Fear Itself

14

“WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT MR. PERRY?” I asked Fearless.

We were a few blocks away at a small park that was like an island at the intersection of Slater Avenue and 127th Street. There was a picnic table with the benches attached under a shady oak tree. The grass was dead. One lone sparrow eyed us sidewise from the nearest bough. He was waiting for a crumb to drop and so was I.

“He’s lyin’ about Kit.”

“You sure’a that?”

“No question there.”

Fearless Jones could have been Buck Rogers’s lie detector. He could tell if someone was lying even if he didn’t understand the language they spoke.

“What about the rest?” I asked.

“Cain’t tell. But I’m sure that he wants to talk to BB. He wants to talk to him bad.”

I could read Esau for myself. Still it was good to have Fearless confirm my conclusions. But what difference did it make? I could go out looking for BB, but there was no promise that I would find him. And even if I did find him, it was a dangerous game turning a man over to somebody with the police breathing down your neck. If I confronted him, Milo would lie, and so would the white man he sent to my house to find Fearless.

I shared these pessimistic thoughts with my friend.

He took it all in and nodded.

“Then maybe I better go down to them cops questioned you,” he said.

“Turn yourself in?”

“Why not? They gonna get me sooner or later—that is, unless I skip town. And you know that little taste of Ambrosia reminded me of just how sweet she is.”

“You don’t know why they after you, Fearless. They might could put you in jail for months.”

“I didn’t do nuthin’ except sit out with those gourds in Oxnard for weeks. They mad, but what they gonna charge me wit’? Why shouldn’t I go?”

“Because we don’t know what they want.”

“And we ain’t gonna know unless I turn myself in.” Fearless grinned at me. I knew that grin. It said, Sometimes you have to be a fool if you want to make it in this world.

I knew that I couldn’t talk Fearless out of his decision, so I asked, “What should I do?”

“Go on home and wait for my one phone call,” he said. “It may not come for a while, but you be there and I’ll get what we need.”

***

WE SEPARATED THERE. Me going back to my bookshop and Fearless following his name.

My store was hot from the brutal summer sun beating down on it. I opened the front door to let a breeze bring the temperature down into the eighties. I was too jumpy even to read, so I picked up a folio of photographs taken by the New York photographer Weegee. I took this to the front room and sat there perusing the strange and revealing images of a New York that few tourists ever saw, even though it was right there under their toes and noses. Weegee treated the whole city as if it were his backyard. I imagined that he knew ten thousand people by name and that they were so familiar with him that they never had their guard up against his lenses. He roamed from Park Avenue to Harlem with his camera, mostly at night, getting behind all of the lies we tell and showing just how ugly people can be when no one else is around.

“Hello?”

If I could have jumped out of my skin I would have. As it was, I leapt out of the chair and threw out my hands, letting the book fly somewhere back into the store.

“What!” I shouted.

It took a few seconds for me to focus on the young woman framed inside the gray rectangle of the screen door.

If she had a gun you’d be dead right now. If she had a gun you’d be dead right now. Those words repeated themselves over and over in my mind. My heart was thumping. I was rubbing both thumbs against my fingertips, trying to look normal.

The Negro woman smiled.

“I didn’t mean to sneak up on you like that,” she said. “I thought that you must have heard me coming up the stairs.”

“No.” It was the only syllable I could manage without stumbling over my tongue.

“Can I come in?”

“Come on.” I was getting better.

She tried the screen door, but it was latched. Did I think that I could keep someone from getting at me with a slender latch and a paper-thin screen?

“Let me,” I said.

She was wearing a tan dress with a pink scarf. At first it looked kind of like a uniform, but on inspection you could see that the material of both articles was of a finer make than any employer or service would spend. She carried a woven straw purse. This too was a higher quality than it at first seemed.

“Are you Paris Minton?”

She had medium brown skin and eyes a brown so light that they were disconcerting. Those orbs seemed to belong not simply to some other race but to a whole other species of animal.

“Are you?” she asked again.

“Who are you?”

“Leora. Leora Hartman.”

“Where’s Son?”

“He’s with his great-uncle,” she said, at once answering my question and telling me that my secret knowledge wasn’t of the least concern to her.

“Would that be Kit’s uncle or yours?”

“Son is not related to Kit Mitchell.”

We were still standing in the doorway. Leora’s figure was slight but her bones weren’t thin or fragile. She wore tan shoes that were exactly the same hue as her dress.

“Can I have a seat?”

“Sure. Why not?”

We sat across from each other. She put her knees together and let them recline to the side. Her calf was very presentable. She was as composed and elegant as the wife of a diplomat, except for those eyes; they were wild and fearful, watching for the slightest aggression.

“Fearless tell you about me?” I asked.

“He said if I needed to get in touch with him that I should come here.”

