Fearless Jones

34

I JOINED Fearless and Milo, who were hunkered down by the side door. Being the only man not wounded, I was elected to get the car. I drove up to the sidewalk, and Fearless hustled Milo out and into the backseat. They both laid low back there while I drove down the fairly empty streets.

We weren’t out of the woods yet. There I was, a black man driving down the streets of white Los Angeles with no reason that a cop could imagine — except mischief. And what could I say if he pulled us over and found two wounded men in the backseat?

“Fearless.”

“Yeah, Paris?”

“You still got that gun?”

“Naw, man. I wiped it off and dropped it next to the big white dude while you was workin’ on Milo’s arm.”

That was one thing at least. My pistol hadn’t even been fired.

Maybe, if we got away, the cops wouldn’t suspect that there had been others in the room.

“Take Hauser down to Olympic and hang a right,” Milo said. “Take it to Sierra Bonita and go all the way south down to three blocks past Venice. It’s the only two-story house on the block.”

I KNOCKED ON the front door. After a few seconds Loretta Kuroko said, “Who is it?”

“It’s Paris, Lo. Me and Milo and Fearless.”

The door opened. Loretta was wearing a blue terrycloth bathrobe. Beyond her were two small Japanese, a man and a woman, huddled together.

“What happened?”

I told her about the wounds but not how they were inflicted. She had me drive through the driveway and into the backyard. From there we went through the back door and into the kitchen. Loretta’s parents didn’t speak any English, but they showed surprisingly little fear of blood and gunshot wounds or desperate men in the middle of the night. Both Fearless and Milo were washed up and bandaged within a quarter of an hour. Milo, who knew enough Japanese to say may I and thank you, made his bed on Loretta’s couch.

Fearless and I said our thank-you’s and left. I dropped Fearless off at Dorthea’s and then drove over to our apartment at Fontanelle’s court, where I slept fitfully until late the next morning.

When I got up, I knew what I had to do.

So, dressed in the same funky clothes, I drove over to an alley off Slauson and climbed the back stairs to the third floor.

Theodore Wally’s door was unlocked, but that didn’t matter much because you can’t steal from a dead man.

The bullet wound had been fatal but not immediately so. He had been cleaned off and bandaged and put into the ratty sofa’s foldout bed. The covers were pulled up to his chin. His skin was still warm.

There was a bloodstain in the middle of the floor. That’s where they shot him and left him to die. I sat on the side of the bed and lowered my face into my hands. I don’t know how long I sat like that.

When I felt a gentle breeze on my skin I looked up, and Love was standing there. She wore a yellow dress with low-heeled orange shoes. Her pocketbook was black though. The fact that she hadn’t color-coordinated her bag was the only clue that she was pressured or rushed.

“I’m surprised you came back,” I said.

“I’m surprised you did too.” She closed the door, and when she turned back, there was a small pistol in her hand.

“Wally tell you that we were here ’fore you killed him?”

“I was hiding behind the sofa,” she said. “When you almost beat him to death.”

“I smelled your perfume,” I said. “But I mistook it for roses at first. And I had the club in my hand, but I didn’t kill him.”

“Neither did I.”

“Then who?”

“Leon,” she said with distaste. “Leon or his friend Tricks. I don’t know which one because they were both here together.”

“So why are you still breathing?”

“I wasn’t here. I came in after they had shot him.” Her sorrow seemed sincere. “He went to meet them, to make a deal about the bond. I guess they followed him after they met, and they left him for dead.”

“How’d you hook up wit’ Wally?” I asked.

“I was looking for you like I said before, and I remembered him from the day he helped you. I saw his profile, and you told me that he worked at the store. He was all sad. I talked to him a little bit, he was nice. Then, when I went out to look for you, Leon grabbed me.”

“Then you were with me and Fearless and then with Latham,” I said. “So how’d Wally fit in all that?”

“I wanted to find you again,” she said. “I thought Theodore could help me, but he was so upset when I went to the store that I offered to take him out for a coffee. He decided right then to quit his job. He wrote a note, and we went off together. He was very sad about what he did to you. I gave him a shoulder to cry on and offered to help him.”

“Some help,” I said.

“I tried to save him.”

“A doctor would have been better.”

“He didn’t want a doctor,” she said. “He wanted the money from the bond and the police would have messed all that up.”

I grunted, and Elana looked away. She wanted the money so bad that she had a dead man begging for it.

“You gonna shoot me?” I asked.

“Only if you want me to,” she said.

“No thanks.”

“Why don’t you join me, Paris? We could make this money together. We could split it,” she smiled, “or share.”

“I don’t know if I like the odds.”

“What odds?”

“I was sitting outside of the motel when Latham and Brother Grove got laid low. I saw you driving in the opposite direction.”

“When Bernard fell asleep I called Father Vincent. He said he’d call Grove,” she explained, “but he brought that big white German dude. They were gonna rob us, but somebody called Latham and warned him. The pig, he ran out with my bag ’cause he thought the bond was in there.”

“But I bet you took it out while he was sleeping off that thing you do with your tongue.”

I regretted what I said immediately because it made her angry. And it doesn’t pay to make a woman angry when she has a gun pointed at your head.

