Fear of the Dark

Chapter 47

There was a hearing to see whether or not a crime had been committed in the shooting death of Thomas Benton Hoag. Angel and Three Hearts and Useless all testified.

Thomas Benton Hoag had been Angel’s boyfriend, but she had come to realize that she loved Useless. Tommy came on them at gunpoint, tied Useless up, and told Angel that if she didn’t come with him he’d kill them all.

The judge liked the story, and there was no one to contradict it.

After the inquiry Angel asked Fearless about the money. He told her that he’d already returned it to the men that she blackmailed.

Actually he’d given it to Martin Friar along with the list I’d compiled and asked him to return it in the best ways he could. I told Fearless that we might as well keep the money as Friar, but Fearless said that we could trust the man. Maybe he was right.

Friar did say that we should keep 10 percent as a kind of finder’s fee. It was some money, enough to support my lazy lifestyle for a year or so.

Useless was angry at our presumptions with his hard-earned, ill-gotten wages. But when I asked him about the money he’d invested with Jerry Twist, he shut up.

That was it. A life worth remembering is hell to live.

A week after the inquisition Three Hearts, Angel, and Useless left for Louisiana. Two days after that I got a visit from Jessa. I had hoped that she’d just go away, but I should have known better.

She was wearing a nice white cotton dress and there was a red ribbon in her hair just begging to be undone. But I kept my hands to myself.

“Have you heard from Tiny?” she asked me after I made her tea.

“No, I haven’t,” I said. “And I hope I don’t. You know I don’t think that Tiny likes me too well.”

Me talking about him as if he were still alive buoyed her spirits. In her heart I think she knew he was dead, but the lie helped some.

“Can I stay with you, Paris?” she asked toward the end of the visit.

“No, honey. Uh-uh. I like you, but all that mess was too much for me.”

“Did they catch the man that killed Hector?” she wanted to know.

“I haven’t heard anything,” I said, knowing that Hector had been slaughtered by Tommy Hoag, “but you can be sure that the man who did it will pay for it one day.”

“You really believe that?” she asked, boring into me with those diamond drill eyes.

I nodded with absolute certainty.

“You’re a good man, Paris Minton,” she said.

I preferred to believe that even if she knew the whole truth she would have held the same opinion.

I gave her five hundred of the five thousand dollars I’d made on the fiasco that Useless had brought to my door. I told her to go somewhere new and get a job in a café or an office.

“Meet a nice guy and start a family,” I said.

She kissed me at the door, and I barely regretted not lying with her one more time.

When I was in the bookstore alone, after Jessa had gone off into her life, I wondered how Angel and Useless were doing and I was glad that I didn’t have an answer.