Copyright © 2006 by Walter Mosley
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
Little, Brown and Company
Hachette Book Group USA
237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroupUSA.com
First eBook Edition: September 2006
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
ISBN: 978-0-7595-6822-8
Contents
Also by Walter Mosley
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
About the Author
ALSO BY WALTER MOSLEY
THE EASY RAWLINS NOVELS
Devil in a Blue Dress
A Red Death
White Butterfly
Black Betty
A Little Yellow Dog
Gone Fishin’
Bad Boy Brawly Brown
Six Easy Pieces
Little Scarlet
Cinnamon Kiss
NONFICTION
Workin’ on the Chain Gang
What Next: An African American Initiative Toward World Peace
Life out of Context
OTHER NOVELS
RL’s Dream
Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned
Blue Light
Walkin’ the Dog
Fearless Jones
Futureland
Fear Itself
The Man in My Basement
47
The Wave
Fortunate Son
To Ken Brecher, Michelle Satter, and all my friends at the Sundance Screenwriters Lab
1
I WAS EXPECTING ONE KIND of trouble when another came knocking at my door.
A year or so after I opened my Florence Avenue Used Book Shop, I installed four mirrors; one in the upper-right-hand corner of the door frame, one just outside the lower-left-hand side of the window, and the third, and second-largest, mirror was placed inside the window. So by daylight or lamplight at night, all I had to do was pull back the bottom hem of the inside drape to see who was knocking.
I installed my little spying device because if a man wanted to kill you and you asked “Who is it?” on the other side of a thin plank of wood, all he would have to do is open fire and that would be it. You might as well just throw the door open and say “Here I am. Come shoot me.”
Someone might wonder why the owner of a used-book store would even think about armed assassins coming after him at any time, for any reason. After all, this is America we’re talking about. And not only America but Los Angeles in the midfifties—1956 to be exact.
We aren’t talking about the Wild West or a period of social and political unrest. That was the most serene period of a democratic and peaceful nation. Most Americans at that time only worried about the cost of gas going above twenty-nine cents a gallon.
But most Americans weren’t black and they sure didn’t live in South Central L.A. And even if they were my color and they did live in my neighborhood, their lives would have been different.
Through no fault of my own I often found myself in the company of desperate and dangerous men—and women. I associated with murderers, kidnappers, extortionists, and fools of all colors, ages, and temperaments. By nature I am a peaceful man, some might say cowardly. I don’t care what they say. It does not shame me to admit that I would rather run than fight. Sometimes, even with my mirrors, I didn’t go anywhere near the door if the knock was too loud or too stealthy.
And during business hours, from 10:00 a.m. to 3:45 p.m. Monday through Saturday, I sat at my desk at the top of the staircase so that if someone dangerous walked in I would be able to get away before they even knew I was there; the fourth, and largest, mirror was on the ceiling at the head of the stairs for just that purpose.
Don’t get me wrong; most of my customers were readers, primarily women and children, and unlikely to be looking for trouble. Whole days could go by and no one came to my bookstore (which was also my home), so I could spend long days reading books, uninterrupted and blissful.
But even though I was alone most days and the people who sought me out were, 999 times out of 1,000, looking for a book, there was that one time now and again when someone came to my door bearing malice and a gun.
I often think that this was true because of my decade-long friendship with Fearless Jones. Fearless was tall and thin, jet of color, and stronger of thew and character than any other man I had ever met. He wasn’t afraid of death or love, threat or imprisonment. Fearless Jones wasn’t even afraid of poverty, which made him a rare man indeed. No one could intimidate him and so he went wherever he wanted and associated with anyone he cared to.
Those anyones often came to me when they were looking for my friend and expressed themselves in ways that Fearless would not have stood for—if he were there.
Sometimes Fearless came to me when he was in a jam and needed the clear eye of logic to see his way out. And, because he’d saved my life more than once, I most often agreed to help, with the caveat that my aid wouldn’t throw me into trouble.
The problem was, Fearless didn’t ever feel like he was in trouble.
“Don’t worry,” he’d tell me. “It ain’t all that bad.”
And then someone was shooting at us, and Fearless did some impossible maneuver, and the gunman was disarmed, and Fearless was there smiling, saying, “You see? I told you it was all right.”
So when I heard that knock on my door at 3:51 in the afternoon, I moved the hem of the drape expecting one thing, but instead I saw Ulysses S. Grant IV staring up into the mirror and waving.
“Open up, Paris. It’s me.”
