Fear Itself

19

FEARLESS CALLED HIS MOTHER and we dropped Milo off in front of the house.

From there I had a plan to gather information while keeping me out of harm’s way.

“What did you throw at that gunman?” I asked Fearless.

“Brick.”

“A brick?”

“Not a whole brick, but just a chunk, like a half like.”

“Where’d that come from?”

“I don’t know. It was there in the gutter, so I grabbed it. You know I used to like to play ball. I could’a played on the Pumas, but they spend half their lives in a dusty bus and I’d rather stay in one place.”

“But how did you know that brick was there?” I asked. “I mean, you reached down and grabbed that stone like it was put there just in case somebody started shootin’ at us.”

“It’s my army trainin’, Paris. That’s all. Wherever I am I look around me. I see things. I don’t think about ’em or nuthin’. I just see ’em, and then they’re there for me when I need ’em.”

“So when you got out the car you saw that little chunk’a brick on the ground?”

“I didn’t know I saw it but I did, and when that man started firin’ I knew it was there and I grabbed it. That’s all.”

“And what’s all this shit about a millionaire white girlfriend?”

“What about her?”

“You ain’t never said nuthin’ ’bout that to me before.”

“I don’t tell you everything, Paris. You know I’m a gentleman anyway.”

“No, baby,” I said. “There’s more to it than that.”

“Yeah, maybe. But I don’t wanna talk about it. Where we goin’ anyway?” he asked, trying to change the subject.

“I wanna go over to that rooming house that Kit had been stayin’ at,” I said. “Where was it?”

“Over on Denker.”

“Let’s go there.”

Fearless made a right turn and then another one.

After five or six blocks I worked my way back to the question about the millionaire white girlfriend.

“I never told you because it’s the kinda thing you always said that you didn’t wanna hear,” Fearless said.

I knew what that meant. I had always told Fearless that I didn’t need to hear about anything illegal because I never wanted to be in the position of being blamed for letting the cat out of the bag to the authorities or, worse, to some gangster who wanted revenge. Had that been a regular day with me at my bookshop and Fearless dropping by to shoot the breeze, I would have held up my hand and said, All right, let’s just skip it. But I had already found one dead body, figured out that another corpse was connected to my friend’s problems, and on top of that I had been shot at. It didn’t seem that some simple story could be any worse.

“How long ago did you and this girl break up?” I asked.

“More’n six years.”

“Let’s hear it, then.”

“Okay. You heard of a man named Thetford Bell?”

“The aeronautics guy?”

“Yeah. He got a house up there in Beverly Hills. Wife, three kids. One’a them is Illyana. Cute girl. Black hair, dark eyes. She climb up on you just like a cat . . .”

“Where’d you meet her?”

“I was gardenin’ next door to her place and some young man was pesterin’ her. He had hold of her arm and wouldn’t let go even though she was yellin’. Wasn’t nobody else to help, so I went up and said that I couldn’t let him abuse the lady. He called me a name and I broke his nose for him.”

“And she did her cat impression to thank you?”

“Not right then. I walked her to the door and then I left. You know I figured that somebody would get me fired over that. But what happened was that Illyana asked the head gardener —”

“You mean you weren’t the only one?” I asked.

“It was a big place so they had four people on the grounds,” Fearless said. “Anyway, the guy whose nose I broke had left and the head gardener didn’t even know about the fight and so he gave the girl my address.”

“Didn’t he think it was strange that some young white girl wanted a colored gardener’s address?”

“She said that I had done some work for them on the side but they weren’t home to pay me, so that her daddy wanted the address to send me my pay. Anyway, she come over to say thanks and ended up spendin’ the night.”

“And then she told you about her father?”

“After a while she did. You know I think she just wanted one night to see what a dark man could do. I guess she liked it, because she was always callin’ after that. But then we went to the Huntington Library and one of her friends saw us. Illyana pretended that she wasn’t wit’ me, and then later she said about her father.”

“So you broke up with her?”

“Naw, man. I wasn’t afraid of her old man. Shit, I started takin’ her all over the place after that. Then one night a big ugly dude come up on me when I was takin’ a shortcut down the alley to my house. White dude. Real fast.” Fearless said these last two words with respect. That meant something, because Fearless was possessed of blinding speed.

“What happened?” I was beginning to regret my request to hear the story, but by then it was too late.

“The white guy told me that Illyana was off limits and that he was gonna rough me up so that I would remember in the future. I remember he said, No hard feelings.”

Fearless was lost in thought for a little while. We were getting close to the Denker address.

“So what happened?” I finally asked.

“He was good,” Fearless said with a single nod. “Too good. I killed him right there under a Lucky Strike sign.”

“And then you and Illyana broke it off?”

“Then I walked home and went to bed. The next day, when I knew Illyana was gonna be out, I went over to her house and knocked on the door. I told the colored woman who answered to take me to Mr. Canto. And when I sat down in front’a him I said that the next man I kill won’t be his errand boy but him. Then I broke it off with Illyana.”

“Did you tell her about her father?”

“She already knew about him, man. She the one told me.”

We pulled up in front of the boardinghouse and I jumped out with Fearless Jones’s story still swirling in my mind.