I came for a parley and found myself on the verge of war.
“Vat do ve care about you?” Ari said in a surprisingly high voice. Fearless stood up.
“You don’t wanna know what I can do.” The motherfucker wasn’t said, but everyone in that room heard it.
Ari looked like he wanted to test Fearless’s claim.
“We didn’t have anything to do with the Tannenbaums’ deaths.” Manly was tense but still thinking.
“What do you know about a man named Zimmerman?” Fearless asked.
I didn’t think that the atmosphere could stand any more tension, but the mention of that name caused tremors in all three of our hosts.
“Vat do you know about Zimmerman?” Ari demanded.
“I think it was him caused Sol and Fanny’s killing,” Fearless said. “You know I do, ’cause if I didn’t, I’d’a come in here with my guns blazin’.”
“Zimmerman,” Lev uttered his first word since we entered. “Zimmerman.”
“Why’ont you two guys sit down here with us?” Fearless demanded. “Either we gonna fight or we gonna talk.”
Ari was still taking Fearless’s measure when Lev took a seat.
“Sit down, Ari,” Manly said.
“I want the finder’s fee,” I said.
Maybe I was a little hoarse, because Manly asked, “What did you say?”
“The finder’s fee,” I said, clearing my throat as I did so. “I want the finder’s fee.”
“Vat is it you do for this?” Ari asked.
“We know how you can get to the money,” Fearless said with absolute confidence. “But we don’t tell you a thing unless you tell us about Zimmerman.”
“If you’re talking about the bond that Hedva Tannenbaum gave the woman, it is useless,” Lev said. “The policeman brought her here with it. We took the number and our people checked it. It was a single issue. Tannenbaum had no other dealings with that bank.”
“I ain’t talkin’ ’bout no bond,” Fearless said. “I’m talkin’ ’bout the money, the money you guys is lookin’ for.”
“Why would we believe that you can help us?” Manly asked Fearless.
“Morris Greenspan killed himself last night,” Fearless said. “He left a note. He been workin’ for a man called hisself Minor, and then he fount out what Sol did with the money. But then he fount out who Minor was.”
There was a question in John Manly’s gaze.
“Zimmerman,” I replied.
Manly sat back and considered. There was an arrogant twist to his lips. He looked at each of his friends, making eye movements that I couldn’t read.
“Where is this note?” Manly cocked his head to the side as if he were trying to see if the suicide note was hanging out of one of our pockets.
“Where’s Zimmerman?” Fearless asked.
Manly answered, “We will pay you to tell us where the money is,” not as an offer but as a foregone conclusion.
That sounded like a good first step to me. All we had to do was talk about a number; no thugs or blood or blackjacks.
Fearless stood up and said, “Come on, Paris.”
Ari stood up too.
“No,” Manly said. “Sit down, both of you.”
There wasn’t much give in either of the gladiators. So I asked a question.
“Where you guys from?”
“We are foreigners,” Manly said.
“From Israel, I bet.”
That somehow broke the standoff. Both Fearless and Ari took their seats.
“We are here to reclaim the wealth of our people,” Lev said. His strained voice warbled with emotion that he bore like an open wound.
“Lev —” Manly began, but he was stopped by an upheld hand. I was surprised to see that the pale kid was the senior statesman among the bunch.
“This man, this Abraham Zimmerman, he helped the Nazis to steal it, and we are here to get it back.”
“Steal what?” I asked. I was pretty sure of the answer, but I wanted to see what they would say.
“They took everything,” Lev said. “The gold from our teeth, the hair from our heads. They took our pocket watches and our wallets. And if you were rich and you hid your jewels and paintings and furs, then Zimmerman was sent in to sell your freedom for what you had hidden away. He and his Nazi friends hid them again…” Lev’s words trailed off, and he stared into space.
“Where is Zimmerman?” Fearless said, always wanting to cut to the chase.
