Fear Itself

42

I GOT TO THE PARK on Lucile Avenue at eight-fifteen. I like to be early to potentially clandestine meetings. That way I can scout out all the exits and escape routes before it’s too late.

There was a French café across the street. Instead of a name there was the picture of a fat chicken wearing a beret as the sign. I moved over toward an alley and took out a newspaper that I pretended to read while waiting for the private secretary to arrive.

I wasn’t worried about Bradford. He seemed like a good guy, a concerned employee. We were the same kind, he and I, thinkers. I would have bet that he was a reader. He was satisfied with his position in life. So was I.

At least I had been until people started talking about hundred-thousand-dollar books. At first I wanted the Fine family diary for myself, but as time had gone by I had begun to crave the money. I had never known a Negro who had a hundred thousand dollars before the day I met Winifred Fine. That kind of money could make a whole new life for me. Even if I had to share it with Fearless I’d still be rich. I could open a bookstore down by the ocean and have the two things I loved most in life: reading and the sea.

Bradford arrived at ten to nine. He wore a simple gray suit that had seen its day of wear. He looked around and then sat on a park bench perched at the edge of the grassy lawn and facing out across the street. Bradford was erect and expectant. He was my doorway to riches. He would know the identity of Maestro Wexler’s nemesis. Wexler’s enemy was mine because he was after the book that was going to make me a rich man. After dealing with him I could sell the book back to Oscar or, if he couldn’t make the grade, I could sell it to Maestro and he could close the deal with Winifred Fine directly. Either way I’d get paid for my services and the world of Theodore Timmerman would slowly fade from my mind.

At three minutes after nine I crossed the street to Bradford. Looking both ways many times before reaching the opposite side, I noticed the French café twice. The second view of the silhouetted chicken set off a bell in my head.

“Mr. Minton,” Bradford said, rising as I approached him.

“Mr. Bradford.” I stuck out my hand.

We shook and sat down side by side on the park bench.

There was the café again.

“So, Mr. Minton,” Bradford said. “You have information for me.”

“It’s a nice morning, isn’t it?” I said.

“Why yes,” he replied with a friendly smile.

I’m sure he thought that I wanted to impose some decorum on our meeting, when really I was stalling for time. The café disturbed me, though I had no idea why. I had never been on that street as far as I remembered. But still there was a vague apprehension.

“I like this spot,” Bradford continued. “It reminds me of my younger days in Paris, before the war.”

It was him saying my name, that’s what did it. My name, the capital of France, the country where people spoke French, where the term chicken would be translated poulet—or to the unenlightened, pull lay.

“You lived in Europe?” I asked.

“Yes. I was the assistant to Parnell Wexler, Maestro’s uncle, in the thirties. I had a small apartment on the Left Bank and walked down the Seine to work every morning.”

“I hear that the weather is terrible in Paris,” I said. “My friend Fearless spent six months there, on and off, after they threw out the Germans. He said that he didn’t see the sunshine again until he was back in the U.S.”

“It’s a glorious town,” Bradford said, the nostalgia in his voice deepening his Australian accent. “Beyond weather concerns. The art and architecture, the people and the language, are the very top of human potential.”

He was a white man and he had an accent. Maybe Charlotta didn’t know any accents but the ones that Mexicans had. Maybe the word Mexican meant accent to her.

“What’s your first name, Bradford? You know, if we’re going to be working together. We might as well be on a first-name basis. You can call me Paris.”

“Bradford is my first name, Paris,” he said easily. “Bradford Craighton.”

“Well, Brad, I can hear how much you love Paris, not me but the city,” I said. “Must be great now you’re goin’ back there in style.”

Bradford turned his head slowly, as if he really didn’t want to see what I had become there next to him.

“Come again?”

“You ever meet a guy named Timmerman?” I asked.

“Timmerman? What is his first name?”

“Theodore.”

“No. I don’t think so. Why do you ask?”

“Think hard, Brad. He’s the man that called you after he pulled your number off a man that he had just gave a heart attack. He didn’t know it, but he really wanted to speak to Maestro, but it was your number he called, your private line.”

“I, I, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Tall white guy, ugly, likes the color brown in his wardrobe,” I said, pretending to jog his memory. “You sent him off to look for a book.”

“What book is that?”

When he didn’t want more details about the murder I knew my suspicions were true.

“I don’t know what it’s about but it’s real old, over two hundred years. Winifred’s family prizes that one handwritten manuscript over all their other possessions.”

“I don’t know anything about what you’re saying,” Bradford said.

“Yes you do. I know it. You know it. So let’s stop playin’ and get down to brass tacks.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Does this have anything to do with Lance or Minna?”

“Late last night, after I talked to you, this Timmerman snatched me and my friend Fearless. When he had the upper hand he let it slip about the book and a fellah named Craighton that he met on a park bench in front of a French café. He even told us the time you guys met. Ten-thirty.”

“That’s ridiculous. Why would he tell you all that?”

