The fifteenth section of the folder contained a file with all the pertinent information on each mark. Full names, addresses, phone numbers, names of wives, ex-wives, children, past lovers, and immediate supervisors. A few of the men had confessed to crimes they had committed at different points in their lives.
I imagined them in the heat of their passion, whispering, whimpering, confessing at Angel’s altar. There was no contempt in my mind’s eye. I could see getting down on my knees for the absolution granted by her beauty. If I were an older gentleman I might have been happy to sacrifice the life I’d built for her. I mean, after all, what good is a lifetime of accrued wealth when all it gets you are body aches and boiled meat for supper?
None of the men had committed murder or any other violent crime as far as the notes went. They seemed to be well-chosen docile and bureaucratic sorts. Even Martin Friar was only brave in his mind. He’d given up his organization’s money to assure his place in Angel’s heart and to protect himself from exposure.
The more I read, the less I believed in the possibility that one of the businessmen was responsible for the deaths I’d encountered. This left me with the most probable cause: Useless.
My cousin messed up anything he got involved in. And if you were there with him, the worst would come to you. Useless had stolen the accordion folder from someone. I knew this because the folder was too neat, too well planned out for a sloppy mind like his. The man, or woman, who had designed this extortion scheme had it all worked out to a science. It was like an investment folder or a detailed business plan.
This meant that Useless was intimate with the mastermind of the operation. He was running from that someone and knew a name.
I didn’t like my conclusion. I didn’t want to talk to Useless again. My fear might have been irrational, but the idea of being in the same room with my cousin made my neck hairs rise.
Luckily I had other things to do first.
I took my car down the street to Central Avenue and drove four blocks to Eugenia’s Stationery Store. There I purchased a box of manila envelopes, a ream of white paper, two black markers, and a roll of postage stamps.
For the next hour I put all the blackmailers’ information into thirteen envelopes, then stamped and addressed each one to the men being blackmailed. I typed thirteen short notes that read,
It’s over now. You will not be bothered again.
A friend
I wrote PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL on the front and back of each envelope, then I licked the adhesive and sealed the envelopes. After that I taped each one shut.
The only information I skipped was Brian Motley’s. His life had already been destroyed.
After that I drove to a post office I knew in Westwood and deposited the envelopes in the box outside.
In my car coming home I had what I came later to know as an anxiety attack. My tongue went dry and my stomach roiled. A cold sweat broke out across my brow. My hands clenched into fists around the steering wheel, and I barely had the muscle control to pull up to the curb. Sitting there, holding on tightly with my head against the wheel, I began to shiver. I think the thing that got to me was sending off those envelopes filled with so much threat and turmoil. My chest began hurting again. I wanted to cry but could not. So instead I took long deep breaths with my eyes closed. After a few minutes I was able to release the wheel. A few moments more and I relaxed into sobs.
When the episode had passed, I was able to drive but unwilling to go home.
Maybe the killer would be there waiting for me. Maybe. But I learned something about myself that afternoon. I learned that fear was so pervasive in my life that it had no real sway over me.
After all, I was afraid of everything. A cold might be pneumonia. A cut warned of lockjaw. Any man I met might be the boyfriend of a woman who had neglected to inform me about her situation.
“Scared if I do,” I said, “and scared if I don’t.”
This made me laugh very hard. Anyone passing would have thought that I’d gone insane there behind the wheel.
41
I MEANT TO GO see Fearless, but first I wanted to drive past my store. Maybe, I thought, I would have the courage to go in if I didn’t see anyone waiting for me. I could change my clothes, take a short bath.
Three blocks from my house I decided that after all of this was over I was going to buy myself a gun, a small-caliber pistol, for times like these.
JESSA WAS SITTING with her back against my door and her knees pulled up to her face. She was rocking herself there. I think it was that gentle, futile swaying that made me park and approach her.
When I got to the top of the stairs, she looked up. Her crystal blue eyes flooded with tears.
“Paris,” she wailed, rising and throwing her arms around me. “I’m so scared.”
I had to bite my lower lip to keep from crying along with her.
“Calm down, Jessa,” I said. “It’s gonna be all right.”
Tenderness only served to make her cry harder. I opened the door as fast as I could and pushed her across the threshold. She stood in the little reading-room entranceway, racked with sobs, leaning against the wall. I let that go on for a minute or two and then dragged her toward the kitchen-porch. When we passed the place where Fearless and I had come upon Tiny, she dug her nails into my forearms.
“That’s where he died,” she said through a series of hoarse sobs. “That’s where my baby boy died.”
“Died?” I asked. “Who died?”
“Tiny,” she said, nodding and leaning on me as we went from the room.
“Is that where the blood came from?”
My incredulity put her tears temporarily at bay.
“Didn’t you find him there?”
“No,” I lied. “All there was was a little blood. I thought that it must’a been from him beatin’ on you. Matter of fact, I was worried ’bout you until you decked me out there in front’a Hector’s place.”
“Hector shot him. He was dead on the floor.”
“Hector must’a missed,” I said. “Because there was nobody here. Just some blood, like I said. Did he shoot him in the head?”