“Hot day, huh?” I asked this to put her off some, but it didn’t seem to work, at least not at first.

“Yes it is,” she said. “But at least it’s dry. It’s the humidity I can’t stand.”

I smiled and nodded but didn’t say anything.

“Aren’t you going to ask me why I’m here?” she asked, finally.

“You like my store?” I replied.

She stood up and walked down the right aisle. Looking over the shorter center shelf to the books on the wall, she said, “I see you have a lot of the Balzac oeuvre.”

“Eighty-one of his books,” I said, coming up next to her. “I got them from a woman in Tarzana. She advertised in a book-buyers’ newsletter I subscribe to.”

“It really is a lovely store.” She looked around a bit more.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Do you have a science section?”

“Down there, in the far corner.”

Our eyes locked on each other.

“I’m very interested in physics.”

“Really? What kind?”

“Theoretical. Theoretical physics, theology, and theater. My mother always says that it’s only the first three letters that get to me.” Her laugh was nice.

“Why’d you lie to Fearless?”

“It was the only way I could think of to be sure that he’d look for Kit for me.”

“What do you want with Kit Mitchell?”

Leora walked back to the front, reclaiming her seat and her composure.

I followed.

“Where is Fearless?” she asked.

“In jail.”

“What for?” She didn’t even blink.

“I don’t even know. Do you?”

This time she didn’t respond.

“Two cops, Morrain and Rawlway, were after him. So he turned himself in. They were looking for a young man named Bartholomew Perry.” I was wondering if she knew BB too.

There was a momentary tightening of Leora’s face.

“Maybe you know what those cops wanted,” I suggested.

“No. Why would I?”

“I don’t know. Why are you here?”

“Fearless gave me an address for Kit. I went there but they said that he skipped out without paying the rent.”

“Really? Did they have any idea where he got to?”

“No. When a man skips out on the rent he usually doesn’t leave a forwarding address.”

Even though she had the poise of a woman in her thirties, I figured that Leora was twenty-five at most. Her skin was flawless without the help of makeup and she had hands that could have belonged to a child.

“So what does Fearless have to do with all that?”

“I need him, to help me find Kit.”

“Why?”

“It’s personal.”

“So’s havin’ the cops on your ass because some girl lied and put you on a trail got you locked up in a six-foot cell.”

“I’m sorry if I got Mr. Jones in trouble. I didn’t mean to do that. But I have to find Kit Mitchell.”

“Why?”

“I can’t tell you that.” Leora Hartman stood up. She wanted to walk out but had nowhere else to go. “What did they arrest Mr. Jones for?”

“Nothing, as far as I can tell. Maybe it’s just questions they need to ask. Like why was he looking for Kit Mitchell.”

“Kit was doing business with someone. A man named BB,” Leora said.

“Bartholomew Perry,” I said, nodding and looking for deception.

“Oh. Is that what it stands for? You already seem to know everything I can tell you.”

“What I don’t know could fill the Library of Congress.”

Leora smiled.

“This BB and Kit have gotten into something and I need to tell them to stop,” she said. “That’s the truth.”

“What are they doing?”

“I can’t tell you about that, I can’t. Only it’s something they’ve stolen and . . . and beyond that it’s private.”

“I can’t help you if I don’t know what it is you’re looking for.”

“I don’t know you, Mr. Minton. I feel bad about your friend, and I want you to understand that I had a reason to lie, an important reason. But I can’t trust you. You can understand that.”

I understood, but I couldn’t just let it go. Fearless was my friend.

“Fearless said that Kit had been bragging that he was gonna bring in a whole truckload’a money over some big deal. That was just before he disappeared. Is this thing that him and BB stole worth all that?”

“I don’t see how.”

“Do you know a man named Lawrence Wexler?” I asked.

“No.”

“Any Wexlers?”

“No. Why are you asking me these questions? Do you know where Kit Mitchell is?”

“Why aren’t you asking about where BB is?”

“I don’t know anything about him but his name. It’s Kit Mitchell who stole . . .” She stopped before revealing the secret.

“What’s it worth to you if I try and find out?”

“I don’t have much money, Mr. Minton.”

“You could’a fooled me. Those fine clothes. Straw bag with what looks like real gold ties on the handle. And the thing cost the most, that classical education. There’s some money somewhere.”

“On my back and in my head maybe,” she said. “But my wallet is empty.”

“That’s too bad,” I said. “Mine is too. But I wish you luck.”

Leora was surprised by my refusal. Her gentle ways and poise had gotten her a long way in life.

She turned to the door.

“If you give me a number I’ll tell Fearless you were here. He’s got more free time than I do.”

“By the time he gets out of jail I will already have found out what I need to know,” she said. “Either that or I’ll be beyond help.”