Walter Mosley: Cinnamon Kiss

I showered and shaved, primped and dressed.

The bonds were gone of course. I figured that I was lucky that Cicero had sent a proxy. I was also lucky that the bonds were right there to be stolen. Otherwise Joe would have come and caused me pain until I gave them up. Then he would have killed me.

I was a lucky bastard.

After my ablutions I called a number that was lodged in my memory. I have a facility for remembering numbers, always did.

She answered on the sixth ring, breathless.

“Yes?”

“That invitation still open?”

“Easy?” Cynthia Aubec said. “I thought I’d never hear from you again.”

“That might be construed as a threat, counselor.”

“No. I thought you didn’t like me.”

“I like you all right,” I said. “I like you even though you lied to me.”

“Lied? Lied about what?”

“You acted like you weren’t related to Axel but here I see that you signed into the Westerly Nursing Home to visit Rega Tourneau. Cynthia Tourneau-Aubec.”

“Tourneau’s my mother’s maiden name. Aubec was my father,” she said.

“Nina’s your mother?”

“You seem to know everything about me.”

“Did you know what Axel was trying to do?”

“He was wrong, Mr. Rawlins. These are our parents, our families. What’s done is done.”

“Is that why you killed him?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Axel told me that he was going to Algeria. I don’t have any reason to think that he’s dead.”

“You worked in the prosecutor’s office when Joe Cicero was on trial, didn’t you?”

She didn’t answer.

“And you visited your grandfather only a few hours before he was found dead.”

“He was very old. Very sick. His death was really a blessing.”

“Maybe he wanted to confess before he died. About trips to the Third Reich and pornographic pictures of him with twelve-year-olds.”

“Where are you?” she asked.

“In L.A. At my house.”

“Come up here... to my house. We’ll talk this out.”

“What is it, Cindy? Were you in your grandfather’s will? Were you afraid that the government would take away all of that wealth if the truth came out?”

“You don’t understand. Between the drugs and his crazy friends Axel only wanted to destroy.”

“What about Haffernon? Was he getting cold feet? Is that why you killed him? Maybe he thought that dealing with a twenty-year-old treason beef would be easier than if he was caught murdering Philomena.”

“Come here to me, Easy. We can work this out. I like you.”

“What’s in it for me?” I asked. It was a simple question but I had complex feelings behind it.

“My mother was disowned,” she said. “But the old man put me back in the will recently. I’m going to be very rich soon.”

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 was on a flight 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 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 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.

There were many photographs on the shelves and windowsills. 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.

I drove 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.