“We don’t know,” Lev said after making the grimace of a man swallowing a bitter draft.
“What’s this all about?” I asked the pale kid. Somehow I felt a connection with him.
“Zimmerman is a Jew…,” Lev began.
When Ari heard this, he spat on the floor.
“We already know the part about Zimmerman robbing the rich Jews who thought they could buy their way out of the slaughterhouse,” I said.
Lev caught the last word and looked into my eyes.
“Yes,” he said. “Many of those wealthy men had converted their money into art treasures and gold. David Tannenbaum found out about the sale —”
“— of those jewelry-making tools that the Rothschild’s jewelers had at one time,” I said, finishing the sentence.
“He knew that these tools had belonged to his nephew and so contacted our government,” Lev said, continuing, “but they told him that we could do nothing without proof.”
“Why don’t you just go over to those accountants and make ’em give it up?” Fearless suggested.
Squat, muscle-bound Ari grunted in agreement.
“The American government frowns on agents of foreign powers threatening their citizens,” Lev explained. “We have no proof that this property was stolen. There were only thirty families that these Nazis and their dog, Zimmerman, took from. And they are all dead. The treasures were private property, and the papers of ownership were part of the devil’s bargain. Our actions must be beyond criticism. So we ask for help from those who sympathize with our goals.”
“That include hirin’ a crooked cop to scare Fanny Tannenbaum and kill Conrad Till?” I asked, none too friendly.
“Do you know Israel?” Lev asked.
“What you read in the papers,” I said.
“We made our own nation,” the pale leader intoned. “We have taken back our lives and our history even though they have tried to destroy us all.”
“If you and Sol believe in the same thing, why didn’t you just ask him for the money?” I knew about Israel; I knew about Marcus Garvey too, and I didn’t have the heart to hear about Garvey’s dream coming true in another man’s world.
“We did,” Lev said. “We did, but like I told you, we are not official. We could not prove to him who we were, and no official of our government would vouch for us.”
“If he didn’t believe you, then why should we?” I asked.
“All you have to believe is our money,” Ari said derisively.
“What about Till?” Fearless asked.
Lev brought the upturned palms of his hands up to the level of his shoulders. “We read that he died of a heart attack.”
“You know better than that,” I said.
“We are not murderers, Mr. Minton. We would not kill a man who has not committed a crime against us. The policeman was, how do you say, suggested to us by people we know. We did not trust him. We did not tell him to kill. We only wanted the bond that Fanny Tannenbaum gave to Leon Douglas.”
“Okay,” I said. “Now here you guys is livin’ in the lap’a luxury, fresh off the boat from Israel, don’t know a damn thing and ain’t got no friends to help you, except one crooked cop; but still you go lookin’ for a bond changed hands between Sol Tannenbaum and Leon Douglas’s girlfriend. That don’t even add up to numbers, man.”
John Manly spoke up then. “Mr. Latham was not an honest man, but he was a good detective. When David Tannenbaum was still in prison, the good sergeant found out that Leon Douglas was his protector.
When Leon was released, Latham became suspicious. He was already keeping an eye on Hedva and David through a friend of his who was a policeman in their neighborhood.”
Ari muttered something in Fanny’s tongue. I didn’t understand a single word except for svartza.
“You ain’t listenin’ to me, brother,” Fearless said. “We want the dude caused it all; we want him to pay for what he did. Money’s nice — we could all use some, I’m sure — but this is about making the traitor Jew pay for what he did.”
“But we don’t know where he is,” Manly insisted.
“If we did, we would have him already,” Lev added.
“Are you after the thief or the money he stole?” Fearless impressed me with his question.
Lev hesitated a moment too long before replying, “Both of course.”
“You tell us where to find Zimmerman, and we give you the suicide note,” Fearless said.
The men were all silent. I couldn’t tell the mood of the room, so I decided to concentrate on the kid. If a fight broke out, I figured I could take him — at least I could try.
