She went from seven years old to three in a twinkling. With two fingers in her mouth and one up her nose she stared at Bonnie as if she had never seen a woman before.
Pharaoh was growling at me. Of course.
“Feather, this is Miss Shay,” I said.
Feather stared.
“Hi, Feather,” Bonnie said. “Are you playing with Pharaoh?” She bent down to scratch the dog behind his ears. He loved that, but not enough to stop eyeing me.
“His name is Frenchie,” Feather said, sticking out her stomach and rocking on the balls of her feet.
“Frenchie. That’s a nice name. Did you give him that name?”
“Uh-huh. I did because Daddy said that he was a French dog, um, Carolina.”
“I like Frenchie much better.”
Feather took her wet hand from her face and put her arms around Bonnie’s neck. Bonnie stood up with my girl in her arms.
She looked good like that.
“Will you be my mommy sometimes?” Feather asked.
“Hi, Dad.” Jesus came in from the back hall.
“This is my son, Jesus. Jesus, this is Miss Shay.”
“Hi,” Bonnie said. She stuck out her hand as far as she could while holding Feather. All three of them laughed at how silly it looked.
It was a regular family scene. All we had to do was to clean up a few murders and a matter of international dope smuggling, then we could move next door to Donna Reed.
Jesus and I made breakfast. That was his Bisquick phase. We turned out pancakes and sausages while Feather sat on Bonnie’s lap and Pharaoh took turns barking with them and snarling at me.
It was all over by eight-fifteen. Jesus took Feather off to school after which he was going to practice for track.
The smile faded from Bonnie’s face as the two children left.
“They’re beautiful,” she said sadly.
“I think so.”
There was an awkward moment then. We didn’t know each other, there were no common friends or interests we had — at least none that we knew about. The only thing we could do was talk about murder and neither one of us had the heart for any more talk like that.
“Where you from?” I asked.
“Originally?”
“Uh-huh.”
There was a tiny spot on her dress, over her left breast. It was probably a food stain. Something that she saw but then said to herself, “It’s just a little spot.”
Her beauty couldn’t be dampened by a blemish or a wrinkle.
“I was born in Guiana,” she said. “French Guiana’s what they call it. But I was raised in New Jersey. That’s why I can work for Air France. I’m fluent in French and American English.”
“Yeah. You’re the first black stewardess I ever heard of.”
“There’s lots of black people doing things outside of America.”
“You spend mosta your time outside America?”
“We do lots of flights to Africa. Algeria, the Sudan.”
“How come you live here then?” I asked.
It was an innocent question but I struck a nerve there.
We were still standing at the front door so I said, “Here, have a seat.” Bonnie sat on the couch. The brown one that I bought after I bled all over the old sofa.
“You want some coffee?” I asked.
“Would you?”
When I returned from the kitchen she’d calmed down a little. She tasted the brew and smiled when she saw that I put in the right amounts of sugar and milk.
“I came here because of Roman Gasteau.” She said it all at once, in a hard voice. “I met him in Paris. I mean, I was introduced to him by Idabell. He was her brother-in-law. He was from Philadelphia but spent a lot of time in New York. Paris was my home base but I flew into New York twice a week. Ida told him where I stayed and he looked me up.”
“So how’d you wind up here?”
“I liked Roman. He was fun and he made me miss living in the States. He’d spent a little while with me in Paris but then he was offered a job in Los Angeles. A blackjack dealer’s job in Gardena.” She looked at me as if to say, So. “Idabell was here. It’s not too hard to change your route if you have seniority. All I had to do was wait a few months for a slot to open up.”
“So you came to L.A. on a lark?” I was unconvinced.
“It wasn’t like that. Not really. Roman and I had gotten close. He wanted me to come to L.A. I thought it was because he was too jealous to leave me in Paris. I was flattered. I didn’t know that he was using me to make visits to Paris to set up some deal.
“Roman was wonderful to be around. He was playful and smart — he was a great dancer. And he believed that people should be responsible to their community. There’s an elderly couple who live in his apartment building, the Blanders. He used to do their shopping and once or twice he even paid their rent.
“From everything I knew about him he seemed perfect. So of course I wanted to come out here, to be with him and live near Idabell.”
“And then he made you his mule,” I said.
“He said that he was importing French toys that he sold on the side. He wanted me to bring them in now and then so that the tariffs wouldn’t cut into his profit. It was only toys. A set of Italian boccie balls, a dollhouse.”
“An’ you didn’t know?”
“Not until I forgot once. I left this set of wooden carpet balls on the plane. I forgot. When I got home and Romny came over he went crazy. I told him that I’d go back in the morning, that the ground crew had probably put the package in my basket. It had my name on it.
“He struck me. He knocked me down. I was afraid that he was going to kick me when he pulled me up by the hair and told me that he’d kill me if I didn’t go down with him right then to get it. He dragged me down there at three in the morning. I told him that that would be suspicious but he didn’t care. I had to sign all kinds of forms and I think the customs agent was suspicious but he knew me and let it go…. Roman took the balls to his car and left me to take a bus home.”
Bonnie trembled with the memories. I didn’t doubt a word that she said.
“What happened then?” I asked.
“I broke off with him. I put in for a transfer back to Europe but I’m still waiting for an open slot.”
“Did he threaten you?”
She nodded.
“That why old man Gillian is ready with his shotgun?”
“I didn’t know if it was drugs or something else, Mr. Rawlins. It didn’t matter, because he hit me. My mother always told me that you can’t let any man treat you like that.” The steel in her eyes was fine by me.
“But you did talk to him again.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because of that croquet set. Because of that note Idabell wrote.”
I was pushing to see how far she would trust me.
“He came to my apartment after they beat him up.”
“Who?”
“The people he dealt with. He didn’t say who. He told me that they had made a deal for six deliveries but we’d only finished five—”
“So they were going to kill him,” I finished the sentence.
“And me,” she said. “He’d told them how he was getting the toys into the country. He said that they were going to kill me too unless I went along with it.”
“And you believed it?”
“You should have seen him. He was all beaten up. Bleeding, swollen. There were bruises and lumps all over his body.”
“So you told him yes.”
“I told him no.” Bonnie Shay reared back like a king cobra. “I told him to get out of my house. I told him to send his killers, but I wouldn’t be his whore.”
That phrase played over and over in my mind for the next few weeks, and years.