Fear Itself

36

IT WAS CLOSE TO ELEVEN-THIRTY when we drove off in Ambrosia’s Chrysler.

“How’d you make it back here?” I asked Fearless.

“Drove Leora’s car. I told her uncle where I’d leave the keys. He said they’d come by and get it in the morning.”

Fearless was in a lighthearted mood. He told bad jokes and laughed at them too.

“What is it?” I asked him after three stories about the war.

“What?”

“Why are you so happy?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Mama really likes havin’ Rose in the house with her. Son’s a good kid and so’s Leora. You know I was worried there a while because I thought she had fooled me. But now I see that she really needed help and she wasn’t tryin’ to bring me grief.”

“That’s like you and me,” I said. “You my friend and you never mean to get me in trouble. But here I am, with you, in the crosshairs.”

This also made Fearless laugh.

“I’d tell ya I’m sorry, Paris. But you know I needed you in this one here.”

“Yeah.”

“Hey, Paris,” Fearless said. “Where’s that guy you always play chess wit’?”

“What guy?”

“You know that sneak thief so smart.”

“You mean Jackson Blue?”

“That’s him. You know they got him for takin’ money out the contribution basket at Second Avenue Baptist.”

“I think he’s in one’a Mofass’s illegal places on Hester,” I said.

“That yellah buildin’?”

“Uh-huh. What you want with Jackson Blue?”

“He the one got that camera equipment, right?”

“Yeah.”

“I wanna take some pictures of Mama and Miss Fine. Maybe Jackson lemme borrah his cameras. You know I can snap some shots. They had me doin’ that in the war too. Called it reconnaissance.”

“Man, all you need is a Brownie to take home pictures. You don’t need Jackson’s fancy jive. Anyway, that stuff he got might be stolen.”

“Might be?” Fearless joked. “Shoot. Naw, baby. I wanna take some high-quality pictures. Yes I do.”

***

WE GOT TO VICTORIA MOORE’S ROOMING HOUSE near midnight. The dining room was dark but there was a light on in the sitting room. Big, yellowy Melvin Conroy was sitting on the couch with a buxom girl who was less than half his age. They were talking while she had her hand on his knee. There was no love or romance in the young woman’s eyes, so I decided that they were working out the details of a business transaction. That didn’t bother me. He was getting on in age and obviously down on his luck. She was just trying to pay the rent, I imagined, and was probably supporting some child fathered by another man like Melvin.

“Hey, DeLois,” Fearless said as we entered.

The young woman took her hand off Conroy’s knee and lowered her eyes.

“Hi, Fearless,” she said. “You livin’ here?”

“No, uh-uh. Me and Paris got some things we need to do. You okay, honey?”

“Fine,” she said tentatively.

“Sure she’s okay,” Melvin said. “Why you wanna go and ask that?”

“I’m not talkin’ to you, big man,” Fearless said. “I’m just askin’ my friend a question.”

Melvin sized up my friend and understood immediately the implications of any loud protest.

While they regarded each other my eyes met with the young DeLois. The smile she had hidden from Melvin came out for me. She stood up from the couch and walked over to us.

“I was just gettin’ ready to leave,” she said.

Her brown skin shone and her eyes did too.

“Let’s walk her outside, Paris.”

Melvin’s shoulders got all tight but he didn’t say anything.

At the car DeLois told us that she lived some miles away. Fearless said that if she waited in the car we’d drive her home after we finished our business.

Melvin Conroy was gone from the sitting room when we returned. His door was closed when we passed it going down the back hall. We went up to the second floor and down to number twelve, the room Charlotta had told me was hers.

That door was open wide.

Brown was kneeling over the battered and bruised Charlotta.

“What the hell?” Fearless said, and I knew the trouble was about to begin. Fearless never cursed unless he was truly outraged.

He stalked into the room and Brown rose up in a crouch.

“Hold up, man,” Brown said.

But he was too late. Fearless threw a hard and fast right that the smaller Brown somehow avoided. He stood up to his full height, connecting with an uppercut that would have rendered anyone but Fearless unconscious. Fearless just moved with the blow and connected with a left hook against Brown’s jaw. That collision sounded like two stones being slammed together. Brown hit Fearless in the gut with both hands. I knew that they were hard punches because I heard Fearless grunt. But he didn’t slow down. He hit Brown twice, hard enough to send my chess partner staggering back a whole half step.

