“What, boy?” Lux asked.
“Let’s step outside,” Fearless said, gesturing at a window that showed a small backyard Briny used as a kind of dump for large appliances gone bad.
Briny rubbed his sore jaw and gaped at Fearless.
Lux nodded and gestured for Fearless to go first.
“You first,” Fearless told him. “You go out first and then I’ll come number two.”
It was like watching a fight on a television with the volume control broken. I have never seen my friend more vicious, accurate, or sadistic in battle. After he’d knocked Lux down for the fourth time, the big man stayed on the dirt. But Fearless wouldn’t have it; he beat the man on the ground until he got up and fought again. Fearless knocked out teeth and opened cuts all over the brutal bully’s face. He broke a whole rack of ribs and caused deep bruising that would follow Lux all the days of his life. When Fearless was finished, he removed Lux’s wallet from his pocket and took something from it (later I found out that this was Lux’s driver’s license). He said something to Lux and then slapped the man until he nodded. Then he pulled Lux to his feet. The big white man pleaded with Fearless not to hit him again; that was the only thing we heard through the closed window. But Fearless didn’t hit him. He merely pushed him toward the door. Lux lumbered through the room with his eyes on the floor and pain in every step. When he went out the front, Fearless came in the back.
“You got a pencil?” he asked Briny.
The ex-seaman nodded and pulled a yellow number two from his pocket. Then he handed Fearless the receipt pad he used for his patrons’ bills.
“This my mother’s phone numbah,” Fearless said, scribbling at the counter. “If that motherfucker ever even look in yo’ windah again, I want you to call this numbah an’ tell her to tell me about it.”
And so we became semiregulars at Briny’s. Lux, who had hectored Briny for two years, never returned, and we always had to force Briny to take our money.
“Fearless. Paris,” Briny hailed.
He served us fried clams and talked about Louisiana. He bought our beers, but we paid for the food.
“Briny,” Fearless said after the restaurateur brought us our change.
“What, my friend?”
“Paris an’ me need a phone and some privacy for a hour or two.”
“My office is yours,” he said. He might have said the same thing even if Fearless hadn’t broken Lux almost in two.
“WYNANT INVESTMENT GROUP,” a young woman said, answering my call.
I was looking out onto the backyard where Fearless had demolished Lux.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m looking for a Mr. Katz.”
“No Katz here,” she replied in a friendly tone.
“Oh,” I said. “I see. Mr. Drummund, then.”
“Sorry, sir. No Mr. Drummund either. If you can tell me the nature of your call, I might be able to pass you on to someone else.”
“You know,” I replied. “I think I must have the wrong number. You said Haversham Investments, right?”
“No. Wynant. Wynant Investments.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “Excuse me.”
I made half a dozen calls like that while Fearless sat back on a walnut chair, smoking one of my Lucky Strikes and staring up into space. He wasn’t listening to me or worrying about anything. I’m sure he was the same in the lull between battles during the war.
There was a V.P. named Katz at Casualty and Life Insurance Company of St. Louis. I got as far as his assistant.
“He’s tied up at the moment,” the man said. “May I tell him what your business is?”
“My name is LaTiara,” I said. “Hector LaTiara. I’ve recently come into a great deal of money. Seventy thousand dollars that I’ve inherited from my uncle Anthony.”
“Yes?”
“I don’t know anything about investing and so I wondered if we could set up an appointment or something.”
“I’m sure one of the junior agents at the firm would be happy to advise you, Mr. LaTiara. Mr. Katz, however, only deals with portfolios of a million dollars or more.”
“You mean my money’s not good enough for him?” I said. For some reason I really was insulted.
“It’s good,” the snooty young man replied. “It’s just not enough money.”
I knew the type. It had nothing to do with race, even though he must have been a white man. He was the sort that identified with his master so closely that he believed he was the arbiter of those million-dollar investors. Here he probably didn’t make seventy dollars a week, but he still sneered at my paltry seventy grand.
