Walter Mosley - Fear of the Dark

“Why’d you come here?” I whispered into her dirty blond hair.

“I stayed at the YWCA for a few days after Hector was killed. I didn’t know where else to go. All I had was a few dollars.”

I walked her over to the stool that Useless had used.

“Tell me what happened to Hector,” I said.

“Somebody killed him,” she said, her eyes wide with the immensity of death. “They cut his throat while I was sleeping in the bed.”

“Who did?”

“I don’t know. All I know is that I thought I heard something and I called out his name. And then, when I came in, there he was.”

She began crying again and I couldn’t blame her. Even if she had killed him herself, it was something worth crying about. But I didn’t think she’d killed him. No. Hector had housed her, punished her, and had brutal sex with her in every position in every room in that apartment. They were perfect together.

“Who was Hector’s boss?”

“He never said,” Jessa uttered. “He never even said that the man he talked to on the phone was his boss. But I could tell. Hector got respectful whenever he called.”

“Did you ever answer the phone when his boss called?”

“Once.”

“What did he say?”

“He asked who it was, and I told him that I was, I was Hector’s girlfriend.”

“An’ what’d he say?”

“He wanted Hector, but Hector was out. Then he told me to tell Hector to meet him at the yard at five thirty.”

“What did he sound like?” I asked.

Jessa didn’t seem to understand the question.

“Was he a white man or a Negro?”

The white girl cocked her head to the side and bit her lower lip. “I don’t know,” she said. “There might have been a little southerner in there, but I couldn’t tell.”

It wasn’t a total loss. I had found out some things.

“Tell me something, Jessa.”

“What?”

“Hector came here one day asking for a French dictionary. Why he do that? Did Useless tell him that I had something of his?”

“No,” Jessa said, her fingers jittering nervously. “Hector asked me about you. I told him that all you did was sell books. But he, he wanted to see you and for you to see him. He said that if you blinked he’d kill you like he had Tiny—”

“Like he thought he killed Tiny,” I reminded her.

“Yeah.”

“So I guess he didn’t think I knew anything,” I said.

“No. He said that you were nothing.”

It’s funny the things that make us mad. I was angry at the dead killer for thinking I wasn’t worth a bullet.

“Do you hate me, Paris?” Jessa asked.

“No. Why?”

“Do you think I’m a whore?”

“No, I do not. I think you’re a young woman got in way over her head, but it wasn’t your fault — at least not all your fault. You might’a been messin’ with Tiny, but he left you first. And there wasn’t a damn thing you could’a done about Hector. Not a damn thing.”

She tried to smile, which was more meaningful than if she had actually managed it.

“I’m’a give ya two hundred dollars and a ride to the downtown YWCA,” I said. “In a couple or few days I’ll come by and tell you what I think.”

“Can’t I stay with you?”

“Stayin’ here just about as dangerous as stayin’ with Hector.”

I didn’t have to say any more.

After i put Jessa into a taxi I took the suitcase to my incinerator in the backyard. There I applied lighter fluid and set it afire. As the flames rose I tried to imagine Useless sneaking up behind a man and cutting his throat.

It wasn’t a nice thought. But he just didn’t have the nerve to kill a man like that.

Or did he?

Fearless’s front door was wide open. This detail made me hesitate. It was a warm day and an open door was the best way to cool down. But maybe the killer had knocked and Fearless had answered and got shot. Maybe Fearless was dead.

I couldn’t take a step forward or back until those maybes were resolved. It’s not that I expected a moment of brilliance to strike where I’d be suddenly aware of the reason behind that open door. I hoped that Fearless would appear or, failing that, he’d speak out.

But as I waited I began to wonder. If some killer had struck at Fearless he would only leave the door open if he’d left. If he was in there waiting for me, the door would be closed so that no one would suspect his presence.

That got me far enough to consider moving, but it was hearing Fearless laugh out loud that brought on the locomotion in my legs.

He was sitting on the sofa with Mona at his side. I thought that she might have just snagged a kiss before I appeared because there was a lascivious look in her lovely grayish eyes.

“There he is,” Fearless said aloud. “Paris. He done saved my life an’ made me fi’e hundred dollars.”

The sexual expectation was replaced by disappointment on Mona’s face, disappointment but not anger. Later I would find out that Mona had a great deal of sisterly love and respect for me. She was a much more complex woman than I could have known back then, when all of her senses were besotted by the Hero.

“That’s all Milo paid you to risk yo’ life like that?” I asked.

“You wanna drink, Paris?” Mona offered.

I nodded, and she went into the tiny kitchen that was through the door next to Fearless’s one room for living, sleeping, and paying his bills.

“That was a bonus,” Fearless said. “On top’a what he paid me for bodyguardin’.”

“Did you hear that window openin’ up over your head?” I asked as I lowered into the broken-down stuffed chair next to his small sofa.

“Yeah,” he admitted. “But I didn’t know what it meant exactly. An’ at the same time I heard it, you shouted. When you called my name it all fell inta place and I jumped.”

I wondered for the thousandth time what it would be like to see the world from Fearless’s point of view. In my world everything was particular and threatening, made up of sharp corners that would cut you if you got too close. But Fearless, I imagined, lived in a liquid world where everything blended together and moved in unison. In his world there were no absolute victors or complete victims, just movement between everything, all the time.

Mona brought me a squat glass of peach schnapps and ice. That was my favorite drink, and Fearless always kept a bottle in the cabinet in case I came by.

She sat on Fearless’s lap. He whispered in her ear and she smiled.

“Okay,” she said gladly and stood up. “Bye, Paris. I’m’a go an’ let you men talk.”

I rose and kissed her cheek. She smiled at me and patted my jaw line. As she sashayed toward her apartment, I closed the front door. Fearless had turned on the light before I was sitting again.

“I called you,” he said.

“I stayed out last night. Seemed like a good idea.”

“You got anything more about Ulysses?”

“I think it might’a been him who killed Hector.”

I told him that Jessa had said Useless had stolen something from Hector’s boss.

“He already admitted killing Tony,” I added as a kind of proof.

“Naw, man,” Fearless said. “Ulysses ain’t gonna sneak up on no bad man an’ cut his th’oat. Naw.” Fearless shook his head, but he was wondering.

“That ain’t all,” I said. “Jessa said that Hector’s bossman called an’ told him to meet him at the yard.”

“Bubba’s Yard?”

“I don’t know. Might be.”

“Thatta make sense. Sure would.”

If you lived in Watts or some other poor neighborhood and you owned a fine or fancy car, you might avail yourself of the services of Bubba Lateman’s Yard. Lateman owned a largish piece of property on the borderline between Compton and Los Angeles. He’d built a high cinder-block wall around it and topped that with barbed wire and shards of glass embedded in concrete. He kept dogs that would chew through bone and an alarm system with a bell that could be heard for six city blocks. Combine that with a high-powered hunting rifle in the hands of an army-certified marksman and you had the safest garage in the world.