“Belinda died three years ago last March. They sold her house, knocked it down, and built a six-story apartment building.”
“Damn, Milo.” That was me. “You lie in the face of Death just to keep that millionaire black lady on your side.”
We heard the front door to the office slam open, followed by hard footsteps of more than one man. Fearless swiveled like a big cat while I took a step backward, looking for an exit.
“Police!” an adolescent voice yelled, and the room was invaded by half a dozen pairs of wide blue shoulders.
***
FEARLESS AND I WERE IN HANDCUFFS before Milo could convince the cops that we had saved his life.
“No sir, officer,” Milo said for the thirteenth time at least. “Paris and Tristan here are freelance operatives. They were comin’ over to see if I had any work. The thief shot at them, and then they came in to make sure that I was okay. We were just about to call the police when you busted in.”
“Who was the man that attacked you?” a uniformed sergeant asked.
“I don’t know, officer. Just a big white man. Said he wanted the bail I’d been collecting. I told him that I don’t keep cash on the premises. But he said he didn’t believe it and hit me a couple’a times.”
“Did you know him?” the sergeant asked again.
“No sir, officer. I did not.”
“What about you two men?” the sergeant asked.
“No, man,” Fearless said. “We just come lookin’ for work. That’s all.”
“What about you?” The sergeant with the boy’s voice turned his attention to me.
“I was um, I came here, um, you know, to see Milo.”
“Did you come here looking for work?”
“Man, right now all I’m thinkin’ about is that man shootin’ at me, Milo laid up behind his desk, and you comin’ in here shoutin’ at us with guns in your hands.” When I get really alarmed like that all I can tell is truth. If that cop had pressed me on Timmerman I would have folded. So instead I just told him how I was feeling, hoping that he wouldn’t push any harder.
It worked. Most of the policemen left and a bored detective came by. He questioned us for about half an hour, taking down details of the attack and attempted robbery.
“There’s one thing that doesn’t make sense in your story,” the short and fat detective said to me.
“What’s that?”
“If this armed robber was after Mr. Sweet’s money, then why would he start taking potshots at you in the street?”
The policeman, I don’t remember his name, had a porcine face marked by small ears and tiny, suspicious eyes. When he squinted at me, I got so nervous that my lie reflex froze up.
“I pointed at him, officer,” Fearless said. “That must be why he shot at us. Because he knew that he just did somethin’ wrong and there I was pointin’ at him.”
“Did you know him?” the detective asked.
“No sir.”
“I don’t get it. Why would you point out a stranger just walking down the street?”
“Because he was white,” Fearless said. “I don’t see too many white men takin’ a stroll down by Milo’s.”
The detective was still suspicious, but he let it slide.
Loretta Kuroko came in at nine. She wore a light emerald green blouse and a darker skirt of the same color. She had been with Milo through all of his different professions and so knew how to keep quiet.
When the detective left, Milo sent Loretta home, telling her not to come back until he had worked out a few “details.” Then Fearless and I followed his burgundy ’48 Cadillac to his apartment on Grand.
***
MILO’S PLACE WAS A STUDIO designed on the same principle as his office. It was dominated by a big oak desk, which was surrounded by oak filing cabinets. The sofa against a far wall might have opened out into a bed. Next to that was a small walnut cabinet that opened up into a bar.
“How do you cook?” Fearless asked.
“Cook? A man cain’t cook. I go down on Century when I need a meal, Johnny’s Restaurant Grill. I pay ’em twenty dollars a week and they always have something for me—breakfast, lunch, or dinner.”
“What if you wake up in the middle’a the night and want a sandwich?”
“I close my eyes and go back to sleep.”
“Milo,” I said. “Why’d you hire that man Timmerman to look for Kit?”
“I already told you,” he replied. “Because Miss Fine wanted to talk to him.”
“That’s a lie, man. You said you put Timmerman mostly on white cases.”
Milo hesitated a moment before saying, “I usually do use him for whites, but he could find a black man too.”
“Come on, Milo,” Fearless said. “Don’t be lyin’ an’ that man out there ready to kill you. How come you used him and not a colored man?”
“You’re a tough man, Fearless. I know that. But I also know you ain’t gonna do nuthin’ if I don’t wanna talk.”
“That’s true,” Fearless said. “But you better believe that I won’t show up if you call on me neither. If that man Timmerman is after you, he know where you live. He might already have found out you lied and be on his way here right now.”
Milo’s eyes moved to his front door.
He shifted in his chair and then clasped his hands together. He pressed his thumbs on the bones just above his eyes and muttered something that might have been a prayer.
“I said I wouldn’t tell anybody,” he said at last. “You know I like to keep my word.”
“Dead man keep a secret like motherfucker,” I said.
Milo nodded.
“Miss Fine told me that BB and Kit were messed up in somethin’ that could prove harmful to the family name. They stole something from her and she was very upset about it. I made a few calls around and found out that Kit had been seen in the company of a white man name of Lance Wexler. Once I knew that, I called Theodore, because he could cross the color line with no problem. If anybody could find them men it was him.”
