Walter Mosley - Fearless Jones

After breakfast I spent a couple of hours on the phone trying to get a line on the Messenger of the Divine church. I called every religious group listed in twelve different counties and every soul that I knew. I wanted to ask Reverend Grove a question or two; like when had he last seen Elana Love and was she driving my red Rambler.

There was a certain urgency behind my search because I was bothered by Latham’s visit. Why had he come? L.A. cops didn’t make friendly visits to warn you that they were watching. They didn’t come to the door unless they were serving papers or making an arrest.

So I went on thinking and calling, fretting and drinking Fanny’s homemade lemonade. She spent the morning baking noodle pudding and making meals for later. She told us that cooking calmed her nerves. We didn’t complain. Both Fearless and I were bachelors, and when a woman came around she did very little cooking — food, that is.

Fearless played catch with Blood. They were completely happy roughhousing and relaxing on the sunny lawn. Since he was just out of the lockup, a day in the sun was heaven for him.

At one Fearless took Fanny and Blood to pick up Gella and go for a drive down to see Sol and maybe let the dog have a run in the park. I couldn’t see where they needed me, so I stayed by the telephone making useless calls.

“Hello,” one man answered.

“Council for the Baptist churches of greater L.A. county?” I inquired in my pretend official tone.

“Yes.”

“I was wondering if you could help me find a minister.”

“A particular minister?” the soft-spoken secretary asked.

“A Reverend Grove or a Father Vincent. They’re affiliated with a church called Messenger of the Divine.”

“Never heard of the institution,” he said with quiet distaste. “Doesn’t sound like one of our congregations at all.”

“No Grove or Vincent?”

“What is this concerning?”

“An exorcism,” I said.

“A what?”

“I got a white man locked up in my basement and I wanna see if an old-time Holy Roller can call the devil out of him. That way maybe I can save the world from his evil… Uh-oh, he’s trying to break out of his cage. I’ll call you back.” I hung up and laughed a mean laugh.

Before my venom was through, the phone rang. I had the immediate and irrational fear that somehow the Council for the Baptist churches knew the numbers of the sinners that called them. I let the ringing go on for a while before answering.

“Tannenbaum residence,” I said brightly.

“May I speak to Hedva Tannenbaum, please?” a man asked. He spoke in perfect but not necessarily American English. His tone was haughty, that’s really the only word for it. The words were mannered, but the voice was not.

“Who’s askin’?” I said in response to the voice.

There was a moment’s hesitation and then, “John Manly.” The name didn’t sound right on his tongue.

“Well, Mr. Manly,” I said. “Mrs. Tannenbaum doesn’t want to speak to anyone just now. She’s had a pretty rough time of it the past few days and doesn’t want to be disturbed.”

I was being hard on Mr. Manly for no other reason than that his tone reminded me of the snootiness of the secretary at the Baptist Council.

“To whom am I speaking?” Manly inquired.

“To whom,” I replied, “doesn’t matter. What matters is that Fanny isn’t gettin’ on the phone, so either you gonna tell me what you want or we gonna break off the connection right here and now.” For an instant the image of that bureaucrat sitting at the window of the courthouse flashed through my mind.

“Excuse me? What did you say?” Manly asked.

I realized that, in my anger, I had slipped into the fast-talking patter of my neighborhood. Manly hadn’t understood my brilliant barbs.

“What do you want me to tell Fanny?” I asked, now patient.

“I must speak to her personally. It’s very important.”

“Maybe to you, but Fanny’s got other things on her mind. Does she know you?” I asked.

“What I have to tell her is very important.”

“I’ll give her the message. What’s your number?”

“Tell her now, while I am waiting.”

“No.”

There were big red-and-purple flowers, shaped like bells, clustered on a bush outside the sitting room windows. A sleek green hummingbird appeared next to one of them. From one to another that hummingbird milked five of those flowers before Manly spoke again.

“It’s about business,” he said. “I’m a real-estate agent. I want to know if she’s interested in selling her house.”

“I don’t think she’s movin’ nowhere right now, but gimme your number and she’ll call ya.”

He finally relented and left a number. It was a Hollywood exchange. “Room three-two-two,” he added.

I hung up and wondered about that number on the way to the window. The hummingbird fled at my approach. I could hardly blame him; when a shadow the size of a mountain looms up above you, you run first and worry about what it could be later on — from the safety of your nest. If you had a nest, that is.

FEARLESS AND FANNY RETURNED at about four. Before I could tell them about the call Fearless started in.

“Paris, it was on the car radio.”

“What?”

“Conrad Till, that’s what. He’s dead.”

“Dead?”

“Yeah. They said about him gettin’ found on account of a, a what you call it, ’nonymous tip. Yeah. Then they said that they took him to Mercy Hospital, but he died in the night a’cause of the wound.”

“He was shot up pretty bad.”

“Yeah, he was. And maybe it killed him too. But you know, I been shot worse than that myself, an’ it didn’t near kill me. I mean maybe he had a weak heart or sumpin’, but I don’t think so. But that’s not what I wanted to tell you.”

“What then?”

“The cop that talked to the newsman. That there they said was Sergeant Latham.”

“Damn,” I said.

“That Latham gets around,” Fearless said.

“What does it mean?” asked Fanny.

“Does Rya still work at Mercy?” I asked Fearless.

“Prob’ly. You know they made her head nurse in the baby section. That’s the kind’a job you hold on to.”

“Maybe we should talk to her.”

“Okay.” With that Fearless went off to the kitchen to call.

“Do you know a guy named John, um, Manly?” I asked Fanny. “Said he was a real-estate agent, but I don’t know.”

“No. Why?”

“He called while you and Fearless were gone.”

Fanny shook her head at me.

“The only weird thing was he didn’t ask for Sol. It was like he knew that he was in the hospital, at least not here. You sure you don’t know his name? John Manly. Talks all proper like he learned English in another country.”

“What can it all mean?” she quailed.

“He’s probably just what he said,” I reassured her. “He probably got your name off of a mailing list and wants to get your house to sell.”

“I’m not interested,” Fanny moaned. “All I want is Solly home and to get on that airplane.”

“What airplane?” I asked.

“We’re going to Israel,” the old lady said. “We have been planning to go all the time he was in prison. We would talk about it in our letters. Now that he was home we had only to buy the tickets and make our plans.”

I had a thought or two about a convicted embezzler planning to flee the country a few weeks after he got out of stir, but whatever he did, or didn’t do, wasn’t important to me right then. I was angry because John Manly was so rude, because Latham had threatened us. I was getting pretty mad, and anger in my small frame is almost like courage.

“How was Sol?” I asked.