Fear Itself

9

THE FINE FAMILY LIVED ON BRAUGHM ROAD, which occupied a strip of land between Santa Monica and Los Angeles. It was a big yellow house, a mansion really, flanked by strawberry farms that have long since disappeared. It had a southern look to it. The driveway was long enough to be called a road. It led to an electric fence equipped with a buzzer, a microphone, and a loudspeaker—all of them held together by black electrical tape.

“Who is it?” a man’s voice asked a minute or so after I pressed the buzzer.

“Paris Minton,” I said.

“Who the hell is Paris Minton?”

“Friend of Milo Sweet.”

“Who?”

“Listen, man,” I said. “Tell Miss Fine that Paris Minton is out here, that I work for Milo Sweet and I need some information to get the job done.”

The loudspeaker went silent and I was by myself out there in the almost country of L.A. There were five different birdcalls that I made out but could not name. Flitting insects were everywhere. A big beetle thumped down on my hood. He sported a shiny black-and-green carapace and seemed to like the heat from the engine rising through the hood. His long legs weren’t strong enough to lift him above the surface, instead they moved like the oars of some ancient galley making its way across the vast brown sea of metal. A blackbird flew up and landed so quickly it was as if she had appeared out of nowhere. She swiveled her head to get a good look at the beetle and then lunged at him with her beak. I could see its oars waving in the air for a moment and then two gulps and he was gone. The blackbird cocked her eye at me and then, in less than an instant, she was gone too.

“Who is this?” a woman’s voice asked from the loudspeaker.

“Paris Minton,” I said.

“And who is Paris Minton?”

I told the new voice about Milo Sweet and my working for him.

“I don’t know nuthin’ about a Mr. Sweet sendin’ no man up in here,” the voice said.

I didn’t respond because she hadn’t asked a question.

“Well, come on in I guess,” the voice said.

The electric fence, made from simple wire gating, rolled half the way across the entrance and then seemed to get stuck. It was still trying to roll but something, somewhere, was an impediment. I got out of my Ford and helped the gate move along its track. Then I got back in and drove the S-shaped driveway up to Winifred L. Fine’s front door.

The house was four stories with an extra turret on top of that. It would have been impressive if the owner had it painted and did something about the front yard.

Really, I guess you would call it the grounds. The lawn in front of the fading house was at least five acres. The grass was overgrown but I could see why. There was a refrigerator, a stove, various canisters, and less identifiable refuse in among the long blades of grass. A gardener would have gone crazy trying to mow. And even if he managed, the lawn would have looked worse because all the trash would have been more visible.

There weren’t only discards in the yard, however. There were trees too. Fruit trees mainly. Two apples—which is one of the only fruit bearers that don’t do well in the southern California clime—a dying peach, a dead pomegranate, and a date palm that had only one living leaf.

I saw no place set aside for parking, so I just pulled as far to the right side of the road as possible and stopped the car.

The front door was green with a picture of Mary and baby Jesus laminated to its center. I wondered if knocking on Mary’s forehead was considered a sin.

A middle-aged black woman opened the door. She was quite short and wore a full-length formal black gown that had shiny black buttons from the throat down to the hem. The sleeves went all the way to her wrists. The head of an unblinking red fox peeked at me from her right shoulder.

“Miss Fine?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. Her eyes didn’t waver, they hardly blinked. It was almost as if I were staring into the face of two dead animals, the fox and the woman.

The foyer behind her was as much in disarray as the grounds. There was a large ceramic pot in one corner filled with peacock feathers that were coated in dust. Above this was a large painting of a white woman astride a white stallion galloping away from a squat stone castle.

“May I speak with you, ma’am?”

“Certainly, young man,” she said.

With that she led me to the left, down a long and wide corridor made narrower by stacks of cartons labeled Madame Ethel’s Beauty Supply along the walls. There were also piles of documents, newspapers, ledgers, and manuals of all kinds. We came to a room that had a barber’s chair and a park bench for furniture. By then I was pretty sure that I was in a madhouse, or at least in a house that was in the process of going mad.

