Fear Itself

10

“I AM WINIFRED FINE,” the woman standing in the doorway said.

She was almost my height (which is five foot eight) and slender, the color of twilight after a storm. She had been beautiful as a young woman. She was handsome today.

“Paris Minton,” I said.

I extended my hand and she turned her back on me, gliding into the large sitting room that Oscar had led me to.

This room was immaculate. The custard-colored walls, edged in dark wood, were twenty feet high. From the ceiling there hung a crystal-and-amber chandelier the like of which I’d never seen before or since. The light through the different crystals was both brilliant and warm. It seemed like a fireplace blazing from the ceiling.

“Have a seat, Mr. Minton.”

Along the walls there were several framed landscape paintings, hung all in a line. At the end of the room were full-length purple curtains. There was a large desk before them and then four red-and-blue-striped sofas that formed a square. I took a seat at the corner of one of the sofas. At the edge of the couch opposite me was a toy gyroscope, the kind that had a slender pump at the top with a bright red handle made from wood.

“A child?” I asked the lady.

“Yes,” she said with a happy smile that bordered on being a grin. “My grandson had been staying with me for a while. He’s away for a few nights with some friends on holiday.”

I wondered what kind of friends millionaire black women had.

Oscar took up a post at my side. I got the feeling that if I made any quick movements he would shoot me before I could be of any threat to the lady.

Winifred did not sit.

“Why are you here, Mr. Minton?”

“To get information.”

“But I thought you worked for Mr. Sweet? Certainly he told you all you need to know.”

“I like to do my own investigations,” I said.

“I don’t understand.” She inclined her head.

Winifred Fine was wearing a two-piece suit that was deep blue in color. When I had first seen her I thought that she was in her late forties. But seeing her figure under that thin material I figured that she was closer to sixty.

“I got questions,” I said.

“What questions?” Oscar asked me.

“Like for instance. Do you know a friend of BB’s called Hercules Wexler?”

The lady seemed unperturbed but Oscar straightened up a bit. His boss noticed this too.

“Who is he?” Oscar asked.

“Big white dude that BB’s been doin’ business with.” I figured they might have worked together, seeing that they were both in the used car business.

“Why do you bring this information to me?” Winifred asked. “Why not tell the man who employed you?”

“Milo is the excitable type, Miss Fine. When things get rough he goes all to pieces. He asked me to look for BB because I’m a little more levelheaded.”

“What do you mean, ‘when things get rough’?”

“Why are you looking for Bartholomew?”

“That is none of your business.”

“You’re right about that, ma’am. But I was sleepin’ in my bed this morning and suddenly I found myself all involved in your business. People started knockin’ on my door and talkin’ to me about your troubles. Some of them lied, others were just confused. One man even said that someone could get killed if he looked too deep into the whereabouts of BB or his friends. Two men have already disappeared.”

“What men?” Winifred asked.

“Kit Mitchell, for instance.”

That got the spinster’s attention.

“What about him?”

“That’s what I wanted to know from you. Seems like Kit and BB’s two peas in a pod.”

“What have you found out, Mr. Minton?” Winifred asked.

“I already told you just about everything I know,” I said. “Now it’s your turn.”

Winifred stole a glance at Oscar and then strode toward the great curtains. She went to a corner and pulled on a braided golden rope. The rope must have been connected to a weighted pulley, because the heavy drapes opened effortlessly. The twenty-foot windows revealed a sun-soaked garden I would never have suspected after seeing the desolate front yard.

Great pines and eucalyptus trees made the walls of Winifred’s private Eden, protecting pomegranate and loquat trees that bore fruit in the midst of golden and scarlet flowers. Birds flitted from bough to bough as a huge tiger-striped cat watched motionlessly from the base of a marble fountain. The fountain gave off a continual spray upon the nude figure carved from an onyxlike stone. The sculpture was of an obviously Negro woman. She had small breasts and a largish butt. With one hand she attempted to maintain her modesty and with the other she was reaching for some unknown goal far above.

I could feel myself become sexually aroused, but I wasn’t sure if it was because of the woman depicted or the wealth the garden represented.

“You like my garden, Mr. Minton?” Winifred asked me.

I realized that I had gotten to my feet and approached the window. Oscar was standing at my elbow.

“It’s beautiful,” I said.

“That woman was me,” she said proudly.

I could see it, mainly in the shape of the face.

“It’s surprising,” I said.

“That I was once young and beautiful?”

“That the front yard is in such a mess but back here is like a paradise.”

“The front of the house is my sister’s responsibility,” Winifred Fine said, rather petulantly for a woman of such power.

“About BB Perry,” I prodded.

“I saw you looking at the paintings along my walls,” she said instead of answering. “They are all by Edward Mitchell Bannister. Do you know his work?”

