Walter Mosley - Fear Itself

“Louis?” a voice asked from the other side.

“Yeah.”

The door opened inward. A small man was standing there. I say small because he was an inch or two shorter than I.

“You got somebody?” the short man said.

“Come on, Eric. You see him don’t ya? He was sneakin’ around the bitch’s front door. I threw him in the trunk and brought him over. He up?”

“I woke him when you called. He’s in the big room.”

“Lead the way,” Louis said.

Eric rubbed his hands together and led us through a maze of short hallways and across nondescript little rooms. We finally came to a broad corridor with thick burgundy carpeting and gold-and-yellow walls. This led into an antechamber whose only purpose was to bring many different hallways into the presence of a large, unfinished oaken door.

Eric allowed Louis and me to go ahead. I noticed that Louis hesitated before raising his knuckles to rap out our request for entry.

I was in a world that was completely strange to my experience. I understood men like Louis and Eric. I understood petit bourgeois pretenders like Bartholomew Perry. But that lobby was the largest room I had ever been in in a man’s home, and it was just the appetizer for what was to come.

I realized that the main course in a house like this might well be a human life.

27

THE ROUGH-HEWN DOOR opened inward. The man standing there surprised me. He was a timid-looking guy in a shabby green suit. He looked like a bookkeeper or a door-to-door salesman—certainly not the monster that I felt must lay beyond that great door. The timid man stood aside and we entered a room that any king in Europe would have been at home in. There were rows of red velvet-covered chairs along the walls and an incredibly long and wide table, cut from a single great tree, down the center of the chamber. Above each chair hung an antique tapestry, each one depicting a different hunting tableau. At the far end of the table sat a throne. That’s the only thing I can call it. You had to ascend three steps to get to it, and it was plush with golden velvet and ornately carved wood.

The man who sat there had a lean, leonine face and long, thick brown hair that flowed backward. He wore a red shirt and white trousers, no shoes or socks, rings or glasses. He was over forty and under sixty.

His eyes were mad.

“Who is this?” the king asked his vassals.

“The driver’s license in his wallet says Paris Minton,” Louis said.

“Where did you find him?”

“Checking out the mailbox at the Faison girl’s house. I figured since it’s niggers in this that you’d wanna see him.”

The king looked at his lackey with something like disdain in his nutso gaze.

I wanted to scream.

“What’s your name?” the king asked me.

“Paris, like the man said. What’s yours?”

Louis’s hand, which still gripped my biceps, tightened. The man on his throne sat up straighter. He frowned for a moment and then he laughed.

“They call me Maestro,” he said, and my heart sank. “What were you doing at my daughter’s sublet, Paris?”

“I don’t know anything about your daughter, sir. All I knew was that it’s an address that a man I’m looking for had left behind in his hideout.”

“What man is that?”

“Young Negro name of Bartholomew Perry,” I said as bravely as I could.

“And where was he?”

I gave the address, certain that the bookkeeper or Eric would write it down.

“But,” I added, “he was already gone from those premises. We got there maybe three hours too late.”

“We?”

“Me and Fearless. Fearless Jones.” Just saying the name gave me hope and maybe even a tiny bit of nerve.

“And why were you and this Fearless looking for Mr. Perry?”

“A man named Milo Sweet was looking for him. He’s a bail bondsman but sometimes he agrees to look for missing persons. Me and Fearless work for him now and then.”

“What did he want with Perry?”

“He said that it was a missing person case. We figured that it was family lookin’ for him.”

I was walking a tightrope with the make-believe king and his subjects. I didn’t know what they knew, so I decided to lie by leaving out any direct involvement we might have had with the Wexler clan. Fearless knew how to take care of himself and Milo was tucked away with Fearless’s mother. The only person I had to worry about was Loretta Kuroko. But all I had to do was call her. That would be easy, if I lived to dial the number.

“How did you find Perry’s hiding place?”

“Milo called me at my house and told me. He said that one of his informants had given him the tip.”

“Who?”

“He didn’t say.”

“Didn’t you wonder why he’d call you if he knew where his quarry was?”

“I was just happy to stay on the payroll, Maestro.”

Louis’s hand tightened again.

“Do you know who I am, Paris?”

“No sir. I mean, I figure you’re rich and all, but I never heard’a you that I know.”

“My last name is Wexler.”

I squinted and then shrugged.

“No sir. I don’t remember that name in any of this.”

“My daughter and son have been murdered. I believe that this man you’re chasing has something to do with the people who killed them. So you can see why I’m suspicious about anyone coming to her sublet home or anyone looking for Bartholomew Perry.”

“Oh yeah.”

“Do you have anything else to tell me?”

“No sir. All I know is that Milo Sweet hired me, then he told me where to find Bartholomew, I found what you tell me is your daughter’s address and came to see if I could get a lead.”

Silence filled the room. My ears got terribly hot, burning hot. I had spun my lie and now all I could do was hope the line would lead me out of there.

“How much is this Milo Sweet paying you?”

“Hundred and fifty if we find BB. Ten dollars a day for our trouble if we don’t.”

“I’ll give you ten thousand dollars if you find him. Will you work for me?”

I looked over at Louis, then at his fist wrapped around my arm.

“Let him go, Louis,” the king commanded.

The brute did as he was told.

“Sure,” I said. “Yeah. Hell yeah.”

“You would betray your employer?”

“The way I look at it, Milo gave up my trust when he didn’t tell me how serious this problem was. He knows, I’ve told him before, that I never wanna get messed up with any problem got a killer in it somewhere.”

“But you would do it for me?”

“The most money Milo ever offered me was for this job here. I’m already in it so why not go for the big payday?”

Maestro Wexler studied me then. He was a man who demanded allegiance from his employees and I was obviously not the faithful sort. But he needed me. Why harm me when I could still be of some use?

“Louis, give Mr. Minton your number and drive him back to his car.”

“No,” I said.

“What is it, Mr. Minton? Do you require a retainer?”

“A retainer sounds nice but that’s not what I was talkin’ about. I already been on a ride with this mothahfuckah right here. I don’t need that again.”

Maestro laughed.

“I’ve told you about your manner, Louis. Bradford.”

“Yes sir,” the bookkeeper intoned. He walked into my line of vision.

“This is Bradford,” Maestro said. “He’s my private secretary.”

I nodded and so did the secretary. I liked him then. Maybe it was because he was the only man in the room who didn’t seem to pose some kind of threat. But I also thought that he resembled me. Quiet and withdrawn from the brutish world. I was glad to have him in the room.

“Take Mr. Minton where he wants to go and give him a thousand dollars from petty cash.”