I hung up on him.
Three calls later, at Holy Cross Episcopal, I found a rector named Drummund—or least I got a woman who answered using his name.
“Reverend Drummund’s office,” she said in a well-worn but not world-weary voice.
“Hector LaTiara,” I said, but there was a hesitation in my tone.
“Yes?”
She didn’t know the name, hadn’t heard it before—I could tell. I could have come up with a story, but I held back.
“Hello?” she said.
Still I remained silent.
“Is anyone there?”
I put the receiver down softly, this time because of caution rather than petty anger. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“What’s wrong?” Fearless asked me.
“I don’t know what to say.”
“What you mean?”
“So far,” I said, “you an’ me been outside the place where Useless an’ them been workin’. Nobody knows us and nobody can tie us up with the crimes.”
“If there is a crime.”
“There’s two dead men, Fearless,” I said. “How much more crime do you want?”
“I mean about the money,” my friend replied. “We don’t even know if there ever was any money in them wrappers.”
“You think Jerry Twist woulda lied about that?”
“Go on,” Fearless said. “Tell me why you cain’t talk to them but you can chatter all ovah me.”
“Drummund don’t know us,” I said. “Katz neither. I cain’t just walk in on ’em, ’cause they’re important men. They ain’t gonna have nobody like you or me walk in their offices, not unless we tell ’em about LaTiara or Useless.”
“Cain’t tell ’em ’bout Ulysses,” Fearless said. “Hearts wouldn’t like that.”
“That don’t even mattah,” I said. “’Cause if we call ’em an’ tell ’em ’bout how we know about them bein’ blackmailed or whatevah, they might just call the cops. They don’t know Hector’s real name, I’m sure’a that, and so when the police ask us and then find Hector dead, where will we be?”
Fearless smiled. Smiled. Here I was explaining how our whole enterprise was stalled in the water, and he just grinned as if I had told a half-funny joke.
“You’ll figure it out, Paris,” he told me.
“Aren’t you listening to me, man?” I asked. “I’m sayin’ I don’t know what to do.”
“That’s okay,” he said. “That’s how everything start. First you don’t know an’ then you do.”
25
THE DAY WAS WENDING into evening while Fearless and I walked along the shore. We were friends, there was no doubt about that, but our relationship was also hard to define. Sometimes I was like the big brother who could read complex documents and decipher the logical knots that faced my simpleminded friend. At other times he was like the ideal father that had never abandoned me, protecting me from danger. On that particular evening he was this selfsame father who saw my troubles and only said that he believed in me and that I would see my way through in time.
Maybe all true friendships are like that: like rolling rivers rather than edifices of stone. I don’t know. All I had on my mind was how I could get information from Katz and Drummund without them calling the cops on me.
“You tired, Paris?” Fearless asked, as the setting sun ignited the pollutants in t
he evening sky, making a fiery red sunset that had all of the ecstasy and terror of a heart attack.
“Naw, man. I couldn’t sleep if I wanted to.”
“That’s good. ’Cause you know I think we gonna have to work hard tonight.”
“Why’s that?”
“Al Rive’s in town.”
“Really? He really came back?” I asked.
“Yeah, brother. First he put his mother in the soup an’ now he wanna hurt Milo for turnin’ on the heat. Whisper fount him out, but before we could get there he was gone. Tomorrow I be full-time either chasin’ Al or bodyguardin’ Milo’s butt.”
“You a good friend, Fearless.”
“Why not? Friendship is free.”
WE DROVE FROM THE BEACH down to Nadine Grant’s many-flowered home.
As we were walking through the gated fence toward the front door, Three Hearts was coming out. She was wearing all white, which was never a good sign. White was what Three Hearts wore when she was bringing God with her on her mission, whatever that mission was. It was lore in our family that Three Hearts wearing white meant that she was going to someone’s funeral—and that someone didn’t need to be dead yet.
