“ M r . F r i a r , ” I said to our new friend, “you’ve been a good partner so far, but right now I believe that we need to go our separate ways.”
“I might be of help to you when you face Mr. Sterling.”
“Naw, man,” Fearless said. “These men serious about their bidness. They got guns an’ knives an’ they know how to use
’em too. I can cover one man, but two be a stretch.”
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There was something in Fearless’s delivery. When he talked, any man halfway near sane listened.
“Will you keep me informed?” Friar asked me.
“When we get your money back, you’ll get it,” I said. “And we might need some’a your kinda help by that time.”
We d r o v e M a r t i n F r i a r b a c k to his office and then made our way to Spalding Drive in that part of Beverly Hills that lay south of Wilshire Boulevard. North of Wilshire and beyond was where the truly wealthy people lived. The south was for their Passepartout-like aides. These men were senior vice presidents with no chance for promotion or small-business owners who didn’t have the vision, or the backing, to go large.
The house that fit the address Friar had given us was a small cottage with white plaster walls and a green thatch roof.
Twenty blocks south and it would have cost less than five thousand dollars, but its location made it worth seven times that.
I rang the bell, and the door came open almost immediately.
Maybe he was expecting someone. Maybe in this house he ignored the criminal circumstances of his life — I don’t know.
All I can say is that the tall and handsome silver-haired white man was smiling when he opened the door. The smile faltered at first and then turned into a panicked grimace. He gasped and turned to run. Given no choice, Fearless lunged after the probable Mr. Sterling, grabbing him by the collar of his white dress shirt. One tug and he was on his back. I was inside the door by then, pulling it shut behind me.
“Please don’t kill me,” the white man whined. “Please.”
“Get his wallet,” I said to Fearless.
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“Take it,” the terrified man said, almost throwing the wallet at me. “Take everything; just don’t kill me.”
I opened the billfold and pulled out his business card. It read: Lionel Charlemagne Sterling, Realtor.
“We got to talk, Lionel,” I said.
“Please, please,” he replied, staying down on his knees.
“Get up,” I said. I couldn’t stand to see a man kneeling and begging — not even a white man.
“Please.”
“Get up,” Fearless said in a voice he never used on me.
The sobbing extortionist rose to his feet, his head bowed and his shoulders sagging.
We were standing in an entranceway. To the right was a sunken living room. I thought he was going to lead us in there, but instead he leaned against a small waist-high table that stood against the wall. There was a telephone sitting there.
“I never meant to hurt anyone,” he said. “It was just too much.”
“Where’s Three Hearts and Angel?” I asked him.
“In Pasadena,” he said. “Thirteen twenty-nine Hugo.”
That was easy.
“Tell him that I would never turn him in,” Sterling said.
“Tell him. Call him.”
“Why don’t you call him?” I said, wondering who it was that frightened Sterling so.
“Can I?” he sobbed. Mucus was running from his left nostril. Tears flowed from both eyes.
“Sure,” I said. “Calm down, Mr. Sterling. We’re not here to hurt you.”
My assurances seemed to frighten him even more. He began to tremble.
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He turned to the telephone table, but instead of grabbing the receiver he pulled open the drawer. He turned quickly, but Fearless was even faster.
If I had been alone I would have died in that overpriced entranceway. But my friend, with his catlike instincts and reflexes, grabbed the gun and tore it from Sterling’s grip.
Sterling fell to his knees and screamed like a woman. He grabbed me by my thigh and yelled again, not so loudly this time. His eyes were popping out and the rictus of his smile was the epitome of terror.
Not knowing what else to do, I grabbed his face and leaned forward.
“It’s okay, man,” I said to him. “We’re not here to hurt you.”
His grin began to quiver, and his eyes fixed on a place that was far away from that room. The grip on my thigh loosened, and Mr. Lionel Charlemagne Sterling began to fade.
“No,” I said. “No, man. We’re not here to hurt you.”
The death grin was accompanied by a nod that did not comprehend my words.
He let go of my leg, but I grabbed his forearms in a hopeless attempt to keep him alive. But the blackmailer was dying, and nothing I could do would keep him from that fate.
When he’d fallen down on his back, Fearless touched his throat and put an ear against his mouth.
“Dead,” my friend said. Then he looked up at me. “Damn, Paris.”
“What? You think I knew somethin’ like this was gonna happen?”
“You the one brought us here, man,” he said.
“He killed himself,” I said. “He was scared because’a what he did.”
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“Are we standin’ ovah a dead white man in Beverly Hills?”
he asked me.
“He died of a heart attack or somethin’ like that. We didn’t kill him.”
Fearless just shook his head.
“Damn,” he said again.
Th e r e wa s o v e r forty thousand dollars laid out on a bed in one of the house’s smaller bedrooms. I looked at it, counted it, placed it in a pillowcase, and put it down.
