Fear of the Dark

Chapter 39

She brought my jasmine tea to the bed. The night before she had bathed me and loved me and even sung a Chinese lullaby while I drifted off to sleep in her arms. But Mum’s greatest gift to me was that cup of fragrant tea. I sat up, realizing that her bed was positioned to receive the morning sun through a high window on the far wall.

Even in that overbuilt part of town you could hear birds chirping. I took a deep breath and a sip; Mum kissed me and said, “Your mustache tickle.”

“I’ll cut it off.”

“No. I like it when a man tickle me.”

It was a moment that I never wanted to end. We made love again, but the seconds were ticking at the back of my mind while she laughed at my mustache against her thighs.

She asked me if I had really read The Odyssey. I recited the first book, translated by Samuel Butler. I’d memorized those lines after I’d read that many Europeans in the old days had committed hundreds, even thousands of poems to memory and then recited them on many occasions.

But even Homer couldn’t save me that morning.

I kissed the young waitress good-bye and walked out into the sultry morning — two parts serenity and three parts terror.

“Good morning, Paris,” Loretta Kuroko said with a humorous and playful suspicion in her eye.

I felt guilty under that gaze.

“Paris,” Milo shouted. “I hear I owe you a favor, boy.”

“You get Fearless outta jail, Miles?” I asked the bail bondsman.

“Come on over here an’ sit with me,” he said.

I turned to Loretta.

“Why are you looking at me?” she asked.

“Can I go?”

Her smile lost its insinuation, and we were friends again. She nodded graciously, and I went to Milo’s spindly visitor’s chair, my favorite piece of furniture in the whole wide world, and sat down hard.

“I need information, Mr. Sweet.”

“Shoot.”

I wasn’t ready yet. I had relied on the habit Milo had of resisting sharing what he knew. He usually got coy and then cagey before getting up off of information. And so, because he hadn’t, I took on his evasive role.

“Where’s Fearless?” I asked.

“That’s what you wanna know?”

“That’s the first thing.”

“He went off wit’ that girlfriend Mona. She was already at the police station when I got there at two.”

“Who was the third man?” I asked then. “The one with the rifle.”

“Steven Borell,” Milo said. “I don’t know how Al Rive managed to fool him into that.”

“Rive is in jail?” I asked, just to make sure.

“For a long time,” Milo promised.

“You know a big ugly brother with a scar run up the center’a his face?”

“That’s the information?” Milo asked.

“Yeah.”

“What for?”

“Milo, I got problems. You know that. I helped Whisper and Fearless with your mess, now please just tell me who he is.”

“Lonnie Mannheim,” Milo said.

“Mannheim?”

“Yeah. I guess the Germans had slaves too.”

“Does he have a gang?”

“Uh-huh. Sure do,” Milo said. “Bobo and Gregory Handsome. Two Arkansas brothers who need to go home. All of ’em have worked for me at one time or another.”

“Trackin’ down bail jumpers?”

“That and other things.”

“You know where I can find them?” I asked.

“Why would you want to?”

“Because Lonnie an’ them know somebody don’t like me,” I said as clearly and candidly as I could. “Because I got to find him.”

“If Lonnie only the door to the problem, then you in trouble deep, Paris.”

“That’s no news to me.”

Milo frowned. He wasn’t the kind of friend that would put his neck on the line for me. But he did care in his way. He didn’t want to think that I’d come to harm. And if the worst happened, he’d put on a good dark suit and come to my funeral. He might even send some lilies — if he could deduct them from his taxes.

“I don’t know where they are,” he told me. “When we did business together they were mostly legal. But nowadays I hear they break legs and worse for people don’t like to hear bones snappin’ and men breathin’ their last.”

That was Milo at his friendliest. He was trying to tell me to find another way in, to avoid men I couldn’t stand up to. And I appreciated his concern, such as it was.

“Can I use your phone, Milo?”

The legal intellectual let his shoulders rise, indicating that he’d done all he could do. He gestured toward Loretta with one of his huge hands, and I rose from the orphan chair like an acolyte dismissed by a great teacher who had failed his task.

“Hello,” the nondescript voice hummed.

“Whisper.”

“What’s up, Paris?”

“Can I come over?”

“Always welcome,” he said.

The words were friendly if the tone was not.

Whisper’s office was on Avalon. The building was perfect for the elusive sleuth. It was three stories and narrow, made from dark red brick. The front door of the building didn’t face the street. Instead you entered into a little recess, turned to the left, and walked up a small set of granite stairs that brought you to an old white door that was locked and far too pulpy to sustain a serious knock.

But for those in the know there was a buzzer inside of a black mailbox that the postman knew not to use. All the letters were put through a slot in the door; packages were held at the post office for pickup.

I pressed that button.

Two minutes later the detective opened the door, giving a rare, and momentary, grin.

“Paris.”

He led me up a carpeted stairway to the top floor, where he had his office. Over the years I had been to Whisper’s sanctum a few times. The visits were always about hard business, but still I stopped to appreciate his sense of style and decorum.

The main office was paneled with real oak, giving it that rich woody-brown feel. The carpet was maroon, edged in royal blue, and there were tall bookshelves on either side of his heavy oak desk. The shelves reached all the way to the ceiling, which was at least fourteen feet high. It was an intelligent room that invited you to sit and contemplate until the problem was solved.

I liked the chamber very much, but it was his one window that always grabbed me.

He must have had it put in specially. It was only a foot and a half in width but ran from a foot above the floor to six inches below the ceiling. It presented a view of the northern mountains and L.A.’s blue-and-amber skies. Something about the slender slice of the outdoors made your mind want to expand.

Whisper gestured to the blue cushioned chair that looked upon the window. I sat down, feeling almost as tranquil as I had in Mum’s arms.

“What’s up, Paris?”

You could have spoken to the man for half a dozen years and he would have used only a couple of hundred words, excluding proper names and numbers.

“I need your help on something,” I said.

His hands, raised palms upward toward his shoulders, asked me what.

“I need to speak to Bobo and Gregory Handsome,” I said. “Them or Lonnie Mannheim. I don’t know where they are and I need that information.”

From his appearance, Whisper could have been a bus driver or a teacher’s aide at a public school; he could have been a deacon at a small church or a single father raising nine kids. He looked like anything but a man who’d run into an open door to root out armed gunmen shooting wildly and intent on taking life.

“Thanks for last night,” he said.

“Sure. You know I didn’t do nuthin’ except for trip ovah my own big feet.”

“You might’a saved Fearless and you shoutin’ took that rifleman’s aim on you.”

Even the thought of such an action put fear in me.

“What happened in there?” I asked.

“Fearless had knocked out both Al Rive and Rex Hathaway before I got inside. Then we went up the stairs. I started shootin’. It was an office buildin’ so I didn’t have to worry about people gettin’ hurt. Steven Borell was shootin’ down the stairs at me while Fearless went out a window and then back in through a side stairway. He jumped Borell and knocked him ovah. Nobody got killed an’ the cops had their bail jumper, so they didn’t question how we got it done.”

Those were the most words I’d ever heard come out of his mouth.

“Thank you,” he said again.

“You the ones did the work,” I said.

“I’ll find the Handsome brothers and Mannheim for you, Paris,” he said. “Gimme a day, two at most, an’ I’ll have what you want.”

“I can pay you,” I said.

“No, brother. You already have.”