Walter Mosley - Fear of the Dark

“Let’s go, then.”

Allegra’s dance hall was no more than the frame of a barn behind an ironworks factory on Hooper. Back there you could lose your life in a second. It was early and no one was dancing. There were a couple of potheads smoking in the yard, but Bobo was nowhere in evidence.

“Should we ask about him?” I asked the professional.

“Not unless you want him to disappear on ya.”

The next place was a Texas barbecue stand on Santa Barbara. It was rumored that Bobo ate there at least four times a week. He wasn’t hungry right then.

Harry’s barbershop had been closed temporarily by the police. There had been a murder over a poker game in the back room, so Harry took off a week or so, until the police got tired of checking their seal.

Thad’s bar was last on our list.

The physical bar at Thad’s was small, but there was a big room for clientele once they had something to drink. There were four bartenders, serving cheap beer, mostly. Whisper had kept Thad’s for last because he’d been told that Bobo had an ex-girlfriend that worked there. He didn’t expect that Bobo would be hanging around an ex, but he was wrong.

Ora, Bobo’s girlfriend, was working serving drinks.

When Whisper asked her about Bobo, she just shrugged and gestured toward a corner with her jaw.

At the corner table sat a big man, a very big man. His shoulders sagged, and all you could see was the top of his uncombed head. The quart pitcher looked like a mug in his large hand.

Whisper and I went to his table. I tried to keep abreast of my new friend, but when we got to within six feet of Bobo, my legs just stopped moving.

Seeing our shadows in his beer, Bobo looked up. His brutal face seemed damaged somehow.

“What?” he whined.

“Bobo Handsome?” Whisper asked.

“Yeah? What you want?”

“Like to buy you a drink,” Whisper said.

I liked the style. I had to remember to use it the next time I wanted to grill somebody.

“Sure,” Bobo said, waving his hand at us.

Whisper ordered a fifth of whiskey and three glasses. Ora, Bobo’s ex-girlfriend, frowned when she received the order, but she kept quiet.

Whisper introduced himself and so did I. We traded shots for a while and discussed baseball. I don’t know a thing about baseball. I knew about the Negro Leagues, but if you asked me what they actually did on the field, I wouldn’t have been able to answer.

But Whisper knew. He seemed to know a little something about everything. Bobo got drunker, and angry, but he wasn’t mad at us.

“You evah have a friend that you really love?” Bobo asked me at one point.

“Uh, yeah,” I said. “I guess.”

“You talkin’ ’bout Tremont?” Whisper asked.

It was the first time I’d heard that name, but I knew from the context that he was the fat man that Three Hearts had killed.

“What you know ’bout Tremont?” Bobo asked, half rising from his chair.

“Nuthin’,” Whisper said innocently. “I just heard that the cops fount his body. Somebody had shot him in the gut.”

The violence in Bobo’s demeanor melted into grief. Tears sprouted from his eyes, and his hands grasped at nothing.

Ora, who was a small dark-skinned woman, came over and put her hands on his oxlike shoulders. Her face wasn’t beautiful, but the feeling she held for him was.

“Leave him alone,” she told us. “Cain’t you see he’s hurtin’?”

“You want us to leave, Bobo?” Whisper asked.

“No, man. Go on, Ora. These here my friends.”

“You don’t even know these niggahs,” she answered. “They buy you a drink an’ turn your ass ovah.”

“We don’t wanna hurt you, Bobo,” Whisper said, and I realized that in order to be a detective you had to be cruel while seeming to be kind.

“Go on, Ora,” Bobo said. “I ain’t no fool.”

“Fuck you, then,” Ora said to all of us.

She stormed away to be consoled by three or four other barmaids.

“I’m sorry about your friend,” Whisper said.

What amazed me about Whisper was how simple and yet elegant his approach was at this point. If I were trying to get information out of Bobo I would have tried to fool him by making up a dozen lies. Whisper just told one lie and then soaked it in whiskey.

“I tell you one thing,” Bobo said. “Don’t evah put yo’ trust in no light-skin, light-eyed, high-yellah niggah. Mothahfuckah done made Tremont’s chirren orphans, an’ he won’t even let up on a dime. Wouldn’t shed a tear ovah his own.”

He said some other things, but I don’t remember what. I let him go on for a while and then I told Whisper that I had to go see my uncle. I explained to Bobo that my uncle had tuberculosis and needed help around his house.

Bobo told me to make sure that he drank a lot of milk. Milk was good for TB.

I thanked him and ordered another bottle of booze. I figured if he got drunk enough he wouldn’t be able to get in the way of my plans.

Whisper dropped me off at my bookstore. I hadn’t told him a thing about what I’d learned.

He shook my hand and smiled at me again.

“You got all the right instincts,” he told me. “You don’t tell nobody nuthin’ they don’t need to know and you keep your cool.”

I smiled, thinking that Whisper didn’t know how scared I really was.

“When you want a real job, call me,” Whisper said. “I could always use a partner.”

I drove straight from the sidewalk to Fearless’s bungalow. When I got to the door, I heard Mona crying, “That’s it. That’s it. Oh yeah, baby, you got it.”

At any other time I would have turned away. But I had to knock. Had to.

The protestations of love stopped. Two hard footsteps crossed the floor.

“Who is it?” Fearless asked, not nearly as angry as I would have been.

“Paris.”

The door came open, and Fearless stuck his head out.

“Yeah?”

“I know the whole thing. All of it.”

“We got to do sumpin’ right now?” he asked me.

“No. But I need a place to stay an’ I ain’t got no cash.”

The head went away. A few words were traded in the room, and he returned holding out a key ring with two keys on it.

“Go stay at Mona’s, man. She gonna be here tonight. Stay ovah there an’ I get ya in the mornin’.”

I took the keys and walked across two dewy lawns to Mona’s place.

Her tiny house was well appointed, as I have said, but the best thing about it was her bed. It was high and soft, with ever so lightly scented sheets and blankets. There were half a dozen pillows and an azure night-light plugged into the socket to the right.

I fell instantly to sleep. And I didn’t have even one bad dream.

I woke up once in the night wondering why Fearless didn’t marry Mona. She was the perfect woman from where I lay. I glanced over at the sky-colored night-light and thought about blue tomorrows.

I’m sure that there was something psychological about my emotions, but I didn’t want to know. It was rare that I came upon a night of bliss. I wasn’t about to question it.

I was sound asleep when someone came knocking on the door.

“Yes?”

“It’s Mona, Paris.”

I put on my pants and went to the door.

The look on her face told me that she’d had a pleasant night too.

“You know I almost got mad at you,” she said.

She was wearing a white terry cloth robe and Fearless’s big brown slippers.

“Sorry, babe. I just wanted a couple’a bucks to get a room someplace. But I tell ya this much — stayin’ here made me feel like I was at the Waldorf in the presidential suite. That was the best night’s sleep I ever had since I was a child in my mother’s arms.”