Rose Gold (3 page)

“So Goldsmith has a problem?” I asked again.

“He has a daughter.”

“And she has a problem or she is a problem,” I surmised.

“She’s a student at UC Santa Barbara.”

“Beautiful place.”

“A hotbed of revolutionaries.”

I took another bite of my Cuban sandwich. The pickles were what made it special. And Arturo used real Swiss cheese that gave it that sour tang.

“I thought you needed my help,” I said.

“I do. The mayor does.”

“Are you working for the mayor or the cops?”

“The police force answers to City Hall.”

“Since when?”

“Goldsmith has a problem,” Frisk said. “His daughter.”

“And what can a man like me do to relieve his distress?”

“It’s my job to find her and make sure that she gets home.”

“Runaway, missing, or kidnapped?” I wasn’t in the mood for niceties.

Frisk didn’t answer immediately. He pondered my question, leading me to wonder if he was making up a reply.

“It’s uncertain,” he said at last.

“I’m listening.”

“Rosemary, that’s the Goldsmiths’ daughter’s name, has been missing from her dormitory for at least the last two weeks. No one has seen her.”

“Boyfriend?”

“A man called Foster telling him that if he ever wanted to see his daughter again that he’d have to come up with, with … a great deal of money.”

“How much money?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“So it’s kidnapping,” I said.

“Maybe. You see …” Frisk paused, trying to pull together the delicate skein of the tale. “Rosemary has been involved with various revolutionary and anti-American groups. It could be that one of them has actually abducted her, but she could also be in league with the people that called.”

“But you don’t know.”

“The call came from a pay phone at a gas station in West Los Angeles. She’d been missing for days before the demands were made.”

“What does her father think?”

“He isn’t sure. The last time he spoke to his daughter she was railing at him about his part in delivery systems dealing with napalm and the war; that and other things.”

“What other things?”

“Just leftist banter. She’s been brainwashed by communists and sees her father as some kind of monster.”

“That could be a big problem,” I agreed. “You wouldn’t want to report a kidnapping and find out that the supposed victim is really an extortionist in disguise.”

“He doesn’t want his daughter going to jail.”

“I understand the problem, Mr. Frisk, but what could I possibly contribute to the investigation? I haven’t been to Santa Barbara in a while and I don’t know anyone up there.”

The special assistant to the chief of police was tapping the indexfinger fingernail of his left hand on the green tiled surface of the counter. He was staring hard at me as if, after all of this, he was wondering if I was the right man for the job.

“Because of that call we think that the trail might be down here in L.A.,” he said at last. “We have reports that Rosemary has been seen in Los Angeles with a man named Mantle, Robert Mantle.”

“Battling Bob Mantle?”

“You know him?”

“I’ve seen him fight. I don’t think he ever won a round but he made
it to the final bell in every match I ever saw, bloody as a slaughtered hog but still on his feet. I haven’t seen him for a while.”

“He got hit too much and they banned him from the ring. We thought if you could get next to Mantle maybe he could point the way.”

“What’s their relationship?”

“That’s not clear.”

“Do you know where I could find him?” I asked.

“If I did I wouldn’t be talking to you, now would I?”

“I thought maybe you needed a man like me to talk to Mantle because he might trust a brother.” If I was being hired as a Judas, I wanted him to say it out loud.

“If I knew where he was I’d ask him myself.”

“So you’re looking for this Rosemary Goldsmith,” I said.

“Yes,” Frisk agreed, “but we need you to find Mantle. He’s the key to finding the girl.”

“That may be,” I said, “but I’d like to talk to her parents before I go out looking for him.”

“That wouldn’t be a good idea,” Frisk advised.

“Why not? They’re the ones who’ll be paying me, right?”

“Rosemary’s parents are separated. The call was to him. All communication with either the mother or the father must be done through my offices.”

Something about his officious tone made me wary.

“I’d like to see your LAPD ID,” I said.

“What?”

“You heard me, man. Show me some ID or we can end this conversation right here.”

“You saw my card.”

“Anybody could print up a fancy card. I need something with a picture on it. Something I recognize. I don’t know you, Mr. Frisk. You could just be playin’ me.”

