Fear Itself Read online

  “Spit it out, brother,” I said. “I got to go get Fearless out of jail.”

  “What’s he in jail for?”

  “What all people are in jail for—not havin’ the money it takes to keep from gettin’ there in the first place.”

  “Will you come to the office after you get him?”

  “What for?”

  “I got a phone call last night that disturbed me,” he said.

  “From who?”

  “Just come on over, Paris. I’ll pay you.”

  “All right,” I said.

  It wasn’t the money he offered but the fact that he offered it that made me acquiesce to his request. If Milo offered to put up cash, the situation had to be dire indeed.

  I hung up the phone and propelled myself into a standing position. I found that the trick here was also in the shoulders; if I kept shifting them I could stay upright.

  I wanted to go back to bed, to take off my clothes, and put my head under the covers. But I knew that was a fool’s move. Things were happening without my knowledge or control, and people knew where I lived. Two people named Wexler were dead, and lawyers were calling me before banking hours to admit their guilt.

  I went to the stairs even though I believed there was a good chance I’d stumble on tangled feet and break my neck for the effort.

  IT WASN’T YET SIX O’CLOCK. Fearless was oblivious of the time. They’d probably questioned him all night. They might have beaten him. He called so early because time for him was just one long day. Milo called because he was scared. He’d probably been up all night fretting over the grief that only greed can bring on a man.

  Thinking about Milo brought up a question. How was it that he had involved himself in a problem that Fearless stumbled into on his own? What did Milo have to do with Kit Mitchell? I took a sip of reheated coffee, hoping that the answer was in my sober mind.

  There came a knock on the door.

  The chill reentered my intestines. The last four times someone had come to my front door my problems had gotten worse. A dog would have stayed away from that trouble after the first time. A stupid dog would have waited for the second bane to start avoiding distress.

  I was fully dressed and shod, so I stepped quietly through the screen door at the back of my house. I tiptoed down the wood stairs, hopped the fence into the alley, and ran like a six-year-old.

  I didn’t slow down for three blocks.

  Maybe it was childish to run away from my own home but, I reasoned, who but Trouble could be knocking at my door that early in the morning? Like I said before, I’m a small man. I’ve been chased, caught, and beaten by big-boned women.

  “Runnin’ ain’t a bad thing, baby,” my mother used to tell me. “When you’re dead you’ll wish you had the legs for it.”

  THE SUN WASN’T UP and there was still a chill in the desert air. There’s a system of alleyways in L.A. that make the streets in some southern towns look like country paths. The alley behind my building was wide and well paved, and it went on for twelve city blocks. There were no rats or cats, not even much trash strewn about. Just one long strip of asphalt with a ribbon of concrete down the middle, a permanent divider line.

  After my initial sprint I slowed to a walk. A few streets down from there and I even began to feel safe. Whoever it was at my house had probably gone away. And even if they broke in, there was nothing to steal but books. (One of the books on my bedroom shelf had been hollowed out. That’s where I put Miss Fine’s five-dollar bills.) For a moment I worried about the fate of my last bookstore. The store owner next door burned me down to get the lot. That had been the worst experience of my life. After a little time fretting I stopped worrying about it. Lightning couldn’t strike twice, not even on my unlucky head.

  17

  “WHAT YOU SAY THAT NAME WAS AGAIN?” the desk sergeant at the Seventy-seventh Street Precinct asked.

  I had walked there. It wasn’t very far, and being a pedestrian made me feel secure. My enemies, if they were out looking for me, would drive past a man on foot without a second glance.

  “Tristan Jones,” I said to the sergeant.

  “Um, let me see here,” the portly, bespectacled white man said as he thumbed through an oversized logbook on his side of the counter. “Oh I see. He owes a big fine, a very big fine.”

  The sergeant closed the book and reached for the phone. He picked up the receiver, dialed a number, and waited for someone to answer.

