Walter Mosley - Fearless Jones

We didn’t molest our escort. It wasn’t his fault that he had to accompany us every step of the way. He knocked for us. The door was answered by a handsome and well-built white man in his late twenties. The same man I had seen bidding farewell to Sergeant Latham and Elana Love.

“Mr. Manly?” I asked affably.

“Thank you,” the bellman Billings was saying to Fearless, and I realized that my friend had given our warden a tip.

“Mr. —?” Manly hesitated.

“Minton,” I said. “And this is Mr. Jones. May we come in?”

“What is this about?”

“It’s about a Jewish fortune stolen by Nazis and one turncoat Jew named —”

“Come in,” the man who answered to the name John Manly said. He backed up, ushering us into the sitting room of a large suite. A yellow couch and four blue chairs were arranged around a table with all kinds of official-looking papers on it. The room was heavy with strange-smelling tobacco smoke. It wasn’t an American blend.

From a side door two more men entered. One was short with heavily muscled arms. He wore a gray T-shirt and ocher pants with no shoes. He had a big belly and a hawkish nose. He wasn’t happy to see us, but from the look of that scowl, I doubted if much made him happy. The third man, and the youngest of the three, was taller and sleeker than Fearless. His skin was pale, and he wore a small black cap on the back of his head.

“This is Ari,” Manly said, pointing at the shorter man, “and Lev.”

We stood there for a moment, wondering what manners to follow.

“Would you gentlemen like to sit down?” Manly asked us.

Fearless moved for a blue chair, I followed suit. Manly took a seat on the yellow couch, but Lev and Ari stayed on their feet.

A pair of glass doors led out to a vine-encircled patio. The sun shone in, slightly green from the vines.

“What do you have to tell us?” Manly inquired.

I was getting ready to launch into the business at hand, but Fearless beat me to it.

“Sol an’ Fanny Tannenbaum’s dead,” he said, “an’ I don’t like it one bit. They was good people, and I promised to look after ’em. I got a pretty good idea’a who killed ’em, but I want to get the man that was the cause of their death.”

Manly glanced at the stocky Ari. The latter hunched his shoulders and turned down his lips.

“That has nothing to do with us,” Manly said.

“That’s a bunch’a shit,” Fearless said. “You want the lost money, the money that Sol took. Whoever killed him was after that. An’ if it’s you, I’m’a find it out.”

I came for a parley and found myself on the verge of war.

“Vat do ve care about you?” Ari said in a surprisingly high voice. Fearless stood up.

“You don’t wanna know what I can do.” The motherfucker wasn’t said, but everyone in that room heard it.

Ari looked like he wanted to test Fearless’s claim.

“We didn’t have anything to do with the Tannenbaums’ deaths.” Manly was tense but still thinking.

“What do you know about a man named Zimmerman?” Fearless asked.

I didn’t think that the atmosphere could stand any more tension, but the mention of that name caused tremors in all three of our hosts.

“Vat do you know about Zimmerman?” Ari demanded.

“I think it was him caused Sol and Fanny’s killing,” Fearless said. “You know I do, ’cause if I didn’t, I’d’a come in here with my guns blazin’.”

“Zimmerman,” Lev uttered his first word since we entered. “Zimmerman.”

“Why’ont you two guys sit down here with us?” Fearless demanded. “Either we gonna fight or we gonna talk.”

Ari was still taking Fearless’s measure when Lev took a seat.

“Sit down, Ari,” Manly said.

“I want the finder’s fee,” I said.

Maybe I was a little hoarse, because Manly asked, “What did you say?”

“The finder’s fee,” I said, clearing my throat as I did so. “I want the finder’s fee.”

“Vat is it you do for this?” Ari asked.

“We know how you can get to the money,” Fearless said with absolute confidence. “But we don’t tell you a thing unless you tell us about Zimmerman.”

“If you’re talking about the bond that Hedva Tannenbaum gave the woman, it is useless,” Lev said. “The policeman brought her here with it. We took the number and our people checked it. It was a single issue. Tannenbaum had no other dealings with that bank.”

“I ain’t talkin’ ’bout no bond,” Fearless said. “I’m talkin’ ’bout the money, the money you guys is lookin’ for.”

“Why would we believe that you can help us?” Manly asked Fearless.

“Morris Greenspan killed himself last night,” Fearless said. “He left a note. He been workin’ for a man called hisself Minor, and then he fount out what Sol did with the money. But then he fount out who Minor was.”

There was a question in John Manly’s gaze.

“Zimmerman,” I replied.

Manly sat back and considered. There was an arrogant twist to his lips. He looked at each of his friends, making eye movements that I couldn’t read.

“Where is this note?” Manly cocked his head to the side as if he were trying to see if the suicide note was hanging out of one of our pockets.

“Where’s Zimmerman?” Fearless asked.

Manly answered, “We will pay you to tell us where the money is,” not as an offer but as a foregone conclusion.

That sounded like a good first step to me. All we had to do was talk about a number; no thugs or blood or blackjacks.

Fearless stood up and said, “Come on, Paris.”

Ari stood up too.

“No,” Manly said. “Sit down, both of you.”