There was no other indication of Sterling’s criminal activity in the house. We left him where he had fallen in the foyer. If we were lucky, a housecleaner or relative would find him and that would be it — Death due to heart attack, the coroner’s report would read.
“Should we take the money?” I asked my friend.
“Yeah. Yeah, sure,” he said. “Maybe we could find somebody he robbed an’ pay ’em back.”
We wa t c h e d t h e s t r e e t until no one was out and no car was coming and then made our escape.
While driving toward Pasadena we had the following conversation:
“You really blame me for this?” I asked.
“I don’t think you knew what was gonna happen,” he said.
“I don’t think you wanted him to die. But it’s just the way you go about things, man. You too much. You too hard.”
“Hard? Me? Man, I couldn’t beat up two outta three high school kids.”
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“Not hard fists, Paris. It’s your mind. You treat people like they was books, man. You just open ’em up and start goin’. But really you should come up slow an’ check it out first.”
I didn’t know what he was talking about. I had the feeling that he was telling me the truth, that I was at least partly the cause of Sterling’s death. But what could I do about it? He was the criminal. Wasn’t he?
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I t wa s e v e n i n g b e f o r e we arrived at 1329 Hugo Place. The address sounded as if it 36 belonged on a small house like Sterling’s cottage. But this was a mansion. There was an eight-foot salmon pink adobe wall around the property and wrought-iron gates blocking pedestrian and vehicular passage.
There was a button for a buzzer to the right of the gateway.
“Okay, Fearless,” I said. “What do you say? Do we knock or not?”
“They got your people in there, man,” Fearless said. Then he tried the pedestrian gate — it wasn’t locked.
A hundred feet from the entrance stood the house.
It was a bi
g house, three floors in places. There were no lights on, no cars in the driveway.
My heart was pounding like John Henry’s hammer, and I worried about a heart attack. Maybe I’d die like Sterling had, from fear. Even Fearless couldn’t protect me from my own heart.
The moon was bright enough to light our way and expose us to invisible assassins. Every footstep we took on the gravel path was like a giant maraca announcing us to our enemies.
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“There’s a way round back,” Fearless hissed.
I went with him from the lunar shade of a large stand of bird-of-paradise to the shadow of the house.
Behind the house stood a smaller, two-story building. There was a faint light coming from a few of its many windows.
We made our way to the front door, which was locked, and then around the sides, looking into windows as we went.
There was one window near the ground that was to the basement. There was a slightly stronger light coming from there. I peered into that portal, down into a room that was at least twenty feet below. There I beheld Three Hearts and Angel sitting across from each other at a wooden table. The room they were in was small and, I thought, probably locked.
I went to get Fearless. When he saw them he said, “I don’t think there’s anybody else here, Paris. Let’s just break a windah an’ get them.”
“You got your gun?”
“Do a robin have wings?”
The window didn’t look large enough, so we broke down a door at the back of the extra house.
We came in through a kitchen. The house was dark, and we left it like that, making our way, trying doors as we went.
“Paris,” Fearless said after pushing open a door.
Just hearing my name caused a pain in my chest.
“What?” I cried.
“It’s some steps leadin’ down.”
I wanted to run away. I would have run if I was alone. The thought occurred to me that we could have called the cops and given them the address on Hugo. We could have told them that there were women trapped in the basement.
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There were tears on my face and the wide-eyed corpse of Lionel Sterling in my mind. I had forty thousand dollars in the trunk, but what difference did that make when my chest was about to explode?
“Come on, man,” Fearless said. “Let’s get this ovah wit’.”
A light snapped on and I gasped, falling to one knee. I knew someone was about to open fire on us. I closed my eyes to pray.
“Paris,” Fearless said.
When I opened my eyes I realized that he had turned on the basement light.
He took a step down on the pine plank staircase. Every step he took sighed like a crying woman. I came after, unable to keep my hands from shaking.
After thirty-seven cries downward we reached a concrete floor. Fearless found another light switch and flipped it. There was nothing in the ten-by-ten room except a sturdy and unpainted wooden door.
“Hearts!” Fearless yelled at the door.
“Fearless? Is that you, baby?” she cried.
Maybe I would have been relieved to hear her voice, but I was trying to hold down the fright Fearless had given me when he shouted. The darkness had brought me back to my own basement and the corpse I’d sat with down there. Fearless could have turned on a dozen lights and it still wouldn’t have been enough for me.
“Hold on, Hearts,” Fearless called. “We’ll get you out. I just gotta jimmy this lock here.”
It was a serious padlock held down by brass fittings that a jailer would have been proud of.
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“I cain’t pull off the lock wit’ my hands, Paris,” my friend told me. “I gotta go upstairs an’ find sumpin’ to pry it with.”
I clamped my teeth shut so that I wouldn’t beg him to stay. I nodded, hoping that he didn’t see my fear.
Fearless patted my shoulder and made his way back up the stairs. I leaned against the door and slid down into a crouch.
