“Okay,” she said gladly and stood up. “Bye, Paris. I’m’a go an’ let you men talk.”
I rose and kissed her cheek. She smiled at me and patted my jaw line. As she sashayed toward her apartment, I closed the front door. Fearless had turned on the light before I was sitting again.
“I called you,” he said.
“I stayed out last night. Seemed like a good idea.”
“You got anything more about Ulysses?”
“I think it might’a been him who killed Hector.”
I told him that Jessa had said Useless had stolen something from Hector’s boss.
“He already admitted killing Tony,” I added as a kind of proof.
“Naw, man,” Fearless said. “Ulysses ain’t gonna sneak up on no bad man an’ cut his th’oat. Naw.” Fearless shook his head, but he was wondering.
“That ain’t all,” I said. “Jessa said that Hector’s bossman called an’ told him to meet him at the yard.”
“Bubba’s Yard?”
“I don’t know. Might be.”
“Thatta make sense. Sure would.”
If you lived in Watts or some other poor neighborhood and you owned a fine or fancy car, you might avail yourself of the services of Bubba Lateman’s Yard. Lateman owned a largish piece of property on the borderline between Compton and Los Angeles. He’d built a high cinder-block wall around it and topped that with barbed wire and shards of glass embedded in concrete. He kept dogs that would chew through bone and an alarm system with a bell that could be heard for six city blocks. Combine that with a high-powered hunting rifle in the hands of an army-certified marksman and you had the safest garage in the world.
It cost two dollars a day, which was steep in 1956, but if you had a fine Cadillac and you didn’t want it damaged or stolen, you just might pay Bubba before you paid the rent.
Bubba had a capacity of twenty-five cars, Milo’s red Caddy usually being one of them.
“So you thinkin’ that they keepin’ somethin’ in the car at Bubba’s,” Fearless said.
“I think that’s where the rest’a the money is.”
“Damn,” Fearless said. “That’s pretty smart. You know Ulysses might think of it, but he wouldn’t have the car to make it real.”
Nor, I thought, would he be able to run a blackmail operation.
“You ready t’face that evil eye again?” Fearless asked me.
“No,” I said. “Could you do it?”
“Sure thing, man. That’s the least I could do.”
WE PARKED DOWN THE BLOCK from Nadine Grant’s home. I sat in the car waiting while Fearless braced the family. Nadine would put up with them for a while; Useless, after all, was blood to her. But it had to be running rather hot in there. Useless was a slob and Angel was a stranger. It shouldn’t have been too hard for Fearless to pry my cousin free.
The more I thought about it, the less likely it seemed that Useless would have killed Hector. The risk wouldn’t have been worth it. And even if it made sense, Useless would have gone after the man with a gun. A knife is a brave man’s weapon. And even though Useless wasn’t as cowardly as I, he wasn’t what you’d have called brave.
I sat in that car with the windows rolled up and the sun beating down. It was getting hot, but I was afraid even to open a window. Just that thin barrier of glass was better than nothing.
I got a little light-headed from the heat but I was only aware of the drowsiness, not its cause. So when Fearless opened the door and said my name, I was surprised. I think maybe I had passed out from all of the exhaustion, peach schnapps, hot sun, and fear.
“Hey, Cousin,” Useless said as he climbed into the backseat.
I slid over to the passenger’s side and Fearless got behind the wheel.
“Did Hector have a car he kept at Bubba Lateman’s?” I asked Useless.
“Yeah. Sho did. Pink-an’-chrome Cadillac. Kep’ it so neat it woulda passed a military inspection.”
“Would Bubba let you pick it up?”
“Prob’ly. I went there wit’ Hector a few times. You know I’d drive ovah there with him. An’ then take him back home after he dropped it off.”
“So you been to his place before?”
Fearless turned the key and the car started.
“Not for a month or two, but yeah.”
Useless was getting wary. Maybe he knew what the next question might have been.
Fearless pulled away from the curb and we started our drive southward.
