“Excuse me? Who is this speaking?”
“You know who I am, Oscar, and you know what I’m talkin’ about too. So let’s not be stupid this late in the game.”
“Are you crazy, man?” the once-rich butler asked.
“I got this number from a man that got it from Brown. You’re the only one in the house he’d be callin’, and that’s because you brought him out here to find that book before Winifred found out it was gone.”
Silence is almost always an admission, usually of guilt. When you run out of retorts, replies, rejoinders, and responses there must be truth on the table with you out of money and cards.
“What do you want?” Oscar asked.
“Why did you send Brown after those white people?”
“I did no such thing. If he went after them that was his decision. I only told him about that Kit Mitchell. I told him that Kit stole the book, that if he found it he could keep Winifred from ever threatening to take his son again.”
“And what you supposed to get out of all that?”
“That book means more than the life of any member of this family. We must have it.”
“You could give Maestro what he wants,” I suggested.
“He doesn’t have the book. I’ve already spoken to his agent. What is it that you want, Mr. Minton?”
It was a good question, a very good question.
“I don’t know, Oscar. I really don’t. Did Leora know that you had gotten in touch with Brown?”
“No. I called him because I knew that he would do anything to protect his family. She wanted him to stay away for the same reason.”
“Why did you give Leora Kit Mitchell’s address instead of Brown?” I asked. And then, “Or did you tell him too?”
“I did not,” Oscar said. “I told Leora because she’s reasonable. If Kit had the book she could at least start to discuss terms with him. Who can tell what a man like Brown might have done?”
“You think he killed the Wexlers?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“What do you know?” I asked.
“That Kit Mitchell came in here and stole our family history. He acted as if it was Son he was after but the book was his real intent. I didn’t mind about the child. A boy should be with his parents.”
“And what about the book?”
“Do you know what it contains?” Oscar asked.
“Yeah. It’s a diary. A family history.”
Oscar grunted at my quaint understatement. “We are the only Negroes in all the New World who can follow our heritage back to the beginning, back to Africa. I know of six generations of my African heritage across a dozen different nations.”
“Shouldn’t something like that be in a museum?” I asked. “Or maybe the Library of Congress?”
“It’s ours. Our history, not theirs. The Negro population isn’t ready yet to receive it. They wouldn’t know the value of such a treasure—not yet.”
“I see. And you think it’s worth the multimillion-dollar deal Maestro Wexler wants to make.”
“It’s worth everything.”
From what Rose had said, Oscar was a man who had thrown away everything once already. I wondered if Winifred was of the same opinion.
“What will you give me if I can get the book?” I asked. “I mean, I hear that Maestro Wexler is willing to pay fifty grand.”
“We will double the offer.”
“You talkin’ for Winifred?”
“She will do what is necessary.”
“Well, I ain’t seen a book like that. But I’ll put it up on the top of my list. I sure will.”
I put the receiver in the cradle and sat back in Loretta’s swivel chair. Milo’s hunger for money was worming in my gut. At the same time I wanted to steal the Fine family chronicle for myself.
I had about twenty-five hundred dollars left from the money I’d been given. Twenty-five hundred was good money in 1955. Even if I had to share it with Fearless it meant a year of easy living and no worries.
But a hundred thousand dollars was a whole lifetime. I could buy a house, build my business, and be set for life. And I had the book right in the trunk of Ambrosia’s car, with Fearless Jones as my Cerberus standing guard.
Those were the most sublime moments of my life. Sitting there in the lap of possible riches and treasure, plotting out a future that no poor man I ever knew had attained, and with none of the responsibilities that come with such gifts.
It was like that span of time when you’ve just met a woman that you want more than anything. She wants you too but you have to wait a day or two so as not to seem improper and tactless. You sleep alone but she’s there with you. You never speak but you know every word that would come out of her mouth. And when she finally does say, I’ll be seeing you, you know the deeper implications, the heat of her desire to give and take everything you both have.
As time has gone by I’ve come to realize that those moments of anticipation are always the high points. Love fades and money squanders itself. Familiarity, even with riches, comes to boredom, and a fly on angel’s food cake or a fly on shit is still just a fly after all.
There came a knock at the door that jarred me awake.
“Paris,” Fearless Jones called, and my anticipation turned once more to fear.
36
IT WAS CLOSE TO ELEVEN-THIRTY when we drove off in Ambrosia’s Chrysler.
“How’d you make it back here?” I asked Fearless.
“Drove Leora’s car. I told her uncle where I’d leave the keys. He said they’d come by and get it in the morning.”
Fearless was in a lighthearted mood. He told bad jokes and laughed at them too.
“What is it?” I asked him after three stories about the war.
“What?”
“Why are you so happy?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Mama really likes havin’ Rose in the house with her. Son’s a good kid and so’s Leora. You know I was worried there a while because I thought she had fooled me. But now I see that she really needed help and she wasn’t tryin’ to bring me grief.”
“That’s like you and me,” I said. “You my friend and you never mean to get me in trouble. But here I am, with you, in the crosshairs.”
This also made Fearless laugh.