“No thank you, Elana,” I said. “I don’t think I could survive a partnership with you. But you could tell me something.”

“What?”

“Why you messin’ around with Leon when you already been to see the Israeli guys?”

My knowledge of her actions disconcerted Elana a little. But she was a smart enough cookie to keep cool even in surprise.

“They say they payin’ like two percent for a finder’s fee. But Leon’s connection was talkin’ about a share.” She hesitated a minute and then continued, “You could get your friend, Paris, we could go to Leon and get him to tell who the connection is. You might as well, ’cause you know Leon’ll try an’ kill the both of you after you shamed him like you did.”

“Lawson and Widlow,” I said.

“Say what?”

“Lawson and Widlow. Accounting. Somewhere in Beverly Hills. That’s Leon’s connection. It’s on me.”

Elana got that tight look around her eyes. Every time I’d seen it before, she was soon to figure out my angle or meaning. But not that time.

“You wanna come with me?” she asked.

“Not for a hundred thousand dollars,” I said.

She almost said something. But words failed.

“Where’s your friend?” she asked, moving away from the door cautiously.

“Fearless is in his girlfriend’s arms. I wish I was too.”

“Why you tellin’ me about Leon’s connection?” she demanded.

I gestured at the cooling corpse. “I done had enough shit.”

For the next few seconds my life was in the balance. Killing me might have been a good idea. But I had played my best card. I didn’t want any more to do with Elana Love. Sitting there next to Theodore was the safest thing I could do. The money, even if we could have found it, stolen from doomed men, was itself a kind of doom. Maybe Elana Love could ride that kind of storm. I sure couldn’t.

“You’re a fool, Paris.” Elana Love was neither the first nor the last woman to think so or say it.

I nodded.

She backed toward the door and let herself out.

I DON’T KNOW what happened for a while after that. I suppose that Elana went to the accountants’ offices and saw the aftermath of the carnage we had witnessed. Maybe, after a day or so, she was able to speak to the principals. I doubt if that meeting did much for her wealth.

But that’s all supposition, because on the drive back to Fontanelle’s court I was stopped by the police. The uniforms detained me until two plainclothes cops arrived.

There was a portly man in a green suit with a snaky little partner who wore a houndstooth jacket and coal-gray pants.

“Paris Minton?” the snaky cop asked.

I held out my wrists and they obliged without even a kick or slap to show who was in charge.

I expected the charges to be conspiracy, theft, maybe breaking and entering, and certainly murder. And so I was surprised down at the precinct at Seventy-seventh Street to hear, “You are being held because we suspect you for the arson of your landlord’s property.”

I used my one phone call to ring Charlotte.

“They got me in the can, baby,” I told her. “But the charges are wrong, and I can prove it, I think.” I asked her to call Milo and tell him. I knew that he’d tell Fearless. That was everyone who mattered.

The county jail was full, so they transferred me to a facility down around Redondo Beach. I had a cell that looked over the ocean and chess partners that could beat me now and then.

There was even a small library. It was like visiting a spa after what I had been through.

They brought me before a public defender who told me that the owner of the store I rented caused such a stink that they were leaning on me.

“They want you on an insurance angle,” the milky-faced kid told me.

“But I didn’t have insurance,” I said.

“They think somebody hired you to set the fire,” he said.

“But how could that be?”

“It happens all the time,” he assured me.

“But, Mr. Defender. You sayin’ that the owner is puttin’ on the pressure, and so they brace me ’cause they think somebody paid me to set the fire for the insurance.”

“I don’t get your meaning,” the kid said.

I knew I was in trouble then.

He didn’t stay long. He resented having to come down to Redondo. The cops didn’t like the drive either. So between the lag in visits and the lack of interest in their own case, I spent six weeks in the can. There was some mixup in the transfer records, so even Milo couldn’t find me.

Finally I was brought back to Los Angeles for a meeting with the prosecutor. It seems that my lawyer, whose name I don’t think I ever knew, had decided I was guilty and that, because my record was clean, I could probably get some kind of reduced sentence.

The prosecutor was young too but she had a little more on the ball.

“But he doesn’t have insurance,” the chubby prosecutor said, trying to understand what she was reading while my lawyer talked deal. I remember that she wore a navy jacket and skirt with a brilliant white blouse and string tie like the cowboys wear.

“It’s the owner,” my lawyer offered as if their roles were reversed.

“But,” the prosecutor said, now talking to herself, “then why aren’t we trying him?”

My lawyer wasn’t smart enough to supply an answer.

They drove me back out to Redondo, where I sat in a cell with a man dying from TB. That was another three weeks. Then they let me go on the streets of Redondo.

“Can I have bus fare?” I asked the guard who was giving me my clothes back.

He handed me a dime.

“I have to call L.A.,” I said, thinking he’d take pity and give me enough for the station-to-station call.

He was not so inclined.

WHEN MILO ANSWERED the phone my heart sank.

“Collect call to anyone from Paris Minton,” the operator said sternly. I was hoping for Loretta to answer. She, I knew, would at least accept the call.

“Of course,” Milo said jovially.

“Do you accept the charges, sir?” the woman asked.

“Yes I do.” And then, “Paris, where are you?”