“Hey, Hearts,” Fearless said, holding out hands of greeting and restraint.
“Out of my way, Fearless,” she commanded. “I got places to be.”
“Who’s drivin’ you?” he asked, both friendly and stern.
“Toby Battrell,” she said, waving a white-gloved hand at the street.
Standing there next to a 1940s wood-paneled station wagon was a teenage boy. His shirttails were hanging out and his plump body seemed to be made from fudge.
“That’s a child right there, Hearts,” Fearless said. “What’s his mama gonna say when you put him out there in front’a Mad Anthony or some other crazy fool like that?”
“Toby will stay in the car.”
“In the middle’a the night in places where Ulysses might be? Hearts,” Fearless entreated. “You cain’t be draggin’ no child around where trouble grow. You know that, baby.”
“Who said that I’m goin’ out lookin’ for trouble?” Three Hearts said to the ground at her feet.
“Toby,” Fearless called.
“Yessir?”
My friend flipped a coin across the void. The boy made a valiant effort, but he missed and had to run after the silver disk as it rolled down the asphalt.
“That’s a dollar,” Fearless said when the awkward ballet was through. “Go on home now. Me an’ Paris will drive Mrs. Grant.”
When the boy flashed a grin I decided I liked him. He jumped into his station wagon and rolled away to safety.
“Now, where you wanna go, Hearts?” Fearless asked my auntie.
I didn’t speak because I would always be a child in the eyes of my family. Even with my mustache they treated me according to my size and temperament. That’s why Three Hearts could use Toby on a risky venture and not realize how wrong she was.
But Fearless was born an adult. People always listened to him; even white folks cocked an ear when they were in trouble and Fearless offered to help.
“There’s a house down around Compton,” she said. “I wanna go there.”
“What’s there?” I asked. I just couldn’t keep quiet.
“Ain’t none’a your business.”
“Hearts,” Fearless said. “We your people here. Why you wanna stonewall us?”
Three Hearts looked up into my friend’s eyes with something like evil festering in hers. I did not know another man or woman who knew Three Hearts that wouldn’t back down from that stare.
Fearless grinned.
“I ain’t scared’a you, Hearts,” he said. “You know I’m tryin’ to help ya. You know you need us wit’ you to help your son. So don’t be pullin’ no evil-eye stuff on me.”
Nadine had come to the screen door. She was looking at the encounter with something like fear in her face.
Three Hearts began to tremble. Her fists were knotted in rage. I swear I felt lightning gather in the sky. It took all of my courage not to step away from Fearless.
“It’s that girl,” Three Hearts hissed. “I found out from a woman. I’m goin’ down there to get her spell off my son.”
FROM THE BACKSEAT of my car on the way to Compton, she told us the tale.
“I know you been lookin’, Paris,” she said. “An’ I appreciate it, baby. But I couldn’t just sit there in Nadine’s house an’ watch the flowers grow. I had to get out an’ do sumpin’. And so Nadine told me about Toby. He done got put outta school fo’ stealin’ from the canteen, an’ his mama want him to work. So I hired him for fifty cent a hour t’drive me. I buy his lunch an’ pay the gas, an’ he took me to every church around here.
“I must’a gone to twenty churches when I finally fount a woman who knew a woman that this Angel girl done messed wit’. I knew it was gonna be sumpin’ like that. Her Christian name is Allmont. She was in this one church, Triumph of the Lord Holy Baptist, when she lured Tyree Mullins inta sin. His wife, Cleo, couldn’t do nuthin’ about it. It was like he had a fever. He kept tellin’ Cleo that it wasn’t nuthin’ romantic or sex but that he was just tryin’ t’help the girl. He owns some property ovah in Compton an’ he put her up there. She don’t pay no rent, don’t buy her own food or her clothes. If she get sick he there wit’ her before his own chirren. That’s the woman that have beguiled my poor son.”
