Fear of the Dark fjm-3

by Walter Mosley

  Standing there next to a 1940s wood-paneled station wagon was a teenage boy. His shirttails were hanging out and his plump body seemed to be made from fudge.

  “That’s a child right there, Hearts,” Fearless said. “What’s 162

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  his mama gonna say when you put him out there in front’a Mad Anthony or some other crazy fool like that?”

  “Toby will stay in the car.”

  “In the middle’a the night in places where Ulysses might be? Hearts,” Fearless entreated. “You cain’t be draggin’ no child around where trouble grow. You know that, baby.”

  “Who said that I’m goin’ out lookin’ for trouble?” Three Hearts said to the ground at her feet.

  “Toby,” Fearless called.

  “Yessir?”

  My friend flipped a coin across the void. The boy made a valiant effort, but he missed and had to run after the silver disk as it rolled down the asphalt.

  “That’s a dollar,” Fearless said when the awkward ballet was through. “Go on home now. Me an’ Paris will drive Mrs.

  Grant.”

  When the boy flashed a grin I decided I liked him. He jumped into his station wagon and rolled away to safety.

  “Now, where you wanna go, Hearts?” Fearless asked my auntie.

  I didn’t speak because I would always be a child in the eyes of my family. Even with my mustache they treated me according to my size and temperament. That’s why Three Hearts could use Toby on a risky venture and not realize how wrong she was.

  But Fearless was born an adult. People always listened to him; even white folks cocked an ear when they were in trouble and Fearless offered to help.

  “There’s a house down around Compton,” she said. “I wanna go there.”

  “What’s there?” I asked. I just couldn’t keep quiet.

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  “Ain’t none’a your business.”

  “Hearts,” Fearless said. “We your people here. Why you wanna stonewall us?”

  Three Hearts looked up into my friend’s eyes with something like evil festering in hers. I did not know another man or woman who knew Three Hearts that wouldn’t back down from that stare.

  Fearless grinned.

  “I ain’t scared’a you, Hearts,” he said. “You know I’m tryin’

  to help ya. You know you need us wit’ you to help your son. So don’t be pullin’ no evil-eye stuff on me.”

  Nadine had come to the screen door. She was looking at the encounter with something like fear in her face.

  Three Hearts began to tremble. Her fists were knotted in rage. I swear I felt lightning gather in the sky. It took all of my courage not to step away from Fearless.

  “It’s that girl,” Three Hearts hissed. “I found out from a woman. I’m goin’ down there to get her spell off my son.”

  F r o m t h e b a c k s e a t of my car on the way to Compton, she told us the tale.

  “I know you been lookin’, Paris,” she said. “An’ I appreciate it, baby. But I couldn’t just sit there in Nadine’s house an’

  watch the flowers grow. I had to get out an’ do sumpin’. And so Nadine told me about Toby. He done got put outta school fo’ stealin’ from the canteen, an’ his mama want him to work.

  So I hired him for fifty cent a hour t’drive me. I buy his lunch an’ pay the gas, an’ he took me to every church around here.

  “I must’a gone to twenty churches when I finally fount a woman who knew a woman that this Angel girl done messed 164

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  wit’. I knew it was gonna be sumpin’ like that. Her Christian name is Allmont. She was in this one church, Triumph of the Lord Holy Baptist, when she lured Tyree Mullins inta sin. His wife, Cleo, couldn’t do nuthin’ about it. It was like he had a fever. He kept tellin’ Cleo that it wasn’t nuthin’ romantic or sex but that he was just tryin’ t’help the girl. He owns some property ovah in Compton an’ he put her up there. She don’t pay no rent, don’t buy her own food or her clothes. If she get sick he there wit’ her before his own chirren. That’s the woman that have beguiled my poor son.”