“And what was that something Miss Fine was talking about?” I asked.
“She didn’t say. All she let on was that it was very important to her and that she would be very grateful if I put her in contact with either Kit or BB or both.”
“And what about Wexler?” I asked.
“She didn’t say anything about him,” Milo said. “I just saw him as some kinda background information.”
“Did you ever find out who he was?”
“No. I told Miss Fine about him, but she didn’t seem to care. But the way I figured it was, if he did turn out to be important Timmerman was my man.”
“And just what was it that you were supposed to do, Mr. Sweet?” I used the proper address because I knew that was the way that Fearless liked to comport himself, with respect.
“She wanted me to find them and give her the information I gathered.”
“What information?”
“Where they lived, their phone numbers if I could get ’em, and their situation. You know, did they live with anybody, if they had a house or an apartment, like that.”
“Sound like a setup,” Fearless speculated.
“No, man,” Milo said. “This is Miss Winifred L. Fine, the richest Negro lady in the forty-eight states. She’s not no thug or gangster. There ain’t even no way that you could tell what she’s thinkin’ about. You know people like that different than you and me.”
“I don’t know, Milo,” Fearless said. “I once had a girlfriend was a millionaire. White girl name of Bell, Solla Bell. She told me that her father had had two men killed that she knew of. She said it so that I would keep my head down when we were around where he had eyes lookin’ out. You don’t have to be a poor man to wanna kill somebody.”
“I don’t know about no rich white girls or their fathers, Fearless. All I know is that Miss Fine has pedigree and social standing,” Milo said, holding up his right hand as if he were swearing under oath. “She ain’t got
nuthin’ to do with no lowlife element like we used to bein’ around.”
“Like Teddy,” I suggested.
“We got to move you, Mr. Sweet,” Fearless said. “Put you someplace that that white man cain’t kill you.”
“Yeah,” the bail bondsman agreed. “I’m beginning to think that Theodore Timmerman is a very dangerous man indeed. Where you think I could go?”
“My mama got a house I bought with the money we made last year. She wouldn’t mind you campin’ out a few days or so.”
19
FEARLESS CALLED HIS MOTHER and we dropped Milo off in front of the house.
From there I had a plan to gather information while keeping me out of harm’s way.
“What did you throw at that gunman?” I asked Fearless.
“Brick.”
“A brick?”
“Not a whole brick, but just a chunk, like a half like.”
“Where’d that come from?”
“I don’t know. It was there in the gutter, so I grabbed it. You know I used to like to play ball. I could’a played on the Pumas, but they spend half their lives in a dusty bus and I’d rather stay in one place.”
“But how did you know that brick was there?” I asked. “I mean, you reached down and grabbed that stone like it was put there just in case somebody started shootin’ at us.”
“It’s my army trainin’, Paris. That’s all. Wherever I am I look around me. I see things. I don’t think about ’em or nuthin’. I just see ’em, and then they’re there for me when I need ’em.”
“So when you got out the car you saw that little chunk’a brick on the ground?”
“I didn’t know I saw it but I did, and when that man started firin’ I knew it was there and I grabbed it. That’s all.”
“And what’s all this shit about a millionaire white girlfriend?”
“What about her?”
“You ain’t never said nuthin’ ’bout that to me before.”
“I don’t tell you everything, Paris. You know I’m a gentleman anyway.”
“No, baby,” I said. “There’s more to it than that.”
“Yeah, maybe. But I don’t wanna talk about it. Where we goin’ anyway?” he asked, trying to change the subject.
“I wanna go over to that rooming house that Kit had been stayin’ at,” I said. “Where was it?”
“Over on Denker.”
“Let’s go there.”
Fearless made a right turn and then another one.
After five or six blocks I worked my way back to the question about the millionaire white girlfriend.
“I never told you because it’s the kinda thing you always said that you didn’t wanna hear,” Fearless said.
I knew what that meant. I had always told Fearless that I didn’t need to hear about anything illegal because I never wanted to be in the position of being blamed for letting the cat out of the bag to the authorities or, worse, to some gangster who wanted revenge. Had that been a regular day with me at my bookshop and Fearless dropping by to shoot the breeze, I would have held up my hand and said, All right, let’s just skip it. But I had already found one dead body, figured out that another corpse was connected to my friend’s problems, and on top of that I had been shot at. It didn’t seem that some simple story could be any worse.
“How long ago did you and this girl break up?” I asked.
“More’n six years.”
“Let’s hear it, then.”
“Okay. You heard of a man named Thetford Bell?”
“The aeronautics guy?”
“Yeah. He got a house up there in Beverly Hills. Wife, three kids. One’a them is Illyana. Cute girl. Black hair, dark eyes. She climb up on you just like a cat . . .”
“Where’d you meet her?”
“I was gardenin’ next door to her place and some young man was pesterin’ her. He had hold of her arm and wouldn’t let go even though she was yellin’. Wasn’t nobody else to help, so I went up and said that I couldn’t let him abuse the lady. He called me a name and I broke his nose for him.”
“And she did her cat impression to thank you?”
