Walter Mosley - Easy Rawlins 01 by Devil in a Blue Dress

Author:Devil in a Blue Dress [Dress, Devil in a Blue]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-06-08T19:26:09+00:00

I put my chair in front of the window so I could look out into my yard. I sat there for a long time, balling my hands together and taking deep breaths when I could remember to. Finally the fear passed and I fell asleep. The last thing I remember was looking at my apple tree in the pre-dawn.

17

I put the card that DeWitt Albright had given me on the dresser. It read:

MAXIM BAXTER

Personnel Director

Lion Investments

In the lower right-hand corner there was an address on La Cienega Boulevard.

I was dressed in my best suit and ready to ride by 10 a.m. I thought that it was time to gather my own information. That card was the one of two things I had to go on, so I drove across town again to a small office building just below Melrose, on La Cienega. The whole building was occupied by Lion Investments.

The secretary, an elderly lady with blue hair, was concentrating on the ledger at her desk. When my shadow fell across her blotter she said, to the shadow, “Yes?”

“I came to see Mr. Baxter.”

“Do you have an appointment?”

“No. But Mr. Albright gave me his card and told me to come down whenever I had a chance.”

“I know no Mr. Albright,” she said, again to the shadow on her desk. “And Mr. Baxter is a very busy man.”

“Maybe he knows Mr. Albright. He gave me this card.” I tossed the card down onto the page she was reading and she looked up.

What she saw surprised her. “Oh!”

I smiled back down. “I can wait if he’s busy. I got a little time off’a work.”

“I, ah … I’ll see if he can make time, Mr.—?”

“Rawlins.”

“You just have a seat over on the couch and I’ll be right back.”

She went through a doorway behind the desk. After a few minutes another elderly lady came out. She looked at me suspiciously and then took up the work that the other one had left.

The waiting room was nice enough. There was a long, black leather couch set up against a window that looked out onto La Cienega Boulevard. Through the window was a view of one of those fancy restaurants, the Angus Steak House. There was a man standing out front in a Beefeater’s uniform, ready to open the door for all the nice people who were going to drop a whole day’s salary in forty-five minutes. The Beefeater looked happy. I wondered how much he made in tips.

There was a long coffee table in front of the couch. It was covered with business newspapers and business magazines. Nothing for women. And nothing for men who might have been looking for something sporty or entertaining. When I got tired of watching the Beefeater open doors I started looking around the room.

On the wall next to the couch was a bronze placard. At the top there was a raised oval that had the form of a swooping falcon carved into it. The falcon had three arrows in its talons.

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