Fear of the Dark

Chapter 37

“They was layin’ for Ulysses when we got there,” Three Hearts Grant said from the backseat. “There was four of ’em.”

We were in the canyon, coming from the valley back to L.A.

Angel sat close to my auntie, holding her hand. The women were completely bonded now.

“There was blood on the floor,” I said, wondering about the union between the mother and the lover of a fool.

“When they made to grab us, I shot the fat one,” Three Hearts said. “But then the bald one, the one with the scar across his face, took my gun an’ slapped me down. Angel tried to stop him, but he was too big and mean.”

There was the knot. Angel’s trying to save Three Hearts had assured their undying union.

“He died in the car,” my aunt said almost casually.

“The fat one?” I asked.

“Yeah. He told ’em he was okay, but I hit sumpin’ in his belly. It’s like he got sadder an’ tireder until he was gone.”

I turned around to see what my aunt looked like when she uttered these words. She had a sneer on her lips, as if she had just tasted something bitter. There was no remorse or discomfort, just a distasteful task that was only one-third done.

Angel didn’t speak at all. She was the younger woman and therefore left the speaking to her elder.

I didn’t push either woman because I was hoping that the whole thing would soon be over. Hector was dead, Sterling too. The men who had kidnapped Three Hearts and Angel were looking for Useless, so he was probably alive somewhere. All I had to do was leave the job up to Angel and Three Hearts. They could go on looking and I could go back to my life.

I figured that I could repay Friar and split the rest of the cash with Fearless. That way at least I’d have a nest egg if I needed to run. For a while then I wondered what a berth to China would cost.

It was late when the four of us got back to my bookstore-home. From the street we could see the shadow of a man hovering near my door.

“Who’s up there?” I called.

“Paris?” he said, and all of the pains and bruises I’d collected in the last weeks came back to me.

“Ulysses?” Three Hearts called.

“Baby?” Angel echoed.

Fearless chuckled while the women rushed up the stairs, the soles of their shoes clattering on the hardwood.

In the kitchen at the back of my place, the women sat sentry in chairs on either side of Ulysses S. Grant IV’s stool. He was grinning and holding hands with both women, while Fearless sat on my counter and I boiled water for tea on one of my three hot plates.

Sitting in front of Useless was a brown leather suitcase with two straps and three latches. It was old and weathered, but that just proved that it was stolen. Useless didn’t own a suitcase. Never had. He was always out the door one step ahead of the law or some other man or woman seeking revenge. He didn’t have time to pack, had no use for luggage. And so I was pretty sure that that traveling bag contained the reason why at least four men were dead.

“I knew you’d come here to see Paris, Ma,” Useless was saying. “I knew it.”

“What about all these things they sayin’ ’bout you, Ulysses?” Three Hearts asked.

“What things?” Useless glanced at Angel with a sudden look of fear.

“Blackmailers, thugs, and murderers,” my aunt said. “That’s what.”

“It wasn’t my fault, Mama,” he whined then.

It was the first time I had ever heard her cross with him. I wondered if it was his first time too.

“Is that what you’re gonna tell the police when they arrest you?” she asked. “Is that what you’re gonna tell the judge?”

“The po-lice ain’t after me, Mama. They don’t know about me.”

“What about this girl here?” Three Hearts asked. “What about this sweet, innocent young thing that you done dragged down in the mud? I done read in her diary how much she loves you and how much you mean to her. How can a son of mine treat a woman’s love like that?”

I wondered, then and now, if Angel was devious enough to lie in her own journal on the off chance that someone might read it and judge her.

“I tried to save her, Mama. Ask her. Ask her if it isn’t true.”

His entreaty was so compelling that I found myself looking to Angel for an answer. For her part, she was staring into her lap.

“It’s true, Mrs. Grant,” she said. “I was already messed up with Hector and them when they brought your son into the business. Ulysses was just supposed to drive me around and pick me up when I needed it. He helped to fix a few poker games we played. Ulysses wanted to take me away from them. He wanted me to stop.”

I bet. He wanted her to stop, all right, but not before the coffers were full; I knew my cousin that well.

Three Hearts’s face filled with love. She put her arms around her son and kissed his brow.

“Baby,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I thought it was you did all that.”

It was him, I thought. Didn’t she know that he was up to his neck in extortion, blackmail, and now murder? Couldn’t she see that everything had fallen apart because of him?

“Why were you runnin’, Cousin?” I asked when I couldn’t take the lies anymore.

“I ran because after Angel took off, I realized that I wanted her more than the money they paid me.”

Angel took that cue to put her arm around her man’s shoulder. Three Hearts nodded at the gesture as if it proved the bald-faced lie he was perpetrating.

“What about the man with the scar?” I asked. “The man that kidnapped your mother and your girlfriend. Who is he?”

“I don’t know,” Useless said, shaking his head and looking pitiful.

“How did you know to call Twist to get us out of jail?”

A liar’s desperation spread across Useless’s face, and I knew that I had him.

But I was wrong.

“I got a call from a guy who wanted us to get back into business. He told me that he had my mama and if I wanted her to be all right I’d have to give him what I got in this here suitcase.”

