Blonde Faith by Walter Mosley

the violence in my posture.
    Before I could come up with the appropriate lie, Mrs. Canfield added, “In order to enroll a child in this school, you will need her birth certificate, inoculation history, and proof of guardianship.”
    “I can have all that by next week.”
    “Bring her back then.”
    Easter Dawn pulled on the sleeve of my dark gray jacket.
    “I thought you wanted all kids in school all the time?” I said.
    “This is not your child.”
    Easter pulled on my sleeve again.
    “We’re talking, honey,” I said.
    “Look in here, Mr. Rawlins.” She was handing me the ornate satchel.
    I took the crocheted case and flipped it open. In there was a paper file, among other things. The manila folder held the information that Canfield had asked for. Christmas had made me Easter’s legal guardian and he had the Riverside Board of Education’s homeschooling certification of her first- and second-grade evaluation exams. She’d had her smallpox, polio, and tetanus vaccines.
    I handed the papers over to Mrs. Canfield, and she studied them like a poker player in the biggest game of her life. Three minutes went by while Easter and I sat silently.
    “Everything seems to be in order,” the ogre said at last. “I’ll take Miss Black to her classroom.”
    “Have Feather walk her home, please,” I said, happy to be mannered and victorious with a single word.
     
     
     

• 18 •
     
     
    I took Easter’s shoulder bag with me because it seemed a better idea than leaving it with her or taking out the two bound stacks of thousand-dollar bills inside.
    Thousand-dollar bills. Two hundred of them.
    Christmas was a soldier and he planned for almost every exigency. He knew that I would have to put Easter in school. He knew better than I did what the school would demand for her admittance. There was a sealed envelope in the satchel that had a list of names and addresses: his lawyer, Thelda Kim; Easter’s doctor, Martin Lewis; a bank officer in Riverside oddly named Bertrand Bill; and his parents. Each name had a phone number and an address beside it. The parents must have been separated. Christmas had told me that almost all the marriages in his family dissolved; something to do with military rigor among professional soldiers.
    In his mind Christmas was ready for everything — even what he’d left out of his typewritten catalog proved this.
    There was no letter or even a note to me. Not one detail about why he had gone to ground, passing his most precious possession into my hands. This negative space, this silence, was a clear message that I should work with what I was given — and sit tight.
    Christmas Black, despite his civilian status, thought of himself as my superior. He was the tactical commander, and I was just a grunt with a stripe or two.
    That’s what Christmas thought, but he didn’t know me all that well. I was a dog that got cut from the pack at an early age. I was no man’s soldier, no leader’s peon. The president of the United States stood on two feet and so did I.
     
     
    AND SO I DROVE out to Venice Beach to look up Glen Thorn on Orchard Lane, the first of the names I’d narrowed down from Gara’s list.
    It was a small cottagelike house behind three crab apple trees. There was a porch and a green front door that was solid and locked. I knocked with the butt of my pistol and called out in a raspy voice, hoping that would conceal my identity. No one attacked or answered me.
    The window was locked too, but the wood had become rather punky. I just pulled hard, ripping off a piece of the sill with the lock, and climbed in.
    I was sure that Glen Thorn was not my man from the state of that one-room hut. The sink was overflowing with dishes, and the floor was cluttered with clothes, fast-food bags and boxes, girlie magazines, and sensationalist rags. BABY WITH TWO HEADS BORN TO SECRET KENNEDY COUSIN. ALIENS CONTROL LADY BIRD’S MIND. BROKENHEARTED LOVER EMASCULATES SELF IN TIJUANA TOILET.
    There were no