Rose Gold by Walter Mosley

skin, eyes, and even his suit were all various shades from silver to gunmetal gray. His posture was solid and his hands soiled with the materials from his worktables.
    “That’s a whole lotta phones,” I said.
    “Makes you wonder why JP Villard didn’t call me in person,” Goldsmith said. “He has the numbers of four of them.”
    I took the envelope from my pocket and handed it across the broad back of the porcine desk.
    He tore open the letter and read it closely. Then he looked up, suddenly intrigued by my presence.
    “What could you possibly have to say to me?” he asked. “And why would the CEO of Proxy Nine need me to listen?”
    “Rosemary.”
    It was a pleasure to see that the captain of industry could be rocked by just a word. He gazed at the letter in his hand, questioning its origins, and then looked up at me with the same query in mind.
    “Where do you come from?”
    I went into the story that had been going through my mind for the last twenty-four hours. I told him about Moving Day and Roger Frisk, about Tout Manning and being shot at in front of Benoit’s Gym.
    “Why would the police come to you?” Goldsmith asked.
    “I’m a private detective. Not too many my shade of brown in L.A. The cops find that I can get work done where they cannot. Also I know things about the world outside my neighborhood.”
    “What kind of things?” he asked.
    “Like that the man sitting outside your door wasn’t you.”
    “Tom Crispin is so close to me that he could finish my sentences.”
    “Well,” I said with a shrug, “I’m talking to you.”
    “And the police sent you here?”
    “No, sir. The police told me not to contact you under any circumstances. But I’m suspicious by nature. I haven’t read about the supposed kidnapping in the newspaper. And even though I’m aware of some of the crimes this Uhuru Nolicé is supposed to have committed, I haven’t ever heard about him before either.”
    “So you don’t believe the police?”
    It was an odd interrogation. Goldsmith had no intention of sitting or of offering me a seat. I decided that this was some kind of superstition; that if he treated me in a civil manner he couldn’t have me shot on the way out.
    “Not necessarily,” I said.
    “And what do you want from me?” he asked.
    “Like I said, somebody paid me six thousand dollars to start this investigation. I figure that was you. And if I’m working for you it’s only right that we meet face-to-face.”
    Goldsmith’s eyebrows creased slightly.
    “And there’s another thing,” I added.
    “What’s that?”
    “I have a daughter of my own and I wouldn’t want somebody out looking for her that I hadn’t met.”
    “I’ve never served in the armed forces, Mr. Rawlins, but I’m military just the same,” Goldsmith said. “I live a Spartan life and work in armaments. I taught Rose how to make her bed when she was six years old. I told her that when a man or woman makes their own bed they sleep in it too.”
    His words were facts tinged with lament.
    “So you’re saying that you don’t want me to find her?” I asked.
    The gun-maker gave me a long hard look then. He was angry about something; maybe it was my question.
    “Have you ever killed anyone, Mr. Rawlins?”
    “Why? Have you?”
    “Not by direct physical contact,” he said as if he had been practicing a legal defense. “I have never shot, stabbed, bludgeoned, or asphyxiated another human being. There are people out there, however, who blame me for the deaths of thousands. They think because I make bombs that I am responsible for how those bombs are used. If a child is shot in the DMZ or Johannesburg with one of my guns they lay the crime at my feet. What about you?”
    “Are you asking me if I blame you for people killed with your weapons?”
    “I’m asking you if you have ever killed anyone.”
    “Why?”
    “Like you said, I want to know what kind of man is out there looking for my daughter.”
    Less than two months