I’ve never respected law enforcement, merely feared it. I’m an honest man as far as it goes, meaning that I’d rather make my own money than take somebody else’s. I’m almost always on the right side of the law, but lawmen scare me anyway, they terrify me. I have always believed that more black folks have been killed by those claiming to be enforcing the law than by those who were breaking it. So following that man I felt like a deer stalking a tiger, or a leaf pretending that it was driving the wind.
LATHAM DOUBLED BACK to Central and cruised toward downtown. I couldn’t tell if he and Elana were talking, much less sharing secrets. There wasn’t much movement between them. Of course I couldn’t see them very well because I lagged pretty far behind most of the time.
When we hit the outskirts of downtown, Latham headed north toward the swankier districts. We went up through the center of the city and then west on Beverly. We finally ended up on Shatto, a street that looked almost residential. Four blocks up we came upon a small hotel, the Pine Grove. A man in a partial uniform rushed out and opened Elana’s door. Even though the valet was colored, you could see that he was surprised to see Elana’s hue. But he swallowed that and ushered the cop and his prisoner in through the cast-iron front doors.
The valet took Latham’s car to park it, so I knew where to wait for his return. But I was worried about Fearless. Had they taken him to jail?
I was afraid for my friend and feeling guilty too. What good was it for me to bail Fearless out of jail if it was just to get him thrown into prison?
I watched the front of the hotel for a minute, a minute that felt like the first sixty seconds of a twenty-year term at Alcatraz. There was no pay phone in sight and I knew that the hotel staff would be unlikely to let me make a call from the desk; and even if they were feeling generous, I didn’t want to take the chance of running across Latham and Elana.
I knew that the longer I waited, the more likely Latham was to come out and drive off, so I made my decision. I walked over to the valet who had returned from parking the cop’s car.
“Hey, brother,” I hailed.
The man’s coat was a conservative dark red and the buttons were metal but not shiny. His features were large for his face. The big eyes and expressive mouth added a startled tinge to his distrust of me. He was my size, that is to say small and slender, and suspicious of any man who claimed a relation.
“What?”
“My car broke down,” I said, pointing across and partway down the street to Layla’s gaudy Packard.
The valet, whose name tag said George, looked suspiciously at the car and back at me.
“This ain’t no garage,” he said.
“Even if it was it wouldn’t help me, ’cause I ain’t got no money for a mechanic,” I said, filling my mouth with words and self-deprecation.
“So what you want from me?” George asked sensibly.
“I wanna call my cousin,” I replied. “He come over and gimme a jump or whatever.”
“There ain’t no phone here for you,” he said. “Phone for guests or people who work here.”
“I know you got a phone at your station, man. I’ll give you a dollar and you can dial the number yourself.”
Dollar was the magic word in porter/valet/waiter language. A dollar was ten tips. A dollar bought six packs of cigarettes, enough to last a week if you didn’t have any broke friends.
George snuck me into a little cubby where he had a chair, a desk, and a phone. I fed him Milo Sweet’s number. He dialed and then handed me the receiver.
“Sweet’s,” Loretta Kuroko said pleasantly.
“You sayin’ that in my ear almost makes everything else okay,” I said.
“Hold on.” Her reply was cold and curt. I wondered if she was insulted somehow by my friendliness. I knew they didn’t have another line that she needed to answer.
“Paris,” Fearless said into the phone.
“You okay, Fearless?”
“Yeah, yeah. When the detective took off, the other cops just let me walk. I looked for you and then figured that you came here, so I did too. I’m sorry, Paris, I really am.”
“About what?”
“The bond.”
“They took it?”
“Naw. The girl saw the cops behind you. She told me an’ I saw ’em too. She said that she could hide the bond in the linin’a her purse and so I give it to her —”
“I know what happened after that,” I said.
George tapped on the door, indicating that my time was up.
“Listen, Fearless,” I whispered. “I’m at a hotel called the Pine Grove up on Shatto. I don’t know how long I’ll be here, so you sit tight until I call back.”
“You got it.”
I cut the connection with my finger and said in a slightly louder tone, “Well when is she comin’ in?… No?… Shit!” Then I hung up the phone.
I opened the door, looked at George, and said, “Never let one’a your relations marry a woman think she’s a beauty queen.” I gave him the dollar and went back across the street.
23
I PUT UP the hood on Layla’s pink Packard and stood behind it, pretending to be working on the engine. From there I could watch the front of the hotel without causing too much concern in the staff or the chance police cruiser. I had to wait about an hour before Latham and Love came out. They were escorted by a tall white man in a gray suit.
They all spoke at the curb while the valet ran to retrieve Latham’s car. Latham and the man clasped hands, then the man took both of Elana’s hands in his and said something that was meant to be sincere. It was odd to see a black woman so well treated at a fancy Hollywood hotel. I didn’t even think that a police detective had the clout to make a place like that serve a Negro. That made me wonder about the man they were talking to. But there was no time for thinking. I jumped in my car and made a U-turn. By the time Latham and Elana were ready to go, I was too.
