Walter Mosley - Fearless Jones

“I’m not the one who has to be careful, Reverend. It’s you who’s got to watch out. ’Cause the man you set up with Grove might figure out that it was you called the crooked cop and told him they were comin’.”

“What kinda stupidity are you talkin’?” Vincent’s eyes grew wider with each syllable.

“A man called Latham at the motel he was at,” I said, holding up a finger as if I were the elder’s teacher. “Right after that, Latham tore outta there. Grove was already outside, though, Grove and a partner. The way I see it, Elana put Latham to sleep with a special wiggle she got, and then she called you, because she heard somewhere that Grove could turn that bond into gold. You called Grove, and him and a friend went over there. But then you called Latham to warn him. That’s the way I see it.”

“Th-th-that’s crazy,” he said. “Crazy.”

“No, it ain’t. Not crazy, it’s evil.” Those words broke down the minister’s defenses. “And if somebody find out about it, retribution gonna belong to them.”

“I ain’t sayin’ that anyone called me,” he said. “But even if they did, and even if I did send William down there, why would I turn around and warn the cop that I sent him?”

“Because Grove stole your congregation,” I said. “Because he brought in those goons callin’ themselves deacons, because they were using your church to sell stolen merchandise. But mostly just because you saw the opportunity and you took it.”

It could have happened differently, but Vincent’s frightened eyes told me that I was right.

“It had to be that white man with him,” I said. “ ’Cause Grove was afraid of Leon, and, anyway, Sol didn’t take no millions from some Negro.”

My voice was strong, but my knees were weak. I swore to myself that if I got out of the building and into my car, I would drive to Chicago, change my name, and end my days as a dishwasher on the southside.

“You cain’t prove that,” Vincent said.

“I don’t need to,” I replied. “You’re the one gonna be in trouble if anyone hears that Latham was warned. All I have to do is cast blame, and your goose is cooked.”

“What do you want from me, Lockwood?”

“I want you to answer my questions. No bullshit.”

“What you wanna know?”

“First of all, why did you run from your place on Central?”

Father Vincent glared at me with something close to hatred in his eyes.

“William’s girlfriend, Elana Love, got hold of a bond,” he said. “Through her old boyfriend, who was in prison. William decided that he was going to cash it in. He went to a bank, but they told him that they could only cash it for the man it was signed to. He should have let it alone right there, but William was a greedy man, he had to have everything he saw.

“The man the bond was made out to was a Jew in jail with Elana’s boyfriend. William went to the Jew’s wife with some lie and got her to tell him who it was the old man stole from.”

“So what?” I asked. “What good would that do?”

“He goes to ’em —”

“To who?”

“Lawson and Widlow, the accountants. He goes to ’em and says he got their money in a bond. They tell him that they’re all so interested and make a meeting at the church to see the bond —”

“He didn’t show it to ’em?”

“William was greedy to a fault but wasn’t stupid. He kept the bond safe in case they tried to use muscle or the law on ’im. Anyway, the next thing we knew, they had three white hoodlums down there knockin’ at our door. Real thugs. Me and William could see through the curtains that they didn’t come to negotiate, so we made it out the back and had the deacons move us out overnight.”

“That’s it?” I asked.

Father Vincent looked in my eyes and saw that he had to give more to be let off the hook.

“Elana got mad ’cause William wouldn’t tell her why we were runnin’ or who was after him.”

“She didn’t know about the accountants?”

Vincent shook his head. “William didn’t trust that girl. He just wanted to be on her good side.”

“Did he stay there?”

“No. Elana took the bond back and left him.”

I realized that Elana had known where Grove was the whole time she was crying in my bookstore.

“Good riddance to bad garbage,” Vincent said. “Everything was okay for a couple’a months. We moved out here, and William kept a low profile. He still did some fencin’, but not so much as before. But then that Leon Douglas, Elana’s old boyfriend, got outta jail. Douglas beat William somethin’ terrible. He beat him so bad that he realized that Elana had to be lyin’ about him havin’ the bond, so they left — leavin’ William to bleed.

“After that, William called the accountants again. He told them that he was in hidin’, that they couldn’t find him, but maybe he could still get their bond.”

“Why he say that?” I asked.

“ ’Cause he was a fool,” Vincent declared. “The only thing he got outta that beatin’ was that the bond must’a been worth somethin’ more than what Elana said. Two days later the accountants sent over the man, and we had a meetin’.”

“What was that about?”

“It was a man named Holderlin,” the minister said. He sat back against a shelf, weak himself from the strain of our bluffs. “He told us that Leon had been working for him to get the bond but that Leon lost the girl, so he needed our help to find her. Holderlin said that he was working for the Jewish government, that money was stole from them by this Tannenbaum guy. He said that the bond was probably one of many, that they were probably printed in sequence. He said one bond would lead to the rest and that there would be a finder’s fee.”

“He said that he worked for Israel?” I asked.

“Yuh.”

“How much did he say it was worth?”