She nodded at me hopefully.
“Must’a just grazed him,” I speculated. “Must’a either bounced off or glanced off the side. The bullet hittin’ him prob’ly knocked him out and then, after you left, he must’a woke up and run.”
“You really didn’t find him?” Jessa asked.
“No, ma’am,” I said. “If I found a body, I’d have to call the cops, and you know I’d be in jail still, them wonderin’ how a white man came here to die.”
“You didn’t see him?”
“If he’d been shot by a black man in my store, I’m sure he decided to cut his losses and run. Probably thought it was one of my crazy cousins.”
“He’s alive,” she breathed. Then she giggled madly.
It was a straight-faced lie, but there was nothing wrong with it the way I figured. It took a great weight of guilt off Jessa’s shoulders and successfully removed the only living witness to the murder.
“Let me make you some tea,” I said, and she went to her favorite chair in my kitchen.
It was almost like old times.
WE’D GRADUATED FROM English Breakfast to peach schnapps when Jessa relaxed enough to tell me her tale.
“Tiny came back an’ started beatin’ on me when you got away. He was mad, and I couldn’t blame him. But you know I was crazy for you, Paris,” she said, as if our affair had been many years ago. “He wasn’t hittin’ me with his fists or nuthin’, just open hand. He must’a been extra mad after he saw you naked. I don’t think that he would have killed me. I don’t think so, but then Hector came in.”
“Did you know this Hector?” I asked.
“I had never seen him before. He yelled at Tiny to stop, and Tiny ran at him. He called Hector nigger, and Hector shot him in the head. I thought he was dead.” Jessa’s eyes got wide while she stared at the kitchen floor. I knew
that she was seeing Tiny’s body at her feet.
“What happened then?” I asked.
“Hector grabbed me by the hair and asked me where Useless was. He hit me and asked me and hit me again. I just screamed and cried and said that I never heard about any Useless. I didn’t even know that he was talkin’ about a man.”
“Did he believe you?”
“Later he did. A lot later. But then he kept slappin’ me and askin’ me. Then he asked who Tiny was, and I told him that he was my boyfriend and he’d found me with you. I think he started getting scared about Tiny and the gunshot, so he made me go with him out to his car.”
“Did you try to get away?” I asked.
“No. I just went. I just went with him to the car, and he drove me to that apartment where I saw you. I’m sorry I hit you, Paris. I’m sorry. I was just so crazy after seeing Hector like that.”
I wasn’t ready to find out about Hector yet. I wanted to get there slowly.
“What happened when he took you to his apartment?” I asked.
She seemed relieved to be distracted from the second murder.
“He brought me in and kept askin’ what he should do with me. He kept sayin’ that he should kill me. I tried to tell him that I wouldn’t turn him in, but he didn’t believe it. Every time I said it he yelled at me to stop lyin’.”
“Didn’t the upstairs neighbors hear all that shouting?” I asked.
“Mrs. Braughm lives by herself and she’s mostly deaf,” Jessa said. “After a while Hector got to drinking. He started slappin’ me again. And I don’t know how, but my clothes started comin’ off and we were doin’ it right there on the big sofa chair. I did everything he wanted me to. We fucked like goats.” Tremors went through her as she spoke. I couldn’t tell if it was pleasure or pain, passion or the desire to forget.
“What happened after that?” I asked her.
“It was like we were together,” she said, amazed herself at the turn of events. “Things had been going bad for Hector. The man he was looking for, Useless, had stolen something from the man he worked for.”
“What did he steal?”
“Money, I think. Hector never told me, but I’m pretty sure that it was money. Every time he’d talk to his boss on the phone or even just think about Useless, he’d get mad and start slappin’ me. And if I did just right, we’d end up rutting on the floor.”
“Did you try to run away?”
“I didn’t . . . I didn’t want to. I didn’t know where to go and there was something that made me want to stay close to Hector. He needed me.”
Sometimes in literature I’d come across the term exquisite pain. I never understood it before. My nature being such as it is, I have always shied away from any kind of suffering. But I could see where the ache in Jessa’s life needed attention and Hector was the perfect mate for her.
“After a while he’d leave me alone in the apartment. I cooked for him and I never blamed him for killin’ Tiny. I was the one who put Tiny in that position. I was the one that killed him.”
“But you didn’t,” I reminded her. “Tiny was gone when I got here.”
Jessa gave me a big smile, stood up, and came to put her arms around my neck. It was a sisterly hug, but all that talk about rutting on the floor had me thinking thoughts I knew were wrong.
“Why’d you come here?” I whispered into her dirty blond hair.
“I stayed at the YWCA for a few days after Hector was killed. I didn’t know where else to go. All I had was a few dollars.”
I walked her over to the stool that Useless had used.
“Tell me what happened to Hector,” I said.
“Somebody killed him,” she said, her eyes wide with the immensity of death. “They cut his throat while I was sleeping in the bed.”
“Who did?”
“I don’t know. All I know is that I thought I heard something and I called out his name. And then, when I came in, there he was.”
