Fearless Jones

33

MILO WAS LEANING back in his chair with his fingers laced across his belly and a smile on his lips. He wasn’t on the phone or reading. He wasn’t doing a thing. I got the feeling that he was sitting there, being smug with himself, waiting for us to arrive and hear his glad song.

“Fearless. Paris. How you’all boys doin’?”

“I hope you don’t choke on that canary you swallowed,” I said.

“It’s more like a goose, son. The goose that lays the golden egg.”

“Where’s Loretta?” Fearless asked.

“I thought it was best if she took a few days off,” Milo said, his voice suggesting more.

“I’ll bite,” I said.

“I went to see Lawson and Widlow,” Milo admitted. “I took a business card that said my name was Brown. I told them that I had a client named Love who had found a bearer bond worth a few thousand dollars to the owner.”

I could see that Milo intended to earn his thirty-three percent.

“And what did they say?” I asked.

The bailbondsman sat forward. “At first they acted like they weren’t too concerned. But when I suggested shopping the bond around, they said that that wouldn’t be such a good idea. They let it drop that I could get in trouble if the wrong people found out about the bond. I said maybe I should go to the police. They offered me a finder’s fee right then and there.”

“How much?” Fearless asked.

“Five thousand dollars.”

“What then, Milo?” I wanted to know.

“I said some names then. Leon Douglas. Fanny and Sol Tannenbaum. I said that that wasn’t all, and I wanted some real money for my client or they was gonna be up to their elbows in J. Edgar.”

“So where’d you leave it?”

“I got a answerin’ service under the name’a Brown at a switchboard downtown. I gave Widlow the number and told him to call me inside of a day.”

“Have they called yet?”

“I was waitin’ for you’n Fearless to come ’fore I checked.” With that he picked up the receiver and dialed. He waited no more than the span of a ring and said, “Brown, sixteen-sixty-four.”

Milo looked up and started snapping his fingers at me. He made the motion of writing and pointed at Loretta’s desk. I ran over, finding a yellow pencil and an unused envelope. I brought these back to Milo’s desk.

“Hold on, hold on,” Milo was saying into the receiver. “I got to get a pencil. All right, go on. Yeah. Three-two-one? Oh. Uh-huh. Is that all? Well then I thank you.”

Milo frowned at the words he had written down, then he smiled and said, “They wanna meet us at their office tonight at eight-fifteen. They said that the security guard’ll meet us at the side door in the alley and let us upstairs. What do you think about that?”

“We ain’t got the bond,” I said.

“A sheer technicality, my boy,” Milo responded cheerfully. “If Lawson and Widlow are still looking, it means that your girlfriend hasn’t brought it to them yet.”

“The bond’s worthless,” I said. “Well, not worthless, but only worth the face value.”

“How would you know that?”

I related the improbable tale of two American Negroes and the Israeli secret service.

Milo wasn’t phased. “Well,” he said. “Lawson and Widlow don’t know that. We just jack up the price to ten or fifteen thousand and let them find out on their own.”

“Yeah,” Fearless added. “But we tell ’em that it ain’t no deal unless we sit down with Zimmerman.”

“Why complicate matters, Mr. Jones?” Milo asked. “Get the money and get out, that’s what I say.”

“Money ain’t everything, Milo.”

Milo tried to argue, but Fearless wouldn’t budge.

MILO GAVE Fearless a small .32-caliber pistol that he had taken as a payment from a man charged with distributing counterfeit bills. It was not the kind of weapon Fearless commonly used.

“I usually like somethin’ wit’ more bite,” he said. “But in a sitchiation like this, somethin’ small is even better.”

“Situation like what?” I asked. We were driving toward downtown. Fearless was testing different places to conceal his weapon. He tried his belt, the sleeve of his windbreaker, even in the elastic of his sock.

“Whenever a man tell ya he gonna meet you at the side door, you know he got somethin’ t’hide,” Fearless said. “An’ if he’s hidin’ one thing, then he might be hidin’ somethin’ else. An’ then you got to worry. Me, I don’t like to worry, so I just hide somethin’ myself.” With that he shoved the pistol in his pocket and shrugged.

“Well, you just keep that thing in your pocket, Mr. Jones,” Milo said from the backseat. “This here is just business. Plain and simple business.”

“Okay,” Fearless replied.

I remembered something that my uncle Lonnie used to say. Trouble with a friend who stand by you in time’a need is that you usually got to be in trouble to enjoy his company.

LAWSON AND WIDLOW’S OFFICE was in a six-story stone building on Wilshire. There was a big glass door and vines trained to cover the walls. The windows were large. Garish floodlights bathed the edifice so that it looked official and important on the otherwise dark street.

