Walter Mosley - Fearless Jones

For the first time I lamented Fearless’s incarceration.

They had arrested him for felony assault on three crooked mechanics, convicted him on a lesser charge, and given him the choice of paying five hundred dollars or spending nine months as a guest of the county. He opted for the fine but had no money to pay and so asked me for a loan.

“I’m sorry, Fearless,” I said through the visitor’s grille at the county jailhouse. “But, man, I just can’t do it.”

Fearless’s lean, dark face didn’t show the disappointment I know he must have felt. He had put his life on the line saving mine eight years earlier, but over the years since then, I had risked my own skin many times for him — and I was no war hero the way he was.

Fearless was the kind of person who attracted trouble. He didn’t know how to look away or back down. He couldn’t even spell the word compromise. Whenever he called me, I didn’t know if we were going to get drunk at a party or get jumped down some dark alley.

To protect my interests as a businessman, I decided to cut my ties with probably the best friend that I ever had.

“Okay,” he said. “I understand. But you know them men did me wrong, Paris.”

I CHECKED to make sure the pistol was loaded and took off the safety. Then I climbed into the bed with the gun under the covers next to me. I didn’t fall into a deep sleep but instead drifted on the edge of a nervous doze.

WHEN I FELT a feathery touch against my forehead I feared that it was a rat, that I was dead and he came in from the alley to eat my flesh. The thought of food caused me to writhe from nausea, and when I moved I felt her flowery dress.

I knew it was her. That was my kind of luck. The kind of woman I wanted most, the kind of woman I should stay away from at all costs, that’s the woman who I will awaken to from a slumber that might have been death.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

I could barely see her in the darkness.

“No.”

“Does it hurt much?”

“Like a toothache set in a broken jaw.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said, reaching out to touch my brow again.

“What’s your name?”

“Elana Love. What’s yours?”

“Paris Minton. Paris Minton.” The repetition was my attempt to extricate myself from the trouble in that room. But I wasn’t going anywhere, and neither was she.

“That’s a nice name.”

“How did you get back in here?” I asked.

“I never left,” she said. “When Leon came in I looked for a back door, but I didn’t see one, so I squeezed in behind the file cabinet and waited until he left. I was going to run out, but then that other man came in.”

“Why didn’t you say something?”

“I thought you might be mad that I didn’t help you against Leon.”

“Who is this Leon?”

“Leon Douglas. We used to see each other before they sent him to jail. He was in for armed robbery and attempted murder, but a lawyer got him out.”

“What did you do, cheat on him or something?”

“No,” she said in a flash of anger. “I broke it off with him before he robbed that store. I told him that no love was gonna make me live with a criminal.”

“Maybe he didn’t like that.”

“He thinks I have somethin’, but I don’t have it. I don’t, but he won’t believe me.”

“But Reverend Grove knows where it is?”

“How did you know about him?” She was suddenly wary. “Oh, yeah. I told you.”

“Does he?” I asked. For some reason talking made me feel better. I sat up.

“Does who?”

“Reverend Grove. Does he have what Leon wants?”

“Uh-uh,” she said, but I wasn’t sure that I believed her. “I told Leon that he did though. I was seein’ William for a while back there, and I thought he could help me against Leon. But when the church was gone I didn’t know what to do.”

Silence brought back the awareness of pain. I didn’t care about Grove or Leon either. I didn’t care what they were hiding or looking for.

“Why are you still here?” I asked.

“When you went outside I looked for a back door, but there wasn’t one, and where could I go anyway?” she asked. “Maybe Leon’s waiting around outside somewhere.”

The thought of that killer lurking outside my door made me queasy again.

“How did he know you were here?”

“He made me come,” she said in a pained tone. “He told me to come in and get his property from William or else he was gonna break somebody’s neck.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I got that.”

“You have to help me, Mr. Minton.”

“I can go to the market next door and use their phone to call the police,” I offered.

“No. No, not the police.”

“Why not? He’s threatenin’ you and he almost killed me.”

“Leon has a lot of friends,” she said. “Even if he gets arrested, he’ll send somebody after me, and maybe you too.”

“Me? Honey, I don’t know either one’a you. All I was doin’ was sittin’ here mindin’ my own business.” I thought of Fearless then, of how he was always saying how he was minding his own business when all hell broke loose.

“But now that he’s seen you, he might think that you’re in this with me.”

“In what? I don’t even know you.”

Elana reached out and touched my chest then. It might sound like a silly gesture, but when a woman like that lays hands on you, it’s hard to ignore.

“Listen, honey,” I said, despite my thrumming heart. “You’re gorgeous. I only meet a woman like you about once every five years or so. But when I do, somebody always ends up wantin’ to kill me. And you know I could find me an ugly girl, be half as happy, but live ten times as long. I don’t want anything to do with you or your boyfriend or your ex-boyfriend. So please, go back out the way you came and shut the door behind you.”

My eyes had adjusted to the darkness enough to see the struggle in her face. She wanted to convince me, to make me her protector but couldn’t quite figure out how.

“I don’t even have bus money. If I go out there alone he could kill me,” she said.

That was my downfall right there. I took pity on her the way I did time and again with Fearless. I came to a compromise in my head even though I knew that what I should do was throw her outdoors.

I made it to my feet and said, “Okay, I’ll give you a ride wherever you need to go to get away, but that’s it.”

3

ELANA DIDN’T COMPLAIN when she saw me pocket the .38.

“Might as well go out the back,” I said. “I mean, he’d probably be covering the front. Does he have any friends?”

“He was with two friends.” Elana sounded defeated. I clearly wasn’t the protector she needed.

“What’re their names?”

“What difference do that make?”

“Well, let’s go out the back door,” I said. My head was still light and my stomach was churning. I swallowed once and gazed at a piece of wall with a cabinet handle screwed on at just about waist height. The reason that Elana hadn’t found her way out was that my back door was almost invisible. It was just a rectangular slat that swung on three rusty old hinges.

My red Nash Rambler was parked against a salmon-pink stucco wall that ran the length of the alley separating the houses on the residential street behind. There was no sign of Leon, his horned car, or his nameless friends. Elana slid into the passenger’s seat and laid her head against the window. She was a picture-perfect damsel in distress.

If I were Fearless Jones I would have run headlong into the fray, taking any blows and doing anything to protect her. But I didn’t believe that even Fearless would have stood long against Leon Douglas.