Fear of the Dark

Chapter 41

I meant to go see Fearless, but first I wanted to drive past my store. Maybe, I thought, I would have the courage to go in if I didn’t see anyone waiting for me. I could change my clothes, take a short bath.

Three blocks from my house I decided that after all of this was over I was going to buy myself a gun, a small-caliber pistol, for times like these.

Jessa was sitting with her back against my door and her knees pulled up to her face. She was rocking herself there. I think it was that gentle, futile swaying that made me park and approach her.

When I got to the top of the stairs, she looked up. Her crystal blue eyes flooded with tears.

“Paris,” she wailed, rising and throwing her arms around me. “I’m so scared.”

I had to bite my lower lip to keep from crying along with her.

“Calm down, Jessa,” I said. “It’s gonna be all right.”

Tenderness only served to make her cry harder. I opened the door as fast as I could and pushed her across the threshold. She stood in the little reading-room entranceway, racked with sobs, leaning against the wall. I let that go on for a minute or two and then dragged her toward the kitchen-porch. When we passed the place where Fearless and I had come upon Tiny, she dug her nails into my forearms.

“That’s where he died,” she said through a series of hoarse sobs. “That’s where my baby boy died.”

“Died?” I asked. “Who died?”

“Tiny,” she said, nodding and leaning on me as we went from the room.

“Is that where the blood came from?”

My incredulity put her tears temporarily at bay.

“Didn’t you find him there?”

“No,” I lied. “All there was was a little blood. I thought that it must’a been from him beatin’ on you. Matter of fact, I was worried ’bout you until you decked me out there in front’a Hector’s place.”

“Hector shot him. He was dead on the floor.”

“Hector must’a missed,” I said. “Because there was nobody here. Just some blood, like I said. Did he shoot him in the head?”

She nodded at me hopefully.

“Must’a just grazed him,” I speculated. “Must’a either bounced off or glanced off the side. The bullet hittin’ him prob’ly knocked him out and then, after you left, he must’a woke up and run.”

“You really didn’t find him?” Jessa asked.

“No, ma’am,” I said. “If I found a body, I’d have to call the cops, and you know I’d be in jail still, them wonderin’ how a white man came here to die.”

“You didn’t see him?”

“If he’d been shot by a black man in my store, I’m sure he decided to cut his losses and run. Probably thought it was one of my crazy cousins.”

“He’s alive,” she breathed. Then she giggled madly.

It was a straight-faced lie, but there was nothing wrong with it the way I figured. It took a great weight of guilt off Jessa’s shoulders and successfully removed the only living witness to the murder.

“Let me make you some tea,” I said, and she went to her favorite chair in my kitchen.

It was almost like old times.

We’d graduated from English Breakfast to peach schnapps when Jessa relaxed enough to tell me her tale.

“Tiny came back an’ started beatin’ on me when you got away. He was mad, and I couldn’t blame him. But you know I was crazy for you, Paris,” she said, as if our affair had been many years ago. “He wasn’t hittin’ me with his fists or nuthin’, just open hand. He must’a been extra mad after he saw you naked. I don’t think that he would have killed me. I don’t think so, but then Hector came in.”

“Did you know this Hector?” I asked.

“I had never seen him before. He yelled at Tiny to stop, and Tiny ran at him. He called Hector nigger, and Hector shot him in the head. I thought he was dead.” Jessa’s eyes got wide while she stared at the kitchen floor. I knew that she was seeing Tiny’s body at her feet.

“What happened then?” I asked.

“Hector grabbed me by the hair and asked me where Useless was. He hit me and asked me and hit me again. I just screamed and cried and said that I never heard about any Useless. I didn’t even know that he was talkin’ about a man.”

“Did he believe you?”

“Later he did. A lot later. But then he kept slappin’ me and askin’ me. Then he asked who Tiny was, and I told him that he was my boyfriend and he’d found me with you. I think he started getting scared about Tiny and the gunshot, so he made me go with him out to his car.”

“Did you try to get away?” I asked.

“No. I just went. I just went with him to the car, and he drove me to that apartment where I saw you. I’m sorry I hit you, Paris. I’m sorry. I was just so crazy after seeing Hector like that.”

I wasn’t ready to find out about Hector yet. I wanted to get there slowly.

“What happened when he took you to his apartment?” I asked.

She seemed relieved to be distracted from the second murder.

“He brought me in and kept askin’ what he should do with me. He kept sayin’ that he should kill me. I tried to tell him that I wouldn’t turn him in, but he didn’t believe it. Every time I said it he yelled at me to stop lyin’.”

“Didn’t the upstairs neighbors hear all that shouting?” I asked.