  “Hello, Jerry?” the sergeant said. “Yeah, it’s Rick. What you think about that Barbette, huh? Damn, I didn’t think she’d really do it but Frank said that she’s wild. . . . Uh-huh. . . . Yeah.”

  I scratched my ear and waited patiently. Being a cop wasn’t a business. He didn’t have to make sure the customer was happy. If he wanted to say hello to the jailer before getting my friend, that was his prerogative.

  The story he told was long and one-sided because I couldn’t hear the parts that the man on the other end of the line added. The gist of it was that this woman, Barbette, had made a wager that she would accompany a group of them to one of their friends’ apartment buck naked. She came in and visited with them just as if she were fully clothed. She hadn’t gotten embarrassed until a guy came over with his girlfriend.

  “Can you imagine that?” Sergeant Rick said. “She didn’t mind us seein’ her titties and bush but another woman made her shy.”

  I must have shifted or something, because Rick noticed me again.

  “Hold on, Jerry,” he said into the phone, and then, “Can I help you?” he asked as if we had never met.

  “Tristan Jones,” I said.

  “I told you he’s bein’ held over for a big fine he owes.”

  “How much is it?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’d like to pay it and get my friend out of jail.”

  “I have to call you back, Jerry,” Sergeant Rick said. Then he hung up.

  Sighing heavily, he reopened the logbook. After turning pages back and forth half a dozen times, he said, “Yeah, yeah. That’s what I thought. It’s ninety-eight dollars and forty-seven cents.”

  He slammed the book shut and actually reached for the phone again.

  “Do you have change?” I asked, reaching for my wallet.

  Sergeant Rick took off his glasses then. His eyes had looked small behind the lenses, but they shrank to almost nothing without the magnifying effect.

  “Change for what?”

  “Hundred-dollar bill.”

  I kept the folded bill behind a sepia-tone photograph of my mother. I carried it around with me because I promised myself when I was a child that once I had enough money I’d always have a hundred bill just like a gambler my uncle once knew named Diamond Blackie.

  Sergeant Rick held the tender up to the light, rubbed it between his fingers, turned it over and over. He did everything but lick Mr. Franklin’s face.

  “Where’d you get this?” he asked.

  “From the bank.”

  “It’s only seven-fifteen, son.”

  Fearless would have bridled under that insult. He might have even resorted to violence. But I’m a different sort of man. I found his reaction funny. The only problem I had was keeping the smile off my face.

  “I’m a businessman, officer. I find that it is at times imperative that I have a certain amount of cash on hand to meet incidental costs. My associate, Tristan Jones, is aware of this fact, and he called upon me to do him this service. So I appear here before you to meet his debt and obtain his freedom.”

  Sergeant Rick looked at me as if I had just walked off the moon. He must have realized that if he had heard my voice and words over the phone he would have thought I was an educated white man. He was stunned, but he had a good comeback.

  “I thought you said you got this bill from the bank.”

  “Originally,” I said. “I took this bill from my branch three weeks ago, the last time I found it necessary to use my incidental fund.”

  “And
what was that?” he asked. “Another jailbird?”

  “That was the library of a woman who was moving to Seattle. She specialized in French literature, translated of course.”

  Sergeant Rick stared at me a moment. I began to worry that I’d gone too far. If he was a sensitive man, he might feel insulted by my palaver. His tiny eyes got still smaller and his cheeks quivered slightly. I was trying to think of some way to tone down his anger when he began to laugh.

  He laughed long and hard, leaning forward on the ledge before him. Then he sat down and leaned way back in his swivel chair.

  “Oh, that was a good one,” he said. “You’re good, son. Real good.”

  He stood up again.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Paris Minton.”

  Hearing this brought on another round of laughter.

  “Okay,” he said. “Whatever it is. I don’t have change, but if that’s all right I’ll go get your associate.”

  “Thank you, officer. That will be fine.”

  The cop went through a door down to his left, and I went to a worn oak bench to sit and wait.

