Fearless Jones

32

“THAT SOUNDS pretty okay, huh, Paris?” Fearless said on our way down the block to our car.

“What?”

“Thirty thousand. Even split three ways you could still start a new bookstore with that kinda scratch.”

“That was just talk, Fearless. We don’t know where the money is. And what the fuck were you doin’ in there anyways?”

“Pushin ’em a little,” Fearless said almost innocently. “Pushin ’em to work with us on this thing.”

“Why you after Zimmerman? You don’t know him. You ain’t even ever met him.”

“It’s Zimmerman had Sol killed.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes I do, Paris. And he gonna pay.”

“Pay how?”

“With blood and money, his freedom or his life,” Fearless said.

“And what’s all this stuff about money?”

“It ain’t about money, it’s about the man who destroyed Fanny and Sol.”

“Morris killed Fanny.”

“’Cause Zimmerman drove him crazy.”

“What does that have to do with you tellin’ them spies up there that we know where the money is? Now they gonna be after us.”

“Not after I told ’em I lied,” Fearless said.

“And what if they don’t believe you?”

“You give ’em the note that Morris wrote and say you sorry.”

HALF AN HOUR LATER we cruised past Gella’s home. Three black-and-white police cruisers were parked out front.

“I guess they must’a found Morris,” I said.

“She must be hurtin’ over that,” Fearless said. “That was the last family she had in life.” There was an indictment in his tone.

“And how would me draggin’ her upstairs to see his corpse make it hurt any less?”

“You could have comforted her, Paris.”

“No, no. That’s you, Mr. Jones. You the one talk to corpses and kiss married women under their husbands’ noses. It’s you who walks into a room full’a spies and puts our lives on the line. Me, I just hold tight and try not to get washed overboard.”

Fearless’s response to my tirade was to light up a cigarette. “Where to now?” he asked half a Camel later.

“Milo might have something, but he could wait. There’s one thing in all this that don’t fit,” I said. “It might be a long shot, but then again, maybe not.”

I drove back to south L.A., back to a nameless alley off of Slauson. It was mostly backyards and trash cans in that alley, but there was one doorway that led to a flight of rickety unpainted stairs. At the top of those stairs was a hallway of apartments. The front of the building, on Avalon, was condemned, but the landlord, a man named Mofass, let the units illegally for fifteen dollars a month.

Theodore Wally had lived in number three since his mother died six years earlier. I knew that because I had a girlfriend who used to live there until she got TB and went back to Lake Charles.

Wally took a long time to let us in. We heard him scurrying around in there. When he opened the door, he had on pants and nothing else. His yellow chest was almost concave, and the hickey on his neck was so purple that it might have bled. I imagined some fat girl pinning him down with her girth while sucking mercilessly on his neck.

“Mr. Minton,” he said, near tears it seemed. “Fearless. What can I do for you?”

“Let us in, Wally,” I said.

“I-I-It’s n-n-not really a good t-t-time for me,” he stuttered. “The house is a mess and… and… and I got a cold. I promised my uncle that I’d help him move.”

“Move it, man,” I said.

Theodore made room, and we came into his wreck of a home. His once-upholstered sofa showed its cotton stuffing and at least one spring. The wood floor was uncovered, unpainted, and un-swept. There was a console radio against the wall and a boarded-up window that allowed a few shafts of sunlight to poke through. The room was longer than it was wide, and it wasn’t that long. There were two chairs and a table with a hot plate and various dirty dishes thereupon. But there was also a tall glass vase holding three long-stemmed white roses that were as big as apples and lovelier than summer clouds. They released an odd but still sweet odor that seemed familiar but not like roses.

“What you want, Mr. Minton?”

“Call me Paris,” I said.

“Okay.”

“Call me Paris.”

“Okay… Paris.”

“Now talk to me about my store,” I said.

“What you mean?” The clerk hunched up one shoulder and listed to that side. He smiled like a fool who couldn’t possibly know anything. But that act wasn’t going to work on me.

Fearless strolled over to one of the chairs and sat down. The movement seemed to alarm Wally.

“What you talkin’ ’bout Mr. — I mean, Paris?”

“I mean that dude beat on me didn’t burn down my store. He said he didn’t, and he had no reason to lie. So somebody else must’a did it.”

“I don’t know who did it,” Wally claimed.

“Now that’s a lie.”

He was trembling there in front of us, looking around as if he expected some accomplice to jump out and save his life. But no one jumped, and we were still there.

