Fearless Jones

6

MILO LEFT US in front of the municipal building. I was wearing the same black slacks and loose yellow shirt I had on when Elana Love dropped in on me — the only clothes to my name since the fire. Fearless wore gray pants and a black silk shirt with two lines of blue and yellow diamonds down either side of the chest. As I said before, I’m a small man, five eight and slim. Fearless is tall, over six feet, and though he’s slender, his shoulders warn you about his strength. He’s also a good-looking man. A group of passing black women attested to that with their eyes. Even a couple of white women glanced more than once.

But it wasn’t just a case of simple good looks. Fearless has a friendly face, a pleasant openness that makes you feel good. If you look at him, he’ll nod and say good day no matter who you are.

“Fearless,” I said.

“Before you say anything, Paris, I have to have me a cheddar cheese omelet, pork patty sausages, and about a gallon’a fresh orange juice. I got to have it after three months under that jail.”

“Momma Tippy?” I asked.

“They ain’t nobody else,” Fearless said, grinning.

Momma Tippy had a canvas enclosed food stand on Temple Street not twelve blocks from where we stood. In normal times we would have driven there or at least taken the streetcar, but, finances the way they were, we walked.

Fearless limped slightly, but he could walk at a fast clip. On the way, he regaled me with tales from the county lockup. He told about the man he had to beat to be left alone and about the guards who didn’t like him because he never got bothered or upset.

“I tried to tell ’em that I was a soldier,” Fearless reasoned. “That I knew how to take a order if I was in the stockade. But somehow they was mad just ’cause I wasn’t sour and moody. Can you believe that?”

Momma Tippy, a small nut-brown woman from Trinidad, served up seconds and thirds for Fearless at no cost because she felt bad that he had been locked up in a cell.

“M’boy didn’t deserve it,” she said. “Dey always be takin’ ’em. N’you know it ain’t right.”

After commiserations and eggs, Fearless reached across the table and put his hand on my shoulder.

“I know you need me, Paris,” Fearless said in an unusually somber tone. “And whatever it is I’m’onna help ya. ’Cause you know I got it.”

“Got what?”

“At first I was mad that you didn’t pay my fine. But then I was talkin’ to Cowboy —”

“Who?”

“That white dude said about me bein’ a war hero.”

“The one at the courthouse?”

“Yeah. He asked me if you owed me money, and I told him no. Then he asked was we related or if I had ever pulled you outta jail. I didn’t tell ’im ’bout them cops — that’s between us an’ them dead officers. But I started to think that over the years you done helped me again and again and I just kept on takin’ like some kinda dog can’t do for himself.” Fearless pointed a long finger at a spot over my head. “And that’s wrong, man. You don’t owe me to pay my bail. Uh-uh. So from now on it’s even Steven. I’m’a help you and pay you back, and the only time I’ll come to you is for a good meal or a good laugh.”

It wasn’t true. Fearless couldn’t stay out of trouble. But still, I was the one who was wrong. He proved that by forgiving me.

I told him about Elana Love and Leon Douglas.

“Damn, that’s some costly lovin’,” he said when I was through. “So you worried that they still gonna be after you?”

“That, yeah, but I also need to build back my store. I mean, damn, I didn’t do nuthin’. Dude kick my ass then shoot at me down the street. Burn down my store. He got to pay money for that.”

Fearless was looking down at his hands. He didn’t nod to agree with me or say anything at all.

“What you thinkin’ ’bout, Fearless?”

“Jail.”

OUR FIRST STOP WAS the Bridgett Beauty Shop on LaRue. Layla Brothers, Fearless’s last girlfriend before he got arrested, worked there fighting the kinks out of black women’s hair. She seemed happy to see Fearless, though she hadn’t even written him a card while he was in jail.

“You know, honey,” she said unashamedly to my friend, “I been goin’ out with Dwight Turner, and he’d’a got jealous if I started writin’ letters back and forth to you.”

Fearless didn’t seem to care. “We need some wheels, Layla,” he said. “Do you mind if we use your car?”

“ ’Course not. Here.” She took the keys from her purse. “What you doin’ after?”

“Well,” Fearless hesitated, “Paris and I might need the car for a couple’a days.”

“That’s okay. I can use my mama’s car. But you got to sleep at night, don’t you?” Now that Fearless was out of jail, Dwight Turner wasn’t even a consideration.

“Yeah, but…”

“But what?”

“Paris’s place burnt down, and you know I don’t have no apartment. So until we get some business done, we bound at the hip.”