Frisk didn’t like my demand. He hesitated while I took another bite out of my sandwich, but finally he produced a wallet from his breast pocket and took out a laminated card with his picture, rank, and police affiliation stated clearly.

“Sorry about that,” I said, “but you know there’s a lot of people out there like to pull the wool over your eyes.”

“Will you take the job?”

“I need two thousand dollars for expenses and four thousand down on my fee. You get the client to give me that and I will be on the job first thing in the morning.”

“The money will be delivered to you later today,” he said.

The fact that money was no object was the best reason I had for passing up the case. Nobody ever put down 50 percent up front—unless they were desperate; and desperation went hand in hand with danger.

“What about those city inspectors?” I asked, pushing my bad luck.

“I’ll make a call tomorrow.”

“I should say no, but I got too much in the hopper to turn my back. You have the client send me the money and I’ll do my due diligence.”

Frisk smiled and put out that hand again.

Though reluctantly, this time I shook it.

Frisk went out the front door of the restaurant and down the aluminum stairs while I paid Manny for our lunch and the brown paper bag filled with food for my workers.

“That man a friend of yours, Mr. Rawlins?” the short Cuban waiter asked.

“Potential employer.”

“When I used to be in the Cuban army I was a sentry for El Jefe.”

“Castro?”

“Sometimes the Russian KGB would come to talk about their secrets. They had dead eyes and only came after dark. Your friend looks like he could be one of them.”

“He’s a cop.”

“Oh,” the amber-skinned man said. “That’s why.”

“Thanks, Manny,” I said. “See you soon.”

On the short drive back to my new home Frisk addressed me as my employer.

“You should check out Benoit’s Gym. Mantle does odd jobs there,” he said. “They might be connected to this.”

“Benoit’s down on Crenshaw? The one run by Hardcase Latour?”

“That’s it.”

“What do you mean,
connected
?”

“Nothing definite,” Frisk admitted. “It’s just that he spent a lot of time down there before the girl went missing.”

“When’s the last time anybody saw Mantle?”

“Almost two weeks.”

“You got a picture of him and the girl?”

By then we were pulling up in front of my place.

Frisk’s pockets were chock-full of information. This time he pulled out a small leatherbound notebook with two photographs between its leaves. One was a reduced mug shot of Bob Mantle. He was holding a number card in front of his chest and sneering at the camera. Bob wasn’t a handsome man but even through that frown and broken nose he looked friendly. Dark-skinned like me, with a buzz cut and generous lips, he might have been twenty-eight, twenty-nine at the time of the arrest.

The girl’s picture was more pedestrian. Smiling and pretty, she was not yet twenty, sitting at a restaurant table among friends. Through the window behind her was a fleet of docked yachts at some marina where the rich congregated. Her hair was brown and her skin pale and clear. She was attractive in a sexless way. Her hazel eyes had intelligence and depth. I imagined that she questioned everything those eyes lit upon.

There was something odd about the photograph: It was printed, not developed. Maybe, I thought, it had been cut out of a yearbook and pasted to a stiff paper backing.

“An odd couple,” I said.

“Find him quickly, Easy, and that’ll lead to her. That’s the best scenario we can hope for.”

The special assistant’s men had put a deep dent in the moving truck’s cargo. Two of them had doffed their jackets, one even loosened his tie. I brought the bag of sandwiches to the back of the van and called everybody out. They seemed to like the food. Feather took hers, along with an order of the plantains and one serving of beans and rice, to the kitchenette. The table and chairs were already set up there and she was a proper child.

The cops were grateful but quiet. Using plastic dinnerware that Manny provided, they ate quickly and went back to work. Frisk, for his part, went to the car and sat alone thinking official thoughts and planning his future.

After lunch we all, with the exception of Frisk, threw ourselves into the move. Percy Bidwell stopped trying to pressure me and even Jackson did a halfway decent job. By two o’clock everything was out of the van and in the house or the garage out back. Feather had organized the process so that every box and piece of furniture was in the room where it belonged.

The cops left. Frisk didn’t talk to me again. I was a soldier and he a passing general. I hoped his elite planning included the money I’d asked for.