Wally belched loudly. His face contorted with nausea.

“Why you quit that market?” I asked.

Theodore tried to look me in the eye, but he couldn’t. He struggled against tears and was mostly successful.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. And then, when he’d gained more of a mastery over his tears, “I’m sorry,” in a surer tone.

“That’s okay, man,” I said. “That’s okay. Just tell me what you know. ’Cause you know I plan to get my due.”

Theodore Wally was as scared a man as I had ever seen. He was trembling, near tears and full of gas, but still he managed to maintain the semblance of a man standing his ground. I couldn’t understand why he was so afraid.

“I’m sorry I burned down your bookstore, Paris,” he said.

“What! You?”

“He told me to, and I did it ’cause I always did what he said. Mr. Antonio was like my father, you know. I been with him fourteen years, since I was a kid.”

“You did it?”

“I told him about the man, the man who hit you. I told him that I saw you drive off, and then I saw that man go after you in his car with bull horns. He said to wait till late, an’ if you didn’t come back to burn down your store. He paid me, but I couldn’t stand it, so I quit. He gave me eight hundred dollars. But you can have it, Mr. Minton.” With that he fell on his knees and reached under the sofa, coming out with a manila envelope. He ripped the paper pouch open and grabbed at the tens and twenties as they fell. He went down on his knees again, gathering the money up. When he had gotten it in two fistfuls, he held them up to me and said, “Take it. Please take it and forgive me.”

“Damn,” Fearless said.

I knew what he was thinking, that I had gotten into more trouble in one day than he had in a lifetime. It made me mad, so mad that I slapped the clerk with the back of my hand.

It wasn’t a hard slap, but it caused Theodore to bleed from the corner of his mouth.

“Take it,” he said again.

“How could you do that to me, man?”

“He told me that you’d get the insurance. He said that his lease was up and that he needed to buy the lot next door or he was gonna go outta business. He said you’d get the insurance and that nobody’d get hurt if you was gone. It wasn’t until after that I found out you didn’t have any insurance.”

“Even if I did, where was I gonna get more books? Where was I gonna have a new store if the one I had burned down?”

“He used to send my momma groceries when she was sick,” Wally said. “He said it was all gonna be okay. Just take the money. Take it please.”

I slapped him again.

Fearless was shaking his head.

I hit Wally with my fist, and he fell down upon his knees. The money went every which way. He crawled among the bills gathering and bleeding on them at the same time.

“Why you think I’m in all this shit? Huh? Why you think I’m out here riskin’ my life? It’s ’cause you burned down my store. If I’d’a come home to my place, I would’a let it drop. I would’a let Fearless outta jail and give him a place to stay till everything was okay.”

Theodore wasn’t listening. All he did was grab at the money, weeping blood.

There was an iron crowbar in the corner, next to the window. I picked it up.

“You the one messed up my life!” I yelled.

I didn’t even feel my arm rising above my head. I had no idea I was swinging the crowbar until something stopped the sweep of my arm.

“Paris,” Fearless said. His powerful grip had stayed the execution.

“What?”

“Take the money, man.”

Theodore had gathered the cash again. He clutched it in both hands. I couldn’t take it, so Fearless collected it for me.

While he was straightening out the bills I asked, “How much did you say it is?”

“Eight hundred dollars,” Wally said, “near about.”

“To burn down my life?”

“I’m sorry.”

“I bet ya he paid you more than that,” I said. “’Cause you had to pay somethin’ for them flowers and that monkey bite.”

“I got them from my girlfriend,” he said, finding some backbone. “She kiss me for nuthin’ and tried to make my house like a home.”

By then there was the ice of murder in my veins. Not murder that I wanted to commit, but the murder I had almost done. I had almost killed Theodore, and that frightened me. I never believed it when people said that they lost control, that they blacked out like Morris said and killed without volition. Until that very moment I believed that a man made his own decisions, that the excuse of passion was just a lawyer’s lie.

I WAS TOO worked up to drive, so Fearless took the wheel. He cruised down Slauson, keeping quiet while I fumed.

After a few blocks I said, “Damn. Damn.”

“He couldn’t help it, Paris. You know Antonio been good to him. He probably never even read a book.”

“What difference does that make?”

“He didn’t know what he was burnin’, man.”

“Let’s go see Milo,” I said to my friend. “Maybe he got somethin’ for us.”

“Whatever you say, Paris.”