Walter Mosley - Fearless Jones

No answer.

A big dog came strolling down the street. It was a light-colored, short-haired and meaty mutt that nearly shimmered under a granite streetlamp. I saw him before he saw us. He did an almost human double take and then started barking for all he was worth.

“We better get outta here,” I said.

“We ain’t even got here yet.” Fearless went down on one knee and held out his hand.

The barking dog got braver and braver. Growling and gurgling murder he advanced on Fearless, who for his part looked like a modern-day African saint. The dog snapped and then he sniffed. He pushed his nose against Fearless’s hand, then plopped down on the ground, turning over onto his back to show his belly.

Fearless scratched the dog and then stood up, his new best friend at his side.

There was a black, lift-top mailbox attached to the wall next to the front door. It was stuffed with mail. I pulled out an envelope wedged in at the side. By match light I read the name Miss Elana Love scrawled in purple ink.

“This is the right place,” I said.

Fearless’s dog growled in anticipation. Fearless pushed him by the neck toward the front walk, and the mutt seemed to understand the command. He padded his way to the curb and stood there daring some phantom intruder to try and go by.

I went around the side of the house, testing windows. On the third try I was successful. Once inside I went straight through the gloom to where the front door should have been. It was there. Fearless snaked in, closing the door behind him. I found a lamp on a table and turned it on.

After making sure that the house was empty we decided to separate to make our search. The whole front of the house was the living room. It was just a couch and two chairs with a stand-up maple bar on top of two mismatched blue throw rugs. The rugs were ugly. One had a diamond pattern, and the other was covered in small white dots.

At either end of the living room was a door. One led to the kitchen, the other to her bedroom. Between these two rooms was the toilet.

Elana’s bedroom was simple enough. A single bed with pink sheets and a dresser with a mirror and chair. The window looked out on a fence cordoning off her three-foot-deep backyard. I went through the drawers of the dresser, the closet, the pockets of her clothes. I checked under the sheets and between the mattresses, on the window ledge and under the bed. There was nothing there. Nothing. She had three dresses in the closet and only one pair of shoes.

Fearless and I met in the bathroom. Two towels on a chrome rack, a half-used bar of white soap, and no floor mat. In the trash can there were a towel and a wad of cotton bandages clotted with a good deal of partially dried blood. I poked at the dressing with a handy toothbrush, but Fearless reached in and pulled out the bloody rags.

“Somebody been wounded pretty good,” he said.

“No shit,” I replied.

I went over the kitchen again because Fearless didn’t have the patience to search for anything smaller than an elephant. There wasn’t much to see there either. A jar of instant coffee, white bread, and an open can of condensed milk.

“I bet she only stays here now and then,” I said. “She probably only keeps the place in case her boyfriend of the week has a change of heart.”

“You think?”

“No clothes to speak of, no food,” I said. “And even a blind man wouldn’t have carpet like that under his feet.”

Fearless laughed at that. He was slender, but he had a fat man’s laugh. For a moment there I realized how much I had missed my friend.

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get outta here.” I led the way through the kitchen door back into the living room. We were almost out of the door when I stopped.

“What is it, Paris?”

“I didn’t look under the kitchen sink. Did you?”

“No.”

“I better look.”

“You think she under there?” I couldn’t tell if he was serious or joking.

I FOUND a tin wastebasket beneath the sink drain and dumped the contents out on the kitchen table. There were tiny bits of paper, coated with once-wet coffee grounds, torn from several notes and at least one letter. I pulled up a chair and started sifting through the mess.

I had been working for all of five minutes when Fearless started yawning. “What you doin’, Paris?” he whined.

The letter was impossible to reconstruct in the time I had. It would have probably taken two or three hours, seeing that it was scrawled in small pale blue letters on both sides of at least three pages. To make it even more difficult, the words had blurred from the moisture of the coffee grounds.

The notes were written in black ink on white paper except for one that was written in pencil and another that was written on yellow paper. I concentrated on these two.

Fearless opened the front door and whistled for the dog, who came bounding in like the loyal family pet.

“Hey, boy. Hey, boy,” Fearless chanted from the living room.

I didn’t have to go far to see that the penciled note was a shopping list — scouring powder and Modess napkins were all I needed for that.

The yellow note had San Quentin Prison printed across the bottom. Above that, in black letters, the initials C.T. were printed slantways, along with a phone number that had an Axminster exchange.

There was a phone in Elana’s bedroom, but it was dead, so we let Fearless’s new pet into the backseat and drove toward a gas station on Slauson. I didn’t want to bring the dog, but I didn’t have the time to argue with Fearless either.

I did say, “Don’t you think somebody’s gonna miss his pet?”

“If he had a collar or license I’d take him home right this minute,” Fearless replied. “You know a dog catcher could be givin’ him cyanide tomorrow if we just let him go.”

That was the end of our discussion.

When we got to the gas station I put a nickel into the slot. C.T., whoever that was, was a long shot. But it was the only shot we had.

He answered on the first ring. “Leon, is that you, man?” His voice sounded like a metal file rasping against stone.

“C.T.?” I asked, disguising my voice just in case this rough man ever heard me speak again.

“Who is?” he asked.

“It’s me — Dingo,” I said. I regretted the name as soon as I said it. I was scared stupid.

“Who?”

“Leon told me to call you up. He wanted me to come and get you but —”

“Get me? Man, I could hardly sit up straight.”

“Leon said to come help —”

“You a doctor?”

“I can take care’a you,” I said, trying to make my fake voice sound certain. “I got a brother used to be a medic in the army with me.”

There was silence on the line.

“C.T.?”

“Why you callin’ me that?”

“That’s what Leon wrote on the paper, man. Ain’t that you? I mean if —”

“When you gonna get here?” he asked, interrupting me for the third time.

“That’s why I called. He wrote down your initials and phone, but I can’t read the address. Clinton sumpin’.”

“Clinton?” C.T. moaned. “Denker, man. Twenty-nine sixty-nine Denker. Super’s apartment.”

“Be right there,” I said in a husky voice that would have fooled even my mother.

“YOU GOT my pistol, Paris?” Fearless asked over the loud barking in the backseat.

“I told you already, the girl stole it.”

“That was my gun she took from you?”

“Yes.” I took the left onto Denker.

“An’ now you want me to walk unarmed into the house of a friend of a ex-con nearly killed you yesterday?”

“He don’t know me, Fearless. I’ll just walk in there an’ tell him I’m Leon’s friend.” Finding that phone number and fooling C.T. had given me a sense of control.