I was a fool. I knew it even then. So what if Useless saw me in my mirror? I didn’t have to open the door. I could have walked upstairs, opened up a copy of Don Quixote that I’d just acquired, and read to my heart’s content.
“Come on, Cousin,” Useless said. “I know you there.”
I should have walked away, but Useless worried me. The kind of trouble he brought was like an infection. He never had a simple yes-or-no kind of problem; it was always “You’re already in a mess. Now how do you plan to get out?”
I opened the door and stood to bar his entrance.
“What do you want?” I asked him.
“Let me by, Cousin,” he said with a grin. “I need some ice water.”
“I’m not askin’ you again, Useless.”
We were the same height, which is to say short, and he was fairly light colored, where I am considered dark (that is unless you see me standing next to Fearless Jones). Ulysses S. Grant IV, whom everyone but his mother and Fearless called Useless, was a petty thief, a liar, a malingerer, and just plain bad luck. His mother and mine were half-sisters, and I’d been dragged off by the ear because of him as far back as I could remember. As young as nine years old I was avoiding Useless.
The last time we’d seen each other was at my previous bookstore. He’d come over asking for a glass of ice water and use of the toilet. After he’d gone I didn’t think much of it. But that night, while I was sleeping, I began to worry. Why had he been there? Who drops by somebody’s place in L.A. for a glass of water?
It was three o’clock in the morning, but I pulled myself out of bed and went into my bathroom. I searched the medicine cabinet and behind the commode and in between the bath towels stacked on a shelf. Nothing.
I made coffee in my hot-plate kitchen and then went back to lift the heavy porcelain lid off the tank of the toilet. Down in the tank was a waterproof rubber sack filled with gold chains of various lengths and designs. Solid gold. The whole thing must have weighed two pounds.
That was 4:00 a.m.
Fearless was at my place in less than half an hour and he took the swag to hide it elsewhere.
I was in bed again by five.
At 6:47 the police were at my door with a warrant.
They went right to the toilet. Somehow they managed to shatter the lid.
It was late morning before they stopped turning over my bookstore. Those cops flipped through more books in that one day than most librarians do in a year.
After all that they arrested me. Milo Sweet, the bail bondsman, got me a good lawyer who told the cops that they had nothing on me and that any accusations made against me had to be proven or at least strongly indicated.
A week later an ugly guy named José Favor came by my house.
“Where the gold, mothahfuckah?” he said to me right off. One of his nostrils was wider than its brother, and the knuckles of his fists were misshapen, probably from beating on smaller men like me.
“You will have to speak to my agent,” I told the man, who had already grabbed me by the collar of my shirt.
“Say what?”
“Fearless Jones,” I said, and he let me go.
“What about him?” the ugly black man with the round eyes asked.
“He told me that anyone wanna know anything about gold they should come and see him.”
José didn’t say any more. I never heard about the gold again. Fearless came by the next week and took me to Tijuana, where we drank tequila and met some very nice young ladies who taught us Spanish and made us breakfast four mornings in a row.
I hadn’t seen Useless since then and I hadn’t missed him for a second.
“I’M IN TROUBLE, PARIS,” Ulysses said, looking pathetic.
“So?”
“I need help.”
“I sell books, not help.”
“It’s about that time with the gold chains, right?” he asked me.
I didn’t even answer.
“That wasn’t my fault, Paris. The cops got a hold’a me and like to beat me half to death. I told ’em that I hid ’em in yo’ sto’. I told ’em you didn’t know nuthin’ about it.”
I could have asked him why did they arrest me, then? But that would have opened a conversation, and I didn’t want to have anything to do with Useless Grant.
“I need a place to hide out,” he said.
“Not here.”
“We blood, Paris.”
“That might be, but I ain’t bleedin’ for you.”
I thought Useless was going to break down and cry. But then he looked at my face and saw that I wouldn’t let him in if he was having a heart attack. He wasn’t getting across my threshold even if he fell down dead.
“Well, do me one favor, okay?” he said.
I just stared at him.
“Tell Three Hearts that there’s a man named Hector wrote my name on a black slip’a paper. Tell her that I tried to make it work with Angel, but I guess I was mudfoot just like she said.”
I didn’t say a thing. Nothing. Useless was less than that to me. I heard his words and I would repeat them if I ever saw his mother again, but he wasn’t going to make it into my house.
No sir, not in a thousand years.
2
I CLOSED THE DOOR on Useless and took a deep breath. I had to send him away, had to. Useless was the kind of trouble that could get a man killed. He had no sense except for the sense of survival. That meant he would deal with thugs or criminals just as if they were upstanding citizens; he’d invite those men into your house and then leave out the back door when trouble started.
