Fear Itself

29

WE CALLED FEARLESS’S MOTHER’S HOUSE from a phone booth on the street. I told Milo to make sure that Loretta and her parents went up to visit their farmer relatives in Bakersfield—immediately. I wasn’t worried about him taking my warning lightly. Loretta was the only person he loved in life. He might not have ever said anything, or even have bought her a present at Christmas, but Milo would have laid down his life to protect that woman.

The next thing I did was to call the Leora Hartman/Brown phone number.

“Hello?” a proper Negro voice queried.

“That you, Oscar?” I asked, trying to mask my surprise.

“To whom am I speaking?” he asked in return.

“It’s Mr. Minton speaking. I, um, I wanted to speak to Miss Fine.”

“Where did you get this number?” he asked suspiciously.

“This is the number I got, man. Something wrong?”

“This is my private line, not the house phone.”

“What can I tell you, Oscar my man?”

Oscar paused long enough for a machination. Then he said, “She’s still dressing, Mr. Minton. I’ll see if she will return your call later.”

“Don’t bother. Just tell her that I’ll be by in an hour or so. I have some reporting to do.”

“I’m not sure if she’ll be here. She said that she was going to do some shopping.”

“Tell her that I have some hot news for her. She’ll stick around for that.”

“If you have something to tell her, I will be happy to pass it on.”

I thought about Bradford, about how he was willing to filter the truth to and from his employer.

“No thanks, man. I better report to the one that’s payin’ me.”

“I can’t promise that she’ll be here when you come.”

“Just promise that you’ll tell her what I said and we’re jake.” On that note I hung up the phone.

“Who was that?” Fearless asked.

“You in this with me now, aren’t you, Fearless?”

“Yeah, Paris. You know it, man. You my boy.”

“There’s money here,” I said. “Mr. Wexler plus BB is twenty thousand right there. Now Miss Fine might even be more than that. But I don’t like all these other people involved.”

“People come and go, Paris. They come and go. But you’n me be right here, baby. Don’t you worry ’bout that.”

His certainty almost made me confident.

I felt bad about the Wexler murders. Life is a precious thing. But they were dead and I didn’t know why. Maybe, if I found out what Kit had done to Miss Fine, I could solve the crime and retire too.

THE GATE TO THE FINE RESIDENCE was open when we got there. Oscar was waiting at the door by the time we reached the desolate front yard.

“Mr. Minton,” he said. “Miss Fine is waiting for you in the study.”

“Bring us to her,” I said in a confident voice.

“Your friend will have to stay here,” he informed me.

“The hell he will.”

“Miss Fine is only expecting you.”

Rose Fine, wearing a white satin gown and elbow-length black gloves, peeked around a corner down the hall from us. She snorted, then giggled and disappeared behind a pile of bound files.

“You tell Miss Fine that I’m here with my fellow investigator—Fearless Jones. If she wants to hear what I have to say, then she will have to talk to both of us.”

Oscar was stuck. I had called him on his personal phone. He knew something was wrong and whatever it was it was bad news for him. If it was his house he would have ushered us out of the door and gone to hide under the bed.

But it wasn’t his house.

He turned and walked through a scuffed-up lime-colored door. When he was gone Rose Fine poked her head out again.

“Hello, Miss Fine,” I said.

“Do I know you gentlemen?” she asked me.

“Sure you do. Don’t you remember? I sat on the wood bench and you took the barber’s chair. Oscar got you a shot of whiskey.”M

“He wasn’t here, though,” she said, referring to Fearless.

“This is my friend. His name is Fearless. We’re doing something for your sister.”

“What?”

“Lookin’ for a boy name of Bartholomew.”

“Perry?”

“That’s him. You know him?”

“Him and father—Esau. Bad relations is what I calls ’em. Definitely the colored side of the family.”

“You don’t like ’em?”

“They family so I have to put up with ’em on Christmas and Easter, but other than them days I wouldn’t let them into my outhouse.”

I liked her candor even if she was mad.

“What about a young woman named Leora Hartman?”

“Leora,” Rose said. She grinned, showing us that she’d lost more teeth than she’d kept. “She’s a feather bed in God’s sanctuary.”

“You know her?”

“Know her? She’s my little girl. My baby.”

“Your daughter?” I asked, surprised and a little confounded.

If Leora belonged to Rose, then the connection to the house was even stronger than it had seemed. Maybe I should have spent a little more time talking to the demure colored woman.

Rose didn’t have many teeth but her hearing was better than mine. She made an unpleasant sound in her throat and darted back down the hall she’d come from. Two seconds after that the scuffed lime door came open.