“He’s with his old Nazi overboss, Otto Holderlin,” John Manly added. “If we knew where he was, we would demand his arrest. But I doubt that we will find him.”
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“From what we could find out, his accountants were moving his monies to Equador, Brazil, and Panama. Herr Zimmerman is moving south for the weather.”
“How much you pay for the money if we lead you to it?” I asked.
“Thirty thousand dollars.”
“But you don’t get a thing,” Fearless said to the Israelis, “till we see about Zimmerman.”
32
“THAT SOUNDS pretty okay, huh, Paris?” Fearless said on our way down the block to our car.
“What?”
“Thirty thousand. Even split three ways you could still start a new bookstore with that kinda scratch.”
“That was just talk, Fearless. We don’t know where the money is. And what the fuck were you doin’ in there anyways?”
“Pushin ’em a little,” Fearless said almost innocently. “Pushin ’em to work with us on this thing.”
“Why you after Zimmerman? You don’t know him. You ain’t even ever met him.”
“It’s Zimmerman had Sol killed.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes I do, Paris. And he gonna pay.”
“Pay how?”
“With blood and money, his freedom or his life,” Fearless said.
“And what’s all this stuff about money?”
“It ain’t about money, it’s about the man who destroyed Fanny and Sol.”
“Morris killed Fanny.”
“’Cause Zimmerman drove him crazy.”
“What does that have to do with you tellin’ them spies up there that we know where the money is? Now they gonna be after us.”
“Not after I told ’em I lied,” Fearless said.
“And what if they don’t believe you?”
“You give ’em the note that Morris wrote and say you sorry.”
HALF AN HOUR LATER we cruised past Gella’s home. Three black-and-white police cruisers were parked out front.
“I guess they must’a found Morris,” I said.
“She must be hurtin’ over that,” Fearless said. “That was the last family she had in life.” There was an indictment in his tone.
“And how would me draggin’ her upstairs to see his corpse make it hurt any less?”
“You could have comforted her, Paris.”
“No, no. That’s you, Mr. Jones. You the one talk to corpses and kiss married women under their husbands’ noses. It’s you who walks into a room full’a spies and puts our lives on the line. Me, I just hold tight and try not to get washed overboard.”
Fearless’s response to my tirade was to light up a cigarette. “Where to now?” he asked half a Camel later.
“Milo might have something, but he could wait. There’s one thing in all this that don’t fit,” I said. “It might be a long shot, but then again, maybe not.”
I drove back to south L.A., back to a nameless alley off of Slauson. It was mostly backyards and trash cans in that alley, but there was one doorway that led to a flight of rickety unpainted stairs. At the top of those stairs was a hallway of apartments. The front of the building, on Avalon, was condemned, but the landlord, a man named Mofass, let the units illegally for fifteen dollars a month.
Theodore Wally had lived in number three since his mother died six years earlier. I knew that because I had a girlfriend who used to live there until she got TB and went back to Lake Charles.
Wally took a long time to let us in. We heard him scurrying around in there. When he opened the door, he had on pants and nothing else. His yellow chest was almost concave, and the hickey on his neck was so purple that it might have bled. I imagined some fat girl pinning him down with her girth while sucking mercilessly on his neck.
“Mr. Minton,” he said, near tears it seemed. “Fearless. What can I do for you?”
“Let us in, Wally,” I said.
“I-I-It’s n-n-not really a good t-t-time for me,” he stuttered. “The house is a mess and… and… and I got a cold. I promised my uncle that I’d help him move.”
“Move it, man,” I said.
Theodore made room, and we came into his wreck of a home. His once-upholstered sofa showed its cotton stuffing and at least one spring. The wood floor was uncovered, unpainted, and un-swept. There was a console radio against the wall and a boarded-up window that allowed a few shafts of sunlight to poke through. The room was longer than it was wide, and it wasn’t that long. There were two chairs and a table with a hot plate and various dirty dishes thereupon. But there was also a tall glass vase holding three long-stemmed white roses that were as big as apples and lovelier than summer clouds. They released an odd but still sweet odor that seemed familiar but not like roses.