Layla was taller than I with skin the color of unburnished brass. Her long hair had been dyed gold. She was prettier than she made herself, buxom and thin. She looked at me with a sneer that tried to be a smile and said, “I ain’t that greedy.”

Fearless laughed and touched her elbow.

He said, “I understand, babe,” then walked off with me and her keys.

LAYLA’S CAR WAS a big Packard. The pink sedan had a straight eight engine that guzzled gas at the rate of ten miles a gallon. We cranked down the windows and lit up Pall Mall cigarettes. Fearless had a perpetual grin on his face, and I was pretty happy too. It had been an act of will for me to leave him in that jail cell, mind over matter. I knew when we were driving that we were supposed to be together, rolling along like two carefree dogs with the wind in their faces.

The Tannenbaum house was just off Brooklyn Avenue in East L.A., the once-Jewish neighborhood that was being repopulated by Mexicans. The house was a smallish yellow job. With two floors and six windows facing the street, it had a few bushes but no trees. The lawn was lovely, however, green and manicured.

“Nice place,” Fearless said as we walked up the concrete footpath to the door.

“Any place is nice if it got walls and don’t smell like smoke,” I said.

“Any place is nice if it ain’t got bars an’ it don’t smell like piss an’ disinfectant,” Fearless corrected.

I knocked on the door, wondering what kind of lie I could use on whoever answered. I expected thirty seconds at least before anyone showed. But the door swung open immediately. A tiny woman wearing a white blouse like a man’s dress shirt and a long flannel gray skirt stood there. There were spots of blood on the blouse.

When she saw our faces she was petrified. An elderly man lay on the floor behind her dressed exactly the same as she was, only the skirt was a pair of trousers instead. There was blood coming from the side of his head and also from his left shoulder.

“Leave us alone!” the woman cried, trying to push the door closed. “Don’t kill us!”

“What happened?” Fearless asked. He held the door open against her feeble shove and took a step across the threshold.

“I called the police,” the woman warned.

Fearless hesitated a moment, no more, but in that delay I realized that jail had hurt him.

“Go away!” the woman cried.

Fearless was already kneeling down over the man and peering into his pained face. I came to his side. I mean, I couldn’t very well run when I had brought us to that door. At any rate, Fearless had the keys to Layla’s car, and running on foot in L.A. is like bullfighting in a wheelchair.

“Get me something to put under his head, Paris,” Fearless said.

Behind me was a parlor of some sort. I grabbed the cushion off of a couch while Fearless said to the woman, “I need a bandage, something to stop the bleeding.”

“Please don’t kill him,” she cried.

Fearless grabbed her arm, forcing her to look down into his eyes. “I’m not gonna hurt him, but he might bleed to death if you don’t bring me a bandage or sumpin’ to stop the bleedin’.”

“Oh,” the woman uttered. “What should I do? What should I do?”

Looking around for an answer, her eyes lit upon me.

“Go get the bandages, lady,” I said.

“Oh. Oh yes.” She scurried along, slowed by the long skirt, through a door that swung open and back.

“Who are you?” the man was asking Fearless as I shoved the cushion under his head.

“Fearless Jones.”

“Are you here to rob me?”

“No.”

The man turned his head to me and asked, “What about him?”

“That’s Paris,” Fearless said. “He’s a friend.”

The pale man nodded in relief.

“What happened to you?” I asked.

“They came to take the money,” the man said to Fearless. “They vanted to, but I said no.”

“Here it is! Here it is!” Mrs. Tannenbaum said, rushing through the swinging door. In her hands was a small white pillowcase.

“Take it, Paris,” Fearless snapped. “Put some pressure on that shoulder.”

“Why did they do it? Why did they do it?” Mrs. Tannenbaum was chanting. I didn’t like her color. It was way past Caucasian on the way to chalk.

“They were trying to rob you?” I asked Sol.

“They vanted the bond, the money.” There was a dreamlike quality to his voice. He was going into shock.

He reached up and grabbed Fearless by the fabric of his silk shirt.

“Don’t let them rob Fanny,” he said.

“It’s a bet,” Fearless said.

“Oh God,” the wife cried.

Sol shuddered and tried to rise, but the pressure I was putting on his shoulder restrained him. The pain of the exertion made him wince, then he passed out.

There was a grim look on Fearless’s face. I knew from experience that that meant trouble for someone.

“He’s dead,” Mrs. Tannenbaum said simply and quietly. A whole lifetime of dread ending with a hush.

“Police!” a man’s voice commanded.

I tried to think my way back to the bookstore when it was still standing, but there was no escaping the hand that caught me by the shoulder and flung me to the floor.