Fear of the Dark

by Walter Mosley

  “I once saw Brian at the racetrack with a lovely young black woman. It was obvious that they were intimate. When he saw me he got very nervous. To assuage his fears I made a joke. . . .”

  “What kinda joke?”

  “I asked him if, if she had a sister.”

  Fearless and I both grinned.

  “Maybe I was foolish, but I had been married for many years. My wife and I love each other, but a man has needs well past the time a woman is done with such things.”

  I liked the way he worded it.

  “The women that Brian introduced me to were of another world. They would never run across my wife or her friends. They wouldn’t want to marry. . . . Not until Monique, anyway.”

  “She wanted to marry you?”

  “I wanted her. I told her we could go to the Caribbean, make a new life down there. . . .”

  He reminded me of my own desire to run away to Jamaica.

  “. . . We could have children and love each other. I got down on my knees.”

  It was a wonder how getting down on begging knee was a sign of pride for the powerful white man. For people like me it was getting up to an erect posture that was difficult.

  “So you say this Brian introduced you to more than one sister of his girlfriend?” I said.

  “It wasn’t like that,” Friar said.

  “I hope not. ’Cause it sounds like prostitution. That could be blackmail lettah numbah two.”

  “They were young women looking for a good time. We went to clubs and restaurants. Every now and then we’d take a weekend on the beach in Ensenada.”

  “How many?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” he lied. “Five.”

  Or fifteen.

  “And did money ever pass hands?” I asked.

  Friar moved his head to the side like cocking the hammer of a gun. But he didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to.

  “But that wasn’t the way it was wit’ Monique,” I said. “Oh, no. Monique came to you bringing money with her. Thousands of dollars. And when you asked her where she got it, she took you through private jazz clubs and into back room poker games. She raked in thousands of dollars and spent the rest of the night whispering in your ear.”

  Martin Friar’s gaze had moved to his hands, which lay helplessly in his lap.

  “You don’t make a lot of money, do you, Mr. Friar?” I asked. “You manage the rich people’s cash that flows into the church. You visit them at their big houses and drink tea from china cups older than your mother’s mother’s mother. But at home you sweat ovah the bills like all the rest of us. Got a gray-haired wife, and kids in college. Car payments for a car spends half the time in the shop. You got three good suits an’ nobody to wear ’em for, and so when Monique came into your life, you just about changed religions.

  “All it would take was ten thousand dollars. Ten thousand. You saw her make twice that in the time you’d been together. She never lost. Never.”

  “It was eight thousand dollars,” he said through a severely constricted throat.

  “Shall we go visit your friend Brian?” I suggested.

  “Stay where you are,” a familiar voice countermanded.

  33

  THE PIMPLE ON THE COP’S forehead had burst since the last time we’d met. In its place was a fleshy red sore. Maybe his hat had broken the strained skin, or maybe he’d been in a brawl with some poor soul who didn’t want to vacate his bench.

  The cops came over to us, their hands hovering at their billy clubs and pistols.

  “Are you okay, sir?” the handsome white policeman asked Martin Friar.

  “What’s your name?” was his reply.

  “Officer Arlen,” the cop said, his voice developing a defensive tone as he spoke.

  “Do I look like I’m in danger, Officer Arlen?”

  “I’m asking the questions,” Arlen said, bringing his shoulders up the way a boxer does when he’s forced against the ropes.

  “My name is Martin Friar,” Angel’s mark said. “I’m a vice president of UEC there across the street. These two gentlemen have come to consult with me. Do you have a problem with that?”

  “This man here,” Pimple Face said, “told us that he was reading a book.”

  “Was he reading a book?”

  “He, he didn’t say anything about meeting some vice president guy.”

  “Would you two like to come with me across the street?” Friar offered. “There you can ask about my position and my prerogative to have a private meeting with anyone I wish.”

  “We’re sorry, Mr. Friar,” Officer Arlen said. “This man just looked suspicious to us.”