  The station was a good size. At the front door sat a desk where another policeman had asked me to explain my business. He had sent me to the counter sergeant. Two other Negro men were sitting on the bench with me. They were both young and surly. Neither one had a word to spare, and that suited me fine.

  After fifteen minutes Fearless and Sergeant Rick came from some other quarter of the station. I didn’t see the door they came out of. I just turned and there was my friend’s smiling face.

  “This him?” the cop asked me.

  “Yes sir.”

  “Go on, then.”

  I put out my hand to shake but Rick turned away.

  FIVE MINUTES LATER we were in Ambrosia’s gold Chrysler, headed for Milo’s office.

  “You might have to pay that fine again one day,” I said to Fearless. He was at the wheel.

  “How come you say that, Paris? Didn’t you just pay it?”

  “Yeah, but that cop didn’t give me no receipt. He might’a just pocketed my hundred.”

  Fearless smiled.

  “You always there when I need it, Paris. Don’t you think I’ma forget that.”

  “I’ll tell you what,” I said. “The next time you need help, remember how I helped you this time and then forget to come and see me.”

  Fearless had a big laugh for a slender man.

  “What did they want?” I asked.

  “To know ’bout them white people. Did I know Minna Wexler or a colored boyfriend she’d been runnin’ wit’? Did I know why she was going to meet with Kit Mitchell the day she disappeared? I played dumb and they kept on askin’ questions. It was like that all night. One time I fooled around and gave my name, rank, and serial number. The bald-headed one acted like he wanted to hit me, but his boss got the joke and laughed.”

  “Why were they looking for to question you?” I asked.

  “I thought it was because I was lookin’ for Kit, but really it was because they talked to Maynard Latrell. They knew Maynard drove Kit every mornin’, and he told them that I was the man had Kit’s trust.”

  “And they’re lookin’ for Kit because he was somehow connected with BB.”

  “That’s what it sounded like,” Fearless said.

  “They say anything we didn’t already know?”

  “You mean other than Kit havin’ a meetin’ with Minna?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They said somethin’ about an emerald necklace reported stolen.”

  “What about it?”

  “They said that Kit had stoled a necklace and did I know anything about that.”

  WE GOT TO MILO’S BLOCK JUST AFTER EIGHT.

  Fearless pulled up to the curb directly across the street. I was making sure that my door was locked when I noticed a white man coming out from the concrete pathway to the side of the apartment building that housed Milo’s office.

  Theodore Timmerman was wearing the same mismatched brown clothes he had on at my doorstep.

  Something in the way he moved, something stealthy and sly, made me call out.

  “Hey you, Timmerman!”

  When Theodore turned, the gun was already in his hand.

  Fearless’s name was stuck in my throat. If that white man’s bullet had hit me I would have probably died calling out to my friend. But Mr. Jones was faster than either one of us. He dove low and hit me in the thigh. As I went down I heard the crack of gunfire and made a sound that even now embarrasses me to remember.

  I was saved from being shot, but nowhere near safe. Teddy Timmerman fired once again, tearing up turf not two feet from my head, and then he took aim.

  Fearless, who was on the ground next to me, reached for something and then leapt to his feet. Teddy swiveled but again not fast enough. Fearless threw some missile that caught the fake insurance man in the chest. I heard his grunt all the way across the street.

  Teddy started shooting wild and ran down the street to his car. He must have had another gun in there, because he took potshots through his window. Finally he got the car started and threw it into reverse. The last we saw of him he was speeding backwards down Baring Cross.

  “Wanna go after him, Paris?” Fearless asked. He wasn’t even breathing hard.

  “No, man. Let’s go check on Milo.”

  18

  THE DOOR TO MILO’S OFFICE WAS OPEN wide, but Loretta’s front room looked none the worse for wear.

  Going through the hall to the office I tripped over my own feet and Fearless had to catch me. I held on to him for a moment, because it was hard for me to regain my balance. I was so scared after being shot at that my internal organs were quivering.

