Fear of the Dark

Chapter 36

It was evening before we arrived at 1329 Hugo Place. The address sounded as if it belonged on a small house like Sterling’s cottage. But this was a mansion. There was an eight-foot salmon pink adobe wall around the property and wrought-iron gates blocking pedestrian and vehicular passage.

There was a button for a buzzer to the right of the gateway.

“Okay, Fearless,” I said. “What do you say? Do we knock or not?”

“They got your people in there, man,” Fearless said. Then he tried the pedestrian gate — it wasn’t locked.

A hundred feet from the entrance stood the house.

It was a big house, three floors in places. There were no lights on, no cars in the driveway.

My heart was pounding like John Henry’s hammer, and I worried about a heart attack. Maybe I’d die like Sterling had, from fear. Even Fearless couldn’t protect me from my own heart.

The moon was bright enough to light our way and expose us to invisible assassins. Every footstep we took on the gravel path was like a giant maraca announcing us to our enemies.

“There’s a way round back,” Fearless hissed.

I went with him from the lunar shade of a large stand of bird-of-paradise to the shadow of the house.

Behind the house stood a smaller, two-story building. There was a faint light coming from a few of its many windows.

We made our way to the front door, which was locked, and then around the sides, looking into windows as we went.

There was one window near the ground that was to the basement. There was a slightly stronger light coming from there. I peered into that portal, down into a room that was at least twenty feet below. There I beheld Three Hearts and Angel sitting across from each other at a wooden table. The room they were in was small and, I thought, probably locked.

I went to get Fearless. When he saw them he said, “I don’t think there’s anybody else here, Paris. Let’s just break a windah an’ get them.”

“You got your gun?”

“Do a robin have wings?”

The window didn’t look large enough, so we broke down a door at the back of the extra house.

We came in through a kitchen. The house was dark, and we left it like that, making our way, trying doors as we went.

“Paris,” Fearless said after pushing open a door.

Just hearing my name caused a pain in my chest.

“What?” I cried.

“It’s some steps leadin’ down.”

I wanted to run away. I would have run if I was alone. The thought occurred to me that we could have called the cops and given them the address on Hugo. We could have told them that there were women trapped in the basement.

There were tears on my face and the wide-eyed corpse of Lionel Sterling in my mind. I had forty thousand dollars in the trunk, but what difference did that make when my chest was about to explode?

“Come on, man,” Fearless said. “Let’s get this ovah wit’.”

A light snapped on and I gasped, falling to one knee. I knew someone was about to open fire on us. I closed my eyes to pray.

“Paris,” Fearless said.

When I opened my eyes I realized that he had turned on the basement light.

He took a step down on the pine plank staircase. Every step he took sighed like a crying woman. I came after, unable to keep my hands from shaking.

After thirty-seven cries downward we reached a concrete floor. Fearless found another light switch and flipped it. There was nothing in the ten-by-ten room except a sturdy and unpainted wooden door.

“Hearts!” Fearless yelled at the door.

“Fearless? Is that you, baby?” she cried.

Maybe I would have been relieved to hear her voice, but I was trying to hold down the fright Fearless had given me when he shouted. The darkness had brought me back to my own basement and the corpse I’d sat with down there. Fearless could have turned on a dozen lights and it still wouldn’t have been enough for me.

“Hold on, Hearts,” Fearless called. “We’ll get you out. I just gotta jimmy this lock here.”

It was a serious padlock held down by brass fittings that a jailer would have been proud of.

“I cain’t pull off the lock wit’ my hands, Paris,” my friend told me. “I gotta go upstairs an’ find sumpin’ to pry it with.”

I clamped my teeth shut so that I wouldn’t beg him to stay. I nodded, hoping that he didn’t see my fear.

Fearless patted my shoulder and made his way back up the stairs. I leaned against the door and slid down into a crouch.

“Fearless?” Three Hearts called. “Are you still there?”

“It’s me, Auntie,” I said, my voice a little high.

“Paris. How did you find us?”

The words jumbled in my mind as I tried to find an answer. We found a man who had been destroyed. We killed a man. We found some money. We buried a guy in a strawberry field.

I got dizzy and nauseous.

“Paris,” Three Hearts cried. “Paris.”

“I’m here, Auntie. Fearless is gettin’ somethin’ t’break the lock wit’.”

“Where’d he go?”

“Up.”

“In the house?”

“Yeah.”

“Them men still up there?”

I expected to hear gunshots at that moment. Never in my life had I been more sure of a premonition. It came to me all of a sudden. The kidnappers were all asleep. They had slept through us breaking in but now they heard Fearless.

I stood up but went no further. Any moment the gunfire would begin. They might get the drop on Fearless, but then again he was the army assassin. But even if he killed them, the gunfire would bring the cops and we’d all be arrested and convicted for a dozen crimes.

“Paris,” Three Hearts called.

“I don’t know,” I whispered. I’m sure she didn’t hear me through that heavy door.

A woman sighed.

I jumped three feet.

It was Fearless on the top stair.

The heart attack tensed inside me, wondering if this was the moment to end my days.

Then Fearless was standing there in front of me. He had a big crowbar in his hand.

“Hold on, Paris,” he told me. “Hold on, man.”

He put a hand on my shoulder, and I grabbed his forearm the way Sterling had grabbed my thigh. I put my head against his shoulder and shivered.

“Paris,” Three Hearts called.

“It’s okay, Hearts,” Fearless answered. “I got me a crowbar.”

I let go and took a deep breath. The dread had gone from me, and I was ready to do what we had to.

“Gimme your gun,” I said to Fearless. “I’ll stand guard while you work on that lock.”

It took five minutes for Fearless to pry that door loose. It was a very good cell. Down in a basement and in the back of a walled mansion; even if the women had screamed, no one would have heard them. And there was no way they could have broken down that door.

Three Hearts and Angel hugged the both of us. They didn’t cry or lose their composure. After a minute of greeting, they both said that they needed a bathroom.

Fearless led them upstairs and turned on the lights in the house.

“What if somebody in the front house sees us?” I asked while the women went about their toilet.

“Ain’t nobody up there,” he said.

“How you know that?”

“I just do,” he replied.

I had been so traumatized that even this lame assurance didn’t bother me. It was as if I had died and now nothing else could happen.

“When they come out, we got to go,” I said.

“Okay, man. You know I got to call Milo anyway. I’m a day late for him as it is.”