There were very few men who could stand toe to toe with Fearless Jones.

I looked down and saw that there was a large white-enameled pitcher filled with water next to the unconscious, or dead, Charlotta. I picked up the jug and splashed the two titans. Surprisingly this had the desired effect.

Both men turned toward me.

“It’s okay, Fearless. He’s tryin’ to help her. You too, Brown. We’re not here to hurt nobody.”

The men looked at me a moment. Then Brown went down on one knee. I was even more impressed that he had absorbed so much punishment without showing how badly he was hurt until the bout was called.

I closed the door.

Fearless and Brown knelt on either side of Charlotta.

“She come staggering in about forty-five minutes ago,” Brown was saying. “She said that a white man had beat her, and then she fainted. I brought her up here and tried to make her comfortable.”

“I need a first aid kit and some ice water,” Fearless said.

Brown was up and out of the door before I had taken the words in.

Fearless unbuttoned Charlotta’s blouse and took it off. He scanned her flesh, prodding here and there. I supposed that he was looking for wounds or deep bruises. It was odd looking at the body I had spent so much time with. There was no allure left, only tight little bruises and slack muscles.

“She gonna be all right?” I asked Fearless.

“Yeah,” he said. “I think so. Her head ain’t hurt except for some hard slaps, and these bruises ain’t deep. It’s just some arm punches. First she fainted, then she passed into sleep.”

Fearless pinched her cheek hard and Charlotta opened her eyes.

“What?” she said, and then she sat up.

She realized she was half-naked but that didn’t seem to bother her, at least not at first.

“Paris, what happened?”

“Brown said that you came in and said a white man beat you.”

She gasped with the memory. “Yeah. Yeah. Bastard beat me like a rug.”

“Who?”

“Some man left a message for me. I called him back and he said that he needed to talk about Kit.”

“Did you know him?” I asked.

“Uh-uh. He called Miss Moore and told her that he owned a restaurant that Kit had been in with his girlfriend and that he left somethin’ behind. He gave her his number and she give it to me. She was all mad, sayin’ that if I talked to Kit she wanted her twelve dollars.”

“And you called the man?”

“Yeah. I didn’t know what he was talkin’ about but I was, you know, curious.”

“And so he met you here?”

“Yeah.” Charlotta picked up her blouse and swaddled her breasts with it. “He met me out front at about ten. At first he was nice, but then when I didn’t know what he was talkin’ about he started beatin’ me.”

Charlotta began to cry.

“What did he want from you, baby?” I asked softly.

Brown came back with a blue pitcher and a drab green first aid kit.

Fearless went to work on the bruises of Charlotta’s lumpy face.

“He wanted to know if Kit had a old book and who was Kit workin’ with.”

“What did you tell him?” I asked for more than one reason.

“I don’t know nuthin’ ’bout no book or nobody he been workin’ with except for BB. I told him all that, and he beat me anyway and then threw me out the car. Ow!” This last was because Fearless was putting iodine on a cut above her left eye.

“Did he ask you where he could find Kit?”

“No.”

“What did he look like?” I asked.

“Like a white man,” she said as if that explained everything.

“Was he fat?”

“No. He was slender-like.”

“Ugly?”

“Plain.”

“What color hair?”

“It was nighttime, Paris. I didn’t see no color but white.”

“Was there anything strange about him?”

“He talked like a Mexican.”

“He had a Spanish accent?”

“Uh-huh. Yeah.”

“You gonna have two shiners by mornin’, girl,” Fearless told her.

“Oh Lord,” she said. “Why they always pickin’ on me?”

Fearless lifted her in his arms and then put her down on the bed. He took off her shoes and skirt, her stockings, and even took away the blouse she still had clutched to her chest. Then he covered her and ran his fingers over her head.

“You should take some’a this aspirin,” he said. “’Cause them bruises gonna hurt in the mornin’.”

Charlotta loved the attention she was getting. I think if they were alone she would have asked him to stay.

“Charlotta?” I said.

“Yeah, Paris?”

“Do you still have the number that man left?”

“No. It was in my bag. But I dropped that in his car.”

“What kinda car was it?”

“A red Ford.”