“Miss Fine will see you both,” Oscar informed us.

“Lead on, my man.”

THE CURTAINS WERE already open when we entered Winifred Lucia Fine’s study. Her nude image in the fountain was still attempting the impossible. My heart still skipped at the beauty.

It struck me that Maestro Wexler’s home was much more opulent but somehow the beauty had gotten lost in all the majesty of his residence.

“Fearless Jones,” my friend said, approaching the matriarch and holding out his hand.

I could see that she didn’t want to shake, but the pressure of his friendliness got to her and she gave up a weak squeeze.

“Winifred Fine,” she said.

“I had a aunt named Winfred,” Fearless said. “She lived in Mississippi in a little cabin off’a the Tickle River. Whenever anybody in my family got in trouble they’d go and hide at Aunt Winfred’s. The house was built on a overhang and you could stay up under there catchin’ and fryin’ catfish until the law gave up and you could move on. She’d still be there except for a flood in ’forty-eight. Now she’s up around St. Louis. She still gotta basement to hide in, the fishin’s not too good though.”

“My name is Winifred, not Winfred,” Miss Fine said.

“She’s a good woman,” Fearless agreed.

“I need to ask you some questions, Miss Fine,” I interjected.

“About what?”

“Me and Fearless found your nephew.”

“Where is he?”

“You got to answer my questions first.”

“Did I not pay you, sir?” she asked, using elocution that she probably learned at the same black college that her niece, Leora, attended.

“Question is, did you pay me to walk down the stairs or jump out the window?”

“What is all this?” she asked, waving both hands at the sides of her head. “River hideouts. Jumping out of windows.”

“Fearless here is a rough customer, Miss Fine,” I said. “He’s a nice guy and fair but he’s known around Watts as one of the two or three most dangerous men in the entire city.”

“Are you trying to threaten me?”

“No ma’am. And it wouldn’t matter even if I was, because Fearless would not hurt a woman no matter what I said. But when we broke in on your nephew, Fearless told him that he better act right or he might get hurt. BB was scared.”

“I can imagine,” Winifred said.

“That’s right, ma’am. He was afraid of Fearless, but then, when we mentioned your name, he threw down and swung on Fearless like he was Sugar Ray Robinson up against a tomato can. Fearless had to knock your nephew out. Not only that. When he came to he begged us not to turn him over to you.”

“I’ve already paid you.”

“Not to bring a man to the slaughter.”

“That’s ridiculous. I would not harm my nephew.”

“Somebody’s been out there harmin’ people,” Fearless said. “Harmin’ up a storm.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Can we go out in your garden, Miss Fine?” I asked. “I mean, I like your room here, but I want to make sure that there aren’t any ears to catch me in my report.”

She cut her eyes at the far door and then toward the book- case.

“Yes,” she said. “That might be a good idea.”

THE AIR IN HER GARDEN smelled richer than your everyday atmosphere. Big monarch butterflies and half a dozen other varieties wafted above our heads. There were two stone benches at the far side of the fountain. Miss Fine sat down and Fearless and I parked ourselves on either side of her.

“What do you have to say, Mr. Minton?”

“Do you know a man named Maestro Wexler?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. At first her expression was neutral, almost bland. But then a stitch of anxiety showed through.

“Do you have any business dealings with Wexler?”

“No. I mean . . . I don’t have any dealings with him but . . .”

“But what?”

“Five years ago I began buying up corner lots in Compton, through a company owned by my cosmetics corporation. That way the people I bought from thought that I was the same color as the lawyer who brokered the purchases.”

“And now Wexler wants those lots?”

“He wants to put in gas stations. He has a big contract for stations in Compton.”

“You can’t own all the corners of the whole town.”

“I own enough to compete with him. I could put in forty or fifty stations myself.”

Forty or fifty. I could see why Milo salivated whenever he spoke her name.

“You refused to sell?”

“I offered to go into business with him but he was too greedy. I decided to hold on to my property. Why not? I don’t need him.”

“Have you heard from him lately?”

“No. What is this about?”

“Two of his children have been murdered.”

“Oh my God. That’s terrible.”

She seemed actually horrified. And I didn’t believe that a woman of her caliber would put on an act for people like Fearless and me.

“Didn’t you hear about it on the news?” I asked.

“I don’t listen to the radio. Nor do I watch television.”

“What about the papers?”

“I have Oscar read to me those stories that are salient to our concerns.”

She was like a child. Completely cut off from the world, so that all that was important was her needs and her desires. In her world me and mine had never drawn a breath. The drama and tragedy of everyday people was invisible to her. In a way she was like Maestro Wexler sitting on his throne. I could see where money affected both of them more than race. It was the first time I had ever actually witnessed the power of money and class in forming character.