“Because I’m not a brave man, Mr. Craighton. He asked me what I knew and I threw your name at him, hoping to save myself from a beating.”

“You say that he had the upper hand?”

“My friend is tough. Theodore let his guard down and Fearless laid him low.”

“Where is this Timmerman now?”

“They admitted him to the hospital this morning. Fearless busted his leg for sure. His jaw too.”

“Why was he after you?”

“He wanted me to bring him to Winifred Fine. I think he had something for her.”

“What, what was that?”

“That’s enough from me for the moment,” I said. “That’s all I got to say until I hear somethin’ from you.”

“I already told you,” Bradford Craighton said, sounding almost like an Englishman, “I don’t know this Theodore Timmerman.”

“You ain’t never gonna get that book lyin’ like that, man. If you want to stay in the game you got to share.”

“What do you mean?”

“I got some information. You got some too. We share, and then once we trust each other, maybe then we can make a money deal.”

Bradford must have loved Paris more than he loved life and liberty. Paris was whispering in his ear, sweating through his pores. He stared at me so hard maybe he saw his beloved city in my stead.

“Timmerman called me,” he said at last. “Like you said.”

“Uh-huh. But Kit called you first, right?”

“Yes.”

“He said that he had the book,” I prompted.

“Yes.”

“Come on, Bradford. Don’t make this be like the dentist’s chair.”

“Mr. Mitchell called and said that he had the book, like you said. He wanted, he wanted money. Money I didn’t have.”

“Now how does a colored farmer come up with the private number of the personal secretary of one of the richest men in L.A.?”

Bradford wasn’t about to answer that question, so I did myself.

“Because,” I said, “Lance and Minna told you about the book. They came to you to get to their father. You were the go-between. But Kit fucked you up. He took the book for Bartholomew Perry and then kept it. BB was too conceited and gave Kit so much information that he thought that he could go out on his own. He cut out BB and Lance and Minna. But what he didn’t know was that cuttin’ them out put a definite crimp on you retiring to France.”

“You seem to know everything already,” Bradford said.

“Not why your boy Timmerman killed the Wexler kids,” I said. “Did you tell him to do that?”

“Certainly not.”

“Then why?”

“Do you have the book, Mr. Minton?”

“I don’t say a thing until you explain these murders to me,” I replied.

“Why? Why do you need to know?”

“There’s a legal term, Brad. It’s called accessory after the fact. If I try and make money from a crime I know has happened, then they can put me in jail for that crime.”

Our eyes met then. Two men, one white and one black, one an Australian and the other almost an American. Both of us aging a day for every minute that passed.

“I asked Timmerman to search Mr. Mitchell’s apartment for the book. He did not find it. Then we had the meeting here on this bench. He told me that he had been searching for Bartholomew Perry. I told him that Mr. Perry probably had the book or at least he had knowledge of where the book could be found. . . .” Bradford’s words trailed off there. He had taken me up to the door and now he was afraid to go through.

“So you sent Timmerman after Lance and Minna to try and get through to BB. You thought that maybe they were going to go to Winifred directly.” It was all supposition by then. I just needed to keep him talking.

“I didn’t know that he was going to kill them. I didn’t know what kind of man he was,” Bradford said, practicing for the trial. “I just told him to get in touch with them, to offer to help and see what they said.”

“Instead he tortured them to find out what the book was worth and then killed ’em to cut down on the number of potential partners in the crime.” I was flying by then.

“Now you know what I do,” Bradford said. “Can you help get the book?”

“I believe I can, my man. I believe I can.”

“How?”

“I’m pretty sure that Timmerman got the book somewhere on the way. When Fearless knocked him down I got his address and the key to his door. Fearless is there right now, lookin’ for the book. When he gets it I might consider sellin’ it to you.”

“Why?” Craighton asked suspiciously. “You could go to Maestro or Miss Fine yourself.”

“Oh yeah,” I said. “I could tie the noose for the hangman too. No, no, brother. You find twenty-five thousand dollars and I’ll let you decide how to make money on the book.”

The light of hope was shining in Bradford Craighton’s eyes.

“That’s a lot of money,” he said.

“I bet you could pick it up in that pantry you paid me from,” I said. “Sell the book to whoever pays the most, return the loan, and fly off to gay Paree.”

“I’ll tell you the same thing I told Mitchell,” the private secretary said. “I can raise seventy-five hundred dollars. That’s all I can lay my hands on.”

“I’ll meet you halfway and take twelve thousand five hundred.”

“Mr. Minton,” Bradford said with great reserve. “I have what I said. Take it and you will be safe and quite a bit richer. . . . Or take your chances with Mr. Wexler and his thugs.”

I stayed silent for a long moment to make him think that I was considering the options he presented. I wanted him to believe I might leave him hanging.

“Okay,” I said. “All right. I’ll take the seventy-five hundred, but you got to promise to keep my name out of it.”

“You have my word.”

Words: from the Emancipation Proclamation to the names on the ballots every election day, they had a life of their own and precious little to do with the truth.