Fear Itself

44

THINGS FELL INTO PLACE QUICKLY after that. Bradford Craighton was arrested at Timmerman’s house on charges of attempted breaking and entering. Maestro Wexler had him out of jail before noon. The private secretary immediately fled the state, which set off a nationwide search. Over the next days there were a series of articles about the conspiracy between Minna Wexler, her brother, and Bradford Craighton to extort money from an unnamed millionaire. It was also believed that, with the help of an as yet unnamed accomplice, Bradford ordered the deaths of the brother and sister.

Three days later it all came to naught. Bradford Craighton hung himself in a three-dollar-a-night room in Toledo, Ohio.

A long way from the Left Bank.

Maybe a week after that a couple camping in the Santa Monica mountain range found the desiccated body of a tall white man. The corpse had no hands and had also been beheaded. Nearby there had been a fire that contained the remains of human bone.

I PUT IT ALL OUT OF MY MIND: the one unbroken thread of African history as it bled into the world of slavery; the possibility of being a rich man with a house near the shore; the first, and hopefully the last, killing my hands would ever commit. I forgot about everything and went back to my spotty life of book sales and reading.

Rose Fine moved in with Fearless’s mother. Son, Brown, and Leora decided to stay in L.A. to be near her. The cops picked up Fearless but he played ignorant and they soon let him go. The information I found in Timmerman’s files never made it to the news. Neither did the money he had in that rusty box.

A few weeks later I was lamenting not taking at least a few dollars for the trouble Timmerman had caused me. The dread of his evil files and photographs had worn off but the mailman was still delivering the bills. I was having those thoughts when my telephone rang.

“Mr. Minton?”

“Oscar?”

“My sister would appreciate it if you could come to the house this afternoon. Shall we say four-thirty?”

***

THE HOUSE WAS GOING THROUGH a major renovation. The lawn had been cleared of the junk that had been rusting there. The façade was being painted. Hard-muscled men of every race were straining and struggling to make the Fine house into the mansion it could be.

I felt guilty as I approached the front door. I’d lost the greatest fortune this family owned, maybe the greatest treasure for American Negroes. Maybe, I thought, Winifred now knew about the loss and she wanted to hire me to search down the book. I had decided that I wouldn’t take her money. It would just be the wrong thing to do.

SHE WAS SITTING AT HER DESK with the curtains open on the Eden behind her. She wore a pink dress that was cut low enough to show the pendant against her chest. It was a large emerald surrounded by white stones that looked like diamonds but which were really white sapphires.

“You got it back,” I said.

“As if you didn’t know,” she replied. “Have a seat, Mr. Minton.”

“What do you mean?”

“Do I have to explain the word seat?”

“I mean about the pendant.”

“It’s okay, Mr. Minton. Your friend Fearless brought it back to me of his own free will.”

“Oh,” I said as I lowered into the soft chair. “I see.”

“He also returned my family book. When I spoke to you I didn’t even know that it was missing. With Son being taken from me and the pendant too I was distracted.”

“I imagine so,” I said pleasantly. But inside I was boiling. Fearless had done it to me again. He knew that I planned either to keep the book or to sell it, and he made the decision that either act would have been wrong. He stole the book from me and gave it back to Winifred. I silently swore never to help him again.

“He told me,” she was saying, “that you found the book and turned it over to him so that he could protect it until you gave it to the rightful owner.”

“Well, that’s how it was, I guess. What is it you wanted today?”

“I’ve already made my allowances for Fearless,” she said as if I should have understood. “And now all I have to do is meet your request.”

“I see,” I said. There were prickles now working their way up my spine.

“I have an offer that you may or may not be interested in.”

“And what’s that?”

There was a black-and-yellow garden spider sitting in the middle of her web in the window. She was a behemoth. Near the web a tiger swallowtail butterfly, also yellow and black, fluttered haplessly looking for pollen and a place to lay her eggs. I began to be afraid for the butterfly. I wanted more than anything for her to go the other way.

“I could give you the ten thousand that Fearless said you wanted,” Winifred Fine said. “But —”

I forgot the butterfly then.

“But what?”

“I also have in my possession the same amount of money in a stock that I intended for Son’s education. I’ll get more stocks in the future, and I’d like to hold on to as much cash as possible because I’m about to embark on a new gas station business in Compton.”

“I’ll take the money, ma’am.”

“Are you sure? The stocks might make a great surge and you can always sell them.”

“No ma’am. I’m just a poor shopkeeper. I don’t know about finance. You got the money here?”

“It’s in the briefcase next to your chair.”

I looked down to see a slender alligator skin case on the right side of my chair. When I looked up the spider was wrapping the butterfly and Winifred L. Fine was smiling.

“I see that you’re fixing up around the front of the house,” I said to make a little conversation before running out of the door with my loot.

“As I told you, the front of the house was Rose’s domain. Now that she has left us I have taken over that responsibility.”

Which one was crazier? I wondered.

“Tell Mr. Jones that I met my end of the bargain,” she said.

I nodded and stood, my treasure in tow. I turned to leave and then turned back.

“What was the name of the stock you wanted to give me?”

“International Business Machines,” she said. “They make typewriters.”

I smiled and wandered out of the house, not a rich man, but certainly not poor.