“Mrs. Braughm lives by herself and she’s mostly deaf,” Jessa said. “After a while Hector got to drinking. He started slappin’ me again. And I don’t know how, but my clothes started comin’ off and we were doin’ it right there on the big sofa chair. I did everything he wanted me to. We fucked like goats.” Tremors went through her as she spoke. I couldn’t tell if it was pleasure or pain, passion or the desire to forget.

“What happened after that?” I asked her.

“It was like we were together,” she said, amazed herself at the turn of events. “Things had been going bad for Hector. The man he was looking for, Useless, had stolen something from the man he worked for.”

“What did he steal?”

“Money, I think. Hector never told me, but I’m pretty sure that it was money. Every time he’d talk to his boss on the phone or even just think about Useless, he’d get mad and start slappin’ me. And if I did just right, we’d end up rutting on the floor.”

“Did you try to run away?”

“I didn’t... I didn’t want to. I didn’t know where to go and there was something that made me want to stay close to Hector. He needed me.”

Sometimes in literature I’d come across the term exquisite pain. I never understood it before. My nature being such as it is, I have always shied away from any kind of suffering. But I could see where the ache in Jessa’s life needed attention and Hector was the perfect mate for her.

“After a while he’d leave me alone in the apartment. I cooked for him and I never blamed him for killin’ Tiny. I was the one who put Tiny in that position. I was the one that killed him.”

“But you didn’t,” I reminded her. “Tiny was gone when I got here.”

Jessa gave me a big smile, stood up, and came to put her arms around my neck. It was a sisterly hug, but all that talk about rutting on the floor had me thinking thoughts I knew were wrong.

“Why’d you come here?” I whispered into her dirty blond hair.

“I stayed at the YWCA for a few days after Hector was killed. I didn’t know where else to go. All I had was a few dollars.”

I walked her over to the stool that Useless had used.

“Tell me what happened to Hector,” I said.

“Somebody killed him,” she said, her eyes wide with the immensity of death. “They cut his throat while I was sleeping in the bed.”

“Who did?”

“I don’t know. All I know is that I thought I heard something and I called out his name. And then, when I came in, there he was.”

She began crying again and I couldn’t blame her. Even if she had killed him herself, it was something worth crying about. But I didn’t think she’d killed him. No. Hector had housed her, punished her, and had brutal sex with her in every position in every room in that apartment. They were perfect together.

“Who was Hector’s boss?”

“He never said,” Jessa uttered. “He never even said that the man he talked to on the phone was his boss. But I could tell. Hector got respectful whenever he called.”

“Did you ever answer the phone when his boss called?”

“Once.”

“What did he say?”

“He asked who it was, and I told him that I was, I was Hector’s girlfriend.”

“An’ what’d he say?”

“He wanted Hector, but Hector was out. Then he told me to tell Hector to meet him at the yard at five thirty.”

“What did he sound like?” I asked.

Jessa didn’t seem to understand the question.

“Was he a white man or a Negro?”

The white girl cocked her head to the side and bit her lower lip. “I don’t know,” she said. “There might have been a little southerner in there, but I couldn’t tell.”

It wasn’t a total loss. I had found out some things.

“Tell me something, Jessa.”

“What?”

“Hector came here one day asking for a French dictionary. Why he do that? Did Useless tell him that I had something of his?”

“No,” Jessa said, her fingers jittering nervously. “Hector asked me about you. I told him that all you did was sell books. But he, he wanted to see you and for you to see him. He said that if you blinked he’d kill you like he had Tiny—”

“Like he thought he killed Tiny,” I reminded her.

“Yeah.”

“So I guess he didn’t think I knew anything,” I said.

“No. He said that you were nothing.”

It’s funny the things that make us mad. I was angry at the dead killer for thinking I wasn’t worth a bullet.

“Do you hate me, Paris?” Jessa asked.

“No. Why?”

“Do you think I’m a whore?”

“No, I do not. I think you’re a young woman got in way over her head, but it wasn’t your fault — at least not all your fault. You might’a been messin’ with Tiny, but he left you first. And there wasn’t a damn thing you could’a done about Hector. Not a damn thing.”

She tried to smile, which was more meaningful than if she had actually managed it.

“I’m’a give ya two hundred dollars and a ride to the downtown YWCA,” I said. “In a couple or few days I’ll come by and tell you what I think.”

“Can’t I stay with you?”

“Stayin’ here just about as dangerous as stayin’ with Hector.”

I didn’t have to say any more.

After i put Jessa into a taxi I took the suitcase to my incinerator in the backyard. There I applied lighter fluid and set it afire. As the flames rose I tried to imagine Useless sneaking up behind a man and cutting his throat.

It wasn’t a nice thought. But he just didn’t have the nerve to kill a man like that.

Or did he?