I didn’t know how much truth or rumor or fabrication by Three Hearts herself had gone into that story, but I did know that Tommy Hoag had used the name Allmont when referring to Angel. Three Hearts had brought us to the door I was looking for, the door I needed to go through in order to effect a plan that had an escape hatch if need be.
Where I was satisfied, Three Hearts was seething. I could feel her evil orb roving in the backseat, looking for just the right calamity to befall the slut-Jezebel who had led her pure and innocent son down the path of wickedness.
I would have felt good if it weren’t for my auntie. Her anger would get in the way of my getting her out of California and back to the superstitious boondocks of the Creoles and Cajuns. Her anger was the promise of a great explosion that would rip open the crime her son had most definitely committed. And in the aftermath of that detonation, the police might come and drag me away for extortion, theft, and multiple murders.
But I couldn’t get too lost in the dangerous atmosphere in which I found myself. We were about to get to Useless’s girlfriend. And if Fearless could daunt Three Hearts just enough, I might get in there and figure a way to placate her and send her and her son far away.
COMPTON WAS A NICE LITTLE TOWN at that time. The houses were almost all one-story single-family dwellings. The yards were wide and green. The sidewalks were newly laid concrete, white and unmarred by the passage of workingmen’s feet. If there were trees along the curbs they were imported, because there hadn’t been enough time for them to grow.
All in all, Angel’s neighborhood was like a brand-new Christmas present given by a king to his patient and penitent peasants.
Angel lived at 12033/4 Snyder. Number 1203 was a large salmon pink house with a friendly family window that had the drapes pulled. At the side of the driveway was a bank of mailboxes, four of them to coincide with the addresses up to 3/4.
Number 12031/4 was an emerald green place, half the size of the front building. There was a gnarled oak on one side (obviously from a time before the area was subdivided) and ten rows of corn on the other. Behind that house was a long flat building painted white and divided into two separate addresses. The one on the right was 12033/4.
Even though Three Hearts rushed forward, Fearless got there first and knocked. Three Hearts was muttering hateful curses to herself, and darkness had fallen. There was a quarter moon to our right and crickets could be heard everywhere.
The door opened and we were flooded with yellow light.
She was much more beautiful than even her photograph had promised. The medi
um brown skin was closer to burnished copper. The straightened hair seemed to flow so naturally that you would have thought that she was an American Indian. The surprise in her eyes and the goddess’s lips’ parting were for Three Hearts. You would have thought that my auntie was Angel’s long-lost sister instead of the instrument of her doom.
“I love your son, Mrs. Grant,” the epitome of beauty uttered.
And to my eternally enduring surprise, Three Hearts broke down crying.
26
NOT WHIMPERING OR SOBS but deep, soul-wrenching howls came from Three Hearts’s chest. She made the sounds that women made when they heard that a child or a husband had died. It was a funeral cry.
Fearless put his arms around my auntie, and she fell into the embrace. He supported her across the threshold while she bawled and shrieked.
For her part, Angel was dismayed at the elder woman’s desolate abandon. She clasped her hands together and guided Fearless to a broad black couch in the center of a very modern room. In front of the couch was a console that had a TV and a record player inside the red-stained maple box. There were copies of abstract paintings on the walls that seemed to be influenced by a jazz sensibility. There was one bookcase and various chairs that went together but did not match. The wood floor was bright white pine and the walls were also white. There were a dozen lamps placed haphazardly around the large space. Some were standing posts, others table lamps. All of them were on.
I liked a brightly lit room; made me feel that nothing underhanded was going on. Of course I knew brightness and honesty weren’t necessarily friends.
Three Hearts moaned and shouted for some time. There could have been bloody murder being committed in that bungalow, but no neighbor called the cops. I was glad that they didn’t, but then again, it bothered me too.
Angel, who was wearing a pink dress that would have been a shirt had it been any shorter, brought ice water and knelt down in front of Three Hearts.
Fear of the Dark Page 13