“What guy?”

“Paris,” he replied, “you don’t wanna get too deep in this, Cousin. These men is dangerous.”

Now I was sure that he was lying.

“Who was it, Ulysses?”

“A white man named Lionel Sterling. He the one called me.”

“He had your number?”

“He called Jerry Twist and told him that if he talked to me to tell me to call. He said that I’d like to hear what he had to say.”

Useless might have been the best liar I’d ever met.

“Sterling’s dead,” I said.

“Oh, no,” Three Hearts proclaimed. “Not another one dead.”

“He wasn’t dead when he called me,” Useless said, approximating a man telling the truth.

“How did you know we were in jail?”

“Sterling told me. He had his men question Three Hearts about the men she’d been wit’—”

“That’s right,” my auntie said. “They asked and we told them that you had been arrested.”

“Why would they ask you that?” I asked Three Hearts.

“I don’t know.”

My frustration was rising. Something was a lie here. Something wasn’t true. And Useless knew what it was.

“When Fearless and I went to see Sterling,” I said to Useless, “he was scared the minute he saw that we were black. That’s what frightened him. Now, if he’s afraid of black people so much, how he gonna get three black men to kidnap your mama an’ girlfriend?”

“Maybe he wasn’t scared,” Useless speculated. “Maybe he only pretended to be afraid so you wouldn’t suspect him.”

I wanted to ask: That’s why he had a heart attack an’ died in my arms?

“People out here dyin’ because’a you, Cousin,” I did say.

“Leave him alone,” my aunt countered. “You’re the one gettin’ people in trouble. You’re the one see somebody and then he turns up dead.”

That was the last straw for me. I said, “You come to my house, drag me out in the street where I get my butt kicked, thrown in jail, surrounded by murderers, blackmailers, pimps, and thieves...”

“Paris,” Fearless said in a low warning tone.

“... You shoot a man with your own gun, kill him dead, don’t even cross your heart for a blessin’ when you talk about it, and still you gonna sit there next to that liar you call a son and blame me for killin’ the man Useless here just said ordered your kidnappin’.”

“His name is Ulysses,” was her reply.

“Maybe to you,” I said. I realized that I was hovering over my relatives. “Maybe to you he’s some Greek hero, some descendant of a poor slave woman got in the way of a war. But to me he’s useless, hopeless, inadequate, futile, a waste of time.”

Three Hearts stood up.

“I’m leaving,” she said.

“Get out, then,” I said, not myself at all. “Get the hell out.”

“Come on, Ulysses,” was her reply.

Useless stood. So did Angel.

“But you ain’t takin’ that suitcase.”

Fearless hopped down from the counter.

“You don’t wanna mess with the contents of this bag, man,” Useless assured me.

“Why not? What you got in there?”

“It’s the stuff Sterling used to blackmail them men.”

“Fearless an’ me know one’a them men,” I said. “Martin Friar.”

“Marty?” was Angel’s first word in a while.

“He sends his best,” I said to the young beauty. “I think he thinks he loves you.”

You couldn’t have read her face with a microscope.

“Leave the bag, Ulysses,” Three Hearts said.

“But Mama...”

“Leave it. That’s the devil’s work in that bag. I’m sure Fearless will make sure it gets back to the men that have been wronged.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Fearless’ll do it. Fearless, not Paris. Not your nephew, who you dragged down in the trough with your son.”

Fearless reached down for the bag. Useless took it by the handle.

“Don’t cause a ruckus, Ulysses,” Fearless said.

“Do you have a car, Ulysses?” Three Hearts’s voice was stiff and angry.

“Yeah. Jerry Twist lent me his car.”

“Then let’s get out of here.”

“Two questions, Useless,” I said.

Hearts was about to protest my bastardization of her son’s name, but he put a hand on her shoulder.

“What, Paris?”

“Who killed Mad Anthony?”

Useless never could lie very well in the presence of his mother. She forgave him everything and loved him fiercely. Her passion made him honest, or somewhat so.

“He was tryin’ to kill me, Paris. I swear.”

“What about Hector?”

“Come on, baby, let’s go,” Angel said.

“I don’t know,” Useless said to me. “I shot Tony in a alley off’a Alameda. He would’a kilt me if I didn’t, but I don’t know about Hector.”

Our eyes were locked for a long minute. I believed him... but that didn’t make what he said the truth.

The three headed for the door. I followed them through the bookstore and out onto the porch. I don’t think I’d ever been angrier. All the trouble I’d gone through, and my aunt still treated me like a throwaway waxed paper milk carton.

“You welcome for our help finding your son,” I called after them. “Make sure you don’t call back any time soon.”

Three Hearts wheeled around and stared at me, her evil eye glowing in the night. But I didn’t care, not one bit. A man can only be pushed so far and then he has to stand up and say what he feels.

“She’ll cool down in the mornin’, Paris,” Fearless said at my back. “She’ll see that you did right by her with the dawn.”

“All I want is for them to leave me alone,” I said. “I’ve had enough. You hear me?”