There wasn’t much give in either of the gladiators. So I asked a question.

“Where you guys from?”

“We are foreigners,” Manly said.

“From Israel, I bet.”

That somehow broke the standoff. Both Fearless and Ari took their seats.

“We are here to reclaim the wealth of our people,” Lev said. His strained voice warbled with emotion that he bore like an open wound.

“Lev —” Manly began, but he was stopped by an upheld hand. I was surprised to see that the pale kid was the senior statesman among the bunch.

“This man, this Abraham Zimmerman, he helped the Nazis to steal it, and we are here to get it back.”

“Steal what?” I asked. I was pretty sure of the answer, but I wanted to see what they would say.

“They took everything,” Lev said. “The gold from our teeth, the hair from our heads. They took our pocket watches and our wallets. And if you were rich and you hid your jewels and paintings and furs, then Zimmerman was sent in to sell your freedom for what you had hidden away. He and his Nazi friends hid them again…” Lev’s words trailed off, and he stared into space.

“Where is Zimmerman?” Fearless said, always wanting to cut to the chase.

“We don’t know,” Lev said after making the grimace of a man swallowing a bitter draft.

“What’s this all about?” I asked the pale kid. Somehow I felt a connection with him.

“Zimmerman is a Jew…,” Lev began.

When Ari heard this, he spat on the floor.

“We already know the part about Zimmerman robbing the rich Jews who thought they could buy their way out of the slaughterhouse,” I said.

Lev caught the last word and looked into my eyes.

“Yes,” he said. “Many of those wealthy men had converted their money into art treasures and gold. David Tannenbaum found out about the sale —”

“— of those jewelry-making tools that the Rothschild’s jewelers had at one time,” I said, finishing the sentence.

“He knew that these tools had belonged to his nephew and so contacted our government,” Lev said, continuing, “but they told him that we could do nothing without proof.”

“Why don’t you just go over to those accountants and make ’em give it up?” Fearless suggested.

Squat, muscle-bound Ari grunted in agreement.

“The American government frowns on agents of foreign powers threatening their citizens,” Lev explained. “We have no proof that this property was stolen. There were only thirty families that these Nazis and their dog, Zimmerman, took from. And they are all dead. The treasures were private property, and the papers of ownership were part of the devil’s bargain. Our actions must be beyond criticism. So we ask for help from those who sympathize with our goals.”

“That include hirin’ a crooked cop to scare Fanny Tannenbaum and kill Conrad Till?” I asked, none too friendly.

“Do you know Israel?” Lev asked.

“What you read in the papers,” I said.

“We made our own nation,” the pale leader intoned. “We have taken back our lives and our history even though they have tried to destroy us all.”

“If you and Sol believe in the same thing, why didn’t you just ask him for the money?” I knew about Israel; I knew about Marcus Garvey too, and I didn’t have the heart to hear about Garvey’s dream coming true in another man’s world.

“We did,” Lev said. “We did, but like I told you, we are not official. We could not prove to him who we were, and no official of our government would vouch for us.”

“If he didn’t believe you, then why should we?” I asked.

“All you have to believe is our money,” Ari said derisively.

“What about Till?” Fearless asked.

Lev brought the upturned palms of his hands up to the level of his shoulders. “We read that he died of a heart attack.”

“You know better than that,” I said.

“We are not murderers, Mr. Minton. We would not kill a man who has not committed a crime against us. The policeman was, how do you say, suggested to us by people we know. We did not trust him. We did not tell him to kill. We only wanted the bond that Fanny Tannenbaum gave to Leon Douglas.”

“Okay,” I said. “Now here you guys is livin’ in the lap’a luxury, fresh off the boat from Israel, don’t know a damn thing and ain’t got no friends to help you, except one crooked cop; but still you go lookin’ for a bond changed hands between Sol Tannenbaum and Leon Douglas’s girlfriend. That don’t even add up to numbers, man.”

John Manly spoke up then. “Mr. Latham was not an honest man, but he was a good detective. When David Tannenbaum was still in prison, the good sergeant found out that Leon Douglas was his protector. When Leon was released, Latham became suspicious. He was already keeping an eye on Hedva and David through a friend of his who was a policeman in their neighborhood.”

Ari muttered something in Fanny’s tongue. I didn’t understand a single word except for svartza.

“You ain’t listenin’ to me, brother,” Fearless said. “We want the dude caused it all; we want him to pay for what he did. Money’s nice — we could all use some, I’m sure — but this is about making the traitor Jew pay for what he did.”

“But we don’t know where he is,” Manly insisted.

“If we did, we would have him already,” Lev added.

“Are you after the thief or the money he stole?” Fearless impressed me with his question.

Lev hesitated a moment too long before replying, “Both of course.”

“You tell us where to find Zimmerman, and we give you the suicide note,” Fearless said.

The men were all silent. I couldn’t tell the mood of the room, so I decided to concentrate on the kid. If a fight broke out, I figured I could take him — at least I could try.

“He’s with his old Nazi overboss, Otto Holderlin,” John Manly added. “If we knew where he was, we would demand his arrest. But I doubt that we will find him.”