Fear of the Dark

Chapter 13

Mona’s apartment was no larger than Fearless’s studio, but she had a royal blue sofa, nice chairs, and a fine oak table that supported a small TV set in a pink plastic frame.

Some people felt sorry for Mona. They thought that she should find a good man who wanted to be with her. But I wasn’t so sure. Fearless didn’t love Mona in the way that she wanted, but he’d accompany her to any restaurant or church event she needed an arm for, he kept her car running and her plumbing flowing, and he never got mad when she had a weekend away with some temporary boyfriend. When Mona’s cousin Natalie died, Fearless stayed with her for two weeks, making coffee in the morning and tea every night.

I’d look at his relationship with her and think that if I could have a woman who treated me the way Fearless did Mona, I’d be in heaven. Of course that’s a selfish attitude, but I don’t know. If Mona had a child and died, I’m pretty sure that Fearless would have taken that baby in. That’s the kind of selfishness the world could use more of.

Fearless sat down on Mona’s upholstered chair, hung his left leg over the arm, and started making phone calls. While he was doing that, Three Hearts, Mona, and I sat around the polished table and drank iced tea that our hostess served.

“Thanks for savin’ my butt, Auntie,” I said.

“You were so cute out there, baby,” she replied. “You should’a seen ’im, Mona. He jump in the air and screamed like a little boy. An’ then he hit that awful man in the shoulder.”

Mona grinned and touched my shoulder with her gray-brown hand. Her fingernails had silver polish on them.

“You know he did his best,” Mona said.

It was the closest I was going to get to being complimented for my manhood, so I took the backhanded accolade in the spirit in which it was meant. Poor people back in those days didn’t know how to give false tribute. They said it how they saw it or they didn’t say a thing.

“Yeah,” Fearless said into the phone. “Yeah. Ovah at Wisterly’s be fine. See you in half a hour. See you then.” He looked up at us and said, “Let’s go.”

That meant me and Three Hearts.

Mona gave Fearless a long heartfelt kiss at the door. He looked down into her eyes and she swelled up like a piece of ripening fruit. I remember thinking that there was more love in that tender good-bye than in many lifelong marriages I’d witnessed. Three Hearts was so moved by the spectacle that she sighed.

Fearless was driving Milo’s red Caddy. Three Hearts got in the backseat and we cruised over toward Florence and Central. There was a big restaurant there owned by a white family called Wisterly. It was a broken-down little diner when Cleetus Rome’s family first moved to town, but it had grown and flourished with the influx of the colored population. That’s because black people needed fancy spots to call our own and most of the upscale places still managed to freeze us out.

Wisterly’s had a big dining room for dinner and special functions, but they also had a diner for the daytime with seven booths against a window that looked out on the street.

We got to the restaurant at a quarter past three. When we’d made it halfway down the aisle of booths I spied big ugly Anthony ensconced at the corner table. I hadn’t asked Fearless who we were going to see. I suppose that’s because I was still rather stunned from the beating I’d taken. But I hadn’t suspected that we’d be meeting with Anthony. I’d thought that Fearless was looking for some other line on Useless.

Anthony had a big white bandage over his left ear. When he saw me he tried to get to his feet. But by that time we were at the booth. Fearless struck out with a right cross that traveled all of seven inches. You could hear the impact in the next room. Anthony fell hard on his butt and groaned in spite of himself.

“Good for him,” Aunt Three Hearts muttered.

Fearless gestured for her and me to sit on the bench across from Anthony while he took a seat next to the big tough. Anthony was rubbing his jaw, trying not to cry — or at least so it seemed to me.

“Why you mess wit’ my friends?” Fearless asked as if he were a father talking to a wayward son.

“Tryin’ t’find Useless.”

“Ulysses,” Three Hearts said.

“Ulysses,” Fearless repeated.

“Ulysses,” Mad Anthony agreed. And then he said, “That bitch shot me in the ear.”

Fearless grabbed Anthony’s shirt and shook him back and forth, letting him know to use proper language around a lady.

I could see Anthony’s jaw swelling.

“What you lookin’ for Hearts’s boy for?” Fearless asked, explaining the rules in doing so. Because once my friend identified Useless as the son of someone he knew by name, Anthony understood that he’d have to kill Fearless to cross that line.

“Use... Ulysses brought me to a man named, uh, String, Stringly... sumpin’ like that.”

“A white man?” I asked.

When Anthony frowned at me my heart did a flip of fear.

“If you hear a question outta Paris’s mouth,” Fearless said, “then that’s me talkin’.”

The frown evaporated and Anthony said, “Yeah. White dude.”

“What about him?” I asked as respectfully as I could.

“He paid me to go with him an’ rough up this white dude called Drummund. Paul Drummund. I did the shit and then Use... Ulysses cut out.”

“How long ago?” I asked.

“Two weeks, a little more.”

“Where did you meet this friend’a Ulysses’?” I asked then.

“At a house down around Fairfax. I don’t think it was his house. At least he wasn’t livin’ there.”

“When did you first meet this white guy?”

“How the hell should I ’member that?” he said belligerently.

“Try hard,” Fearless advised.

“I dunno. Three mont’s. Sumpin’ like that.”

Anthony winced then and put a hand against his jaw.

“So you met him a long time before he had you beat on Drummund,” I speculated.

“Yeah,” Anthony said. “Yeah. String-whatevah had me put a scare into a dude named Katz too. That was aftah I first met ’im. He paid me a hunnert dollars for that.”

“Did you say anything to these people when you beat them?” I asked.

“I cain’t talk like that in front of a lady,” Anthony demurred.

I could have reminded him of the language he had used in front of Three Hearts in the alley earlier that day, but I felt sorry for him.

“What I meant was did Stringly have any message that he wanted you to give them?” I asked.

“Yeah, uh-huh. He told me to say that they went down this road on they own an’ they wasn’t goin’ back. He said to tell ’em that if they paid, the pain would go away.”

“What did you do to them?” I asked. I don’t know why. It wasn’t relevant to what we were looking for, but Anthony fascinated me when he was no longer a threat.

“Broke some fingers an’ knocked out a couple’a teeth.”

“For a hundred dollars.”

“I’d kick yo’ skinny ass for nuthin’,” he replied, unable to keep the sneer off his lopsided face.

Fearless placed a hand on Anthony’s forearm. It was a light touch, but Anthony flinched.

A sharp pain made Anthony bring both hands gingerly to his jaw.

“Anything else you want?” he cried.

“What was Ulysses into with this Stringly dude?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Come on, man,” I said, selecting my words delicately. “Everybody knows that U-man liked to talk. He wouldn’t just bring you somewhere and not say somethin’ ’bout what he was up to.”

“He said that him an’ Stringly was tight,” Anthony said, straining at the memory. “He said that they had a scam goin’ gonna make ’em rich. That’s it.”

“He didn’t say nuthin’ ’bout what they was doin’?” I asked.

“Naw. Just that, just that white people was thieves too, it’s just that they never got caught ’cause they stole big.”

“That doesn’t prove a thing,” Three Hearts said with deadly conviction.

“That all, Paris?” Fearless asked me.

I nodded.

Fearless put a hand on Anthony’s shoulder.

“You bettah get to the hospital, Tony,” he said. “That jaw you got there is broke pretty bad.”

Mad Anthony stood away from the booth and staggered toward the door.