  I didn’t know how much truth or rumor or fabrication by Three Hearts herself had gone into that story, but I did know that Tommy Hoag had used the name Allmont when referring to Angel. Three Hearts had brought us to the door I was looking for, the door I needed to go through in order to effect a plan that had an escape hatch if need be.

  Where I was satisfied, Three Hearts was seething. I could feel her evil orb roving in the backseat, looking for just the right calamity to befall the slut-Jezebel who had led her pure and innocent son down the path of wickedness.

  I would have felt good if it weren’t for my auntie. Her anger would get in the way of my getting her out of California and back to the superstitious boondocks of the Creoles and Cajuns. Her anger was the promise of a great explosion that would rip open the crime her son had most definitely committed. And in the aftermath of that detonation, the police might come and drag me away for extortion, theft, and multiple murders.

  But I couldn’t get too lost in the dangerous atmosphere in which I found myself. We were about to get to Useless’s girlfriend. And if Fearless could daunt Three Hearts just enough, 165

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  I might get in there and figure a way to placate her and send her and her son far away.

  C o m p t o n wa s a n i c e l i t t l e t o w n at that time.

  The houses were almost all one-story single-family dwellings.

  The yards were wide and green. The sidewalks were newly laid concrete, white and unmarred by the passage of workingmen’s feet. If there were trees along the curbs they were imported, because there hadn’t been enough time for them to grow.

  All in all, Angel’s neighborhood was like a brand-new Christmas present given by a king to his patient and penitent peasants.

  Angel lived at 12033⁄4 Snyder. Number 1203 was a large salmon pink house with a friendly family window that had the drapes pulled. At the side of the driveway was a bank of mailboxes, four of them to coincide with the addresses up to 3⁄4.

  Number 12031⁄4 was an emerald green place, half the size of the front building. There was a gnarled oak on one side (obviously from a time before the area was subdivided) and ten rows of corn on the other. Behind that house was a long flat building painted white and divided into two separate addresses. The one on the right was 12033⁄4.

  Even though Three Hearts rushed forward, Fearless got there first and knocked. Three Hearts was muttering hateful curses to herself, and darkness had fallen. There was a quarter moon to our right and crickets could be heard everywhere.

  The door opened and we were flooded with yellow light.

  She was much more beautiful than even her photograph had promised. The medium brown skin was closer to bur-166

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  nished copper. The straightened hair seemed to flow so naturally that you would have thought that she was an American Indian. The surprise in her eyes and the goddess’s lips’ parting were for Three Hearts. You would have thought that my auntie was Angel’s long-lost sister instead of the instrument of her doom.

  “I love your son, Mrs. Grant,” the epitome of beauty uttered.

  And to my eternally enduring surprise, Three Hearts broke down crying.

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  N o t w h i m p e r i n g o r s o b s but deep, soul-wrenching howls came from Three Hearts’s 26 chest. She made the sounds that women made when they heard that a child or a husband had died. It was a funeral cry.

  Fearless put his arms around my auntie, and she fell into the embrace. He supported her across the threshold while she bawled and shrieked.

  For her part, Angel was dismayed at the elder woman’s desolate abandon. She clasped her hands together and guided Fearless to a broad black couch in the center of a very modern room. In front of the couch was a console that had a TV and a record player inside the red-stained maple box.
There were copies of abstract paintings on the walls that seemed to be influenced by a jazz sensibility. There was one bookcase and various chairs that went together but did not match. The wood floor was bright white pine and the walls were also white.

  There were a dozen lamps placed haphazardly around the large space. Some were standing posts, others table lamps. All of them were on.

  I liked a brightly lit room; made me feel that nothing 168

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  underhanded was going on. Of course I knew brightness and honesty weren’t necessarily friends.

  Three Hearts moaned and shouted for some time. There could have been bloody murder being committed in that bun-galow, but no neighbor called the cops. I was glad that they didn’t, but then again, it bothered me too.

  Angel, who was wearing a pink dress that would have been a shirt had it been any shorter, brought ice water and knelt down in front of Three Hearts.

