Fear Itself

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.”