Walter Mosley - Fearless Jones

“We were from the same town, like I told you,” he said in a whispery tone, “but that was long ago.”

“And he introduced you to Morris?”

“No,” Zev said. “That’s what’s funny. I met Morris only in the last year. We were doing business together, and while we were talking I found out that he was married to Sol’s niece.”

“I thought that Morris worked for a bank?” I asked.

“That’s right.” The tiny man reached out for my hand.

His skin was dry and papery, a little cool.

A few minutes after he left I shuddered, recalling the feel of his onionskin hand on my fingers.

17

ZEV MINOR’S VISIT faded quickly from my thoughts. I felt sluggish once alone again. The death of Fanny Tannenbaum had hit me hard. She was just an old white woman, that’s what I thought, but she reminded me of the women in my own family. She was strong and brave in the face of people much more powerful than she. She was sweet and comfortable in the company of strange men. Maybe she even sparkled a little while cooking for us and ironing our clothes.

I knew that I should be doing something, but I didn’t remember what.

I went through the library in the den, finally resting my eyes on a book, the title of which I had never seen before. Dead Souls, by Nikolay Gogol. The preface said that it was a Russian masterpiece. I had read Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky but never Gogol. The preface went on to say that he wrote about the travesty of serfdom in old Russia. It seemed like those old white people used to own each other at the same time that whites owned blacks in America.

For a moment or so I forgot about my problems and started to read the words of the long-dead Russian.

I suppose that the lock on the front door had been wedged open by the cops, because he just walked on in without rousing me from my reverie. When I sensed a shadow passing somewhere at the edge of my peripheral vision I jumped, screamed, and threw my book all at the same time. Luckily my aim was bad and Fearless had stayed back, knowing how jumpy I could be sometimes.

“Hey, Paris,” he said, holding his hands up in mock surrender. “I give.”

He wore black jeans and a denim jacket of the same color over a gray shirt. There was a watch with a gold band on his wrist and a pair of sunglasses stuffed in the breast pocket of his new jacket.

I wanted to crack wise about his new wardrobe, but the fear that made me jump was deeper than just edginess.

“What’s wrong, Paris?”

“They killed Fanny.”

Fearless and I hadn’t met until we were both full-grown men, but I felt that I knew him as a child, because every once in a while the boy would come out in his face. Loss and disbelief erased any swagger from the sex he had had with Dorthea the night before.

“No.”

Blood padded in from the doorway and regarded his newfound master.

“Somebody came in and choked her.”

“Where were you, Paris?”

“I was out lookin’ for them Messenger people. Didn’t come in till about eleven. I went over her niece’s house to get her, but Fanny’d already come here.”

Fearless hunkered down on the floor, elbows on his knees, hands propped on either side of his face. Blood licked a hand, but Fearless pushed him away.

“Who did it, man?”

He wasn’t looking at me, but still I only shook my head.

Fearless stood up all at once.

“Muthahfuckah,” he said, and then he grabbed me by the front of my shirt and lifted me from the floor.

He raised his fist, but I didn’t resist. Fearless was one of the kindest men I ever met, but the devil lived in him too. In a rage he was capable of murder. But he had never killed any friend that I knew of.

His eyes could have belonged to a dead man, they were so fixed. He didn’t seem to be breathing. I hovered there an inch or so over the floor.

Even though I’m often frightened, I have never been afraid of Fearless. I felt such a deep kinship with him that he never scared me.

When he let me go I stumbled but remained on my feet.

“Where is she?” he asked.

“Ambulance took her,” I said. “Gella went with them.”

“What you got?”

I considered my words carefully then. I knew he was close to killing, and I was taught never to point a loaded weapon at somebody unless I intended to shoot.

“Grove called me. He’s gonna meet us at the Charles Diner at nine.”

“He do this?”

“Naw. Naw, I don’t think so.”

“He know who did it?”

Before I could answer, Blood started barking and Morris Greenspan rushed in.

“Blood!” Fearless commanded, and the dog, still growling, stood down.

“Where?” Morris Greenspan asked. He was looking around the room. His eyes stopped on the floor of the den. “Gella said it was in there.”

The big, sloppy man was nearly in shock. His eyes were wide and his voice was strained to cracking. He lurched into the den and looked around, twisting from side to side.

“What happened?” he shouted, and then he fell to the floor just like a two-year-old throwing a tantrum. “What happened?”

He jerked and flailed around on the carpet for a while, but I didn’t mind. At least the spectacle distracted Fearless. After a minute or so we helped Morris back to his feet and sat him down in a chair.

“Why would anyone… how could they?” he said, and then he cried in earnest.

It was a deep, mournful wailing with no modesty or shame. He cried from his eyes and nose and mouth. He bent forward in the chair and called out for his Fanny, his Hedva. It was more like a pagan priest who had witnessed the death of his patron deity than a man who’d lost an in-law.

It was a full ten minutes before the lament subsided.

“How did you hear about it?” I asked.

“Gella called me at work from the hospital. She said that they were taking her to the police station to talk.”

“What did she tell you?”

“That Hedva was dead!” he declared.

“Did she want you to pick her up or meet her?”

“She, she… I guess.”

“Then why did you come here?”

“I thought I could do something. I hoped I could do something. I wanted to help.”

“But she’s dead, man,” I said. The anger probably came from my own frustration. “She’s dead, and your wife needs help down at the cops.”

“Leave him alone, Paris,” Fearless said.

Blood growled to back up his new master’s command, but he wasn’t sure if he was growling at me or Morris.

“No,” Morris said. “He’s right. I should go.”

“You better not drive,” Fearless said. “We’ll take you.”

GELLA WASN’T too much better off than her husband. She was sitting at the far end of the long bench in the entrance room of the Boyleston Heights precinct. There were a few others seated here and there. Mostly Mexicans. Mostly women. Waiting for their men, I guess. Nobody seemed happy.

One young woman, she couldn’t have been twenty-five, had four small children running around, a toddler holding on to her skirts, and a baby in her arms. The children laughed and played on the hard floor, explored the area in front of the sergeant’s desk, and watched as three brown men were brought in in chains.

Them chirren is where they gonna be, I could hear my mother say. Ain’t nobody even care ’cept her. An’ look at her. What could she do?

When Gella saw us she went straight to her husband and put her arms around him. He brought his arms around her, but it was more a hopeless gesture than it was a hug. Fearless and I waited for the pitiful embrace to be over, and then I suggested we make tracks.

But before we could get out of there a ranking officer in uniform came up to us.