Fearless Jones

11

ACROSS THE STREET and down half a block was a small building with a plate-glass window for a front wall. That was The Beauty Shop, owned by Hester Grey and run by her daughter Shirley. There were three chairs set side by side before the window where a black woman could get everything from gold frosting on her hair to application of the newest skin bleaching techniques.

Shirley was smoking a cigarette, and Dorthea, her number two girl, was putting curlers in a woman’s hair. They were all talking loudly.

From outside it was really nice. The three were almost yelling, you could tell by the posture they took to speak. After yelling they’d laugh hard, but you couldn’t hear a sound through the thick glass. It was like experiencing the deep pleasure of music without being able to hear it.

When we opened the door, a brief moment of mirth reached us before the women clammed up. The room smelled of cigarettes and hair spray. It wasn’t a pleasant odor, but it conjured the memories of many a woman I had known.

“Fearless,” Shirley Grey said. “Paris.”

“Afternoon, ladies,” I said.

Both Shirley and Dorthea had big puffed-up hairdos. That was where the similarities ended. Shirley had a lot of flesh with no figure to speak of and a permanent scowl on her face. She thought she was a raving beauty though. She always wore tight dresses that showed more than anyone wanted to see.

Dorthea was an African beauty who had been brainwashed into thinking she was ugly by movies and magazines. She had straight blond hair puffed out like a white country singer and all kinds of costume rings and beads. Her breasts were trussed up in a brassiere that pushed them out like battering rams, and her long skirt was so tight that she walked like one of those Chinese women with the destroyed feet. Still, her face was elegant with deep brown skin and high cheekbones. Her eyes slanted up, and her teeth were as white as the enamel on a new gas stove.

She showed a lot of teeth when she saw Fearless.

“That was too bad about your store, Paris,” Shirley said. “What happened?”

“I don’t know, babe. I came home and it was gone.”

“Where were you?”

“Out bein’ a fool.”

Shirley shook her head and sucked her tooth. She and her mother had lost all the men in their lives. The father ran off with the number three chair girl. Her brothers were both institutionalized, one by the prison system and the other by the armed forces.

“Shirley, can I borrow Dorthea for a moment?” Fearless asked.

We decided while approaching the beauty shop that Fearless would ask for Dorthea. Women were much more likely to say yes to him.

“Can’t you see that she’s workin’?” Obviously Shirley didn’t see it our way.

“Oh, that’s okay,” Dorthea spoke up. “Mrs. Calhoun don’t mind waitin’. Do ya, honey?”

Up until then I hadn’t looked closely at the woman in Dorthea’s chair. She was older and with a stern, strawberry-brown face. She had white-rimmed glasses and hard eyes. Her stern countenance was cause for surprise because it broke out into a big smile for Dorthea and the prospect of her talking with a good-looking man.

“Go on, honey,” Mrs. Calhoun said. “Me an’ Shirley can talk mess without you for a while.”

Before Shirley could object, Dorthea took off her white apron and scooted toward the door. We were right after her.

Outside, the three of us convened at the curb, but I might just as well have been the fireplug as far as Dorthea was concerned.

“What you wanted, Fearless?”

“Did you know them Messenger of the Divine peoples?” he asked.

The light of love faltered in her eyes.

“Did you?” I chimed.

“What’s this all about, Paris?” Now that she was angry she talked to me.

“Dorthea, honey, I don’t wanna fight with you…”

“I ain’t fightin’ I just —”

“I don’t wanna fight, so I’ll cut this short. I need information on them Messenger people because I think it was somebody after them came and burnt down my store. You know I lost everything and somebody got to pay.”

“Them’s religious people, Paris,” Dorthea said. “They wouldn’t do nothin’ like that.”

“I don’t think they did it,” I assured her. “But somebody didn’t like ’em did.”

“Who?”

“Did you know Reverend Grove?” I asked.

“Why should I tell you?”

“Five dollars,” I said.

Dorthea looked left and right, then she said, “You gotta car?”

“Right across the street.”

“Take me around the block then.”

We got into Layla’s Packard. Fearless drove and I sat in the back.

“What you wanna know?” Dorthea asked.

“Do you know Grove?”

“Yeah. William. He from Arkansas. He came in as Father Vincent’s head deacon, but after just a year he was so popular that he forced Vincent into semiretirement and took over the whole ministry even though they say he ain’t really ordained. That man can preach. He make you feel like he’s God and you the only one he care about.”

“But he took the church away from the pastor was there?” Fearless asked.

Dorthea nodded. “Brought in his own deacons and everything.”

“Did you know a woman around there called Elana Love?” I asked.

“What about her?” She certainly did, and she didn’t like her either.

“Did you know her?”

“She was all over William. I mean, sometimes they’d go in the back while Vincent was deliverin’ the sermon for him. It was just sad the way they was.” Dorthea curled her lip the same way that Shirley had.

“Did they do anything but sermons there?”

“What you mean?”

“Anything illegal?” I was thinking that the church had something to do with the money or bonds or whatever and maybe Dorthea had heard about it.

She said, “No,” but there was something else on her mind.

“Come on, Dorthea. Ten bucks.”

“You won’t tell?”

“Swear,” I said, drawing an X across my heart with my finger.

“Brother Bigelow from over there sold me a pearl ring one time for fifteen dollars. It was a real nice one. He said that he got stuff like that sometimes and that if I knew ladies in the beauty shop wanted some good jewelry cheap, I should bring them to him.”

“Did you?” I asked.

“Uh-uh. It’s one thing just buyin’ a ring, but I didn’t want to be a fence.”

Fearless turned to her and smiled.

“Good girl,” he said.

She would have beamed at any compliment he gave.

“Why did the church move away?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Really. But it was all of a sudden. One day they was just gone. Everything. You remember.”

“Do you know where they went?”

Dorthea looked me in the eye. She was measuring me.

“Why should I tell you, Paris?”

Before I could think of a lie Fearless said, “You can tell me, honey.”

“Well,” she said. “I like you, Fearless, but I wanna see my money before I say anything else.”

I counted out five wrinkled one-dollar bills followed by a five.

“They was in Compton three weeks ago, down on Alameda somewhere. At least that’s what I heard.”

“You know the address?”

“Uh-uh. But you could find it if you looked.”

“When do they have meetings?”

“Every night they can.”

Fearless pulled up in front of The Beauty Shop and parked.

“Is that it?” Dorthea asked.

“You know how we can find Elana Love?”

“That bitch? No.”

She grabbed the handle and opened the door, but before she could exit, Fearless reached out for her shoulder.

“You wanna go to Rackman’s tonight?”

Looking at his hand, Dorthea said, “Yeah.”

“Paris and me gotta do somethin’ at eight, but I could be down to get you by ten-thirty.”

“You could pick me up at the Charles Diner on Eighty-ninth. I’m supposed to see my sister there.”

They lingered for a moment, him looking at her and her looking at his fingers, and then she climbed out. Fearless watched her Chinese shuffle into the shop before he drove off.

“Man, don’t we have enough to do without you makin’ dates in the middle?” I asked.

“I been in jail for three months, Paris. You know I’m starvin’ for what Dorthea can feed me.”

“Oh,” I said. “Oh, yeah.”

“Paris?”

“Yeah?”

“Where’d you get that money?”

“What money?”

“That money you give Dorthea.”

“Borrowed it from Milo.”

I could see in Fearless’s eyes that he knew I was lying, but he didn’t press it. That’s the kind of friends we were.