Fearless Jones

3

ELANA DIDN’T COMPLAIN when she saw me pocket the .38.

“Might as well go out the back,” I said. “I mean, he’d probably be covering the front. Does he have any friends?”

“He was with two friends.” Elana sounded defeated. I clearly wasn’t the protector she needed.

“What’re their names?”

“What difference do that make?”

“Well, let’s go out the back door,” I said. My head was still light and my stomach was churning. I swallowed once and gazed at a piece of wall with a cabinet handle screwed on at just about waist height. The reason that Elana hadn’t found her way out was that my back door was almost invisible. It was just a rectangular slat that swung on three rusty old hinges.

My red Nash Rambler was parked against a salmon-pink stucco wall that ran the length of the alley separating the houses on the residential street behind. There was no sign of Leon, his horned car, or his nameless friends. Elana slid into the passenger’s seat and laid her head against the window. She was a picture-perfect damsel in distress.

If I were Fearless Jones I would have run headlong into the fray, taking any blows and doing anything to protect her. But I didn’t believe that even Fearless would have stood long against Leon Douglas.

I started the motor and we slid off into the afternoon.

“Where to?” I asked.

She rattled off an address on a street named Hazzard.

“Where’s that?”

“It’s off Brooklyn Avenue in East L.A.”

“What’s there?”

“Prob’ly nuthin’.”

I WAS CUTTING left and right on side streets, making my way east, looking up into my rearview mirror from time to time. We’d driven for more than five minutes in silence.

“What does this Leon guy want from you?” I asked.

“You don’t want to get involved, remember?” she said.

“Have it your way, honey. All I thought was that maybe I could give you some advice.”

“The only thing anybody could give me is manpower or money. Either that or Leon Douglas is gonna kill me.”

I looked over into the side mirror and saw the flash of a powder blue Chrysler with horns on its grate as it swerved, aiming to cut me off.

“Shit!” I hit the brakes, narrowly avoiding the collision. He banged into a parked car at a wide angle, blocking the street. I hit the gas and drove up onto the sidewalk. The lawns on that block were small hills leading up to the little homes. I put deep ruts across three of these lawns, fishtailing as I went. As soon as we cleared Leon, I cut a hard left back down to the street. Once on the asphalt, I gunned the engine and we took off. I would have felt good about the maneuver except by then Leon had straightened out also. He was barreling down on us.

I careened left, scraping an oncoming Ford. Leon did the same thing. Then I heard something that sounded like a chicken bone breaking.

“They’re shooting at us!” Elana cried.

I made three more wild turns. Shots popped off at irregular intervals. There were no cops anywhere.

“Take the gun outta my pocket!” I yelled.

Elana wasn’t slow. She didn’t resist or think or pretend that it was too much for her. She just jammed her hand into my pocket and rolled down her window.

A bullet ricocheted off the side of my door.

I made a right turn and Elana leaned out, taking four fast shots at the rampaging bull of a car. I had turned onto Edison, a warehouse street with very few pedestrians. I remembered, too late, that most of the side streets off it were dead ends, so I couldn’t afford a turn. We were on a straightaway with only two bullets left.

“Did you hit anything?” I shouted.

“I don’t think so.”

The Chrysler was coming on strong for three blocks, four, five. I swerved and banked to pull around cars ahead of me. Leon matched me move for move. After Leonard Street the bull slowed. By the next block there was smoke from the car’s hood. They pulled to the curb soon after that.

I almost fainted when I realized we’d survived.

I turned onto Hooper and headed downtown.

“Where are you going?” she asked me, the steely calm of her voice in deep contrast with my racing heart.

“You’ll see when we get there.”

After half an hour or so we came to an underground parking lot on Flower. It was expensive, thirty-five cents an hour, but I wanted to be careful now that I had a killer on my trail. A killer with whom I had just been in a running gun battle in the streets of L.A.

I reached out to Elana Love and said, “Gun, please.”

She looked down at the pistol in her hand and considered a moment before handing it over.

We went to a small diner called Guardino’s on Hope. It was a nice place with an Italian flair. Larry, the owner, liked me and Fearless because we’d come there on double dates and buy big dinners with fancy wines for our girls. Fearless could eat antipasto all day if you’d let him.

“Paris,” Selena Karsky said in greeting. She was Larry’s girlfriend, bottled blond and fifty. She still looked good though. “Where’s Fearless?”

“He went away,” I said.

“Oh, that’s too bad. Is he coming back soon?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t think so. He got a job outta town.”

“You must miss him.”

“More every day.”

Selena took us to a booth in the dark corridor of the restaurant. Of the eight booths, six already had customers. All of them were white, and a few gave us surprised looks.

“We’re not too hungry, Selena,” I told her. “Just beers, mine-strone, and an antipasto plate for two.”

“Okay,” she said, smiling.

“Friend of yours?” Elana asked when Selena was gone.

“She smiles and serves me spaghetti and seats me even though some people complain. I like her okay.”

“Why did you bring me here?” Elana asked.

“Because I’m a fool.”

“Excuse me?”

“If I had sent you away instead of offering you a ride, none of this would be happening. I’d be sleepin’ off my lumps, and you’d be all snugly with Mr. Douglas.”

My words made her uncomfortable, which was just fine by me.

“So,” I continued. “Tell me about Leon and why it’s his business to kill me.”

“Are you going to help me?”

“No. I’m gonna help myself. You got Frankenstein and his brothers stakin’ out my store. If I don’t do something, I’ll either lose my business or lose my life. You know I don’t like either one’a them choices.” I spoke in a whisper that had all the weight of a shout.

“What could you do?” Her sneer reminded me that she had witnessed my humiliation under Leon’s threats and violence.

“Go to the cops for one thing.”

That wiped the smug off her face.