  “Why?”

  “He was, uh, you know . . . hanging out with nothing to do.”

  “Isn’t this a city park, Officer?” Friar asked.

  I liked what he was doing, but I was beginning to get nervous. I had never seen a policeman getting browbeaten by a civilian before. I suppose I had never thought it possible.

  “Yes, sir,” Arlen replied, “but —”

  “But because these men are Negroes you decided that they were up to no good,” Friar said, cutting him off. “This is a free country, Officer Arlen. Men like these have rights just as much as you and I. And if you take away this man’s rights, you are hurting all of us. Do you understand that?”

  Two minutes earlier I would have sold Martin Friar down the river for an extra carton of Lucky Strikes. But now I would be more likely to help him than I would Useless.

  “Excuse us, sir,” Arlen said. “We didn’t understand.”

  The policeman didn’t apologize to Fearless and me. He didn’t really care, but I wasn’t bothered by that. As Arlen and his bad-skinned partner climbed into their prowl car, I had to strain to keep from grinning at them.

  Pimple Face glowered at me as they drove off.

  “Damn,” Fearless said. “Damn.”

  “Maybe we should go someplace private,” Friar suggested.

  “I got the car parked up the street,” Fearless said.

  MARTIN FRIAR TOOK US to a very nice one-bedroom apartment on a small street called Bucknell a few blocks from his office. It was on the third floor of a solid brick building and very well appointed. The maroon carpeting was plush and the white walls were bright backgrounds for the real oil paintings that hung from them. There were landscapes and still lifes, tasteful nudes, and even one abstract painting of nested quadrangles in differing hues of crimson.

  “When we have important visitors from out of town, we often put them up here,” Friar explained.

  Fearless and I were sitting on a wooden-legged violet couch built for two and a half, and Friar sat across from us on a chair that completed the set. He’d poured us a very good cognac in large snifters.

  I nursed my liquor, remembering that I had to keep my mind sharp in order not to be trapped by the sins of my cousin.

  “This guy Motley,” I said. “What’s he do?”

  “He works for an oil company now. Tiger Oil. For the past few years he’s been a liaison between the charitable arm of his corporation and our service.”

  “What were you doing at the track?” I asked.

  “I gamble. Not a lot. It relaxes me. I put aside a hundred dollars a month and either I go out to Gardena for poker or to the track. Once a year I blow five hundred in Las Vegas.”

  “And Motley knew all this?”

  “We’d seen each other now and again at the track,” Friar said. “I liked to go on Saturday afternoons.”

  “How long ago was it that you saw him with the black lady?”

  “Three years . . . no, four.”

  “So he knew you liked to gamble and he knew you liked black women,” I said.

  “I don’t see what you’re trying to make out of it,” Friar said. “I mean, do you think that Brian’s been trying to set me up for years? That’s ridiculous.”

  “Maybe Mr. Motley likes gambling a little more than you,” I speculated. “Maybe he got into somebody
who knew what you felt about women like Monique.”

  “That’s pretty far-fetched, don’t you think?” Friar said.

  “We could check it out,” I suggested.

  “How?”

  “Let’s go talk to him.”

  “He’ll be at work.”

  “Call him there. Ask to see him for lunch or after work if he can’t make it.”

  My words were falling together for Friar a few moments after they were spoken. He stared at me for quite a while and then he nodded.

  “Excuse me,” he said. “I’ll make a call from the bedroom.”

  I smiled. Fearless made a silent toast with his snifter.

  “This is some racket,” Fearless said when Friar closed the bedroom door. “He got his own little place to go to if he need a shower or a shave. That’s nice.”

  “I wonder how many times he was here with Angel?” I said.

  “You know I’d be up in here with some lady at least once a week,” Fearless said with a rare lascivious smile. “You cain’t have sumpin’ like this here an’ not take advantage.”

  We both took drinks then and appreciated the quiet and calmness of our surroundings.