“I’m not really up on my painting,” I said. “I mean, I’ve seen a lot of them in art books but I don’t know the artists’ names as a rule, except the Postimpressionists. They’re so wild it’s easy to tell the difference in styles.”

“Bannister was a great landscape artist of the nineteenth century. He was a black man. The first truly great landscape artist that this country ever had.”

I’m a well-read individual. It’s unusual that I meet a man or woman who has gone through more books than I have. I’ve met English teachers who didn’t know as much about literature. But for all my stores of knowledge I’d never heard of Bannister before that day.

Winifred Fine saw that knowledge and wealth impressed me.

“Bartholomew is my nephew by blood,” she said. “His father, Esau, was my sister’s husband.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Esau is a fool, and his son takes after him.”

“So why do you want to talk to him?”

“I think he’s in trouble.”

“Why?”

Oscar cleared his throat. Winifred turned her gaze to him.

“Make me a chocolate malted, Oscar.” It was the last thing in the world I expected to hear from her.

“Yes ma’am.”

The butler, or whatever he was, turned and left.

When he had gone from the study Winifred said, “Oscar is very protective of me.”

“That’s a good quality in an employee.”

Winifred smiled and said, “He doesn’t like you.”

“He tell you that?”

“I can see it in his eyes.”

“You were going to tell me something while he was gone,” I suggested.

“Esau Perry is a fool. He’s a gifted mechanic. Anything made from moving parts he can fix. He knows watches and steam engines, cotton gins and hydraulic lifts. But put a deck of cards in his hand, a woman on his lap, or a bottle anywhere within reach and he loses his mind.”

I was enjoying the way the tall old maid put together sentences. You could tell by her grasp of the language that she was formidable and in control.

“So what?” I asked.

Winifred’s stormy eyes washed over me. Then for a moment the squall subsided.

“Bartholomew is just like his father. Good under the hood but a mess out in the street. He’d be in jail today if I hadn’t helped out. Now I think it was a mistake. Maybe he would have done better in prison.”

“No ma’am,” I said.

Lance Wexler was dubbed with a demigod’s name, but Winifred Fine held herself like a real deity. Her high cheekbones and sleek face seemed to bring her eyes to the great heights of heaven. She considered me and then nodded; maybe I knew more about the pedestrian doings of the world.

“Whatever you say, Mr. Minton. All I know is that Bartholomew has done something that could be very embarrassing to this family. And I want to talk to him before the damage becomes irreversible.”

“What damage?”

“That is none of your concern.”

“It is if it’s illegal and I’m out there up to my neck in it.”

“Who said anything about illegal?” she asked.

“Nobody,” I said. “But you got all the elements there. Foolish men around wild women, gamblin’, liquor, and cars.”

Winifred smiled. It was a wonderful thing. Beautiful. She opened her mouth, showed two rows of almost perfect teeth (one on the bottom was missing), and said, “Go to the desk, Mr. Minton, and open the top right drawer. There’s a brown envelope there. Take it and go find Bartholomew for me.”

The desk was made from some knotty, light-hued wood. The shallow drawer slid open with ease. There were three items inside: an antique dagger with a seven-inch blade, a new Luger pistol, and a light caramel-colored and sealed envelope that was stuffed with some sort of paper.

“What is this?” I asked.

“A small sum,” she said. “For your services.”

“I didn’t come here looking for a job.”

“If you are working for Mr. Sweet I want you to remember who the real client is. If you find out anything, a personal report to me will earn you another such envelope.”

I shoved the fat letter into my front pocket.

“Uh-huh. One more question, Miss Fine.”

She sighed deeply and asked, “Yes?”

“Kit Mitchell.”

“What about him?”

“Do you know him?”

“He did some mechanical work for us a while back, two or three months ago, I think. Bartholomew had suggested him.”

“You seemed to be upset when I mentioned his name.”

“He wasn’t a very good worker,” she replied coolly. “I should have known better than to take a recommendation from Bartholomew.”

I didn’t believe a word of what she said, but Winifred L. Fine wasn’t the kind of woman you called a liar. Her breeding prohibited any such intimacy.

“Does Bartholomew’s problem have anything to do with Kit?”

“No,” she said with all the finality of Creation. “Go now, Mr. Minton. Come back when you have knowledge of my nephew.”

“Can I get a phone number?”

She pointed with her baby finger to a small stack of cards on the lower left corner of the desk. The card had two lines. The first one read W.L.F. and the second one had her number.

“You can show yourself out,” she said.

“What about Oscar?”

“What about him?”

“Isn’t he going to bring your malted?”

“I’m allergic to milk products,” she said. Then she turned her back on me and stared out upon the stone image of her younger, more vulnerable self.