  Milo’s office had seen some violence. One of his files was overturned and the spindly visitor’s chair was upside down. Milo was not in sight.

  Then we heard a deep bass moan that could have been a sea lion sunning himself in Monterey Bay.

  Bloody and bruised, Milo was on the floor behind his desk.

  “Thug,” he said. “Try and bully me. See what that gets him.”

  Fearless lifted the portly bail bondsman with one hand and his chair with the other. It was a show of strength that was almost impossible, but he did it with such ease that most people wouldn’t have even noticed.

  Once he was seated, Milo began to cry. It wasn’t fear or weakness but rage at being so mistreated.

  “You hurt?” I asked our sometime employer.

  “He wanted Miss Fine’s name and address,” Milo said. “Said he was gonna kill me if I led him wrong.”

  “I thought he worked for you.”

  “Me too. I used him before. He’s always good if I got a white jumper, and he’s even proven all right on Negro cases. But he got somethin’ up his nose out there. A way to make some money, you better believe that.”

  Milo loved money. He would be balancing a checkbook on his deathbed.

  “Is he the reason you called me?”

  “Yes sir,” Milo intoned. “He called up last night and asked me for the client’s name. At first he was all friendly, but when I didn’t give him what he wanted he got rude. And when that didn’t work he said that he’d be down here, like he was the father and me the wayward son.”

  “What did you have him doing for you, Milo?” I asked.

  “Lookin’ for somebody,” he replied.

  “Kit Mitchell?”

  “Who it was don’t matter,” Milo said with an attempt at finality in his tone.

  “If it were Kit it do,” Fearless said simply.

  Milo heard the threat in those words. He knew that he was a small fish and that Fearless was a man-eater. He knew when to back down.

  “Yeah. It was Kit,” he said.

  “And what does Kit Mitchell have to do with that white man?”

  “It’s all the same thing. Bartholomew, Kit. Miss Fine wanted them both.”

  “I thought you said that Winnie wan
ted to find Bartholomew.”

  “Yeah, yeah. That’s right. She wanted to find both of them.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that?” I asked, trying to get some threat in my own voice.

  “Because it wasn’t none of your business.”

  “People shootin’ at us on the street is too our business,” Fearless said.

  “He shot at you?” Milo asked, showing his first inkling of the trouble we were in.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I didn’t know it was gonna come to gunfire, Fearless,” Milo said. “I mean, I thought it was just business as usual. Miss Fine wanted Kit and BB. Theodore was on Kit, and when you come in, Paris, I put you on the boy.”

  “If Miss Fine wanted Kit too, why didn’t she tell me that?” I asked the bail bondsman.

  “Because I called her,” Milo said. “I called her and said that you good, too good to know all her business. I said she could send you out after BB but to let Kit alone.”

  “So why did you send Theodore to my door?”

  “He heard about Fearless workin’ for Kit and came to me an’ asked did I know where he could find him. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with givin’ him your address. I mean, he was workin’ for me.”

  “Now why is he after Miss Fine’s address?”

  “He don’t know that he is,” Milo said. “He just come in here an’ tell me he wanted to speak with my client.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if I didn’t, he said he was gonna kill me. But hell if I was gonna give in to that garbage.”

  “So why you still breathin’, Milo?” Fearless asked.

  “After I realized that he meant to beat the answer outta me, I decided to send him on a wild goose chase,” Milo said. “I did some bail work for a nice white woman used to live up in Beverly Hills. She had a maid that had been with her family for forty-some years. That was Phyllis Noreen.”

  “Bobby Noreen’s mother?” Fearless asked.

  “Yeah. You know Bobby be in jail every time you turn around. And every time Bobby went in, Phyllis got so upset that the only way to calm her down was to get her son out. Then the white woman, Belinda Thurman, would call me.”

  “So you sent a gunman to that good woman’s house?” Fearless was not happy.