  “You see the way them cops bowed down to him?” Fearless asked after some time had passed.

  “Yeah,” I said. “White people.”

  “Uh-uh, Paris,” Fearless said. “No, man. It ain’t just that. It’s the way he thinks too. Mr. Friar know he in charge. He know it. He know it so well that them cops know it too. An’ he so sure about who he is that here he bring us up in here an’ he ain’t even scared or nuthin’.”

  “Why he wanna be scared of two Negro men, anyway?” I asked.

  “You see that, man?” Fearless said. “You see? You think them cops stopped us ’cause they can, ’cause they don’t like colored people.”

  “Well, didn’t they?”

  “Naw, man. They stopped us ’cause they scared. An’ if they ain’t scared, the people pay ’em is. That’s the on’y reason they wanna keep you from readin’ yo’ book. That’s the on’y reason they asked that white man were we botherin’ him. They wanna keep on our ass ’cause if they don’t, they worried we might start fightin’ back.”

  Fearless did that every once in a while. He’d open his mind to let me see his deft perceptions of the human heart. It’s no wonder that women and children loved him so much. He was a natural man in a synthetic world. He had to be as tough as he was to survive the danger that truth brought.

  While I was having these thoughts, Martin Friar came through the bedroom door. His eyes were once again glazed over with doubts.

  “He was fired four months ago,” the vice president said. “His home phone has been disconnected.”

  “Why was he fired?” I asked.

  “They didn’t say why. Only that he’d been let go and they didn’t know where he’d gone.”

  “Did you look up his name in the phone book?”

  “Yes. I called information too, just in case he’d gotten a new number recently.”

  “What about any friends?” I asked. “Or family.”

  “I don’t know any of his girlfriends’ numbers, and he was divorced two years ago.”

  “Maybe his ex-wife knows how to get in touch with him,” I suggested.

  “I don’t know her maiden name.”

  “Does she have kids?”

  “Three.”

  “Then maybe she’s using their last name.”

  Friar went back into the bedroom, closing the door behind him.

  “You plenty smart, Paris,” Fearless said, pouring himself another shot of cognac. “It’s like you look at everything like one’a them books you read.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I know enough to jump in the Pacific but I don’t know how to swim.”

  Fearless brightened at that.

  “That’s where I come in,” he said. “You know I can swim like a dolphin. Yes, I can.”

  When Friar returned, he told us that Mrs. Irene Motley was indeed listed. She’d known Friar from a happier time and so was willing to tell him where her ex-husband had moved. He had no phone, but that was okay because I had no intention of calling the man.

  “Let’s go over there,” I said to Friar and Fearless.

  “I should go alone,” Friar said flatly. “Brian doesn’t know you guys, and I’m the one in trouble.”

  “Hector LaTiara,” I said, “the man you know as Paul Dempsey, is dead.”

  “Dead?”

  “Murdered. Angel, who you know as Monique, has disappeared and so have Maurice and his mother. They blackmailed you and done worse. It is in your best interest to have somebody backin’ you up when you go to see this guy.”

  “Brian’s harmless. He wouldn’t have anything to do with people like that,” Friar said, dismissing my worries.

  “Did he introduce you to Monique?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “He’s been involved with black people and gambling, and once you were in the same situation you got blackmailed. He’s the connection between you and the trouble you’re in.”

  Martin was quiet then, contemplative.

  “He’s been fired and he can’t even afford a phone. You know there’s something wrong there.”

  Friar maintained his silence.

  “Look, man,” I said. “They got you on embezzlement. You can’t go to the cops and you’d be a fool to go it alone. Let us go wit’ you. That way we go in strength.”

  “Why should I trust you?” Friar asked. “I don’t even know your name.”

  “Robert,” I said, holding out my hand for him to shake. “Robert Butler, and this is Mr. Tiding. Frank.”

  “Why should I trust you, Mr. Butler?”