“So why you still lookin’ into Hector an’ them?” Useless asked, partly to prevent me from asking more questions.
“Because someone killed him,” I said. “Because’a that suitcase you had and some things we found at Lionel Sterling’s place.”
Useless was silent.
“Where’d you get that bag, Useless?” I asked into the void of the backseat.
“Um.”
“Come on, man,” I said. “You ain’t got time to make up no lie.”
“I took it.”
“Took it from where?”
“From, from Hector’s place.”
“When?”
“A few days ago.”
“You just walked in an’ took it?” I asked sarcastically. “He just let you walk all ovah him?”
“He, he was dead.”
Fearless turned his head for a moment.
“You killed him?”
“No, man. No. He was dead. Somebody cut his th’oat. I saw the suitcase, grabbed it, and ran.”
“Did you see who killed him?”
“Uh-uh. No. I just grabbed the suitcase ’cause I knew it was important. I grabbed it and hustled out the back.”
“What about the girl?”
“She wasn’t there.”
“The white girl wasn’t there?” I asked.
“What white girl? I thought you was askin’ ’bout Angel.”
“Hector’s girl. Jessa.”
“I didn’t even know ’bout no girlfriend, man. I walked in, saw he was murdered, grabbed the suitcase, an’ run.”
He was lying—had to be. The man who had murdered Hector was certainly in on the blackmailing scheme. That man wouldn’t have left all that evidence behind.
43
THE ONLY ENTRANCE to Bubba’s Yard was an eight-foot-high wrought-iron gate. He had four snapping and slavering feral dogs that came out to greet us with their canine threats and promises.
Fearless pressed the buzzer while Useless and I stood a few feet away. The dogs were wolflike, maybe they were wolves, with dense pelts and yellow fangs. They wanted to look us in the eye, like bullies on a street corner. They wanted to kill us.
The dogs prowled the inside of the gate, lunging at it now and then. A man approached from the house that sat at the back end of the lot.
Bubba Lateman was a huge man. Six six or more and weighing three fifty at least. His head was bald and his hands too big even for a body his size. He had a smile on his face, but I knew how mean Bubba could be.
He was wearing overalls and railroad gloves. His skin was black and that day streaked with sweat.
“Fearless Jones,” he said amid the yowling and barking of his dogs.
It was both a greeting and a threat. Powerful men who had never tested him always felt a little disdainful of Fearless’s reputation.
“Mornin’, Bubba,” my friend hailed. “We come with Ulysses here to pick up Hector LaTiara’s car . . . for his widow.”
Fearless could lie if he had to. Usually it was to save some poor soul from an ass-whupping. I think that day he was also worried about having to kill those dogs.
“Hector didn’t say nuthin’ ’bout no wife,” Bubba said.
“White girl,” Fearless assured him. “Jessa is what they call her.”
Bubba’s eyes were tiny for his big, bald black head. When he blinked it was almost as if he were being coquettish, flirting with the object of his confusion.
“What you say about that, Useless?” Bubba asked.
There was a moment in which Useless faltered. I believed that he was wondering if maybe he could enlist the aid of this giant standing before him. Maybe Bubba could block us from getting Hector’s Cadillac.
“They just drove me down, Bubba,” he said. “Paris my cousin, an’ Fearless his friend.”
The dogs sensed something and began snarling in a different key.
“Get on back there!” Bubba commanded his curs. They whimpered and obeyed, skulking to some kennel on the far side of the property.
Bubba brought a big ring of keys out of the inside of his work overalls. He used a jagged-looking piece of brass to unlock the gate.
After we entered, and he locked up again, Bubba led us to the right, where the yard part of his business was. The largest of the wolf-dogs came to walk with him. She was a big gray creature, between seventy-five and eighty-five pounds. For all her weight, she looked starved and hungry for fresh flesh and revenge.
I had never been inside Bubba’s Yard before. The automobiles parked in neat rows upon the hard desert soil were impressive. Cadillac cars and Italian sports jobs, there was even a Bentley and a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud.