“I’d tell ya I’m sorry, Paris. But you know I needed you in this one here.”
“Yeah.”
“Hey, Paris,” Fearless said. “Where’s that guy you always play chess wit’?”
“What guy?”
“You know that sneak thief so smart.”
“You mean Jackson Blue?”
“That’s him. You know they got him for takin’ money out the contribution basket at Second Avenue Baptist.”
“I think he’s in one’a Mofass’s illegal places on Hester,” I said.
“That yellah buildin’?”
“Uh-huh. What you want with Jackson Blue?”
“He the one got that camera equipment, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I wanna take some pictures of Mama and Miss Fine. Maybe Jackson lemme borrah his cameras. You know I can snap some shots. They had me doin’ that in the war too. Called it reconnaissance.”
“Man, all you need is a Brownie to take home pictures. You don’t need Jackson’s fancy jive. Anyway, that stuff he got might be stolen.”
“Might be?” Fearless joked. “Shoot. Naw, baby. I wanna take some high-quality pictures. Yes I do.”
***
WE GOT TO VICTORIA MOORE’S ROOMING HOUSE near midnight. The dining room was dark but there was a light on in the sitting room. Big, yellowy Melvin Conroy was sitting on the couch with a buxom girl who was less than half his age. They were talking while she had her hand on his knee. There was no love or romance in the young woman’s eyes, so I decided that they were working out the details of a business transaction. That didn’t bother me. He was getting on in age and obviously down on his luck. She was just trying to pay the rent, I imagined, and was prob
ably supporting some child fathered by another man like Melvin.
“Hey, DeLois,” Fearless said as we entered.
The young woman took her hand off Conroy’s knee and lowered her eyes.
“Hi, Fearless,” she said. “You livin’ here?”
“No, uh-uh. Me and Paris got some things we need to do. You okay, honey?”
“Fine,” she said tentatively.
“Sure she’s okay,” Melvin said. “Why you wanna go and ask that?”
“I’m not talkin’ to you, big man,” Fearless said. “I’m just askin’ my friend a question.”
Melvin sized up my friend and understood immediately the implications of any loud protest.
While they regarded each other my eyes met with the young DeLois. The smile she had hidden from Melvin came out for me. She stood up from the couch and walked over to us.
“I was just gettin’ ready to leave,” she said.
Her brown skin shone and her eyes did too.
“Let’s walk her outside, Paris.”
Melvin’s shoulders got all tight but he didn’t say anything.
At the car DeLois told us that she lived some miles away. Fearless said that if she waited in the car we’d drive her home after we finished our business.
Melvin Conroy was gone from the sitting room when we returned. His door was closed when we passed it going down the back hall. We went up to the second floor and down to number twelve, the room Charlotta had told me was hers.
That door was open wide.
Brown was kneeling over the battered and bruised Charlotta.
“What the hell?” Fearless said, and I knew the trouble was about to begin. Fearless never cursed unless he was truly outraged.
He stalked into the room and Brown rose up in a crouch.
“Hold up, man,” Brown said.
But he was too late. Fearless threw a hard and fast right that the smaller Brown somehow avoided. He stood up to his full height, connecting with an uppercut that would have rendered anyone but Fearless unconscious. Fearless just moved with the blow and connected with a left hook against Brown’s jaw. That collision sounded like two stones being slammed together. Brown hit Fearless in the gut with both hands. I knew that they were hard punches because I heard Fearless grunt. But he didn’t slow down. He hit Brown twice, hard enough to send my chess partner staggering back a whole half step.
There were very few men who could stand toe to toe with Fearless Jones.
I looked down and saw that there was a large white-enameled pitcher filled with water next to the unconscious, or dead, Charlotta. I picked up the jug and splashed the two titans. Surprisingly this had the desired effect.
Both men turned toward me.
“It’s okay, Fearless. He’s tryin’ to help her. You too, Brown. We’re not here to hurt nobody.”
The men looked at me a moment. Then Brown went down on one knee. I was even more impressed that he had absorbed so much punishment without showing how badly he was hurt until the bout was called.
I closed the door.
Fearless and Brown knelt on either side of Charlotta.
“She come staggering in about forty-five minutes ago,” Brown was saying. “She said that a white man had beat her, and then she fainted. I brought her up here and tried to make her comfortable.”
“I need a first aid kit and some ice water,” Fearless said.
Brown was up and out of the door before I had taken the words in.
Fearless unbuttoned Charlotta’s blouse and took it off. He scanned her flesh, prodding here and there. I supposed that he was looking for wounds or deep bruises. It was odd looking at the body I had spent so much time with. There was no allure left, only tight little bruises and slack muscles.
“She gonna be all right?” I asked Fearless.
“Yeah,” he said. “I think so. Her head ain’t hurt except for some hard slaps, and these bruises ain’t deep. It’s just some arm punches. First she fainted, then she passed into sleep.”
Fearless pinched her cheek hard and Charlotta opened her eyes.
“What?” she said, and then she sat up.
She realized she was half-naked but that didn’t seem to bother her, at least not at first.