She began crying again and I couldn’t blame her. Even if she had killed him herself, it was something worth crying about. But I didn’t think she’d killed him. No. Hector had housed her, punished her, and had brutal sex with her in every position in every room in that apartment. They were perfect together.
“Who was Hector’s boss?”
“He never said,” Jessa uttered. “He never even said that the man he talked to on the phone was his boss. But I could tell. Hector got respectful whenever he called.”
“Did you ever answer the phone when his boss called?”
“Once.”
“What did he say?”
“He asked who it was, and I told him that I was, I was Hector’s girlfriend.”
“An’ what’d he say?”
“He wanted Hector, but Hector was out. Then he told me to tell Hector to meet him at the yard at five thirty.”
“What did he sound like?” I asked.
Jessa didn’t seem to understand the question.
“Was he a white man or a Negro?”
The white girl cocked her head to the side and bit her lower lip. “I don’t know,” she said. “There might have been a little southerner in there, but I couldn’t tell.”
It wasn’t a total loss. I had found out some things.
“Tell me something, Jessa.”
“What?”
“Hector came here one day asking for a French dictionary. Why he do that? Did Useless tell him that I had something of his?”
“No,” Jessa said, her fingers jittering nervously. “Hector asked me about you. I told him that all you did was sell books. But he, he wanted to see you and for you to see him. He said that if you blinked he’d kill you like he had Tiny —”
“Like he thought he killed Tiny,” I reminded her.
“Yeah.”
“So I guess he didn’t think I knew anything,” I said.
“No. He said that you were nothing.”
It’s funny the things that make us mad. I was angry at the dead killer for thinking I wasn’t worth a bullet.
“Do you hate me, Paris?” Jessa asked.
“No. Why?”
“Do you think I’m a whore?”
“No, I do not. I think you’re a young woman got in way over her head, but it wasn’t your fault—at least not all your fault. You might’a been messin’ with Tiny, but he left you first. And there wasn’t a damn thing you could’a done about Hector. Not a damn thing.”
She tried to smile, which was more meaningful than if she had actually managed it.
“I’m’a give ya two hundred dollars and a ride to the downtown YWCA,” I said. “In a couple or few days I’ll come by and tell you what I think.”
“Can’t I stay with you?”
“Stayin’ here just about as dangerous as stayin’ with Hector.”
I didn’t have to say any more.
AFTER I PUT JESSA into a taxi I took the suitcase to my incinerator in the backyard. There I applied lighter fluid and set it afire. As the flames rose I tried to imagine Useless sneaking up behind a man and cutting his throat.
It wasn’t a nice thought. But he just didn’t have the nerve to kill a man like that.
Or did he?
42
FEARLESS’S FRONT DOOR was wide open. This detail made me hesitate. It was a warm day and an open door was the best way to cool down. But maybe the killer had knocked and Fearless had answered and got shot. Maybe Fearless was dead.
I couldn’t take a step forward or back until those maybes were resolved. It’s not that I expected a moment of brilliance to strike where I’d be suddenly aware of the reason behind that open door. I hoped that Fearless would appear or, failing that, he’d speak out.
But as I waited I began to wonder. If some killer had struck at Fearless he would only leave the door open if he’d left. If he was in there waiting for me, the door would be closed so that no one would suspect his presence.
That got me far enough to consider moving, but it was hearing Fearless laugh ou
t loud that brought on the locomotion in my legs.
He was sitting on the sofa with Mona at his side. I thought that she might have just snagged a kiss before I appeared because there was a lascivious look in her lovely grayish eyes.
“There he is,” Fearless said aloud. “Paris. He done saved my life an’ made me fi’e hundred dollars.”
The sexual expectation was replaced by disappointment on Mona’s face, disappointment but not anger. Later I would find out that Mona had a great deal of sisterly love and respect for me. She was a much more complex woman than I could have known back then, when all of her senses were besotted by the Hero.
“That’s all Milo paid you to risk yo’ life like that?” I asked.
“You wanna drink, Paris?” Mona offered.
I nodded, and she went into the tiny kitchen that was through the door next to Fearless’s one room for living, sleeping, and paying his bills.
“That was a bonus,” Fearless said. “On top’a what he paid me for bodyguardin’.”
“Did you hear that window openin’ up over your head?” I asked as I lowered into the broken-down stuffed chair next to his small sofa.
“Yeah,” he admitted. “But I didn’t know what it meant exactly. An’ at the same time I heard it, you shouted. When you called my name it all fell inta place and I jumped.”
I wondered for the thousandth time what it would be like to see the world from Fearless’s point of view. In my world everything was particular and threatening, made up of sharp corners that would cut you if you got too close. But Fearless, I imagined, lived in a liquid world where everything blended together and moved in unison. In his world there were no absolute victors or complete victims, just movement between everything, all the time.
Mona brought me a squat glass of peach schnapps and ice. That was my favorite drink, and Fearless always kept a bottle in the cabinet in case I came by.
She sat on Fearless’s lap. He whispered in her ear and she smiled.
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