Tags:
Fiction,
Historical fiction,
General,
Historical,
Mystery & Detective,
Private Investigators,
Mystery Fiction,
Missing Persons,
Los Angeles (Calif.),
African American,
Rawlins; Easy (Fictitious character),
Private investigators - California - Los Angeles,
African American men
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.
• 7 •
A beautiful 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 yellow 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 Cushman. 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.
“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