Walter Mosley - Fearless Jones

“Not that I wanna insult you, Milo,” Fearless said, “but what you gonna do for us to deserve a third?”

“I found out about Douglas and his lawyers, didn’t I?” Milo whined.

“We agreed to find Lucas in trade,” I said.

“I let you sleep in my office.”

“That’s about two percent,” I said. “Where’s the other thirty-one and a third?”

“You’ll definitely need professional help if it comes to making bonds into money,” Milo suggested.

“That could work on a percentage,” I replied. “And not nowhere near the kind you want. I mean, you can’t even practice law, Miles. If we needed someone in a courtroom, we’d have to hire somebody else.”

It was a ritual dance. The conclusion was foregone. Fearless and I wanted Milo in it with us. He was smart and he knew things we didn’t, and he was less likely to turn us over than some other men we knew. But the problem we had — the problem we always had — was money.

“How much?” Milo asked.

“The same amount you was gonna lose on Lucas,” I said.

“Six hundred dollars!”

“That’s it,” Fearless chimed.

“In cash, in our hands, right now,” I added.

“This come back on the other end,” Milo amended.

“Uh-uh,” I said. “Our blood, your money, that’s the fuel and the investment.”

When Mr. Sweet put those thirty twenty-dollar bills on the desk I knew that he believed in us. I was a young man then. His faith would only mean something to a young fool.

21

THE FIRST THING Fearless and I did was to drive over to Merrydale Circle, a single-story court of apartments on Ninety-fifth Street. Fontanelle Roberts was the superintendent of the nine units there. She rented to tenants by the week and paid the owners based on a monthly rent schedule. Monthly rent was forty dollars, but she charged eleven bucks a week.

Fontanelle was also a bookie, a fence, and a go-between when somebody needed the services of a criminal or a shady doctor or lawyer, all of whom she held in the same low esteem. She was a small woman with dark red skin, Negro features, and black eyes. She always wore a dress and hat. She carried a purse too. In that purse was a dull gray .45. I knew about the gun because she once showed it to me and said that she celebrated every January 1 by firing off the old bullets and then reloading with fresh ammunition for the new year.

“Hi, Fearless,” the older woman cried, honestly happy to see my friend. “Paris.”

“Hey, Fell,” I said. Fearless echoed my greeting.

“What happent to yo bookstore, Paris? I seen it all burned down. They was clearin’ off the lot.”

“Who was?”

“Workmen. Had a fancy truck with writin’ on it, but I didn’t stop to read.”

I wanted to know more about the lot I’d left behind, but there was no time for nostalgia with the tasks before me and Fearless Jones.

“You got a place for us?” Fearless asked.

“How long you boys wanna stay?”

“We’ll pay for the month,” I said, knowing that the price went up if you didn’t pay four and a half weeks in advance.

“You got furniture?” the ebony-eyed businesswoman wanted to know.

We didn’t answer.

“I had Florence Landis move out real quick last week. She left one adult bed and another one for her boy. There’s a table and chairs and some kitchen supplies. Two dollars more a week and you can have it.”

“Okay,” I said, going for my pocket.

Fontanelle reached out to stay my hand.

“Is this just livin’, or is it bidness?” she asked.

“Livin’,” I said.

Fontanelle didn’t have anything against me. We had done bidness in the past and I never gave her any reason to question me, but she turned to Fearless, the same question in her glance.

“Livin’,” Fearless repeated.

Fontanelle smiled, took our money, and went to find the keys.

WE DIDN’T SPEND more than an hour in our new home. Two seven-minute baths, canned soup heated on the gas range, and we were out of the door.

Milo had found out from the white bailbondsman that Leon Douglas had taken a place on Orchard Street just a little south of Vernon Avenue. It was on a small half-lot, but that didn’t matter much because the house was no larger than a shack. The paint was so faded and worn that it was hard to tell if the place had been white or tan or blue.

“Ain’t that your car parked on the lawn, Paris?” Fearless asked.

It was. I wondered if Elana went along with the wheels. Had he killed her? I doubted it.

“Paris?”

“What?”

“What you wanna do?”

On my own I watched or lied or misrepresented. I never took danger head-on if there was a second choice. Fearless was the opposite of me; he moved ahead as a rule. He might use a back entrance or even surprise, but no matter what, he was always going forward.

I considered going up to the front door, but then Leon Douglas returned to my mind. He was an engine of destruction, a stick of dynamite ready to explode.

“Let’s watch for a while, Fearless.”

“How come?”

“Maybe he’s got some accomplices in there. These are desperate men. If we walk in and find ourselves outnumbered, they ain’t gonna let us stroll.”

Fearless didn’t look convinced, but he sat tight. We had a good relationship in the field. He would call me the intelligence officer, while he was the man with the heavy artillery.

We moved down to the end of the block to watch the house from a distance. That street was populated by black people from the South. Almost everyone in that neighborhood was from someplace down in the western South. Texans, Louisianans, some from Arkansas. Southern neighborhoods, even in the North, were friendly in the extreme.

Small children were drawn to us first.

“Mister, why you sittin’ in your car?” a boy no more than three asked Fearless. He was wearing a T-shirt with horizontal rainbow stripes but no pants or underwear.

“Waitin’ for somebody,” Fearless replied.

“He waitin’ for somebody!” the boy yelled at a gang of kids who were standing in the driveway of a nearby house.

The children then wandered down to the patch of grass at the curb next to our car. One girl, probably the boy’s older sister, brought down a small pair of blue pants for the brave scout.

“He don’t like his clothes,” the shy six-year-old told us while tussling with her brother.

They asked us a few more questions and then set up camp there next to the car, playing games and shouting. I was nervous having them there, but Fearless calmed me.

“It’s like camouflage, Paris,” he said. “Nobody gonna be suspicious of kids tearin’ and rippin’ around.”

After the little kids the older ones came by. First it was the twelve-year-old boys on their bicycles and then their older sisters. The girls were young and budding nicely. They were part children and part women, leaning up on Fearless’s side of the car.

“Could you take us to the store?” one fifteen-year-old asked.

“Not my car, honey,” my friend said easily.

“But if your friend wanted to, would you take us?”

I was beginning to get nervous because there was a definite logic to that line of guests. First the babies, then the children, next the boys on bicycles that they dream can fly, after that the young girls who feel the stirrings of womanhood — wary mothers and angry fathers wouldn’t be too far behind.

“That him, Paris?” Fearless asked.

The tree trunk of a man was now wearing yellow pants and a loose-fitting, striped red shirt. He also wore a straw hat, for a disguise I guess. He walked leisurely to my car, dropped into the driver’s seat, and released the emergency brake. By the time he’d rolled down to the curb, the door was shut and the engine turned over. It was a poor way to treat an automobile, but I had no desire to tell him that.