“I think his children’s deaths have to do with something they were hatching up with BB,” I said. “Him and Kit Mitchell.”

Winifred had a poker face that could have broken the confidence of the most seasoned dealer. She might have been isolated but she knew how to play the game.

“I don’t see what you mean, Mr. Minton.”

“BB offered us ten thousand dollars to find Kit. He put a thousand down on that offer. Maestro offered me ten thousand to find BB. He also plunked down a grand. You already gave me near a thousand in five-dollar bills. That’s three thousand that two poor black men have collected, and we haven’t done a thing but ask questions and survive the answers.”

“You want more money,” Winifred Fine said.

“A white man says his name is Theodore Timmerman open fire on me and Fearless two mornings ago. All we did was call his name. He was willing to kill us and all he wanted to know was your identity.”

“Me?”

“Yes ma’am,” I said.

“And he was shooting at you?”

“Like it was the Fourth of July,” Fearless said.

I glanced at my friend then. It was an unspoken rule we had that he would stay quiet when I was asking questions. He never understood the verbal nuances of complex discussions. I wondered why he wanted to be a part of our talk.

“What did he want with me?” Winifred asked.

“Milo sent him out lookin’ for the man BB was workin’ with. You know—Kit Mitchell. Somewhere out there he found out that he could make more money on his own. It’s my bet that he figured the money would come from you but he didn’t know your name. Fearless and me was just crows in the road.”

“I, I, I’m sorry,” she said.

“Sorry’s all good and well,” I replied. “But what I would like to know is what’s goin’ on?”

Miss Fine stood up. She walked toward a large rosebush until her face was in among the leaves.

She said something that only the flowers heard.

“What?” I asked.

“It was just a piece of colored crystal,” she said, turning back to us. “Green. An emerald surrounded by white sapphires. Have you ever seen a white sapphire, Mr. Minton?”

“I can’t say that I have.”

“They look like diamonds only the glow is softer. They’re beautiful. In the old days they used to give them for weddings. It meant good fortune and a happy life. My father got me a necklace with a single emerald surrounded by those sapphires.”

“He must’a been rich as you,” Fearless said.

“No. Not really. He had a farm. It was pretty large. But he sold a quarter of his acreage when he saw that pendant in a New Orleans jewelry store window.” Winifred was far away in a dream of days gone by. “He loved me and he was superstitious too. He believed that if he made a sacrifice and gave me that gift that I would have a blessed life. He never saw that the real blessing was his love.”

“So BB stole your father’s dowry?”

“He got Oscar to hire this Kit Mitchell. Mr. Mitchell worked for three weeks and then he left—at our request. A few days after that, Oscar realized that the pendant was missing.”

“And so,” I said, “they intended to use that to make you give up on the property.”

“I can’t see how,” she said. “I loved my father, not that piece of crystal. It’s worth no more than ten or twelve thousand dollars. Maybe because BB knew the story he thought that I would be swayed. But I can assure you that nothing would make me give up on my Compton properties.”

“Do you know a man named Brown?” I asked then.

“What is his first name?”

“I don’t know. He calls himself Brown, and when he wanted someone to call him he gave out Oscar’s number.”

“Maybe he worked here,” she said. “I wouldn’t know.”

“How about Oscar? Would he know?”

“Ask him.”

“Why are you looking for your nephew?” It was my last attempt to decipher this straight-faced woman.

“When I found out that Bartholomew had suggested this Kit Mitchell for the job, I assumed that he would know where to find my necklace. That’s why I need to talk to Bartholomew, to tell him to have my property returned.”

“How would BB know where you kept the necklace?”

“He and my niece, Leora, used to play with it when they were children. They both knew where all my jewelry was.”

“So what you want is the necklace and not your nephew at all.”

“That’s right. But I want to speak to Bartholomew, to tell him that I no longer consider him a member of our family.”

“Uh-huh. So if me and Fearless get the necklace and make it so you have your chat with BB, then we’re clear?”

“Certainly, Mr. Minton.”

“BB seemed to think that you would be willing to commit violence against him if he didn’t return your property,” I said as a primer for further discussion.

“That is ridiculous,” Winifred L. Fine said. “Violence is the last resort of the desperate.”

“Okay,” I said. “Let us go out there and see what we can see.”

I touched Fearless’s arm to indicate that it was time for our departure.

“One more thing,” Winifred Fine said. “What about the man who shot at you? Is he still after me?”

“Don’t you worry about him, ma’am,” Fearless said. “He came down with a chest cold and now he’s laid up for the season.”