A big and brawny white man met us at the side door. His face was bland with smallish features. It wasn’t a face that I recognized, but still I thought that I’d seen him before.

“What, three?” he asked. “There’s only supposed to be one.”

His accent sounded European, but I was no expert. It was familiar, though I couldn’t remember where I’d heard the cadence before.

“These are my partners,” Milo said in an officious tone, as though he expected the stranger to hop out of the way. He was acting like a black man who had never experienced racism, who expected his due with no arguments or questions.

The white man didn’t like the idea of partners but finally decided that he couldn’t make us disappear.

“Come,” he said gruffly.

We followed him up three narrow and unlit flights of carpeted stairs. Everywhere was dark until we arrived on the fourth floor, where a light shone from behind a glass door at the end of the hall. Our chaperone opened the door and ushered us in with a gesture of his hand.

Fearless was the first one through the door, then Milo and me, followed by the big man. We all three had different reactions to what we found there.

Fearless swiveled his head around to get the lay of the land. Milo looked at the small suited man behind the desk and sputtered, “What’s this supposed to mean?”

I was proud that I didn’t let the fear I felt come out when I greeted our host.

“Hello, Mr. Minor,” I said. “I wondered when you’d show up again.”

The little man squinted at me. “Rome? No, Paris. You were at the Tannenbaum’s house, no?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Hey, brother,” Fearless said.

When I looked to my right to see who it was that Fearless was greeting, I felt a clenching spasm down in my bowels. Leon Douglas, his eye still puffy and his jaw swollen, stood next to another evil-looking black man. The stranger was taller by an inch and twenty pounds lighter than Leon. He wore a cowboy hat.

Both men glared at us.

“What is the meaning of this?” Milo said again. “Where’s Mr. Widlow?”

“Mr. Widlow suggested to me that the principals should work out the specifics of this transaction,” the little man said. “Sit down, gentlemen.”

Fearless grabbed the chair closest to Leon and his friend, who stood against the wall on our right. The big white man who let us in leaned against the door behind us.

Minor was seated at a vast maple desk that was empty of papers or books or anything else to distract the eye. All he had was a lamp with an opaque green glass shade. Mr. Minor/Zimmerman smiled and nodded.

“How is Sol?” he asked.

“Dead,” Fearless said.

“We have business, yes?” our host asked. Sol’s death was not even worth his notice.

“Who are you?” Milo asked.

“I am Zev Minor.” I would have never known it was a lie from his delivery. He was just a feeble uncle too old and weary to waste time trying to fool you. “And this is Mr. Christopher,” he said, gesturing to the man behind us.

Fearless had his head turned away from Minor. He was pretending to read the titles on a shelf of books. That way our back was covered.

“I think you already know Mr. Douglas. His friend’s name is Mr. Tricks.”

“Just Tricks,” the cowboy said.

“We represent Lawson and Widlow in this business about the bond.” The last three words betrayed the gravity of his interest.

It was then that I remembered where I had seen Mr. Christopher. He was the big man leaving the Messenger of the Divine storefront on the night I was so cold and sleepy.

“This is totally unacceptable,” Milo said, sputtering as he spoke. “I was to meet Mr. Widlow, and I expect to meet with him …”

Milo kept talking because he sensed danger. Words were Milo’s weapons, so he pulled them out. I wasn’t concerned about the bailbondsman or his fears, but when I looked over at Fearless, I saw that his hand had edged nearer to his gun pocket. Fearless was preparing to fight for his life. I could see that in his posture and the almost imperceptible furrow at the center of his brow. I wasn’t worried about Fearless though — if anybody could survive that kind of battle, he could, but the odds for me and Milo weren’t so good.

Under the fear of impending death and with the recognition of Christopher, who I would have bet was the Nazi Holderlin, everything else fell into place in my mind. I wondered if the nearness of death caused some chemical reaction in the brain that increased intelligence, as some scientists say that adrenaline increases physical strength in times of great stress.

I sat forward and said, “We know where Elana Love is at, and she has the bond.”

“Where?” Leon asked from the sidelines.

“My colleague has a good question, Mr. Minton,” Minor said.

“What’s it worth?” I asked.

The little man pressed out his lips and shrugged. “My patience is wearing thin, my friend. Sol Tannenbaum stole my money. It took me many years to get to this moment. Don’t press your luck.”

“You mean the art treasures you stole from the poor people that Mr. Christopher sent to the gas chamber?”

Mr. Christopher said something in German.

“What’d he say?” Leon demanded. “I told you muthahfuckahs I don’t want you talkin’ that shit around me.”