The ride wasn’t very far. They drove toward the south side of downtown; a rougher neighborhood with motels instead of hotels, hot dog stands instead of fine restaurants.
They pulled into a motel call Las Palmas on Adams. Latham and Elana went into the main office together. He didn’t want to let her out of his reach. I wondered if he knew about the bond in her purse.
After they took room 12B on the second floor of the open-air two-tiered motel, I went to call Fearless at a pay phone next to a pop machine in the parking lot.
“Paris?” Fearless said, answering Milo’s phone.
I gave him the address.
“Milo wants to know what’s happenin’.”
“Tell ’im that we’re looking for the money. That should make him happy.”
“See you soon,” Fearless said.
THERE WAS an all-night coffee shop down the block where I loaded up on pork sandwiches and beer. Milo sent Fearless down with a pint of rye whiskey. It was the friendly gesture of an insecure business partner. I think he knew that if Fearless took the gift, he wouldn’t let me cut the ex-lawyer out. He was right about that.
We watched the motel from my car parked across the street. I was in the front seat, and Fearless was in back. We sat low so as not to be seen if the cops cruised by.
“Paris?” Fearless said at a little after one.
“What?”
“You think she in there lovin’ him?”
“How should I know?”
“I didn’t ask if you knew,” Fearless pointed out. “I just wondered what you thought.”
“Why?”
“It ain’t like she’s your girlfriend or nuthin’. Damn, she just laid you so she could get your money and your car.”
“Thank you, Fearless. I didn’t know that until you told me.”
“You don’t have to get all mad, Paris. It’s just that I been thinkin’ about her.”
“Thinkin’ what?”
“She’s definitely smart. Smart like you, you know? And she’s in deep. Now what’s she gonna do? Woman cain’t run around
like a man. I mean, I know she shot Conrad Till, but more times than not she be in a situation where the man has the more muscle. So she got to use bein’ a woman to fight her way through, like she said at that shack.”
“This the first time you ever thought that a woman use sex to get what she want?” I said.
“ ’Course not. But I never thought of it like fightin’. I never thought that a kiss could be like a loaded gun.”
I had never thought of that either.
BY FOUR A.M. Fearless had fallen asleep in the backseat. It was cold again, and I could see the steam of my breath in the darkness. I closed my eyes, trying not to think about what Elana and Latham were up to.
In the dream I was standing at a corner flirting with a woman, Elana Love. I had a long key chain, and I was twirling it while telling her lies about my riches and exploits. There were children playing on the street and a fat man sitting on a wooden crate. The man was winded and asking for help. I thought that he might have been having a heart attack, but I kept talking to Elana anyway. In mid-swing of my key chain I felt something like a nibble on the bait of a fishing line. I looked and saw three of the children from the day before running away. They were rounding the corner into an alley.
“Stop him!” the fat man yelled. “Stop!”
I realized that the smallest boy had taken my keys. I took off after them. It was the opposite of the dream I usually have. Usually I’m running hard trying to get away from some attacker; I’m running hard but I make no progress. In this dream I was running at full speed unable to close the gap. The children were scurrying like little kids do while I barreled down on them, getting no closer. The fat man was laboring behind me, yelling, “Stop! Stop!”
“Paris!” Fearless said.
I was just gaining on the kids, but then someone grabbed my shoulder. Three loud gunshots blasted through my dream.
I opened my eyes. Fearless was rushing out of the passenger’s door from the backseat.
“What?” I said, and then there was a fourth report.
Fearless was running toward an alley down the block from the motel. I turned the engine over and nosed the car to follow. Before I reached the alley I heard a car screeching in the motel lot. I looked back and saw Latham’s sedan race off in the opposite direction.
Under the neon glow of the motel sign I caught a glimpse of Elana Love at the wheel. I couldn’t follow though, because Fearless needed me. It was just like old times, times that I wished were over and forgotten.
Lights were coming on in the windows of an apartment building that bordered the alley. Two men were down. Fearless was moving from the first body and going to the second. I jumped out of the car.
“We got to go, man!” I shouted through a whisper.
The soldier ignored me. The second body was still moving. The first man, who was sprawled out on his belly, was Reverend Grove. His left temple was gone, and grim dark liquid had leaked out next to his amazed eye.
The other man was Latham. Fearless squatted down next to him. The wound in his chest looked bad even in that weak light. His breathing was labored and liquid. There was no mistaking his gurgling. The rest of his life would be measured in seconds.
He said something, and then he said something else that resembled the first sound but was even less comprehensible.
“Come on, man,” I said to Fearless.
Latham faded out then. I think that was the moment he died, but the final end might have come a moment or two later.
Fearless stood. He nodded and said, “There was somebody else.”
“What?”
“When I got here, there was somebody way up the alley — runnin’.”
“Come on, Fearless. We gotta get outta here.”
“What about the runner?”
I noticed a purse on the ground a few feet farther down the alley. Fearless saw it too.
As he went to pick it up, I said, “Probably some tramp didn’t wanna get his ass shot off.”