  “Because I came to you,” I said. “Because I didn’t ask you for any money. Because I know the trouble you’re in and you haven’t told me a thing about it.”

  Friar’s eyes were alive with thoughts and ideas but they hadn’t, as yet, settled on a verdict.

  “Because you’re in trouble and Monique might be too. And maybe, if we’re lucky, we might pull your fat out of the fire along with hers.”

  Finally the self-important white man nodded.

  I let out a big sigh and Fearless rose to his feet.

  34

  BRIAN MOTLEY LIVED in a residence hotel called Leontine Court on the other side of downtown. The building was made from bricks that hadn’t been cleaned since the day they were laid and edged in once-white marble. The sidewalk leading to the door was so soiled and marked that it was almost as dark as the asphalt of the street. There were eighteen stairs rising to the front door. The climb told me that this hotel had been a fancy place that had come down with the neighborhood. Years ago you could have ordered sirloin steak with red wine from room service. Now the men hanging out around the entrance carried their day-old wine in back pockets. The only steak they ate had gone through the grinder.

  There was a solitary figure at the front desk sitting under a sign that read ROOMS $2. The gatekeeper was a small white man with large square-framed glasses. The thick lenses threw reflections around the dingy room.

  “May I help you?” he asked Mr. Friar.

  “Brian Motley, please.”

  “He’s in four-A,” the man, who was somewhere between thirty and fifty, said. “Across the courtyard and up the stairs to your left.

  “And what about you?” the down-at-the-heels concierge asked Fearless.

  “We wit’ the white man, boss,” Fearless said with a grin.

  THE LEONTINE COURTYARD must have been beautiful at one time. The marble walkways ran through great planters walled in by granite bricks. But the palm trees and elephant’s ears had all died away. The huge gardens were now used for cigarette butts and broken bottles. The men and women who perched out there on stone benches were young and old, beaten down and broken.

  The sun glared pitilessly on the wide square, but the people still looked to be in shadow.

  THE ONLY LIG
HT ON the stairway leading to the fourth floor came through paneless windows open to the yard. Dirt was caked in the corners and long-legged spiders scrambled out of our path. There were big roaches too, and flies, and one pigeon that couldn’t seem to find its way out of that hell.

  FRIAR KNOCKED ON the crayon blue door. The man who answered wore shapeless maroon pants and a strap-shouldered undershirt. The shirt, once white, was now equal parts yellow and gray.

  Brian Motley was unshaven but prebeard, five six exactly, and worn down to fit perfectly among the other residents of that slum.

  His rheumy eyes registered Martin and then took us in. He made a slight shrug of resignation and said, “Killing me won’t help you, Marty.”

  With that he backed away from the door and shambled down a very long, very narrow hall to a small room that wasn’t worth the buildup.

  Motley’s floor hadn’t been finished or sealed in many years. The wood was pale and fibrous. His wooden bench and chairs had been built for outside use. There was nothing on the walls—hardly even paint. The only good thing about that room was a small window that looked upon downtown with its high-rises and blue skies.

  I had been in many rooms like this one since coming to L.A., but I had never seen a white man living in one. That was a real eye-opener for me. In America anyone could be poor and downtrodden. I would have spent more time thinking about that, but I was worried about someone deciding to cut my throat for finding out.

  “What’s happened to you, Brian?” Martin Friar asked his supplier of black women.

  “Who’re your friends?” Motley replied, sitting heavily on a wooden lawn chair.

  “Robert,” I said, holding out a hand. “And this is my friend Frank.”

  When Brian Motley grinned, you could see that he’d recently lost most of an upper front tooth.

  “Bob, Frankie,” he said. “Sit, sit. I found this couch three blocks from here. Can you imagine somebody throwing out something so sturdy? You know, there’s people in China take somethin’ home like this an’ pay for their kids’ education with it.”

  We all sat.

  Martin was visibly shaken by the condition of his friend.