I found Jesus in the backyard studying the high redwood fence that separated me from my neighbors.

I walked up behind my son and put a hand on his shoulder.

“A lot bigger than what we’re used to,” I said.

“Not as big as that house Auntie Jewelle had us in.”

“But we didn’t own that.”

“It’s real nice, Dad.”

My son. When I found him he was the pet of a child molester who believed he was untouchable. The pedophile was long dead and Jesus had become a man that any nation would have been proud to call citizen.

“Benita still wants to go back to school?” I asked of his common-law wife and mother of his child.

“She says that if she’s a registered nurse we could make enough that we could buy our own place.”

“What school?”

“SMCC has most of the courses she needs. She just has to bring in enough to help pay for Essie and the rent.”

Essie, my de facto granddaughter, was still a baby.

“I think I can give you enough to pay for the first year,” I said. “After that … we’ll see.”

Jesus wasn’t a big talker. He smiled and nodded. We’d be on the same page ten years after my death.

“Hey, Jackson,” I said to one of my oldest friends in the master bedroom on the second floor.

He was sitting on a padded walnut chair, sifting through a box of books.

“You read all’a these, Ease?”

“Most of ’em. Why?”

“No reason,” the little black man said. He sat up and crossed his legs.

Jackson was wearing stained canvas painter’s pants. His white T-shirt was torn in three places and even though it was a size small, it hung loose from his shoulders. He was the right-hand man of the CEO of the largest French insurance company in the world, but he was still a child of poverty, afraid of his own shadow.

“What’s with this guy Percy?” I asked.

That shadow passed over Jackson’s face. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “He seems to feel like he deserves special attention.”

“Jewelle send him,” Jackson said, avoiding my gaze. “He graduated from UCLA in business or somethin’. He’s working in her office, lookin’ for somethin’ better.”

“Does she expect me to help him?”

“If she did she’d tell you so.” Jackson stood up and walked past me out the door.

I followed him into the hall and watched as he jounced down the stairs. I had seen Jackson through many phases. He had been a thief and a coward, a con man and a liar, but I had never known him to be rude through any of that.

I might have questioned him further but LaMarque was coming up the stairs as my old friend descended.

“I’m gonna leave, Mr. Rawlins,” the young man said.

Reaching for my wallet, I asked, “How long your father said he’d be gone?”

“Three weeks.”

“He still call in?”

“Every two or three days he call Mama and me.”

I handed him four five-dollar bills.

“Tell Etta to say hey to him for me.”

“Okay, Mr. Rawlins, I will.”

By four that afternoon all of my helpers had gone. Jesus drove the truck back to Primo’s garage in East L.A. Jackson, Percy, and LaMarque took off in separate cars and Feather was behind a closed door putting her room in order.

Frenchie, the little yellow dog, was in there with her. We had left him in the car while moving. But as soon as we were done Feather brought him in and let him sniff around the new premises. When he got a whiff of me he looked up with a quizzical expression on his canine face. He was remembering, I believed, the days when he hated me. But that was over now and so he yipped a greeting and went on with his nasal investigations.

The upstairs of my new home was made up of a round hall and three bedrooms: two large and one small. Feather had apportioned me the largest of the boudoirs while she claimed the smallest. The middle chamber was to be used as a library and study room.

I told Feather that I didn’t mind taking the small room but she said, “The parent should have the biggest room and, anyway, Bonnie might move in to live with us again one day and then it would be a bedroom for two.”

Bonnie Shay had been my girlfriend for much of Feather’s life. For a while there we had broken up and then I almost died. Now we were trying to find our way back together again. I couldn’t seem to get my emotions straight around Bonnie. I didn’t love anyone else. I didn’t want anyone else. But when we were together I felt like a citizen of a defeated nation with no right to hold my head up.

I went downstairs to the huge living room. A latticed picture window took up most of the front wall and looked out onto Point View. The
living room of our Genesee home was one-sixth the size and so there wasn’t nearly enough furniture to fill it. I sat on our toy sofa and wondered if there was really money on the way from Roger Frisk.