Fear of the Dark

Chapter 29

Loren cried all through the altercation. By the time the guards came, the fight was over. Things settled down, and I sat there thinking how the life I was living would be better in the remembering than it was while it was going on.

Fearless, definitely the nicest and kindest person I knew, would fight at the drop of a hat. If he were a white guy living in the middle-class world, he would have been exactly the same, but there would never be a reason for him to fight. But we were poor and black and so either we fought or we lost ground. That’s all there was to it.

Despite the smell of sweat and urine, despite the blood and tears on my cot, I still felt more secure than I had for many days. While Fearless listened to Loren talk about how much he loved his mother, I lay back and closed my eyes.

The nimbus Sleep sensed my repose and began slowly to drift in my direction.

“Minton, Paris,” someone shouted, and Sleep scurried away to the corner where she resided next to Death and Despair.

“That’s me,” I said, rising from my bunk.

“Come with me,” a man in a suit said. He was accompanied by two large policemen. Each of them took an arm as they led me through the labyrinth of the Seventy-seventh Street precinct.

We came finally to a small door, a really small door. I remember thinking that due to some mistake in planning, this door and the room it led to had to be cut down in size. I could walk through with no difficulty at all, but I was six inches below six feet. The men holding my arms had to duck to get through, their heads nearly grazing the ceiling of the room we entered.

Two fat detectives were waiting in there. One wore a suit that was too green to be a suit and the other wore a suit of spotted gray, though I don’t think the spots were intentional. They were both white men, but that goes without saying; all detectives were white men back then. They were the detectives and I was there to be detected.

“Mr. Minton?” Green Suit asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Have a seat.”

I sat on a wooden stool placed on the other side of the table from the detectives. The men who had brought me there left without being asked.

The game began in earnest then. The goals of this particular sport were different on the opposite sides of the table. For the detectives to win they’d have to get me to admit to certain suppositions that they would posit. For me not to lose I’d have to avoid admission while keeping from being damaged beyond repair in the process.

“Tony Jarman,” Spotty said. It was like a low ante in a high-stakes poker game.

I knew what he wanted me to say, but I squinted and cocked my head to the side. What?

“Don’t fuck with us, Minton,” Green Suit said.

“I don’t know no Jarman, man. What could I tell you?”

“Mad Anthony,” Spotty amended.

“Oh,” I said, but my expression said, Uh-oh, so you know about that?

“Yeah,” Green Suit said. “Oh.”

I put up my hands, trying to halt the train coming at me. I went right into my explanation because in the game we were playing it was in my best interest to get it over quickly. The longer they played, the better chance they had to win.

“Let me explain,” I said.

I told them about Three Hearts but not about Useless’s visit. I told them that I was looking for Useless but not about his business or his confederates. I told them that Man from Man’s Barn had told me that Useless knew Mad Anthony and that Anthony had kicked my butt for talking to him. I added that Fearless broke Anthony’s jaw because that was just the kind of friend he was.

After all that, I smiled, thinking that my points added up to an even number.

“Why are you looking for Mr. Grant again?” Spotty asked.

“His mother thinks that the woman he’s with is not right for him. She came up to see him and tell him so, but he had moved and she didn’t know where he was.”

“What’s the girlfriend’s name?” Green Suit asked.

“Debbie, I think. Don’t know the last name.”

“What she look like?”

I shook my head. In that game there was a point deducted for every word someone on my side spoke.

Green Suit walked around the table so that he could hit me if I tried that shit again. I let my eyes get big, very big.

“Hey, hey, man,” I said. “I don’t know nuthin’ about her. I never met her.”

Green Suit was uncertain. He believed that me and my kind were stupid but wily. That was trouble for him because he never knew when to slap my face or shake his head in disgust.

He hit me hard enough to knock me off the stool, then he shook his head. Doing both was against the rules even in our freewheeling game.

“Get back on the chair,” Spotty said. He had a red face and Saint Bernard-like jowls.

“That’s not what I wanna hear,” Green Suit told me.

“Man, I was just lookin’ for Useless. That’s all.”

“Where is Grant?” Green Suit asked.

“He moved to Man’s Barn and then he disappeared.”

“What did Useless have to do with Mad Anthony?” Spotty asked.

“He gambled a lot. Played snooker for up to a dollar a ball,” I said. “I thought that Anthony might be bankrollin’ him.”

“And you say this Fearless broke his jaw?”

“Yeah. But that was just a fight in a café. Anthony left after that an’ everything was peaceful.”

Green Suit laughed at my choice of words, and I knew that Anthony was dead.