“Fearless?” Three Hearts called. “Are you still there?”
“It’s me, Auntie,” I said, my voice a little high.
“Paris. How did you find us?”
The words jumbled in my mind as I tried to find an answer.
We found a man who had been destroyed. We killed a man.
We found some money. We buried a guy in a strawberry field.
I got dizzy and nauseous.
“Paris,” Three Hearts cried. “Paris.”
“I’m here, Auntie. Fearless is gettin’ somethin’ t’break the lock wit’.”
“Where’d he go?”
“Up.”
“In the house?”
“Yeah.”
“Them men still up there?”
I expected to hear gunshots at that moment. Never in my life had I been more sure of a premonition. It came to me all of a sudden. The kidnappers were all asleep. They had slept through us breaking in but now they heard Fearless.
I stood up but went no further. Any moment the gunfire would begin. They might get the drop on Fearless, but then again he was the army assassin. But even if he killed them, the gunfire would bring the cops and we’d all be arrested and convicted for a dozen crimes.
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“Paris,” Three Hearts called.
“I don’t know,” I whispered. I’m sure she didn’t hear me through that heavy door.
A woman sighed.
I jumped three feet.
It was Fearless on the top stair.
The heart attack tensed inside me, wondering if this was the moment to end my days.
Then Fearless was standing there in front of me. He had a big crowbar in his hand.
“Hold on, Paris,” he told me. “Hold on, man.”
He put a hand on my shoulder, and I grabbed his forearm the way Sterling had grabbed my thigh. I put my head against his shoulder and shivered.
“Paris,” Three Hearts called.
“It’s okay, Hearts,” Fearless answered. “I got me a crowbar.”
I let go and took a deep breath. The dread had gone from me, and I was ready to do what we had to.
“Gimme your gun,” I said to Fearless. “I’ll stand guard while you work on that lock.”
I t t o o k f i v e m i n u t e s for Fearless to pry that door loose. It was a very good cell. Down in a basement and in the back of a walled mansion; even if the women had screamed, no one would have heard them. And there was no way they could have broken down that door.
Three Hearts and Angel hugged the both of us. They didn’t cry or lose their composure. After a minute of greeting, they both said that they needed a bathroom.
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Fearless led them upstairs and turned on the lights in the house.
“What if somebody in the front house sees us?” I asked while the women went about their toilet.
“Ain’t nobody up there,” he said.
“How you know that?”
“I just do,” he replied.
I had been so traumatized that even this lame assurance didn’t bother me. It was as if I had died and now nothing else could happen.
“When they come out, we got to go,” I said.
“Okay, man. You know I got to call Milo anyway. I’m a day late for him as it is.”
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“ Th e y wa s l ay i n ’ for Ulysses when we got there,” Three Hearts Grant said from the 37 backseat. “There was four of’em.”
We were in the canyon, coming from the valley back to L.A.
Angel sat close to my auntie, holding her hand. The women were completely bonded now.
“There was blood on the floor,” I said, wondering about the union between the mother and the lover of a fool.
“When they made to grab us, I shot the fat one,” Three Hearts said. “But then the bald one, the one with the scar across his
face, took my gun an’ slapped me down. Angel tried to stop him, but he was too big and mean.”
There was the knot. Angel’s trying to save Three Hearts had assured their undying union.
“He died in the car,” my aunt said almost casually.
“The fat one?” I asked.
“Yeah. He told ’em he was okay, but I hit sumpin’ in his belly. It’s like he got sadder an’ tireder until he was gone.”
I turned around to see what my aunt looked like when she uttered these words. She had a sneer on her lips, as if she had just tasted something bitter. There was no remorse or discomfort, just a distasteful task that was only one-third done.
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Angel didn’t speak at all. She was the younger woman and therefore left the speaking to her elder.
I didn’t push either woman because I was hoping that the whole thing would soon be over. Hector was dead, Sterling too.
The men who had kidnapped Three Hearts and Angel were looking for Useless, so he was probably alive somewhere. All I had to do was leave the job up to Angel and Three Hearts.
They could go on looking and I could go back to my life.
I figured that I could repay Friar and split the rest of the cash with Fearless. That way at least I’d have a nest egg if I needed to run. For a while then I wondered what a berth to China would cost.
I t wa s l a t e w h e n the four of us got back to my bookstore-home. From the street we could see the shadow of a man hovering near my door.
“Who’s up there?” I called.
“Paris?” he said, and all of the pains and bruises I’d collected in the last weeks came back to me.
“Ulysses?” Three Hearts called.
“Baby?” Angel echoed.
Fearless chuckled while the women rushed up the stairs, the soles of their shoes clattering on the hardwood.
I n t h e k i t c h e n at the back of my place, the women sat sentry in chairs on either side of Ulysses S. Grant IV’s stool. He was grinning and holding hands with both women, while Fearless sat on my counter and I boiled water for tea on one of my three hot plates.
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