“Lend me your Pontiac for a few days and try not to bang up mine too bad.”

“Bang it up? Brother, the only thing I’m ever gonna do with a car like that is go sit in it, drink a flute of champagne, and smoke the biggest, blackest cigar I can find.”

“Can I use your phone?” I asked.

“You know where it’s at.”

It was nearly 8:00 but both Edmund Lewis and Christmas Black were still at work, making sure that P9’s billions were secure.

“Security,” Edmund announced.

“Easy Rawlins for Christmas Black,” I said.

Edmund had given up stonewalling me and passed the call right through.

“Black.”

“You said call if I needed help.”

“Name it.”

“I could use a good operative to meet me at the end of Filomena Road in the hills above Orange County at six hundred hours tomorrow.”

“Done.”

“You need any directions for your man?”

“If a man can’t get there on that, I got no use for him in my army.”

12

12

I was in my broad bed by 9:30 and up six hours later. My first waking action was to go to Feather’s door and look in. I did this every morning of our life together. I forgot that she was staying over with Jewelle and Jackson. The bed was made and everything else was neat enough.

I wandered around the third floor feeling odd. It wasn’t that I missed my daughter but rather that I felt her absence. It occurred to me this gentle awareness was not as painful as but even deeper than heartache.

By 5:29 I was at the end of Filomena Road in far eastern Orange County. He was already there, leaning against a black Harvester Scout 800. Despite his clothes the man looked more military than the Jeep knockoff. He wore a short-sleeved dark blue flannel shirt and rugged black jeans. The beret adorning his head was at a rakish tilt, the only true vestige of a military career.

“Chris,” I said. “I wanted a grunt, not a general.”

“I could tell you were in trouble at the office,” he reported. “I couldn’t trust getting a man paid a salary to back you up and I sure didn’t want to send that man to his death.”

He said these words in a neutral tone but I heard the strain of hardship that lay underneath. And he was right. We were, I and almost all of my friends, men and women, living on the wrong side of the danger line.

I gave Christmas Craig’s directions to Knowles Rock and he led the way, forging ahead like a bloodhound.

We ascended at a pretty good clip. On the way I told Black about Craig and his problems.

“You think it was in his head?” he asked. “You know a lotta these army pups today smoke dope and take LSD.”

“I think it’s more shell shock than chemical.”