Walter Mosley - Fear Itself

“Not worth much,” I said. “No hundred dollars there.”

“He gimme twenty though,” Maynard admitted.

“For what?”

“I’ont know. He didn’t know what I told him. Maybe he might’a got to his man because’a what I said.”

“The man I saw didn’t have the kinda cash to be throwin’ twenty dollars at somebody don’t give him what he wants.”

“Well he did,” Maynard said.

“What else he give you?”

“Twenty dollars, like I said.”

“No,” I said. “Not money. He give you a way to get in touch with him.”

Maynard shook his head and looked away. He wasn’t a liar by nature and so found it hard to deny what he knew to be true.

I was sitting sidesaddle behind the wheel of Ambrosia Childress’s Chrysler. Fearless was a shadow on my right and Maynard Latrell was in front of me with the key to a room full of money like an ocean waiting to drown some unsuspecting fool.

You too smart for your own good, my mother used to say to me. You always askin’ questions and lookin’ for answers. You always actin’ innocent, but that won’t save a nosy nose or the curious cat.

“He give you a number,” I said in spite of my mother’s advice. “He told you how to get in touch with him.”

“No,” Maynard said.

“Yeah, he did. But don’t worry, Maynard, we ain’t gonna jump you for it. ’Cause you see, Kit don’t owe that Brown a thousand dollars.”

“He don’t?”

“No. If Brown find ’im he could get it. But so could me and Fearless. So I’ll give you a hundred and ten dollars right here, right now, for that number he give you and anything else you got.”

Maynard Latrell was a beautiful man. He had strong but not extreme features, bright eyes, and skin that almost glowed orange. His mouth curved into a smile, then a grin.

“Okay, men,” he said. “I got it up in my room.”

HIS STUDIO APARTMENT was on floor five of the gray building. There were gray carpets down the gray hall to his black door. The carpeting was the same in his one room but the walls had once been white. Now the dim green plaster was showing from under the thin coat of water-based paint.

The room was neat, though. The bed was up against the wall and covered with a printed yellow cloth. The pillows were set up like the bolsters of a couch. His chest of drawers had a bare top. And there was a chair next to a window that had a radio on its ledge. It was a room that a poor man could survive in, make plans in. One day, if the man was smart, he could move out of there and buy a small house with a backyard. He’d have to have a hard-working wife. They’d raise kids together, send them to college, and spend their twilight years happy in the knowledge that they’d made something out of nothing.

Maynard took two scraps of paper from the bottom drawer of the bureau. He held these in a clenched fist.

“Where the money?”

“You got ten dollars, Fearless?” I asked my friend.

He pulled out a fistful of ones and counted out the cash. I reached into my pocket and peeled five twenty-dollar bills off of the roll Bradford the secretary had given me. I was good at peeling off money from bills in my pocket. You learned to do that when you didn’t want people around you to know just how big your wad was.

I handed the money over and Maynard happily gave me the crumpled snippets.

I read both numbers and asked, “What’s this? Double vision?”

The numbers were University exchanges, both exactly the same.

“One was the girl,” Maynard said, “and the other was that guy Brown.”

“Girl called Leora Hartman?”

“Even if she is, I ain’t givin’ you no money back,” Maynard said.

“Let’s go, Fearless.”

After we were just a few steps down the hall I could hear Maynard whoop for joy.

29

WE CALLED FEARLESS’S MOTHER’S HOUSE from a phone booth on the street. I told Milo to make sure that Loretta and her parents went up to visit their farmer relatives in Bakersfield—immediately. I wasn’t worried about him taking my warning lightly. Loretta was the only person he loved in life. He might not have ever said anything, or even have bought her a present at Christmas, but Milo would have laid down his life to protect that woman.

The next thing I did was to call the Leora Hartman/Brown phone number.

“Hello?” a proper Negro voice queried.

“That you, Oscar?” I asked, trying to mask my surprise.

“To whom am I speaking?” he asked in return.

“It’s Mr. Minton speaking. I, um, I wanted to speak to Miss Fine.”

“Where did you get this number?” he asked suspiciously.

“This is the number I got, man. Something wrong?”

“This is my private line, not the house phone.”

“What can I tell you, Oscar my man?”

Oscar paused long enough for a machination. Then he said, “She’s still dressing, Mr. Minton. I’ll see if she will return your call later.”

“Don’t bother. Just tell her that I’ll be by in an hour or so. I have some reporting to do.”

“I’m not sure if she’ll be here. She said that she was going to do some shopping.”

“Tell her that I have some hot news for her. She’ll stick around for that.”

“If you have something to tell her, I will be happy to pass it on.”

I thought about Bradford, about how he was willing to filter the truth to and from his employer.

“No thanks, man. I better report to the one that’s payin’ me.”

“I can’t promise that she’ll be here when you come.”

“Just promise that you’ll tell her what I said and we’re jake.” On that note I hung up the phone.

“Who was that?” Fearless asked.

“You in this with me now, aren’t you, Fearless?”

“Yeah, Paris. You know it, man. You my boy.”

“There’s money here,” I said. “Mr. Wexler plus BB is twenty thousand right there. Now Miss Fine might even be more than that. But I don’t like all these other people involved.”

“People come and go, Paris. They come and go. But you’n me be right here, baby. Don’t you worry ’bout that.”

His certainty almost made me confident.

I felt bad about the Wexler murders. Life is a precious thing. But they were dead and I didn’t know why. Maybe, if I found out what Kit had done to Miss Fine, I could solve the crime and retire too.

THE GATE TO THE FINE RESIDENCE was open when we got there. Oscar was waiting at the door by the time we reached the desolate front yard.

“Mr. Minton,” he said. “Miss Fine is waiting for you in the study.”

“Bring us to her,” I said in a confident voice.

“Your friend will have to stay here,” he informed me.

“The hell he will.”

“Miss Fine is only expecting you.”

Rose Fine, wearing a white satin gown and elbow-length black gloves, peeked around a corner down the hall from us. She snorted, then giggled and disappeared behind a pile of bound files.

“You tell Miss Fine that I’m here with my fellow investigator—Fearless Jones. If she wants to hear what I have to say, then she will have to talk to both of us.”

Oscar was stuck. I had called him on his personal phone. He knew something was wrong and whatever it was it was bad news for him. If it was his house he would have ushered us out of the door and gone to hide under the bed.

But it wasn’t his house.

He turned and walked through a scuffed-up lime-colored door. When he was gone Rose Fine poked her head out again.

“Hello, Miss Fine,” I said.

“Do I know you gentlemen?” she asked me.

“Sure you do. Don’t you remember? I sat on the wood bench and you took the barber’s chair. Oscar got you a shot of whiskey.”M