I had no doubt that they might utilize such tactics. And if I was another kind of man in a different profession I might have tried to placate them.
But I was who I was and what I was by choice and inclination—and then there was history. Maybe if they had shown me their identification, asked for help, or at least smiled, I might have been persuaded to accommodate them. But the freedom I had to refuse had its own story. Millions of people had died, and there were those who were still dying for my freedom to say no.
Maybe one day Agents Bruce and Sorkin would understand that simple fact.
“This isn’t some kind of game, Mr. Rawlins,” Agent Bruce said. “We have to ask you to stop any activity you’re involved in that has to do with Rosemary Goldsmith or Robert Mantle.”
I gave him a wan smile and a crooked nod, then closed the door in his face.