  “Here, baby,” the boundless beauty said. “Take some water.

  Drink it down. Let it cool you.”

  Then Angel put her hand to Three Hearts’s forehead as if she were the older woman’s mother feeling for fever.

  And my auntie accepted the attention. Here I would have told you that Three Hearts would have bitten that hand if it got too close. Instead she let her head loll back and her eyes close, allowing the Jezebel to minister to her.

  Fearless found a bottle of whiskey and some ice and poured us both a draft. That liquor was just what I needed.

  “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Grant,” Angel said just as soon as Three Hearts settled down. “I know how much pain you must be in.

  Ulysses got in a whole mess of trouble, and I didn’t know what to do.”

  As I have said, Three Hearts is my blood. I have known that woman since I could speak my own name. Never in all the time before that moment had I witnessed her allow man, woman, or child to lay blame at her son’s feet.

  “What did he do to you, child?” Three Hearts asked Angel.

  “I see it stitched in your face. What did he do?”

  “It wasn’t him,” Angel said. “He couldn’t help it. He got 169

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  mixed up with those men and before he knew it we were in too deep.”

  “He tries so hard,” Three Hearts sobbed.

  The women hugged over their love. It was almost as if they were competing over who could love the little rat more.

  I drained my glass. Fearless refilled it. I drained it again and Fearless was right on the job.

  Half the way through my third glass of bourbon I looked around me. There I was, a mortal man flanked by Venus, Mars, and Juno. I wondered if Fate was standing outside the door, if he would allow me to stand up and walk away, just walk away from all that craziness. Maybe if I asked her right, Mum would take me in. We could discuss Spinoza and Karl Marx over dumplings and white rice.

  That was a beautiful thought. I allowed myself fifteen seconds to wallow in it. I’d go to college and teach English at a boarding school in Jamaica.

  “Excuse me,” I said when the daydream was done.

  Angel and Three Hearts turned to me.

  Fearless refilled my glass for the fourth time.

  “What is it, Paris?” my auntie asked. She didn’t like her grief being interrupted.

  “I know you ladies can read each other’s minds and all,” I said. “You seein’ invisible scars and like that. But for the men-folk here who don’t have your powers, could somebody please tell me where Ulysses has gone to?”

  “I don’t know where he is,” Angel said. She rose up from her knees as if there were no gravity at her feet.

  I felt some consternation because when I looked at her the rest of the room got fuzzy. At first I told myself that it was the 170

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  whiskey, but then I looked at Fearless — the world around him was clear.

  So I tried not to look directly into Angel’s eyes. That way I could converse with her without falling into some kind of crazy enchantment.

  “But you an’ him was in business,” I said, all business myself.

  “No,” she replied.

  “What about Mr. Katz and Reverend Drummund?” I said.

  “Mad Anthony and Hector LaTiara?”

  “You know about them?” Angel asked, seeking but not finding my eyes.

  “I know about thirteen churches, banks, insurance companies, and investment firms,” I said. “I know about at least seventy thousand dollars that you and Use . . . Ulysses had in your apartment at Man’s Barn.”

  Angel gasped at every other syllable. She fell onto a chair that sat next the sofa. Three Hearts was glaring at me for being so cruel to her new best friend — the woman she had wanted to murder less than half an hour ago. But I didn’t feel the effect of my auntie’s evil eye. I realized then that alcohol was proof against her spells.

  “How did it work, Angel?” I asked.

  “You know my name,” she replied, “but I don’t know either of yours.”

  “Jones,” my friend said first. “Fearless Jones.”

  “Oh,” Angel crooned. “I’ve heard all about you. You’re famous.”

  Fearless smiled. Even he could be flattered by an angel.

  “Paris,” I said. “Paris Minton.”

  “Oh, yes. You’re Ullie’s cousin. He felt really bad about that 171

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  time the police arrested you. He didn’t know that they’d come to your house.”