And Hector’s Caddy, pink and chrome, as Useless had promised. It actually sparkled under the hot L.A. sun.
“They say you’re bad, Fearless Jones,” Bubba said.
“Some say I’m good,” Fearless replied easily.
Bubba didn’t like the joke. “What would you do if I told Bree here to jump up an’ tear out yo’ throat?”
Fearless glanced at Bree, who started growling on cue. He, Fearless, contemplated a moment and then looked back at Bubba.
“She’s a beautiful animal,” Fearless said. “Too skinny and knocked around more than she deserves. If she was to jump I’d have to grab her by the jaw an’ snap her neck like a chicken. An’ then, Bubba Lateman, I would have to teach you a lesson that you’d carry down into the coffin wit’ you.”
Bulfinch’s Mythology came to me then. It seemed to me that this tableau belonged in those pages. Fearless was the hero, I was the hero’s companion, Useless was the mischievous trickster, and Bubba was the ogre or giant. We were playing out roles in a history that went back before anyone could remember. The river Styx might have lain to our left, and this was just a step in our journey.
I couldn’t help it: I laughed.
Bubba grinned then too. Bree turned her head toward him with a look of canine surprise on her vicious face.
“Take the car, man,” Bubba said. “And lemme tell ya, if Bree here jumped at ya, you’d never have a chance.”
I DROVE MY CAR while Fearless manned the Caddy with Useless at his side. We took Useless back to Nadine’s house. Out front he was unwilling to see us go.
“Why you want Hector’s car?” he asked us.
“I like pink,” Fearless said. “It’s my favorite color.”
“Come on,” he said. “What you want it for?”
“Useless,” I said.
“Why you have to call me that?” he asked. He almost sounded insulted.
“What? Useless?”
“That’s hurtful. I don’t call you Dog Shit, now, do I?”
“You bettah not.”
“Well, I might.”
“And I might go to the cops an’ say about Martin Friar and Brian Motley, not to mention Mad Anthony. I might tell ’em that you was in business with Lionel Sterling and Hector LaTiara. That’s all I got to say, Useless. Because you know I never call you. I never drop by your house askin’ for ice water. I don’t need you, not at all. To me you truly are Useless. So get your ass back up in the house with your cockeyed mama and wait for us to call you again.”
If I didn’t know better I would have thought that Useless’s feelings were actually hurt. He pouted and stared at the ground.
“Go on, Useless,” I insisted.
He turned and walked away slowly.
For my part, I stood there refusing to feel guilty.
“WHAT YOU THINK, PARIS?” Fearless asked me when we were in my kitchen smoking cigarettes and drinking schnapps.
“I don’t know.”
There was a duffel bag on the floor between us. Above that was a table piled high with twenties, fifties, and hundred-dollar bills. I had stopped counting at sixty thousand dollars. Adding that to the money we had found at Sterling’s, we had over one hundred thousand dollars. One hundred thousand. In 1956 that was enough to retire on.
“We got to give it back, Paris,” Fearless said. “We got to.”
“Why, man? They already stole it. We might get caught tryin’ to put it back.”
Fearless shook his head and started shoving the money in its bag.
“I got the addresses,” I said. “Why don’t you just let me send it?”
“First we need to make sure the cutthroat ain’t a problem,” Fearless said.
“What you gonna do with the money and Hector’s car?”
“I’ll just leave Hector’s car on the street to get towed and then I’ll borrah Mickey Dean’s white Caddy, put the money in the trunk, an’ bring it ovah to Bubba.”
“You sure you wanna mess wit’ that man again?” I asked seriously. “I think he wanna test you.”
“Naw,” Fearless assured me. “I mean yeah, he wonders, but Bubba’s business. The minute I’m a payin’ client, thatta put fightin’ right out his mind.”
Fearless hefted the bag of money over his shoulder and carried it out to the Caddy.
I accompanied him out to the street and watched as he drove away.
