Fearless Jones

12

RYA MCKENZIE WAS a stern young woman with close-cropped hair and walnut-colored eyes. Her skin was the color of forest shadows, and her judgment was swift. If she didn’t like you, you knew it and stayed away, but if she was your friend, you’d never want for anything that she could provide.

She kissed Fearless and shook my hand, greeted us both with brief hellos, and then led us from the nurses’ station for pediatrics to a small room furnished with a long, rickety table that supported a coffee urn, three boxes of sugar-glazed doughnuts, and a small stack of paper cups and plates next to a jumble of disposable utensils made from wood.

“When did you get out of jail?” Rya asked Fearless when we were all seated on folding chairs.

“Yesterday. Paris paid my fine.”

“So what kinda trouble you in then?” she asked me.

“Conrad Till,” I said, as blandly as I could manage. It was nice to see her disapproval turn into something wary.

She half rose from her squeaky chair and looked around for spies.

“What you got to do with that?”

“Conrad was a friend of a woman I need to find. His name came up when I was lookin’ for her, and then I heard he’d died.”

Fearless nodded, going along with my half-lie. He had a philosophy about lying. It’s okay as long as you ain’t hurtin’ nobody, he told me one drunken night. Matter’a fact a lotta times a lie is better’n the truth when the whole thing come out.

“I don’t know nuthin’ ’bout no foul-mouthed murdered man,” Rya said.

“You say he’s foul-mouthed,” I said. “But the evenin’ papers said that he never regained consciousness.”

“So they said. But you know you cain’t believe all that you read in no papers.”

“Did a lotta police come?”

“No. I mean there was cops in when they first brought him. But they left. Then that one officer, that Sergeant Latham come in. He went to talk to Till, and then, a little while later, Ginny Sidell found him dead.”

“They talked?” I asked, just to be sure.

“Conrad Till was awake and cussin’ two hours after they brought him in. That’s when Latham come.”

“What did Till die of?”

Rya looked away at a blank wall and said, “Heart failure.”

“He had a heart attack?”

She shrugged.

“That’s it? A man comes in shot and they say he had a heart attack?”

“Heart failure,” she said, correcting me. “That’s what always kill ya. That’s how we know. A truck could hit ya and your spleen be in your lap, but you still ain’t dead unless your heart stop.”

She looked at me with her walnut eyes. Fearless checked out the clock on the wall.

“Is somebody going to investigate the death?” I asked.

“Somebody who?”

“I mean, if everybody’s talking about it…”

“Everybody around here got a real job, Mr. Minton. Real jobs and apartments and mouths to feed. Conrad Till was just a year outta prison, an ex-con with a bullet in his chest, found after an anonymous call.”

Fearless didn’t have a job or an apartment or kids to feed. She wasn’t talking about him though.

“Thanks, Rya,” Fearless said. “We really appreciate it.”

“You better watch out where you stickin’ your nose, Mr. Jones,” Rya warned. “Some people might get you all caught up in somethin’ you can’t get out of wit’ a fine.”

Fearless laughed.

“Baby,” he said. “If I was to worry about me gettin’ pulled down under the trouble I see, I’d be in my bed from mornin’ to night. Man wanna kill me or put me in prison, he’s welcome to try it. But, you know, I draw from a deep well, deep as a muthahfuckah.”

It was the profanity that clued me in to how serious Fearless felt. He rarely cursed, almost never in front of women. But when he did, you knew that he meant business.

“YOU KNOW we killed him, Fearless,” I said on the drive back from Mercy. Blood was pacing impatiently in the backseat.

“Killed who?”

“Conrad Till.”

“How the hell you figure that?”

“He was hurting but not dying when we left him. It was the report from the hospital that brought Latham into it. He probably knew that Till was Leon’s buddy. And you better believe that he was the cause of Till’s demise.”

“Why you think?”

“I don’t know. Maybe the questioning got outta hand. Maybe there’s somethin’ we don’t know about Latham. I mean he’s a Hollywood cop, so what’s he doin’ down near Watts and East L.A.?”

“Man, Paris, you got us into a real mess here.”

“I didn’t get into no mess. Mess just fell right on top’a me. I was sittin’ in my store readin’ a book.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. But you could’a walked away. Could’a taken that five hundred dollars you used to pay my fine and started a new store somewhere.”

He was right. There I was bound up with murder and arson and even in trouble with a maybe crooked cop when I could have walked away. Could have but couldn’t anymore. I was no hero but I was stubborn, and, anyway, my five hundred dollars were gone.

“Fearless.”

“Yeah, Paris?”

“I’m sorry, man. Sorry I didn’t get you outta jail before you went in. Sorry I got you thinkin’ you gotta stay with me. I fucked up, man.”

Fearless stretched out his right hand while keeping his left on the wheel. I clasped it.

“You my friend, Paris. An’ this mess ain’t so bad. I was in a war eight thousand miles from home with white men talkin’ German in front’a me an’ white men talkin’ English at my back. They was all callin’ me nigger. They all wanted me dead. You know I wasn’t scared then, baby. This ain’t no more bad than a night with a girlfriend like to bite.”

THE CHARLES DINER was a night haunt. They didn’t have live music, but they had waitresses and drinks. The Charles was the place you went if you didn’t have the cover charge in your pocket. Fearless and I double-parked out front, and he ran in.

While waiting I tried to screw up the courage to do what I knew had to come next. I knew from experience that Fearless could be gone for a few days once he was off with a woman. He’d lose track of time, and how could I blame him? Ninety days was a long time to go without love, even for me.

I watched the blinking neon sign that lit up the old-time diner. The facade of the restaurant was made to look like a train car detailed in chrome. Now it was a place for the end of the night, when jukebox tunes would do. Thousands of people passed through those doors every week. Working people and gangsters, women looking for love or money and men looking to throw love or money away. You didn’t go to the Charles to see old friends; no, the Charles was where you went to seek out somebody who wanted to help you with your problem, somebody who wanted to give you something or take what you had to give.

“Hey, Paris.” Fearless opened the driver’s side and leaned in. “Dorthea got her own car an’ she don’t mind drivin’ it. So you take Layla’s, and I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon at Fanny’s.”

“You know Dorthea ain’t gonna let you go that quick.”

“Cross my heart, Paris. This is just for the night, baby. Tomorrow we got ground to cover.”

“Okay,” I said. “But take this dog anyway. Just in case you get stuck, I don’t want to have to take care’a no dog too.”

I eased in behind the wheel and we shook hands.

“You better take this,” I said, handing him four five-dollar bills and five ones. “Just in case you need somethin’.”

“Hey, Paris. Thanks, man.”

Fearless went around to the passenger door, opened it, and said, “Come on, boy.”

Blood jumped out with a quick bark.

I sat behind the wheel a few minutes after Fearless and his dog were gone, wondering if I would make it through the night without getting killed. A car behind me honked its horn, and I slid away from the curb, prodded by that unknown driver, into the night.