“Paris, what happened?”
“Brown said that you came in and said a white man beat you.”
She gasped with the memory. “Yeah. Yeah. Bastard beat me like a rug.”
“Who?”
“Some man left a message for me. I called him back and he said that he needed to talk about Kit.”
“Did you know him?” I asked.
“Uh-uh. He called Miss Moore and told her that he owned a restaurant that Kit had been in with his girlfriend and that he left somethin’ behind. He gave her his number and she give it to me. She was all mad, sayin’ that if I talked to Kit she wanted her twelve dollars.”
“And you called the man?”
“Yeah. I didn’t know what he was talkin’ about but I was, you know, curious.”
“And so he met you here?”
“Yeah.” Charlotta picked up her blouse and swaddled her breasts with it. “He met me out front at about ten. At first he was nice, but then when I didn’t know what he was talkin’ about he started beatin’ me.”
Charlotta began to cry.
“What did he want from you, baby?” I asked softly.
Brown came back with a blue pitcher and a drab green first aid kit.
Fearless went to work on the bruises of Charlotta’s lumpy face.
“He wanted to know if Kit had a old book and who was Kit workin’ with.”
“What did you tell him?” I asked for more than one reason.
“I don’t know nuthin’ ’bout no book or nobody he been workin’ with except for BB. I told him all that, and he beat me anyway and then threw me out the car. Ow!” This last was because Fearless was putting iodine on a cut above her left eye.
“Did he ask you where he could find Kit?”
“No.”
“What did he look like?” I asked.
“Like a white man,” she said as if that explained everything.
“Was he fat?”
“No. He was slender-like.”
“Ugly?”
“Plain.”
“What color hair?”
“It was nighttime, Paris. I didn’t see no color but white.”
“Was there anything strange about him?”
“He talked like a Mexican.”
“He had a Spanish accent?”
“Uh-huh. Yeah.”
“You gonna have two shiners by mornin’, girl,” Fearless told her.
“Oh Lord,” she said. “Why they always pickin’ on me?”
Fearless lifted her in his arms and then put her down on the bed. He took off her shoes and skirt, her stockings, and even took away the blouse she still had clutched to her chest. Then he covered her and ran his fingers over her head.
“You should take some’a this aspirin,” he said. “’Cause them bruises gonna hurt in the mornin’.”
Charlotta loved the attention she was getting. I think if they were alone she would have asked him to stay.
“Charlotta?” I said.
“Yeah, Paris?”
“Do you still have the number that man left?”
“No. It was in my bag. But I dropped that in his car.”
“What kinda car was it?”
“A red Ford.”
37
FEARLESS, BROWN, AND I WENT UP to my room for a powwow.
“We know about Son and Leora,” I said right off. “And that Oscar called you to come out here and help them with the book that white man was after.”
“You know everything then,” Brown replied. He was getting fidgety, tapping his left foot and looking around.
“No,” I said. “Not everything. Not where the book is or who killed the Wexlers and Kit.”
“Kit’s dead? Since when?”
“Probably the same time the wh
ite folks got it.”
Brown’s cheek jumped from an involuntary tic, but that seemed to come from the nervousness descending on him and not guilt.
“I need some water,” he said.
I poured a glass from my private sink and handed it to him. He took a wax paper packet from his pants pocket and poured a foul-looking powder into the glass. He drank it down in one big gulp, after which he grimaced and coughed.
“What’s that?” Fearless asked.
“Medicine,” Brown said.
“Doctor give you that? In wax paper?”
“No. Witch woman from down in Louisiana.”
“Not Mama Jo?” Fearless asked.
“Yeah. How you know that?”
“Jo’s famous, man. She got people comin’ all the way from South America to get her cures.”
In just the few moments it took them to speak Brown began to calm down.
“Yeah,” he said. “I got this nerves thing that fucks me up. Sometimes I get so crazy that I could put my fist through a brick wall, and then sometimes I might be so sad that all I can do is cry and sleep. Doctors couldn’t do a thing. But Mama Jo had me out there in her swamp house for three days, and when I left she give me these packets and says take one if I feel the lows comin’ on. I could still feel it for a while but it don’t get to me.”
“About the book,” I said.
“Yeah. Yeah. I found out that Kit was stayin’ here, so I moved in hopin’ to get a hint about where he put it.”
“Why’s he holdin’ on to it in the first place?”
“I don’t know for sure but the best bet’s money,” Brown said. “BB said too much about what that book was worth, so Kit decided that he didn’t need no partner.”
“And what about you?” Fearless asked.
“What about me?”
“Are you crazy or what? Are you workin’ with that white man worked over Charlotta and tryin’ to put it over on us too?”
Fearless was dumb as a post when it came to letters and other intellectual concerns. He couldn’t follow an eighth-grade fairy tale. But he knew people, at least most people. He understood the workings of the heart. But his greatest knowledge was at those moments when he was aware of what he didn’t know, when he looked into a darkness that even his bright soul could not illuminate. Brown was such an anomaly. He was a cipher, a man without even a proper name.
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