A hundred thousand dollars in free money, and my potential partner in crime was the most honest man in L.A.
44
THE PHONE BEGAN RINGING about ten minutes after Fearless had driven off with my windfall retirement fund.
I could have taken that money and moved to Paris, my namesake city, lived on the Champs-Élysée, and listened to American jazz in the bistros and nightclubs. I could have learned Latin and French and married an African princess.
The phone kept on ringing.
I was almost as leery of the phone as I was of people at my front door. Anybody could have been calling me: the police, Three Hearts, the killer pretending to be somebody else.
Why should I answer?
What I needed to do was to find an out-of-the-way motel where I could sleep and read until there was no more trouble roiling around me.
The phone stopped ringing.
I always forgot that it was Fearless’s moral side that did me in in the end. No matter how much money passed through our hands, he always wanted to do the right thing. Here we had money that nobody expected to see again. I had sent the victims the blackmailers’ evidence—wasn’t that good enough?
The phone started ringing again. That worried me. Somebody wanted to get through. If I didn’t answer they might come by.
“Hello?”
“Paris,” the voice intoned.
“Yeah,” I said resignedly.
“I don’t give information over the phone.”
“Come on by, then,” I said.
“Be there in five.”
More trouble. Whisper could find his way into any problem. He was a real private eye. I couldn’t shake the notion that it was him who had me walking in front of those armed men. It was him who was saved by my diversion.
But even in my self-centered despair, I knew that I had asked Mr. Natly for help. He wouldn’t have been calling me if I hadn’t called on him first.
Above my telephone I had a big round wall clock with a sweeping second hand.
Exactly three hundred seconds after I hung up there was a knock at the door. I just opened it. If it was some armed killer, then so be it.
Whisper smiled and stuck out a hand for me to shake.
I had met the detective a dozen times in my life. He had never before, to my recollection, offered to shake hands. His fleeting smile came and went. I offered him tea and he accepted.
We went into my kitchen and sat
down like friends.
He used three sugars in his English Breakfast. That surprised me.
“That was a good thing you did the other night, Paris,” Whisper said.
“I was so scared I couldn’t even run,” I replied.
“Scared is the detective’s best friend,” he said. “Scared makes you look harder and think longer. Scared keeps your hand on the wheel and your eye on the rearview mirror.”
“Sounds like a heart attack waitin’ to happen,” I said.
“Naw, man. You get used to it. Find yourself sitting in your chair thinkin’ ’bout things nobody else will get to for days. After a while you take actions before the fear moves you. Not so many people could be a detective, but you could, Paris.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Yes, you do. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be askin’ after Mannheim and the Handsome boys.”
He had me there.
“You find ’em?” I asked.
“Bobo,” he said with a nod. “I decided to concentrate on him. I’m guessin’ you wouldn’t want to see ’em all together.”
“Where?” I asked, cutting to the chase.
Whisper smiled again. He took out a slip of paper with a list of four places scrawled on it. These places, I knew, were the leg breaker’s hangouts.
I took the list and looked it over. They were joints I wouldn’t have felt comfortable going in for any reason. The names were often heard along with reports of fights, knifings, arrests, and murder.
“You want some company, Paris?” Whisper offered.
“Damn right.”
“Let’s go, then.”
ALLEGRA’S DANCE HALL WAS no more than the frame of a barn behind an ironworks factory on Hooper. Back there you could lose your life in a second. It was early and no one was dancing. There were a couple of potheads smoking in the yard, but Bobo was nowhere in evidence.
“Should we ask about him?” I asked the professional.
“Not unless you want him to disappear on ya.”
THE NEXT PLACE WAS a Texas barbecue stand on Santa Barbara. It was rumored that Bobo ate there at least four times a week. He wasn’t hungry right then.
HARRY’S BARBERSHOP HAD BEEN CLOSED temporarily by the police. There had been a murder over a poker game in the back room, so Harry took off a week or so, until the police got tired of checking their seal.
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