Fear Itself

28

FEARLESS WAS EATING A CHILI BURGER at an outside counter by the time I made it to Rob’s. The whole place was crowded with late-night customers. There were cops and cabbies, prostitutes and short-straw runners from a dozen companies that drew lots on the graveyard shift to see who had to take the drive for their burgers.

Fearless was talking to two young women who were looking him up and down, hoping that Rob would put something like that on the menu. It broke their hearts when I came up and Fearless shooed them off.

“You late, Paris,” Fearless said. “I was gettin’ worried.”

“You should’a been. I got hit upside the head, hog-tied, kidnapped, threatened with a gun the size of a cannon, and questioned. I was in fear for my life.”

“Well,” my friend said dismissively. “I guess it didn’t turn out too bad.”

“I know it don’t seem like it,” I said. “Especially when it all ended up with me gettin’ paid another thousand dollars and promised yet another nine.”

“Damn, Paris. People just throwin’ money at you.”

“I don’t like it, Fearless.”

“Me neither, man. But we okay now. Ain’t nobody after either one of us.”

“What about Timmerman?”

“He probably dead by now. You know that brick hit him hard. Yeah. If he ain’t dead he’s outta play, that’s for sure.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe. But I’d like to know where all these players are before I can sleep comfortably in my bed. Did you find Maynard?”

“Yeah. I know where he’s at. We could pick him off when he’s goin’ out to work. ’Bout eight o’clock.”

“What we gonna do till then?”

Fearless nodded at an open-air counter across the parking lot from us. The two girls he had been talking to were standing there staring in our direction.

“Lisa and Joanelle,” Fearless said. “I told ’em about your medical condition.”

“What condition?”

“I told ’em I didn’t know the right doctor’s words for it, but down around where we were from they called it big-bone-itis.” He slapped my shoulder and laughed. “They said we could go over to their place. It’s just a few blocks from here.”

I glanced across the lot again. One of them was pear-shaped and the other skinny and short. But they were young and laughing. And I’d almost been killed two or three times already.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go.”

THE EVENING WENT DIFFERENTLY than I had supposed it would.

When we got to the girls’ apartment Fearless produced a pint bottle of blackberry brandy that he’d picked up somewhere. Joanelle, the pear-shaped, walnut-colored young woman, brought out a lump of ice with an ice pick. I chipped at the ice while Little Lisa, a name she answered to, cleared off a space on a traveling trunk that they used for a coffee table. They had paper cups for the brandy and potato chips for salt.

I was wondering how we were going to split up when Fearless said, “Paris, did I ever tell you about the time I crossed over into Germany with three white boys before our army invaded?”

“No,” I said, wondering why he was addressing me as if we were alone.

“It was late in the evening and the CO told us that he didn’t want to see us again until we had blowed up somebody’s bomber planes. I was search and destroy,” he added for the girls’ benefit. “Usually I went out by myself, but because they wanted us to put a dent in an air base they had near the border, they sent two demolition men wit’ us.”

“Who was the third man?” Joanelle asked.

I could see by her face that Fearless had her complete attention with his tale of derring-do.

“He was the radioman,” Fearless said. “If we came across something that we couldn’t attack properly, he was to call in for our bombers to take over. . . .”

The story went on for a long time. One of the demolition men had called Fearless a nigger before they went out. He told Fearless to stay away from him. But along the way the other two men were killed when they stumbled across a land mine. There were a few close calls and the surviving demolitionist was wounded in the leg. They found the secret air base, though, and Fearless was able to set the charges with the racist’s help. He also dragged the wounded man all the way back to Allied territory.

“Why didn’t you just let him die?” Little Lisa asked. She had her head on my lap but she kept awake for Fearless’s story.

“I saved him because of the uniform,” Fearless said. “He was my fellow American, and because’a that I had to save his butt.”

“Did he change his opinion?” I asked, as rapt in the tale as those young women.

“I have no idea,” Fearless said. “I dropped him off at the infirmary and never saw him again. You know he shouldn’ta said nothin’ bad about me in the first place. What you want? I got to save every redneck’s life in order for them to think I’m a man?”

Joanelle and Lisa had a thousand questions for Fearless. They’d never known a Negro who had autonomy in the war. Lisa pressed her head against my stomach and squeezed my hand. Joanelle had her head on Fearless’s shoulder.

When I woke up at dawn we were all pretty much in the same positions. The chipped ice was nearly melted and the blackberry liquor was gone.

For a moment I regretted the missed opportunity but then I remembered how friendly the night had been. I could have slept with Charlotta for a year and never had the warmth or closeness I had with those girls. I sat there for over an hour with Lisa’s hand between my thighs. I didn’t move to wake them until seven-fifteen.

The good-bye kisses and hugs were warm, and they made us promise to come back when we were through with our business so that we could have another good time.

I FOLLOWED FEARLESS back to Ambrosia’s house. We left my car in her garage and kept hers. I didn’t want to be too far away from our money or my book. Then we drove over to a big apartment house on Alameda near Vernon. After a few minutes a tall man came out of a green door on the side.

Fearless stepped out and called, “Hey, Maynard!”

You could tell by the way the man looked at us he was considering escape. Fearless had a small limp that might have given Latrell the edge. Still, he would have to stay away from his own door if he ran.