“What you want, Mr. Minton?”
“Call me Paris,” I said.
“Okay.”
“Call me Paris.”
“Okay… Paris.”
“Now talk to me about my store,” I said.
“What you mean?” The clerk hunched up one shoulder and listed to that side. He smiled like a fool who couldn’t possibly know anything. But that act wasn’t going to work on me.
Fearless strolled over to one of the chairs and sat down. The movement seemed to alarm Wally.
“What you talkin’ ’bout Mr. — I mean, Paris?”
“I mean that dude beat on me didn’t burn down my store. He said he didn’t, and he had no reason to lie. So somebody else must’a did it.”
“I don’t know who did it,” Wally claimed.
“Now that’s a lie.”
He was trembling there in front of us, looking around as if he expected some accomplice to jump out and save his life. But no one jumped, and we were still there.
Wally belched loudly. His face contorted with nausea.
“Why you quit that market?” I asked.
Theodore tried to look me in the eye, but he couldn’t. He struggled against tears and was mostly successful.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. And then, when he’d gained more of a mastery over his tears, “I’m sorry,” in a surer tone.
“That’s okay, man,” I said. “That’s okay. Just tell me what you know. ’Cause you know I plan to get my due.”
Theodore Wally was as scared a man as I had ever seen. He was trembling, near tears and full of gas, but still he managed to maintain the semblance of a man standing his ground. I couldn’t understand why he was so afraid.
“I’m sorry I burned down your bookstore, Paris,” he said.
“What! You?”
“He told me to, and I did it ’cause I always did what he said. Mr. Antonio was like my father, you know. I been with him fourteen years, since I was a kid.”
“You did it?”
“I told him about
the man, the man who hit you. I told him that I saw you drive off, and then I saw that man go after you in his car with bull horns. He said to wait till late, an’ if you didn’t come back to burn down your store. He paid me, but I couldn’t stand it, so I quit. He gave me eight hundred dollars. But you can have it, Mr. Minton.” With that he fell on his knees and reached under the sofa, coming out with a manila envelope. He ripped the paper pouch open and grabbed at the tens and twenties as they fell. He went down on his knees again, gathering the money up. When he had gotten it in two fistfuls, he held them up to me and said, “Take it. Please take it and forgive me.”
“Damn,” Fearless said.
I knew what he was thinking, that I had gotten into more trouble in one day than he had in a lifetime. It made me mad, so mad that I slapped the clerk with the back of my hand.
It wasn’t a hard slap, but it caused Theodore to bleed from the corner of his mouth.
“Take it,” he said again.
“How could you do that to me, man?”
“He told me that you’d get the insurance. He said that his lease was up and that he needed to buy the lot next door or he was gonna go outta business. He said you’d get the insurance and that nobody’d get hurt if you was gone. It wasn’t until after that I found out you didn’t have any insurance.”
“Even if I did, where was I gonna get more books? Where was I gonna have a new store if the one I had burned down?”
“He used to send my momma groceries when she was sick,” Wally said. “He said it was all gonna be okay. Just take the money. Take it please.”
I slapped him again.
Fearless was shaking his head.
I hit Wally with my fist, and he fell down upon his knees. The money went every which way. He crawled among the bills gathering and bleeding on them at the same time.
“Why you think I’m in all this shit? Huh? Why you think I’m out here riskin’ my life? It’s ’cause you burned down my store. If I’d’a come home to my place, I would’a let it drop. I would’a let Fearless outta jail and give him a place to stay till everything was okay.”
Theodore wasn’t listening. All he did was grab at the money, weeping blood.
There was an iron crowbar in the corner, next to the window. I picked it up.
Fearless Jones Page 22