Vincent gave me a suspicious look.

“I heard millions,” I said, trying to head off his misgivings. “But I don’t know exactly.”

“I want outta this, Lockwood. I don’t need to get killed over somethin’ like this.”

I remember thinking that he was giving better advice than when he stood in front of his transient congregation.

“Was this Holderlin a young man?” I asked, adding my description of the man I saw with Latham and Elana out in front of the Pine Grove Hotel.

“No, no. He was in his forties, big dude. Grove’s age, maybe a little more. He had a partner too. I didn’t get a good look at him ’cause he drove the car.”

“Did this Holderlin tell you how you could get in touch with him?”

“No. He got our number, but we never had his.”

“What are you gonna do now?” I asked.

“The congregation needs me now that Brother Grove has passed on,” the pastor said. “They need me more than ever.”

“That may be,” I said. “But I suggest you change your address again, Reverend, and maybe the name of your congregation.”

Father Vincent considered my words as I considered him. He was a killer like Leon Douglas, but he didn’t use his hands. Instead he had used stealth and lies, along with good timing, to manage the murder of his nemesis, William Grove. He was a murderer, but I couldn’t do anything about it. I doubted if any court would convict him. It put a sour taste in my mouth.MM

I swallowed deeply and then left the minister to his God. But I wasn’t breathing easy. Brother Bigelow and two other deacons were waiting for me in the small yard.

“What you doin’ here, man?” Bigelow demanded.

“Reverend Grove had been seeing my cousin.” Lies came out of me like shit from a pig, as my Aunt Calais used to say. “She went missin’ behind all kindsa crazy stories. I wanted to find out where she was.”

“Who’s this cousin?” an unnamed deacon asked.

“Elana Love,” I said. A feeling of triumph snaked down my spine. Let them make the connections, that was the only way out.

“Elana,” another deacon said.

“Yeah,” I said. “She came to me talkin’ ’bout how Grove had stolen her stuff and now her boyfriend out of jail, Leon, was comin’ after them. Now Grove is dead, and I want to know about my cousin. She haven’t called or nuthin’.”

I was trying to keep my breathing from going crazy. I knew that if I showed the panic I felt, they would think I was lying — and if they thought that, they might not let me go.

It seemed like a long time before Bigelow said, “Get the hell outta here.”

They let me go but didn’t stand out of the way. I had to walk around them on the recently watered soggy lawn. But I did so happily.

In the storefront church, the congregation was still mourning the empty coffin. They were drinking wine and eating sandwiches. I half-expected someone else to grab me, to interrogate me, to threaten my life, but no one even noticed. I slipped through the throng, no more remarkable than a shadow.

27

I WAS SWEATING, but it wasn’t hot. My heart was throbbing instead of beating, and my legs couldn’t seem to coordinate to keep a steady stride. When I got in the car my fingers went numb, and I couldn’t seem to hold the key right. It took me four or five tries before I realized that I was trying to fit my new apartment key into the ignition.

I started the car and drove off. Three blocks away I pulled to the curb. There I took in great gulps of air, trying to bring my spirit back into alignment with my body — because that’s how it felt, as if my soul were somehow trying to flee the flesh, as if I had been so close to death so often in the past few days that the ghost was ready to bolt. That’s how it goes with me. I face danger and survive it, acting just fine, but as soon as it’s over and I’m alone, I break down.

There was a World-Wide gas station just up the block. There I found a phone booth.

“Hello,” a woman answered flatly.

“Charlotte?”

“Hold on.”

The phone rumbled from being set down on a hard surface.

“Hello?” a much sweeter voice asked.

“Charlotte?”

“Who is this?”

“It’s Paris.”

“Oh, hi,” she said. “I thought that number you gave me was just sumpin’ you thought up when I called it. It sounded like a law office or sumpin’.”

“Can we get some coffee or something?” I asked.

“Yeah. Why’ont you come on ovah?” She gave me her address.

CHARLOTTE’S APARTMENT COMPLEX was a series of big brick-and-plaster affairs on 109. The buildings were long and thin looking, like army barracks, separated by green lawns. She was in building K on the third floor.

The hallway was lit by the setting sun through a window at the far end. The walls were white and pretty except for a mark here and there. You could tell that the place was new. I hoped that it would maintain its beauty, but I had my doubts. The suffering of a people often showed up in their material surroundings. Like a broken heart leaving a forlorn lover a physical mess, the weight of racism and poverty often made colored neighborhoods downtrodden and marred.

Charlotte answered the door. She was wearing a close-fitting but not tight black dress with no hose and no makeup.

“Hi.” She smiled and looked me in the eye, but then she saw something and asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Can I come in?”

She stepped back, and I stumbled a little crossing the threshold. There was a low couch with chrome legs and orange vinyl cushions. Beyond that was a glass door that led out onto a tiny landing. The sun was shining in on a large rubber plant in a terra-cotta pot. The living room and kitchen were one. But the couch was placed so that it marked the line between the two.