Walter Mosley - Fearless Jones

“Follow him?” Fearless asked.

“No. No,” I said. “Let’s go check out the house.”

“I thought you said he might have some friends in there?”

“They don’t know us.”

“What about the girl?” Fearless asked sensibly.

“That girl ain’t nobody’s friend.”

I started the car and rolled away from the curb.

“Where y’all goin’?” the little scout shouted.

TAKING FEARLESS’S QUESTION into account, the first thing we did was knock on the front door. I didn’t think that there was anybody there, but it was always good to be certain.

To my surprise the door swung open.

Elana Love looked better every time I saw her. She was wearing a short brown bathrobe that barely covered the tops of her brown thighs. Her hair was wrapped in a towel. That lovely flat face considered us a moment and then smiled.

“Hi, Paris. Who’s your friend?”

I walked past her into the house. Fearless followed my lead, closing the door behind him.

“Elana,” I said. “We got to talk.”

“Do you mind if I put on some clothes first?”

“Go right ahead,” I said. “It ain’t nuthin’ I ain’t already seen, and I don’t think it’ll come as any surprise to my friend neither.”

Elana put on a petulant look for a second, but she didn’t really care. She dropped the bathrobe and squatted down to pull a floral-patterned dress out of a satchel next to the couch. She stepped into the brightly colored shift and buttoned up the front. I stole a glance at Fearless while she was dressing. He didn’t seem to be concerned at all. As long as I had known Fearless he proved at least once every day that he was a better man than I.

The room we had entered was almost the entire house. There was one door at the back, which I suspected was to the toilet. That was the only thing missing. There was a stove, a couch, a bed, and a bathtub in the room where we stood, making the house reminiscent of many a country home I had seen. We were standing near a table covered with dirty dishes, crumbs, newspapers, and other, less recognizable, trash. A line of tiny black ants had crossed the floor and then scattered across the table, foraging among the treasures they found there.

“How’d you find me?” Elana asked.

“We didn’t,” I said.

At first she was confused by my answer, but then a little twinkle told me she understood.

“You found Leon,” she said.

Her intelligence did not set my mind at ease.

“I came back to see you the same day I took your car, you know,” she said with a smile that made me wish it were true.

“What for? You tasted my gold fillin’ when you was kissin’ me and you wanted that too?”

“Don’t be like that, Paris. I came back to give you your car and say I was sorry, but the store was burned down and nobody knew where you were.”

There was something easy about Elana Love. All you had to do was talk to her a minute or two and a whole new life appeared before you. Maybe everything could be different, I thought. But then I remembered that Leon might be back any minute.

“We want the bond, Elana,” I said.

She sighed and went to the couch, seating herself squarely in the middle.

“You got a cigarette, honey?” she asked Fearless.

He just stared at her, a soldier on reconnaissance duty.

I gave her a cigarette and lit it.

“You were lookin’ for me and found Leon instead?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said, crossing the right leg over the left.

I sat down on the wooden arm of the calico couch and nodded for her to continue.

“Leon came back around your place just before I did. He thought you an’ me were together and figured if he waited long enough, one or the other of us’d show up. It was just about the only smart thing he ever did in his life, and that was just a stupid mistake.”

“Was he with Conrad Till then?” I asked.

“Naw, he had already taken Conrad to my apartment, lookin’ for me. I guess I must’a shot Conrad when they was comin’ after you and me in your car —”

Fearless grunted at that. I couldn’t tell if it was admiration or commiseration with the dumb luck of the dead man.

“Conrad was afraid to go to his own house at first because he was on parole. He thought he could get cleaned up enough so that he could say he was sick without bleedin’ all over whoever came to the door.”

“So then you took Conrad to his place…,” I prompted.

“They made me. They said they was gonna kill me if I didn’t do what they said. At first it was just to take care’a Conrad’s wound.”

“They didn’t mind that you were the one who shot him?”

“I told ’em that it was you shootin’ out the windah,” she said.

“So now Douglas thinks it was me killed his friend?”

“I’ont know what he’s thinkin’,” Elana protested. “Anyways, I worked on Conrad’s wounds, and then Leon forgot how mad he was and started lookin’ at me like a man looks at a woman.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said.

“You cain’t blame me,” Elana said as if we had a relationship that had gone bad. “I’m alone out here. Men all gruff and mean, lookin’ at me like I’m a piece’a meat.”

“Look how you dressed,” I said.

“Look how you just pushed your way into my house,” was her retort.

I didn’t have anything to say to that.

“You see,” Elana said. “There’s people out there kill me in a second. Sure I took your money and your car. But I left the five dollars in your shoe. And if you weren’t out after me now, you’d be safe while my life is still on the line.”

“I wouldn’t be here if your boyfriend didn’t burn down my motherfuckin’ store,” I said, getting hot.

“Leon didn’t burn down your store.”

“If he didn’t, then who did?”

“I don’t know. But he asked me the same question when he grabbed me off the street.”

“That could just be a lie,” I said.

“Why he wanna lie about that? Why he wanna burn your place down anyway?”

“So what happened with you and Leon?” I asked.

“We went to see William. Leon fount out where he was through a fence he knew.”

“Leon the one messed up his face like that?”

“What are you, a cop?”

“Just talk, sister,” Fearless said.

The timbre of his voice drew a strange stare from Elana.

“Yeah,” she said, answering my question. “Leon slapped him around a little but —”

“But then he realized that the good William was tellin’ the truth and you still had the bond,” I said to cut off whatever lie she was going to tell.

“If you know so fuckin’ much, then why you askin’ me?”

“Does Leon have the bond?”

Elana’s nod was as subtle as a first kiss.

“What’s he plan to do with it?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she lied.

“Is the bond here?”

“No,” she said. “He like me, but he don’t trust me.”

“Smart kid,” I said.

“So we got to get the bond from this Douglas,” Fearless said to me.

Elana Love was beautiful, but she had an ugly laugh, cruel and cold. “You’re pretty, Paris’s friend, but you don’t have the stuff to take Leon Douglas down.”

Fearless gave her a smile and a salute.

“What did you do after you braced Grove?” I wanted to get the conversation back to business.

“We went to my place, but the cops were there. I guess somebody found somethin’a mines at Conrad’s.”

“Why did your boyfriend kill Fanny Tannenbaum?” Fearless asked.

For the first time Elana lost her poise. “What?”

“Don’t act like you don’t know what he’s talkin’ about,” I said. “Somebody killed her. I’m almost sure that Leon and his friend the cowboy went to Fanny’s house after we got away. He stabbed Sol and ran. Cowboy or Leon just went back to finish the job.”