Walter Mosley - Fear of the Dark

But I was wrong.

“I got a call from a guy who wanted us to get back into business. He told me that he had my mama and if I wanted her to be all right I’d have to give him what I got in this here suitcase.”

“What guy?”

“Paris,” he replied, “you don’t wanna get too deep in this, Cousin. These men is dangerous.”

Now I was sure that he was lying.

“Who was it, Ulysses?”

“A white man named Lionel Sterling. He the one called me.”

“He had your number?”

“He called Jerry Twist and told him that if he talked to me to tell me to call. He said that I’d like to hear what he had to say.”

Useless might have been the best liar I’d ever met.

“Sterling’s dead,” I said.

“Oh, no,” Three Hearts proclaimed. “Not another one dead.”

“He wasn’t dead when he called me,” Useless said, approximating a man telling the truth.

“How did you know we were in jail?”

“Sterling told me. He had his men question Three Hearts about the men she’d been wit’—”

“That’s right,” my auntie said. “They asked and we told them that you had been arrested.”

“Why would they ask you that?” I asked Three Hearts.

“I don’t know.”

My frustration was rising. Something was a lie here. Something wasn’t true. And Useless knew what it was.

“When Fearless and I went to see Sterling,” I said to Useless, “he was scared the minute he saw that we were black. That’s what frightened him. Now, if he’s afraid of black people so much, how he gonna get three black men to kidnap your mama an’ girlfriend?”

“Maybe he wasn’t scared,” Useless speculated. “Maybe he only pretended to be afraid so you wouldn’t suspect him.”

I wanted to ask: That’s why he had a heart attack an’ died in my arms?

“People out here dyin’ because’a you, Cousin,” I did say.

“Leave him alone,” my aunt countered. “You’re the one gettin’ people in trouble. You’re the one see somebody and then he turns up dead.”

That was the last straw for me. I said, “You come to my house, drag me out in the street where I get my butt kicked, thrown in jail, surrounded by murderers, blackmailers, pimps, and thieves...”

“Paris,” Fearless said in a low warning tone.

“... You shoot a man with your own gun, kill him dead, don’t even cross your heart for a blessin’ when you talk about it, and still you gonna sit there next to that liar you call a son and blame me for killin’ the man Useless here just said ordered your kidnappin’.”

“His name is Ulysses,” was her reply.

“Maybe to you,” I said. I realized that I was hovering over my relatives. “Maybe to you he’s some Greek hero, some descendant of a poor slave woman got in the way of a war. But to me he’s useless, hopeless, inadequate, futile, a waste of time.”

Three Hearts stood up.

“I’m leaving,” she said.

“Get out, then,” I said, not myself at all. “Get the hell out.”

“Come on, Ulysses,” was her reply.

Useless stood. So did Angel.

“But you ain’t takin’ that suitcase.”

Fearless hopped down from the counter.

“You don’t wanna mess with the contents of this bag, man,” Useless assured me.

“Why not? What you got in there?”

“It’s the stuff Sterling used to blackmail them men.”

“Fearless an’ me know one’a them men,” I said. “Martin Friar.”

“Marty?” was Angel’s first word in a while.

“He sends his best,” I said to the young beauty. “I think he thinks he loves you.”

You couldn’t have read her face with a microscope.

“Leave the bag, Ulysses,” Three Hearts said.

“But Mama...”

“Leave it. That’s the devil’s work in that bag. I’m sure Fearless will make sure it gets back to the men that have been wronged.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Fearless’ll do it. Fearless, not Paris. Not your nephew, who you dragged down in the trough with your son.”

Fearless reached down for the bag. Useless took it by the handle.

“Don’t cause a ruckus, Ulysses,” Fearless said.

“Do you have a car, Ulysses?” Three Hearts’s voice was stiff and angry.

“Yeah. Jerry Twist lent me his car.”

“Then let’s get out of here.”

“Two questions, Useless,” I said.

Hearts was about to protest my bastardization of her son’s name, but he put a hand on her shoulder.

“What, Paris?”

“Who killed Mad Anthony?”

Useless never could lie very well in the presence of his mother. She forgave him everything and loved him fiercely. Her passion made him honest, or somewhat so.

“He was tryin’ to kill me, Paris. I swear.”

“What about Hector?”

“Come on, baby, let’s go,” Angel said.

“I don’t know,” Useless said to me. “I shot Tony in a alley off’a Alameda. He would’a kilt me if I didn’t, but I don’t know about Hector.”

Our eyes were locked for a long minute. I believed him... but that didn’t make what he said the truth.

The three headed for the door. I followed them through the bookstore and out onto the porch. I don’t think I’d ever been angrier. All the trouble I’d gone through, and my aunt still treated me like a throwaway waxed paper milk carton.

“You welcome for our help finding your son,” I called after them. “Make sure you don’t call back any time soon.”

Three Hearts wheeled around and stared at me, her evil eye glowing in the night. But I didn’t care, not one bit. A man can only be pushed so far and then he has to stand up and say what he feels.

“She’ll cool down in the mornin’, Paris,” Fearless said at my back. “She’ll see that you did right by her with the dawn.”

“All I want is for them to leave me alone,” I said. “I’ve had enough. You hear me?”

Back inside, Fearless picked up the suitcase that Useless had left in my kitchen.

“I’ll hold on to that,” I told him.

“You sure, man?”

“I wanna check it out.”

“Okay, Paris,” Fearless said. Then he chuckled. “You must be boilin’.”

“She drive me crazy, Fearless,” I said. “Here I done helped her do what she want, an’ she still wanna look at Useless like he the one did it all.”

“That’s her baby there,” Fearless said. “You cain’t do nuttin’ about that.”

“It’s not only that,” I said. “Sterling was workin’ for somebody, somebody he was scared of. That means the one who had Angel and Hearts kidnapped is still out there. That man’s a killer an’ he might be thinkin’ about us. And you know Useless not tellin’ us everything.”

Fearless stood there while I ranted and gulped tea. He leaned back against the counter, with moths darting through the darkness behind him. It’s not that he didn’t care about what I was saying. It’s just that there was nothing to do about it. Fearless lived a life filled with dangers. Walking down the street was a threat to him. But he just moved through it, living by a code that I doubt he’d have been able to articulate.

The phone rang about then.

It was after midnight.

“Hello?” I said, hoping that Three Hearts did not want to apologize.

“Paris,” he said in a low tone.

“Hold on.”

Fearless had followed me into the bookshop part of my home. I handed the phone to him. He muttered a word and then listened. After forty-five seconds or so he grunted and then hung up.

“You wanna go for a ride?” he asked me.

There was no doubt in my mind that Fearless meant to drive into trouble. Trouble was where he was coming from and it was most often his destination. But the alternative was to sit in my house alone with the fear of a killer who could take you out with a straightedge or a heart attack.