“Not right then. I walked her to the door and then I left. You know I figured that somebody would get me fired over that. But what happened was that Illyana asked the head gardener —”
“You mean you weren’t the only one?” I asked.
“It was a big place so they had four people on the grounds,” Fearless said. “Anyway, the guy whose nose I broke had left and the head gardener didn’t even know about the fight and so he gave the girl my address.”
“Didn’t he think it was strange that some young white girl wanted a colored gardener’s address?”
“She said that I had done some work for them on the side but they weren’t home to pay me, so that her daddy wanted the address to send me my pay. Anyway, she come over to say thanks and ended up spendin’ the night.”
“And then she told you about her father?”
“After a while she did. You know I think she just wanted one night to see what a dark man could do. I guess she liked it, because she was always callin’ after that. But then we went to the Huntington Library and one of her friends saw us. Illyana pretended that she wasn’t wit’ me, and then later she said about her father.”
“So you broke up with her?”
“Naw, man. I wasn’t afraid of her old man. Shit, I started takin’ her all over the place after that. Then one night a big ugly dude come up on me when I was takin’ a shortcut down the alley to my house. White dude. Real fast.” Fearless said these last two words with respect. That meant something, because Fearless was possessed of blinding speed.
“What happened?” I was beginning to regret my request to hear the story, but by then it was too late.
“The white guy told me that Illyana was off limits and that he was gonna rough me up so that I would remember in the future. I remember he said, No hard feelings.”
Fearless was lost in thought for a little while. We were getting close to the Denker address.
“So what happened?” I finally asked.
“He was good,” Fearless said with a single nod. “Too good. I killed him right there under a Lucky Strike sign.”
“And then you and Illyana broke it off?”
“Then I walked home and went to bed. The next day, when I knew Illyana was gonna be out, I went over to her house and knocked on the door. I told the colored woman who answered to take me to Mr. Canto. And when I sat down in front’a him I said that the next man I kill won’t be his errand boy but him. Then I broke it off with Illyana.”
“Did you tell her about her father?”
“She already knew about him, man. She the one told me.”
We pulled up in front of the boardinghouse and I jumped out with Fearless Jones’s story still swirling in my mind.
20
WE DECIDED THAT FEARLESS WOULD GO back to Ambrosia’s house while I did my question thing.
“Yes?” a middle-aged, auburn colored woman asked me at the door. She wore a once-black housedress that had faded to a reddish gray. The hem came down to the middle of her shins. Over the dress she had a white apron that hinted at a powder blue heyday.
“Hello, ma’am,” I said. “I’m looking for the super or the landlord for the rooms.”
“That’s me,” she said. “Victoria Moore. I’m the owner.”
“Well hello, Victoria Moore. Glad to meet ya.” I put on my brightest smile. “My name is Thad Hendricks. I’m just in from the Bay Area and a friend’a mine told me that you had a recent vacancy. I’m down here lookin’ for work while planning my wedding. She’s from down around here, and I thought that I could scout out a job before sinkin’ too much money into rent.”
The woman’s face lit up. Everything I said delighted her: looking for the room, planning to get married, saving a dollar, and applying for jobs. I was the daydream she’d been having two minutes before the doorbell rang.
“Oh, isn’t th
at wonderful,” she said.
“So do you have a room available, Mrs. Moore?”
“Miss Moore,” she said. “And yes, I do happen to have a vacancy. You know that Kit Mitchell just up and left one morning and never came back. He owed me a week’s rent. I’m down twelve dollars as it is.”
“That’s pretty steep for just a room, isn’t it?” I asked, not wanting to seem overly eager.
“It’s a very large room, Mr. Hendricks,” Miss Moore said. “On the top floor. With a view. And the twelve dollars is for both room and board.”
“Can I see it?”
The landlady was short but so am I. She looked at my face and then down around my feet.
“No bag?”
I reached for my wallet and produced my last five- and ten-dollar bills.
“I left my bag with my fiancée,” I said. “You know I’ll only be staying here a week, and so I’d be happy to add on three dollars to what you usually get. And if you rent the room to me, at least you won’t lose a second week’s rent while looking for a more permanent tenant.”
Miss Moore reached for the money but I held it back.
“Could I see the room first?”
The landlady closed her hand and smiled.
“Of course, Mr. Hendricks. You’re going to fall in love with it I’m sure.”
THE FRONT DOOR LED INTO A LARGE DINING ROOM with a long table that had fourteen mismatched chairs set at placemats with the dishware and cutlery already out.
“We serve coffee, toast, and hard-boiled eggs in the morning, and dinner six nights a week,” Miss Moore informed me as we walked through the dining room and into a long hallway.
Halfway down the hall a door swung open and a large man dressed only in a T-shirt and boxer shorts emerged. He was fat and freckled, lemon-colored and past fifty.
“Miss Moore,” he said in an accent that had to be put on. “I distinctly remember you promising me that I would be told when the tub was ready for my bath.”
“Oh, Mr. Conroy. You aren’t dressed,” she said.
This observation caused the big man to fold his arms over his belly.
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