He put on a smile and waved.

“Hey, Fearless. What you doin’ here?”

“Lookin’ for you, my man. Me an’ my friend Paris here needed to know a thing or two.”

“Maybe this afternoon. I got to get to work right now,” Maynard said. He moved to walk away.

“Arthur North Construction let you slide fifteen minutes, brother,” Fearless said, still friendly.

Maynard shook his head and then he nodded.

“Okay. All right. What you need?”

Fearless had walked up to Maynard by then. He shook the man’s hand and guided him back to our car. He opened the passenger’s door for Maynard and then climbed into the backseat.

“Okay, Paris,” Fearless said. “There he is.”

“We were wondering about Kit Mitchell,” I said.

“You an’ everybody else,” Latrell replied.

“Everybody else?” Fearless said. “You didn’t say that anybody else had said nuthin’ when we talked.”

“That’s ’cause you talked to me five days ago. People been to see me ever since then.”

“Who else?” I asked.

“White guy said he was in insurance, black guy said that they were old friends, a colored girl said that he was her husband, and the cops. The cops dropped on me only about a hour after you, Fearless. You know they had me down at the station for three hours. For a while there I thought they was gonna keep me.”

“An’ you told ’em that I been askin’ about Kit?” Fearless asked in a too-neutral tone.

“Naw. Uh-uh. But when they asked me who knew Kit best I said it was you. Why not? I didn’t think you was in any mess.”

“What was the black guy’s name?” I asked.

“Brown.”

“Middle-sized guy?” I asked, thinking about my chess opponent at Miss Moore’s rooming house. “Looks young at first but then you see that he’s older?”

“That’s him.”

“What did he want?”

“He said that Kit owed him a thousand dollars, that I could have ten percent if I could tell him where Kit was.”

“Did you?”

“I don’t know where he is, man.”

“So what did you give this dude?” Fearless asked. “’Cause I know you would’a tried to get in on that coin.”

“I told him that Kit had that watermelon farm and that he made deliveries for that cosmetic line. That’s all I knew.”

“Not worth much,” I said. “No hundred dollars there.”

“He gimme twenty though,” Maynard admitted.

“For what?”

“I’ont know. He didn’t know what I told him. Maybe he might’a got to his man because’a what I said.”

“The man I saw didn’t have the kinda cash to be throwin’ twenty dollars at somebody don’t give him what he wants.”

“Well he did,” Maynard said.

“What else he give you?”

“Twenty dollars, like I said.”

“No,” I said. “Not money. He give you a way to get in touch with him.”

Maynard shook his head and looked away. He wasn’t a liar by nature and so found it hard to deny what he knew to be true.

I was sitting sidesaddle behind the wheel of Ambrosia Childress’s Chrysler. Fearless was a shadow on my right and Maynard Latrell was in front of me with the key to a room full of money like an ocean waiting to drown some unsuspecting fool.

You too smart for your own good, my mother used to say to me. You always askin’ questions and lookin’ for answers. You always actin’ innocent, but that won’t save a nosy nose or the curious cat.

“He give you a number,” I said in spite of my mother’s advice. “He told you how to get in touch with him.”

“No,” Maynard said.

“Yeah, he did. But don’t worry, Maynard, we ain’t gonna jump you for it. ’Cause you see, Kit don’t owe that Brown a thousand dollars.”

“He don’t?”

“No. If Brown find ’im he could get it. But so could me and Fearless. So I’ll give you a hundred and ten dollars right here, right now, for that number he give you and anything else you got.”

Maynard Latrell was a beautiful man. He had strong but not extreme features, bright eyes, and skin that almost glowed orange. His mouth curved into a smile, then a grin.

“Okay, men,” he said. “I got it up in my room.”

HIS STUDIO APARTMENT was on floor five of the gray building. There were gray carpets down the gray hall to his black door. The carpeting was the same in his one room but the walls had once been white. Now the dim green plaster was showing from under the thin coat of water-based paint.

The room was neat, though. The bed was up against the wall and covered with a printed yellow cloth. The pillows were set up like the bolsters of a couch. His chest of drawers had a bare top. And there was a chair next to a window that had a radio on its ledge. It was a room that a poor man could survive in, make plans in. One day, if the man was smart, he could move out of there and buy a small house with a backyard. He’d have to have a hard-working wife. They’d raise kids together, send them to college, and spend their twilight years happy in the knowledge that they’d made something out of nothing.

Maynard took two scraps of paper from the bottom drawer of the bureau. He held these in a clenched fist.

“Where the money?”

“You got ten dollars, Fearless?” I asked my friend.

He pulled out a fistful of ones and counted out the cash. I reached into my pocket and peeled five twenty-dollar bills off of the roll Bradford the secretary had given me. I was good at peeling off money from bills in my pocket. You learned to do that when you didn’t want people around you to know just how big your wad was.

I handed the money over and Maynard happily gave me the crumpled snippets.

I read both numbers and asked, “What’s this? Double vision?”

The numbers were University exchanges, both exactly the same.

“One was the girl,” Maynard said, “and the other was that guy Brown.”

“Girl called Leora Hartman?”

“Even if she is, I ain’t givin’ you no money back,” Maynard said.

“Let’s go, Fearless.”

After we were just a few steps down the hall I could hear Maynard whoop for joy.