“No, don’t,” she said.

“Why not?”

Elana Love struggled with the truth. It was all caught up with lies and fears. She couldn’t tell me everything, but she had to let up on something or I’d blow the game.

“Leon had a cellmate in prison. A man named Sol Tannenbaum. Sol was in for embezzlement, but, you know, he wasn’t a criminal type, never even been in jail. Leon’s tough. He promised Sol that he’d protect him. But Sol had to give him something.” Elana stopped a moment.

“What?”

“It was a bond. What they called a bond of deposit. It was issued by some bank in Switzerland.”

“How much?” I asked.

“It was ten thousand francs, about two thousand five hundred American dollars.”

“So? What does all this have to do with Leon?”

“Sol didn’t have the bond in jail. He set it up so that I got it from his wife.”

“I thought you broke up with Leon before he got sent up?”

“He asked me for a favor. An’ maybe I didn’t exactly tell ’im that we were through.”

“And so you took the bond and…”

“I gave it to William to hold it for me.”

“I thought you said he didn’t have it.”

“He didn’t think he did, that’s what I meant,” she said. “I didn’t tell him what it was or anything. It was just in a whole bunch of papers I left with him for safekeeping.”

Selena came with the beers and a basket of white bread.

When she was gone I asked Elana, “Why didn’t you keep the money with you?”

“Not money,” she corrected, “a bond. After Leon got sent to jail I was having trouble making my rent, and I didn’t wanna take a chance and lose it if the landlord changed the locks and took my stuff.”

“But couldn’t Grove go through your papers, find the bond, and cash it in?” I asked reasonably.

“No,” she said as if talking to a fool. “It was made out to Mr. Tannenbaum. Only he could cash it. That way everybody was covered. I couldn’t get the money and neither could Leon if he got out before Sol. He didn’t though. Leon told me that Sol got out on good behavior last week.”

“So you think Reverend Grove went to this Sol guy an’ got him to sign over the bond?” I asked her.

“No,” she replied, looking down into her beer.

“Why not?”

“ ’Cause William don’t know he got the bond.”

I knew she was lying. Why would she tell me the truth?

“Why didn’t you go to find Grove yourself?” I asked. “And take the bond to Sol for him to sign it?”

“I didn’t even know that he was out of jail,” she said. “And even if I did, he would’a been a fool to sign it without Leon’s say-so.”

“There’s something else I don’t understand. You said that Leon was in for armed robbery and attempted murder. How’s he gonna get out anytime before twenty years?”

“Leon had a bad lawyer. He was sure that if he got a new trial he could beat the charges.”

“So now you sayin’ he didn’t do the robbery?”

“He did it all right, it’s just that they didn’t have no evidence.”

“Uh-huh. And the bond was gonna pay for the new lawyer?” I was trying to make some kind of sense out of her story, but it wasn’t easy.

“Yeah. Leon told me that he told his lawyer that he could pay him a thousand dollars when he got out. He was gonna use the bond for that.”

“And now he needs the money to pay his lawyer?” I asked.

Elana nodded. “Otherwise the lawyer’ll drop the case an’ he’s back in jail.”

“I’m sorry, honey, but your story still don’t add up,” I said. “Here you tell me that you’re close enough to Reverend Grove for him to store your things, but you don’t even know his church’s address.”

“I knew where Messenger was” — there was acid on her tongue now — “I knew that William had cleared out too. But I needed to get away from Leon. The church store was padlocked, so I told him that your place was the church office. That way I could leave him outside and get away through the back.”

“Why wouldn’t he just come in with you?”

“Because he’s out on bail waitin’ for his new trial and he don’t wanna get that revoked.”

“Out on bail?” I said. “How much was that?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t go to the hearin’. All I know is that the judge turned over his conviction and set bail. I told him that the people in the church would call the police if he caused trouble. He said he’d wait ten minutes, but I guess he didn’t trust me.”

“No kiddin’? So all that shit you said about lookin’ for Grove, that was just actin’?” As I said the words I realized that I was no more a match for Elana Love than I had been for her boyfriend.

“Maybe I already knew the church was gone, but I really was scared. You saw Leon. You can’t blame me for tryin’ to get away.”

“Here you are, hun.” Selena appeared with our soup and antipasto on a wide, cork-lined tray. She set the plates out in front of us and stared admiringly at Elana. “You’re a beauty.”

“Thank you,” the siren said.

“Are you an actress or model?”

“No,” she answered. But there was something else. The way her eyes moved and her body twisted, a whole volume of mystery passed from her to the waitress.

When Selena was gone I said, “So tell me something.”

“What?”

“Did Leon have money from that robbery? Is that what he’s after?”

She shook her head again. “They let him out of jail today and he was at my door an hour after. All he said was that he wanted his bond.”

I wrapped a slice of salami around a semi-sour gherkin and popped it in my mouth. I chewed for a while, enjoying the loud crunching in my ears.

“I didn’t mean to get you into trouble, Mr. Minton. I was just looking for a way out.”

I took Elana to that restaurant instead of putting her out on the street because I wanted to know about the trouble I had fallen into. I had found out a few things, but they didn’t help much.

“So what do you intend to do now?”

“I don’t know.” She made a gesture of hopelessness with her hands, but I had learned by now not to trust when she was acting weak.

“What about that place on Hazzard you wanted to go before? You wanna go there?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Are you going to help me?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I can’t go back to the store because of Leon. That’s where he’d go for sure.”

“We could go to your place,” she suggested.

“I live at my store,” I said.

“Oh.”

“But there’s a motel down at Venice Beach take us. It’s cheap and there’s the ocean outside. The waves help me think.”

“Let’s go there.” She reached across the table and laid her hand over mine. And damn if my fingers didn’t curl around hers.