  “Who was the man you left with when you ran out on Ulysses?” I asked.

  “It’s not like it seems, Mrs. Grant,” she said. “I left, but it was because Ulysses wanted me to. He said that LaTiara was after him and he didn’t want me to get hurt.”

  I laughed then.

  I don’t get drunk all that often. And I don’t believe that ine-briation is any panacea to a poor man’s problems. But now and then a good buzz will help you through when the ground is trembling and the mountains are coming down.

  “Angel,” I said slowly and deliberately, “Hector is dead, had his throat cut.”

  “Whaaat?” Three Hearts sang.

  “I have reason to believe that Hector killed somebody else tryin’ t’find my cousin. So I really wish you’d stop bein’ all beautiful an’ perfect for just a minute and answer some simple fuckin’ questions.”

  “Paris,” Fearless said.

  “You could leave any time you want, Fearless. This girl here got us up to our necks in crocodiles, and I cain’t help what comes outta my mouth.”

  “Excuse him, ma’am,” Fearless said. “He’s been under some strain. He needs to know who it is killin’ who out here.

  He needs to know it or he won’t be able to sleep in his bed.”

  “I, I didn’t know about Hector,” Angel said then. Maybe she didn’t.

  “What were Hector and Ulysses doin’?” I asked.

  Angel looked to be full of information, but she didn’t say a word.

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  “I got to know, girl,” I said, the whiskey awash in my brain.

  “I don’t know you, Paris,” she said. “The kind of trouble Ullie is in could put him . . . and me in jail.”

  “I bet Hector would take jail over what he got,” I opined.

  “Hector was a friend of Ullie’s,” she said. “Not so much a friend but an acquaintance. Hector knew a white man named Sterling. Sterling knew about men,” she said tentatively.

  “What kind of men?” I asked.

  “Men like Katz and Reverend Drummund.”

  “Rich men?”

  “Not rich but in charge of great wealth.”

  “Oh, Lord,” Three Hearts moaned.

  “What was the hook?” I asked.

  “Me,” Angel said softly but without any deep sense of shame that I could tell.

  “How so?”

  “I’d go to them with a purse full of money. Five thousand dollars in fif
ties and hundreds and the promise that I had ten times that. I’d say that I wanted to invest the money in their companies or, in the case of the church, that I wanted to use it for the greater good. When they’d wonder how I made the money, I told them about a system I used in betting in poker games. Hector would set up a fake game and I’d go there with the reverend or V.P. and show them how I’d win. The game was always fixed. After a few nights they’d be hooked and get into a big game where I’d lose ten, maybe twenty thousand dollars of their institution’s money. After that Hector would blackmail them, threatening to tell their employers that they’d put the company’s money on the line.”

  At the last words, she shed a tear and swallowed a sob. I believed that they were cheating those men but not that poor 173

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  Angel was an innocent who regretted her part in the scheme.

  She regretted Ulysses running away with her money. She regretted some killer hungering after her soft throat. But she didn’t give a damn about the men whose lives she’d ruined.

  I didn’t care about them either, but I wasn’t the one who brought them down.

  “You poor child,” Three Hearts said.

  “You have any idea where my cousin is?” I asked.

  “There’s a cabin in the Angeles National Forest. Sterling owns it. Ullie liked to go up there.”

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  I h a d u n l o c k e d the doors of my Studebaker for the women to climb in back. I was 27 about to get in the driver’s seat when Fearless said, “Uh, Paris?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You bettah let me drive, man.”

  “Why?”

  “ ’Cause you drunk.”

  I looked at him and took in a deep breath.

  “I am not.”

  Fearless put one finger against my chest and shoved with barely any force. I would have been on the ground if the car wasn’t behind me.

  How many whiskies had I downed? I couldn’t remember.

  I fell into the driver’s seat and crawled to the other side.

  Fearless got in and put his hand out for the key.