Fearless picked up the purse, and then we were both running for my car. I backed into the street and drove away from the motel. Through the rearview mirror I could see that there were people standing outside of the windowed office, talking and pointing toward my car.
After a block or two Fearless began laughing. He laughed full out.
“What’s wrong with you, fool?” I said, afraid that he had cracked under the strain.
“Nuthin’,” was all Fearless could say for a moment. He had to take a deep breath to keep the mirth down.
“Nuthin’? Have you gone crazy?”
“Naw, Paris. Naw, man. It’s you.”
“Me what?”
“You know I promised myself a long time ago that I wasn’t gonna put myself back in a war for nuthin’, not even America.”
“So?”
“This right here is war, baby,” he said, suddenly serious. “And where my own country couldn’t make me — you did.”
He made another short bark, but this time there was no humor behind it.
24
IT WASN’T UNTIL I was parking down the street from Arthur’s Pet Shop and Animal Grooming that my hands stopped shaking. The side door to Arthur’s led to three rooms that made up an after-hours club that a few dozen regulars kept in business. In order to get to Arthur’s you had to come in the back alley and park at least a block away. It wasn’t a party place or a music hall; there wasn’t any dance floor. All it was was a jukebox and Nathan Wellman, an insomniac tailor who ran the place to make a few extra dollars while having people to talk to between midnight and dawn.
Nathan brought two generous shots of whiskey to our table.
“You boys look serious,” Nathan said as a conversation opener.
“I need to use the phone, Nate,” I replied.
He gave me a sour look and went over to the mahogany bar, returning with a baseball bat that had a hole drilled in the handle. Through the hole was knotted a string that held a single brass key.
Nathan’s place was a dive. The wood floor wasn’t sealed or waxed, the walls were devoid of paint. The tables and chairs were mismatched and wobbly. But for all that it was primitive, Nathan’s had something that even the Waldorf Astoria in New York City couldn’t brag about; he had a telephone room. It was rustic and spare, but it was a whole room, six feet square with a pay phone on the wall and a table and chair. There was a phone book too.
I dialed a number.
“Las Palmas,” a woman said, after answering on the sixth ring.
“Certainly,” I said, doing my best to mimic the snooty Landry Lamming. “Helen Huggins,” I continued, cursing myself for making up such dumb names, “in room twelve B, if you please.”
“Uh… well… hold on,” the night clerk said.
There was silence and then a series a clicks and bangs. A man’s voice finally said, “Who is this?”
“Excuse me,” I said primly, “but I asked for Miss Huggins in twelve B. They must have connected me with the wrong room.”
“Who is this?” the man repeated. “Are you the one who called twelve B earlier tonight?”
“Who, may I ask, are you, sir?”
“Police Sergeant Bryant,” he said. “Did you call earlier tonight?”
“I was looking for my friend,” I said. “Miss Huggins.”
“Did you ask for a man named Latham?”
“No. Who is he?”
“He was with the woman in twelve B.”
“Oh my,” I said in a fey tone.
“What’s your name, sir?”
“Is Miss Huggins in trouble, Officer Bryant?”
“I’m asking the questions, Mr...?”
“Is Miss Huggins there, Sergeant?”
“Two men have been shot,” Bryant said, trying the frank approach. After all, maybe I really was a foreigner, far from home and unfamiliar with the legal customs of America.
“And Miss Huggins?” I asked, all aflutter.
“There was a woman. She fled the scene. You
say her name is Huggins?”
I chose that moment to hang up.
Nathan and Fearless were having a good old time talking about Fearless’s experience in the county lockup. I came back and downed my drink. Fearless took that as a cue to stand.
“See you later, Nathan,” Fearless said.
“But you didn’t finish your story.”
“Save it for the next time.”
Fearless clapped Nathan on the shoulder, and we left.
WE MADE IT back to Fontanelle’s court near five. I let Fearless have the mother’s bedroom. I took the child’s bed, just a urine-stained mattress on the floor, because I was the smaller of us two. As scared as I was, I needed sleep. We had nothing to go on. Elana’s purse was ripped open and the bond was gone. The bond was gone and we didn’t know who had it. I had a pretty good idea that it was in Elana’s possession, but at five in the morning I hardly even cared.
I slept soundly until I felt a tongue on my face. I opened my eyes and saw Blood, Fearless’s adopted dog. I sat up and pushed him away. Fearless was drinking some hot liquid out of a cup and relaxing, slouched back in his chair. From his demeanor you would have thought that we were on vacation.
“What time is it?” I asked.
“’Bout twelve-thirty.”
“Where’d this dog come from? I thought you left him with Dorthea.”
“I called her, and she told me to come get ’im.”
“What you think Fell gonna say when we got pets in her court?”
“That’s three questions wit’out you sayin’ good mornin’,” Fearless said.
“Good morning,” I said.
Fearless’s face broke out into a friendly smile. “Fontanelle said it was okay. She said that she might even want a good watchdog to protect her garage when she holdin’ stuff fo’ people.”
Fearless Jones Page 16