“Sit down, sit down,” the woman said, waving at the park bench.

She struggled with the barber’s chair. The long skirts and stiffness in her joints made the necessary movements difficult, but she finally managed to seat herself upon the cracked grandeur of the golden leather cushion.

“Miss Fine . . . ,” I said.

She held up her hand to stop me and then shook the same hand. A tinkling accompanied the motion. I saw then that there was a tiny silver bell attached to her wrist. The old woman then stared at a bookcase to her left with great concentration.

The room was quite odd. First of all, it wasn’t so much a room but the dead end of the cluttered hall. There was nothing that seemed normal in there. Besides the park bench and barber’s chair there was an unfinished sawhorse and a high table on which stood three miner’s lanterns. The bookcases were crowded with handmade papier-mâché figurines. There were statuettes of black men and women shopping, kneeling in prayer, two men fighting with knives, and dozens of other tableaus.

“Miss Fine,” I said again.

“Shh!”

A man came out from behind the bookcase then. He wore black slacks and a long-sleeved white shirt that was one size too big. His coloring was equal parts brown and drab green, and his eyebrows were thicker than some men’s beards.

“Yes?” he asked with undisguised disdain.

“Oscar, this is my guest,” she said.

He glanced at me with similar condescension.

“Yes, I know. Mr. Minton, who, I am told, was sent by Mr. Milo Sweet.”

“What do we have to offer my guest?” she asked.

“What does he want?”

“Why I . . . ,” she said. “What do you want?” she then asked me, as if some request I had made was the cause of her embarrassment.

“Nothing. Thank you, ma’am.”

“You have to have something,” she said. “You don’t just walk into somebody’s house without accepting their hospitality.”

Miss Fine was staring at me. Oscar was staring at me.

“Tea?” I said.

“Hot tea or ice?” Oscar asked.

“Ice.”

“Milk or lemon?”

Miss Fine giggled and bounced a little in her chair.

“Milk,” I said.

“Sugar?”

“Okay.”

“How many teaspoons?”

“Half of one.”

Oscar’s immense eyebrows rose like two bales of black hay giving way to a great subterranean upheaval.

“Don’t have much of a sweet tooth,” I apologized.

Oscar gave a slight shrug.

“And you?” he asked Miss Fine.

“The usual.”

“It’s rather early, don’t you think?”

“The usual,” she repeated.

Oscar shrugged again, turned, and went back behind the bookcase. For all I knew there was a closet back there where he lived with a maid, a chauffeur, and a cook.

“Now, Miss Fine,” I said.

“He’s not a very good servant, is he?” she asked.

“I wouldn’t know,” I said. “Never had a butler and never been one.”

“Are you here on business?”

“I’m working for Milo Sweet, like Oscar said.”

“Oh, Mr. Sweet. You know I like that name. Sweet. I love sweets, and so I liked his name right away.”

“You asked Mr. Sweet to look for Bartholomew Perry.”

“Bartholomew? I did?”

“That’s what he told me.”

“He did? Well then he must be right.”

By that time I was completely lost. Either Winifred Fine was senile or so wily that there was no way for me to understand her motives.

“Why do you think you might have wanted him to find BB?” I asked.

“What did Mr. Sweet say I wanted?”

“He said that you wanted to have a secret talk with Bartholomew.”

Miss Fine grinned and ducked her head as if we were exchanging confidences.

“Your tea,” Oscar said.

He had come in from behind the bookcase with a silver tray supported by his left hand. The tray held a slender tumbler of milky ice tea and a squat glass filled with amber liquid. I took my glass. Oscar then proffered the tray to his mistress. She took the liquor with eagerness.

“Miss Fine will see you now,” Oscar said to me.

“What?” I said.

“She’s waiting for you in her sitting room.”

“Isn’t this Miss Fine?”

“Rose Fine,” Oscar said. “Miss Winifred is waiting for you in her sitting room.”

“But he’s my guest,” Rose Fine whined. “I’m all dressed up.”

“I’ll be back in just a little bit,” I said.

I took the old woman’s hand and kissed it.

She gasped and yanked the hand away.