Walter Mosley - Fear Itself

“Paris?”

“. . . and tell that skinny-ass mothahfuckah that he bettah not show up at my door to get ya, neither!” Ambrosia yelled on her line. Then she slammed down the receiver in both our ears.

“Yeah, Fearless. It’s me.”

“You find Kit?”

“Meet me at the Emerald Lounge.”

“Why’ont you pick me up?”

“Because Ambrosia said she don’t want me there.”

“You scared of a woman, Paris?”

“No,” I said. “It’s just that I’m respecting her wishes.”

“I won’t let her hurt you.”

“Just get over to the bar soon as you can. All right?”

Fearless laughed and hung up the phone.

I leaned forward over my butcher-block table and recounted the five-dollar bills that had been stuffed in the envelope Winifred L. Fine gave me. There were 186 notes. Nine hundred and thirty dollars. Not the millions Milo was talking about, but a pretty big payday for a man who had never earned over two dollars an hour on a regular job.

The name Wexler was still nagging at me. It was as if I had heard it before calling the Bernard Arms. The newspaper was in the trash, the column heading WOMAN FOUND DEAD in plain sight. I remembered that when I thought about the name Wexler it was as though I had read it before. . . . And there it was—Minna Wexler. The corpse of the young woman in Griffith Park. Wexler. Could it be a coincidence?

She had been found by a hobo, Ty Shoreman, who had been living in the park for a few weeks. She was stripped to the waist at the time of her death. Strangled. There were signs that she had been tortured before her demise. I thought about the burns up and down Lance’s arm. The hobo was held for questioning and then released.

Wexler.

There were three sharp raps on my front door. I shivered in response.

BOTH WHITE MEN WORE DARK SUITS and frowns. One was going bald and the other had hair nearly down to his eyebrows.

“Paris Minton?”

“Yes, officer?”

“Why you think we’re cops?” the hairy one asked.

“Guilty conscience?” his partner chimed.

“How can I help you?” I replied.

“We’re looking for a friend of yours,” baldy said. “A man named Fearless Jones.”

“He ain’t here.”

“Do you know where we might find him?”

“No sir.”

My face went blank. The life drained out of my voice. My arms hung down at my side and I was willing to do anything those policemen wanted—except tell the truth.

“When’s the last time you saw him?” the ape-man asked.

I stared out at the sky between their faces, pretending to concentrate. “Maybe four weeks. He’s been up north working for a man grows watermelons.”

The cop with the advancing hairline took out a small leather notebook and the nub of a yellow pencil. He jotted down something and smiled at me. I remember being surprised that the one with all the hair was also the man in charge. That seemed unfair somehow.

“May we come in, Mr. Minton?” he asked.

“Sure.” I stepped backward, pulling the door with me. “Have a seat.”

They entered my front room but neither one took me up on the offer to sit. They scanned the room like dog-pack brothers, looking everywhere. The balding cop stepped into the bookstore, checking for surprises or infractions.

“Sorry for the intrusion,” the other cop said. “I’m Sergeant Rawlway and this is Officer Morrain.”

“Pleased to meet ya.”

“Nice place you got here,” bald Morrain said from the left aisle. “You sell a lotta books?”

“Yes sir.”

“That all?”

“I don’t understand you, Officer Morrain.”

He walked back into the room and looked down into my eyes.

“Lots of times we find that people down around here set up places that are supposed to sell one thing but really they have some other business.”

“Like what?” I asked, simple as a stone.

Morrain smiled and sucked in air through his nostrils.

“Where is this watermelon farm?” Sergeant Rawlway asked.

“Up near Oxnard,” I said. “Fearless harvests them for these street salesmen that work all over Watts. Is Fearless in trouble?”

“Why don’t you worry about yourself?” Morrain suggested.

“Well, yeah,” I said. “Sure.”

“When did you say you saw Fearless last?” Rawlway asked.

“About a month . . . almost that.”

“Are you good friends?”

“Yeah. Uh-huh. I met Fearless when he was discharged from the service, after the war.”

“Has he always been a farmer?”

“No sir. Fearless works at whatever. Day labor, farming, you name it.”

“If you’re such good friends,” Morrain asked, “then why haven’t you seen him in so long?”

At that moment I thought about the five-dollar bills on the counter in my kitchen. If the police came across that cache they’d arrest me on suspicion. I could feel the moisture breaking through my pores.

“He, he’s been on that watermelon farm, like I told you. I run this store and don’t have time to drive up there. And even if I did, Fearless is workin’.”

“Where is Fearless?” Rawlway asked again.

“I told you,” I said. “I don’t know. He was up on that farm. He haven’t called me. I guess he’s still there.”

I was wily but numb. That was my defense against the law. I didn’t have the slightest antagonism toward those peace officers. That might come as a surprise to anyone who hasn’t had the experience of being a black man in America. I wasn’t angry, because we were just actors playing parts written down before any one of us was born. Later on, at the barbershop, I’d laugh about my answers with other black men who had grown up playing dumb under the scrutiny of some other man’s law.

