Walter Mosley - Fearless Jones

“Leon,” he said, “sent Elana a letter askin’ her to come see him in prison. She was stayin’ with me at that time but still had her own place.”

“And you didn’t mind her gettin’ mail from an old boyfriend?”

“I saw my fortieth birthday two years ago, son. I know that women go to the bathroom and everything. I wasn’t her first man. I wasn’t her best man. Leon mentioned a thousand dollars in the letter, and so she took a day trip. Three days later we had the note.”

“Tell me about the note,” I said.

“What about it?”

“What country it come from? What’s the face value?”

“Ten thousand Swiss francs,” he said.

I was happy because at least one thing Elana said might be true.

“And she give it to you?” Fearless asked.

“It was new love. She saw in me what a woman wants to see in a man when they first start out.” Grove spoke from experience. “I could do anything at first. But then, when the bank told me on the phone that I had to have proof that I was David Tannenbaum, she saw a little tarnish here and there. I wanted to keep on the good side of a woman like that, so I go down to see the wife — Fanny.”

“You went to the Tannenbaum house?” I asked.

Fearless tensed up and then began his descent into a crouch.

“Yeah,” Grove said.

“When?”

“That was maybe four months ago,” he replied. “I went there to find out why her husband was in jail, the particulars.”

“Why she wanna talk to you?” Fearless asked.

“I said that I was the visiting chaplain at the prison. I said that her husband wanted me to tell her that he was okay.”

“Why she gonna believe that shit?” Fearless had no love lost for this messenger.

“Her husband forbade her to go up to the prison. That’s why Elana had to go up, to get a letter from the Jew to give to his wife. So all I did was say that he was doing okay and that he was safe and missing her.”

“And what she give you in return?” I asked.

That was the heart of our talk — what Fanny told Grove. He knew it and he knew I knew it. I was riding high on the powerful presence of Fearless and the fact that Grove was a little shy.

“It wasn’t nuthin’,” he said. “She didn’t know a thing.”

“That’s why you ran out on Elana? That’s why the Messenger packed up its drapes and ran?”

Grove took a deep breath, reaching for strength and conviction. “Elana got the bond. No matter what she told you, she got it. You find her, you find the bond. You do that, and you come to me. I can make ten times ten thousand.”

“How?”

Grove shook his head while looking me in the eye.

“So now what?” I asked.

“I know how to make the money. You bring me the bond.”

“Maybe I should go to the cops,” I speculated.

Grove decided on that moment to stand up.

“Messenger of the Divine is where you could get in touch with me. I might be a little bit scarce the next week or so, but Vincent knows how to get to me,” he said. “Going to the cops might get me in trouble, but it’ll get you boys killed.”

Fearless blew Grove a kiss in reply. I wasn’t feeling so cocky.

The self-proclaimed minister walked away from the table and to the woman who was waiting for him at the bar. Together they went out the front door. I sat there wondering, was there a dollar amount worth my life?

FEARLESS AND I FINISHED our drinks in silence. Then we went toward the door. He was the first one through, and I was just about to follow when someone grabbed me, roughly, by the shoulder. It was the waitress with the scarred lip.

“Excuse me,” she said.

“Uh-huh?”

“Why cain’t you look at me? I’m so ugly that you got to be rude?”

I looked at her then. I saw a lovely female face, except for that scar, on a woman not over twenty. Her expression was petulant but sweet; that face had seen some life.

“It ain’t that, sugar,” I said.

“Then what?”

I brought a finger to her face, tracing the scar up to her lip. She didn’t move away.

“I wanna kiss that streak. I wanna bite it. But you know I don’t even have a roof or rent for a room. That scar meant that somebody hurt you, so I looked away. I wanted to say somethin’ nice, but what use is a man smooth talkin’ when he ain’t got two nickels to rub together?”

The woman didn’t believe me, but she wanted to. One brow was knitted in anger, but the other one was wide with hope.

“I’m Charlotte,” she said.

“Paris. Paris Minton. You be workin’ here in two nights, Charlotte?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’ll drop by.”

“Sure. I bet.”

“You got a pencil?” I asked her.

She took out her yellow number two and her bill pad. I gave her Milo Sweet’s phone number and said, “You can call there if I don’t show, but don’t worry, I’m comin’ back around.”

“HEY, PARIS,” Fearless said in a shy tone. We were in the car driving toward Milo’s office.

“What?”

“I just remembered somethin’.”

“Yeah?”

“I know Leon Douglas.”

“Say what?”

“I know ’im, Paris. He went in for armed robbery. But he was in the city jail ’cause he got a fancy new lawyer and a retrial. His cell was just down the hall from me.”

I pulled the car to the curb and turned off the ignition. I put my head on the steering wheel and closed my eyes. The darkness called me toward sleep, but I sat up again and asked, “Why the hell you wait till now to tell me this?”

“I just didn’t think of it. In the can they called him Big Bama ’cause he was from Alabama an’ he was big. I hardly even knew him.”

“So? What do you know about him?”

“Nuthin’. He was smug about bein’ down at the jail. He did a payroll robbery and shot two men. They had him for thirty at San Quentin, but the evidence wasn’t hard. The gun they found on him when he was arrested was the wrong caliber. He did it, but this new lawyer was trying to get the case thrown out.”

“Who’s the lawyer?”

Fearless shrugged his shoulders.

“What kinda dude is he?” I asked.

“Armed robbery, single-handed, two men shot. Three-quarters bad if he can blindside ya. Half bad face-to-face.”

Fearless considered himself and maybe three other people he’d ever met to be full bad: Jacob Trench, Doolen Waters, and, of course, Raymond Alexander. But three-quarters was plenty scary enough for me.

19

LORETTA WAS SHUFFLING papers on her desk before Fearless and I awoke the next morning. We had decided that sleeping at the Tannenbaum house was too much for either of us, and I still had Milo’s key.

“Morning, Mr. Jones, Mr. Minton.” Our presence held no surprise for her.

“Mornin’,” we said together.

I had let Fearless have the couch because he was just out of jail, and I was still feeling guilty for not helping him sooner.

“When’s Milo due in?” I asked the Japanese passe-partout.

“Soon, I think,” she said. “He has a problem with a client who has to show up for sentencing at three. A friend of yours.”

“Who’s that?”

“Lucas North.”

“Luke?” Fearless smiled. “What’s that boy up to?”

“He was with some friends in a stolen car. He wasn’t driving. He didn’t even know the driver. They had gotten drunk together and were taking some high school girls for a ride. The judge had seen Lucas before and decided to scare him, I guess. He found him guilty but postponed the sentencing. Milo thinks it was just to make Lucas sweat, but if he doesn’t show up, there’s six hundred dollars on the bond.”

Fearless scratched his head. I stifled a yawn. It wasn’t our problem.