Fearless’s hand was at the opening of his pocket.

I felt my own pistol pressing into my stomach at the belt line.

I wanted to get us up on our feet and going through the door. That was a natural advantage that I was sure Fearless could capitalize on.

“We could take you to her,” I suggested to Minor, “but we’d have to get something for that.”

“Why bother, Paris?” Fearless said. “Go on, tell him.”

I turned to Fearless, speechless.

Fearless smiled.

“Tell him what the Israeli guys said.” Fearless leaned forward across the desk, reaching into his pocket as he did so. “Elana took the bond to these Israeli guys been lookin’ for you. She showed ’em the bond, and they found out that it wasn’t part’a the big money you lost.” Fearless nodded toward Leon and Tricks. “That means he don’t need you no more, Leon. If there ain’t no treasure, then there ain’t no cut. He’ll probably tell that fancy lawyer you got to cut you loose.”

“What’s he sayin’, Minor?” Leon said.

“It’s nothing. It’s a trick.”

“That cop, that Latham, he was workin’ for the Israelis,” Fearless went on. “He took Elana there before Grove called you. You know I ain’t lyin’.”

Minor’s eyes showed uncertainty. I remember thinking that Fearless had probably succeeded in getting us killed.

Mr. Christopher chose that unfortunate moment to practice his German.

“I told you to talk English,” Leon shouted. He pulled a pistol from under his shirt.

“Get down!” Fearless screamed.

He grabbed my chair, upturning it into Milo. We both tumbled over, shouting. Mr. Christopher shouted something else in German. One shot was fired. I was turned on my back, facing Minor, who stood erect like a soldier holding a pistol at arm’s length. He fired and I turned, expecting to see Fearless die.

He was already firing when the bullet entered his forehead. Then the tall and slender black man named Tricks fell straight down in a heap.

Fearless, was on my lips when I realized that it was the cowboy who’d gotten shot. Leon had pressed Mr. Christopher against the far wall and was just firing the bullet into that man’s temple. With terrible quickness he fired randomly in my direction. I didn’t know if he’d hit me or not, but Milo screamed out loud. Two more shots fired. I grabbed for my pistol, but I pulled it out with such force that it went flying out of my grasp into a far corner. Fearless was bleeding, but the baby gun was in his hand rapping out reports. Leon lowered his gun and got a strange look on his face. When he remembered that he was supposed to be shooting, the gun was already too heavy. He slumped down and expired, beaten for the second time in a row.

Suddenly I remembered Minor.

“Fearless! Watch out!” I yelled.

I stumbled up on top of the desk and then fell right on the corpse of the traitor. The shot from Tricks’s gun had found the mark.

“Shit!” Fearless shouted.

“I’m dyin’,” Milo moaned.

Both men were bleeding — Fearless from his left hand and Milo from his upper arm. I went to Milo and pulled off his jacket, then I ripped the shirt off his back. I wadded the shirt up and pressed it against the wound.

“Hold it tight,” I told him.

“I can’t,” he cried.

“You don’t and you’ll keep on bleedin’,” I said. “An’ you know there’s only so much you got to give.”

Milo grabbed the bandage, and I went to Fearless. He was holding a handkerchief on the wound of his left hand and searching the floor with his eyes.

“Damn!” Fearless cursed. “Damn!”

“What, man? What!” I cried.

“My goddamned baby finger,” Fearless said. “Muthahfuckah shot it off!”

“We got to go, man!”

“Not without my finger.”

“What?”

Fearless grabbed my shirt with his good hand and pulled me up close. “Wake up, Paris. That finger got my fingerprint on it.”

I took a deep breath, and in that forced semblance of calm I said, “You get Milo to the bottom of the stairs. I’ll find the finger and be down in a minute.”

Milo yelled in pain when Fearless helped him to his feet. They struggled over the four dead men, climbed through the door, and went shuffling and groaning down the hall.

I turned on the overhead light and searched the bloody scene. I looked all over the floor, under the desk, and even under the four corpses. I was in a kind of shock, sifting around. I got lost there among the dead. At one point I sat down on the floor next to Tricks. He had collapsed into a seated position, looking like a puppet waiting for someone to pull his string. I looked at him, wondering who he was and what had brought him to this final moment. Then I thought that if I was lucky, I’d read about it in tomorrow’s evening edition; if not, I’d find out at my trial.

Down on the floor, next to the man’s knee, was a finger, a curved little digit with a wad of bulging red flesh pressing out where the knuckle should have been. I picked it up and put it in my pocket. Then I got to my feet. I retrieved my discarded pistol and headed for the stairs.

As I walked from the room, Tricks fell over on his side.