“He was seen in the past few days by various witnesses not a mile from your door,” hairy Rawlway reported.

“Witnesses?”

“Where is he, Mr. Minton?”

“I’m tellin’ you the truth, man. I ain’t seen Fearless. I don’t know anything about what he’s been doin’ or about any witnesses either.”

“What about Bartholomew Perry?” Rawlway asked.

“I know him to say hi to,” I said. “I mean, we ain’t friends or nuthin’ and I don’t even remember the last time I saw him.”

“Are he and Fearless friends?”

“Not that I know of.”

“I could take you down to the station, Paris,” Rawlway said.

“You could, sergeant, but that wouldn’t change what I said. I don’t know where Fearless is. I don’t know Bartholomew Perry more than to tell you his name. I’m in this buildin’ here all day sellin’ books. That’s all.”

“And you expect us to believe that you sell books for a living?”

“Why not?”

Morrain stepped back into one of the aisles.

“Who wrote . . . um . . . ,” he said, holding a book at arm’s length so that he could make out the spine. “Let’s see here, oh yeah. Who wrote Madame Bovary ?”

“Gustave Flaubert.”

He picked out another book.

“How about the, The Mysterious Stranger ?”

“Mark Twain.”

“You think you’re smart, nigger?”

“I’m just trying to make a living, officer. Fearless is my friend but I haven’t seen him. That’s all I know.”

It was always a tough part to play. They saw themselves as the foremen of the neighborhood. I was a lazy worker, a liar looking to cheat them out of what was their superior’s proper due. My job was to make them believe in their picture of me while at the same time showing that today I wasn’t shirking or lying or lining my pockets with their boss man’s money.

“You remember our names?” Rawlway asked.

“Sergeant Rawlway and Officer Morrain,” I said.

“If you hear from this Fearless, call us. Because if we find out you didn’t, there’s nothing in any of these books that will save your ass from me. You understand?”

“Yes sir.”

12

THE EMERALD LOUNGE WAS AN OASIS of sorts in the Negro community. It was run by a Jamaican named Orrin Nye. He had an American wife and three little kids. Orrin only allowed classical music on the record player. Because of this aesthetic only a certain kind of customer frequented the place. Members of the church, especially the choir, older ladies who were scandalized by boogie-woogie and rhythm and blues, pretentious white-collar professionals, and world-weary lovers, muggers, and thieves were the regulars—them and Fearless Jones when he was in love.

Fearless was a killer of men but that didn’t keep him from being sappy sometimes. Love made him think about church and church for him was somehow represented by the German masters, especially their arias. And so in those rare moments that he fell for some girl, he would bring her to the lounge. I think it was because he wanted the woman he was with to see, or maybe hear, the contents of his heart.

The last woman he fell for was Brenda Hollings. She was an overweight, nearsighted girl who had come from Tennessee with her parents at the tender age of seventeen. Her parents came out to live with an uncle who owned a Laundromat and needed workers he could trust.

Fearless met Brenda when she was nineteen.

“Paris,” he told me, “that there’s the woman I want to bear my sons and daughters.”

I didn’t say anything. She was awkward and not friendly, plain-looking by the best light and sharp-tongued to boot. Add those drawbacks to the fact that Fearless had never lived in the same place for more than three months during his entire adult life and one could see why I didn’t hold out much hope for his dreams of domestic tranquillity.

But he got a steady job at Douglas Aircraft and rented a nice little cottage on Ninety-second Street. Whenever Brenda would snap at him, he’d hop to and do whatever it was she wanted.

Beautiful women were always throwing themselves at him, but he never gave in to temptation for the six months he and Brenda were engaged. Then one night I got a phone call. I was staying in a rooming house then, on Vernon. That was about a year before I opened my first bookstore.

“Hi, Paris.”

“Brenda.”

“Is Fearless with you?”

“No. He’s probably at his place. Is something wrong?”

“I need to talk to you. Can you come over here?”

“Sure. I guess so. You at your mother’s place?”

“No. I got my own apartment now.”

I was wary, but I agreed because I thought that Fearless would want me to help his fiancée if she needed it. Brenda gave me an address on McKinley and I was there in less than fifteen minutes.

It was the bottom floor of a three-story apartment building that looked something like an incinerator, with its gaping front doorway and shadows like soot up the walls.

Brenda answered the door and invited me in. It was a neat little place with thick maroon carpeting and powder blue walls. The furniture was simple but it was homey.

“When did you move out from your parents?” I asked after being seated and served a beer.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Sometime last month, I guess.”

“But I thought that you and Fearless . . .” My words trailed off then. The walls began to feel like they were leaning in.

“My old boyfriend from Tennessee, his name is Miller, well . . . he came out to see me,” Brenda said.

She was ungainly and lumpy, wore glasses with lenses thicker than Coke-bottle bottoms, but still men swarmed around her like gnats. There are some things about the human animal that I will never understand.

“He wanted me back and I decided to go with him,” Brenda was saying.