“How come you gave the suitcase to Useless?” I asked. Why not? It might buy us some time.
“He stole it from me,” Angel spoke up. “I was holding it for Tommy after, after what he did to Hector.”
“You don’t have to answer to this mothahfucker,” Hoag said, his handsome features warped by rage. “Now get up off my money or I shoot this here bastard first.”
Hoag moved his pistol to Useless’s temple, and Three Hearts cried, “No, Lord.”
I realized then that I was not truly superstitious because if I had been I would have been confident that my aunt’s evil eye would slay Hoag. But I was sure that Hoag would kill us all.
Fearless moved slightly, and Hoag brought up his pistol to point at his head. I could see that he had decided to kill Fearless. That was the smartest move. My friend was the only one in the room who posed a threat.
“Fearless took the money, Tommy,” I said. “He took it and hid it. If you kill him then it’s gone.”
“The bitch got a gun in her purse,” Angel said then. “I’ll get it and keep it on him.”
Hoag nodded and smiled at Fearless. My friend’s nostrils dilated maybe an eighth of an inch. I knew that was his recognition of a near-death experience.
Angel took out Three Hearts’s pistol and pointed it at Fearless. Hoag waited a second and then moved his gun so that it was pointing at the ceiling.
She must have been squeezing as she turned. The shot was perfect, hitting Thomas Benton Hoag in the center of his forehead. She kept on shooting, but he was already dead.
That was a moment of crystal clarity for me. I saw it all in less than a second. Angel was partners with Hoag, but then she fell in love with Useless. She was trying to get away, but Tommy ran her down. She convinced him that Useless was some kind of mastermind and told him that Fearless had the money.
It was all a ploy. She meant to kill him all along.
When the gun was empty Angel lowered it and her head.
“You got a phone in here?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“Run outside and start screamin’,” I said. “And when the cops come, tell ’em he was your old boyfriend and that he wanted you back. Tell ’em that he was gonna rob you too.”
Three Hearts was trying to untie Useless, but I told her to stop.
“Tell ’em the knot was too much for you,” I said. “Him bein’ tied will be proof that Hoag was robbin’ you.”
That was it. Fearless and I were out the back and over the fence to the block behind. We heard Angel screaming from that far away.
We took a bus home. I left my car. It would wait for me.
I don’t know about Fearless, but I slept for twenty-four hours after that.
47
THERE WAS A HEARING to see whether or not a crime had been committed in the shooting death of Thomas Benton Hoag. Angel and Three Hearts and Useless all testified.
Thomas Benton Hoag had been Angel’s boyfriend, but she had come to realize that she loved Useless. Tommy came on them at gunpoint, tied Useless up, and told Angel that if she didn’t come with him he’d kill them all.
The judge liked the story, and there was no one to contradict it.
AFTER THE INQUIRY Angel asked Fearless about the money. He told her that he’d already returned it to the men that she blackmailed.
Actually he’d given it to Martin Friar along with the list I’d compiled and asked him to return it in the best ways he could. I told Fearless that we might as well keep the money as Friar, but Fearless said that we could trust the man. Maybe he was right.
Friar did say that we should keep 10 percent as a kind of finder’s fee. It was some money, enough to support my lazy lifestyle for a year or so.
Useless was angry at our presumptions with his hard-earned, ill-gotten wages. But when I asked him about the money he’d invested with Jerry Twist, he shut up.
THAT WAS IT. A life worth remembering is hell to live.
A WEEK AFTER the inquisition Three Hearts, Angel, and Useless left for Louisiana. Two days after that I got a visit from Jessa. I had hoped that she’d just go away, but I should have known better.
She was wearing a nice white cotton dress and there was a red ribbon in her hair just begging to be undone. But I kept my hands to myself.
“Have you heard from Tiny?” she asked me after I made her tea.
“No, I haven’t,” I said. “And I hope I don’t. You know I don’t think that Tiny likes me too well.”
Me talking about him as if he were still alive buoyed her spirits. In her heart I think she knew he was dead, but the lie helped some.
“Can I stay with you, Paris?” she asked toward the end of the visit.
“No, honey. Uh-uh. I like you, but all that mess was too much for me.”
“Did they catch the man that killed Hector?” she wanted to know.
“I haven’t heard anything,” I said, knowing that Hector had been slaughtered by Tommy Hoag, “but you can be sure that the man who did it will pay for it one day.”
“You really believe that?” she asked, boring into me with those diamond drill eyes.
I nodded with absolute certainty.
“You’re a good man, Paris Minton,” she said.
I preferred to believe that even if she knew the whole truth she would have held the same opinion.
I gave her five hundred of the five thousand dollars I’d made on the fiasco that Useless had brought to my door. I told her to go somewhere new and get a job in a café or an office.
“Meet a nice guy and start a family,” I said.
She kissed me at the door, and I barely regretted not lying with her one more time.
When I was in the bookstore alone, after Jessa had gone off into her life, I wondered how Angel and Useless were doing and I was glad that I didn’t have an answer.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
WALTER MOSLEY is the author of the acclaimed Easy Rawlins series of mysteries, including national bestsellers Cinnamon Kiss, Little Scarlet, and Bad Boy Brawly Brown; the Fearless Jones series, including Fearless Jones and Fear Itself; the novels Blue Light and RL’s Dream; and two collections of stories featuring Socrates Fortlow, Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, for which he received the Anisfield-Wolf Award, and Walkin’ the Dog. He was born in Los Angeles and lives in New York.
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