Walter Mosley - Fear of the Dark

“Fearless Jones,” I said.

For a moment time ceased to pass on Man Dorn’s face. Then he looked at me, wondering how to avoid the two words he’d just heard.

“What’s Mr. Jones got to do wit’ me?”

“You know that woman I was here wit’ today?” I asked. “The one that paid Useless’s rent?”

“Yeah?”

“She took me ovah to Mad Anthony’s, and he got kinda riled...”

“That don’t have nuthin’ to do wit’ me,” Man claimed.

“Yeah. I know.” I was feeling sorry for Man. “But then Three Hearts went to Fearless and Fearless broke Tony’s jaw. Then she said that she was here and she thought that you knew more about Angel than you was sayin’ and that maybe he could come on by. I told Fearless that we didn’t need to go through all’a that. I said that I was sure you’d give Three Hearts what she needed.”

“Hold on,” he said, retreating into the blue home.

He left the door open. There was a television on in a room next to the one the door opened onto. Through the second doorway I could see two black women sitting on a couch, illuminated by the light of the TV. They were peering out at me. They looked like dark sisters, maybe a year or two apart. I tried to think of what their relationship to Man might have been but failed.

I did know that neither one of them was his wife.

Man returned with an eight-by-six glossy photograph. It was of a stunningly beautiful woman. She had medium brown skin, straight or straightened hair, eyes filled with knowing surprise, and parted lips that could teach you how to kiss a Greek goddess.

“This Angel?” I asked.

“When she told me that she was a actress,” Man said, “I asked her if she had a publicity picture. You know, a lotta these girls got bikini pictures for their Hollywood agents. It wasn’t that, but she’s pretty, though. Nice girl. She just had bad taste in men.”

“Anything else?”

“Naw, man. That’s it. I told you everything else.”

“How about the car the guy drove her off in?”

“I don’t even know, brother. I didn’t really care.”

“Man?” a woman said. She was standing at the inner door.

She was a shortish woman with big kissy lips and startled eyes.

“Go on back in the TV room, Doretha,” Man said. “We almost through here.”

She backed away fearfully.

“Couple’a my tenants come up to watch TV,” he told me. “So Fearless don’t have to come by now, right?”

“No, sir, Mr. Dorn.”

There weren’t too many joints where a woman like Angel would belong. Of course there were all kinds of men who would have wanted to go there with her: garage attendants and gangsters on the Negro side; directors, producers, and other high rollers on the white. But black men couldn’t get into the places she would have wanted to be, and white men couldn’t take her there — at least not for very long.

In 1956 a sophisticated and beautiful black woman had very few choices unless she wanted to be a good girl and wear midcalf skirts and milky rimmed glasses. I didn’t expect that Angel was that type of woman. If she was, I wouldn’t find her and I wouldn’t need to.

The only black club that would fit her bill was Apollo’s at the Knickerbocker Hotel off Central down in the forties. Apollo’s had jazz and fine food for black and white patrons. That was before the black part of town became off-limits to the casual white devotee.

I pulled up to a liquor store called Kenny’s Keg on Figueroa. I got a pack of Lucky Strikes and a pint of Greeley’s whiskey with a short stack of paper cups and a quart bottle of seltzer. I put the booze and water in the trunk, lit a cigarette, and then walked across the street to a glass-encased phone booth. I looked up a number by the yellow electric light and dialed.

“Hello?” a frightened elderly voice inquired.

“Kiko, please.”

“What?”

“Kiko.”

“Kiko?”

“Yes.”

A few hard knocks sounded in my ear and then, “Hello,” came a sultry voice.

“Loretta?”

“Paris?” she managed to evince both surprise and joy in her tone.

“You said call you, right?”

“I’m surprised you did,” she said.

“Why’s that?”

“I don’t know. You seem to think about some things until all the color is washed out, I guess. What do you want?”

“I got fifty dollars and a yen to hear some jazz.”

“The High Hat?” she suggested.

“I was thinkin’ more in the line with Apollo’s.”

“You know you need a reservation to get in there,” she said.

“I do, but Milo don’t.”

“And you just came up with this idea on a whim?” she asked. She was playing with me, but even when playing, cats use their claws a little.

“No,” I admitted. “I got to find out some things there, but I promise you a good dinner and fine companionship.”

“I’m not a cheap date, Mr. Minton.”

“I know how to act.”

I picked her up at her parents’ house twenty-five minutes later. They lived just south of Venice Boulevard on the west side of town.

That night Kiko “Loretta” Kuroko was a sight to behold. She wore a tight-fitting green gown that had sequins here and there, with a black velvet-and-silk shawl draped on her shoulders. Her black high heels made her taller than I by two inches, and her makeup was just enough to make any man from six to sixty-six skip a step in his gait.

I opened the door for her as her frightened parents gawped from a window of their small house.

Loretta’s whole family had been imprisoned in an American-run concentration camp during World War II. This caused her parents to be afraid of anything outside their small circle and it made Loretta hate all white people.

“Damn,” I once said to her. “My people been under a white man’s thumb for three hundred years an’ I don’t hate all of ’em.”

“That’s because they never lied to you,” she said on that weekday afternoon at Milo’s office. “But I always believed that I was accepted as a person and a citizen. After what I saw, I don’t care what happens to them.”

It was lucky for Milo and the black population of Watts in general. Loretta was a force to be reckoned with.

The bouncer at the club entrance at the Knickerbocker was a reptilian-looking fellow named Razor. He was taller than Fearless and broader of shoulder than Mad Anthony. But he smiled, showing more teeth than seemed possible.

“Loretta,” he said, not even deigning to recognize my presence.

“Mr. Hanley.” If Loretta knew you, she knew your last name and often used it as a mark of respect.

Loretta took a step across the threshold and I moved to follow. A big brown hand covered my chest.

“Where you think you goin’, boy?” Razor asked, no longer smiling but still showing his teeth.

I wish I’d said something smart or sassy, but I was flabbergasted and intimidated. All I could do was stutter.

“Paris is with me,” Loretta said.

“Really?”

“Yes.” Her smile really was something.

“You know you could do a lot bettah than a little man like this here,” Razor said, giving her an up and down look.

“I can see that you don’t know him as well as I do, Mr. Hanley,” she replied. “Paris here can’t fight to save his life, but you know when women get a man alone, fighting is the last thing on their minds.”

The club was crowded, and the bar was right next to the door. A few of the people standing around heard Loretta’s lecture and started laughing.

Razor smiled and bowed his head to me.

“Excuse me, Mr. Paris, sir. I didn’t know.” He waved his hand and we were taken by a young brown girl in a tight pink dress to a table near the stage.