The next day he’d call and ask how you were just as if he hadn’t seen his partners come after you with a butcher’s knife. He’d come to visit you in the hospital and hit you up for a loan even after you explained to him that you couldn’t pay the doctor’s bill.
Useless was trouble from the git-go.
But still I felt guilty.
I loved my auntie Three Hearts. She was the finest individual that you could imagine. She never passed judgment on people without cause and she was loyal. I once had a fever of 105 degrees, and she sat there sponging me down for days while my mother was laid up sick with the same flu. She stayed with us another week, cooking and looking after us while her son, Useless, broke every toy I owned.
Three Hearts’s only blind spot was her son. Useless could do nothing wrong in her mind. If he got in trouble it was always somebody else’s fault. If he lied it was for a higher purpose. Her son was a perfect man, and woe be unto those who thought otherwise. She lived in Lafayette, Louisiana, which was a good thing because that meant I wouldn’t have to face her wrath at my turning her boy away in time of need.
Maybe I would have offered Useless a glass of water but, as I said before, I was already expecting trouble when he came knocking.
THREE WEEKS EARLIER I had been having dinner at a diner in downtown L.A. It was an Italian-American place at one of the crossroads between the races. There were all kinds of patrons eating there: whites, blacks, Asians, and even one Mexican family.
I liked integrated places. I guess that’s because my time in the Deep South had been defined by segregation. They wouldn’t let me into the library in my hometown. I wasn’t even allowed to urinate where a white man had gone.
I had ordered eggplant parmigiana and was sitting there reading Ulysses by James Joyce. The book was no longer banned in the United States, but there was still a stigma attached to it, and I wanted to see what that was all about.
Between Joyce’s playfulness, the eggplant and Italian bread, and the satisfaction of being able to sit where I was sitting, I was pretty happy.
Also, at the booth across from me there was this skinny young white woman. She had natural, if dirty, blond hair and blue eyes that looked like pale quartz. She used her tongue a lot while eating and I was quite enchanted by her wandering gaze.
The meal and Stephen Dedalus went along just fine, and I was completely satisfied. But then a disturbance occurred.
The plump waitress, who wore a tight red uniform, had delivered a check to the blonde’s table, but then she came back with the cook. The cook was dressed all in whites. He had a sailor’s cap, a stained white T-shirt, bleached white trousers, and an apron that was once buff colored but now had faded to a kind of off-white.
“No, no, miss,” the burly, all-white cook was saying. “This is the dinner menu. The meat loaf is two ninety-nine, not one fifty.”
“It says right here that meat loaf is a dollar fifty cent,” the young woman said, pointing.
“It says lunch from n
oon to four right here,” the cook, who had a kindly face, insisted.
“You shouldn’t have the lunches on the same menu with the dinners,” the girl said. “I wouldn’t have even eaten here if I thought I had to pay all that.”
“I’m sorry,” the big man said.
The woman took out a small red purse and reached in.
“Oh, no,” she said.
“What now?” the waitress, who was almost as large as the cook, said.
“I must have left my wallet at home.”
“I do not trust you,” the cook said, and I wondered what his native language might have been.
“I’ll just go home and bring it right back,” the woman went on as if she had not heard his words.
“No,” said the man. “You will be staying here and Diane will be calling the police.”
The woman attempted to rise, but the man with the kindly face held up a warning hand.
Diane turned to go toward the counter.
People all over the diner were craning their necks to see what was happening.
“Rita?” I said. I was standing next to the cook with a restraining hand on the waitress’s elbow.
The dirty blonde looked up at me, trying not to seem confused.
“Hey, Rita. It’s me . . . Paris. Don’t tell me you lost your wallet again. I told you you got to remember to put it in your purse before you leave the house.”
“You know her?” the cook asked.
Instead of answering, I handed him a twenty-dollar bill, the first twenty I’d had a hold of in a few weeks. That’s the reason I had come to the diner, because I was flush and didn’t have to eat pinto beans and rice for once.
“Rita Pigeon,” I said, lying easily. “We work at the Lido Theater. I take tickets in the afternoon, and she’s the nighttime usherette.”
“Bullshit,” Diane, the obese waitress, said.
“Watch you language,” the cook said. “Don’t speak like that around customers.”
“What customers?” Diane spat.
“Come on over and sit with me, Rita,” I said to the blonde. “And could you bring us some coffee with milk?” I asked the waitress.
Diane was going to tell me where I could go, but one gesture from the cook and she was on her way.
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