Walter Mosley - Fearless Jones

“What’s wrong with you, fool?” I said, afraid that he had cracked under the strain.

“Nuthin’,” was all Fearless could say for a moment. He had to take a deep breath to keep the mirth down.

“Nuthin’? Have you gone crazy?”

“Naw, Paris. Naw, man. It’s you.”

“Me what?”

“You know I promised myself a long time ago that I wasn’t gonna put myself back in a war for nuthin’, not even America.”

“So?”

“This right here is war, baby,” he said, suddenly serious. “And where my own country couldn’t make me — you did.”

He made another short bark, but this time there was no humor behind it.

24

IT WASN’T UNTIL I was parking down the street from Arthur’s Pet Shop and Animal Grooming that my hands stopped shaking. The side door to Arthur’s led to three rooms that made up an after-hours club that a few dozen regulars kept in business. In order to get to Arthur’s you had to come in the back alley and park at least a block away. It wasn’t a party place or a music hall; there wasn’t any dance floor. All it was was a jukebox and Nathan Wellman, an insomniac tailor who ran the place to make a few extra dollars while having people to talk to between midnight and dawn.

Nathan brought two generous shots of whiskey to our table.

“You boys look serious,” Nathan said as a conversation opener.

“I need to use the phone, Nate,” I replied.

He gave me a sour look and went over to the mahogany bar, returning with a baseball bat that had a hole drilled in the handle. Through the hole was knotted a string that held a single brass key.

Nathan’s place was a dive. The wood floor wasn’t sealed or waxed, the walls were devoid of paint. The tables and chairs were mismatched and wobbly. But for all that it was primitive, Nathan’s had something that even the Waldorf Astoria in New York City couldn’t brag about; he had a telephone room. It was rustic and spare, but it was a whole room, six feet square with a pay phone on the wall and a table and chair. There was a phone book too.

I dialed a number.

“Las Palmas,” a woman said, after answering on the sixth ring.

“Certainly,” I said, doing my best to mimic the snooty Landry Lamming. “Helen Huggins,” I continued, cursing myself for making up such dumb names, “in room twelve B, if you please.”

“Uh… well… hold on,” the night clerk said.

There was silence and then a series a clicks and bangs. A man’s voice finally said, “Who is this?”

“Excuse me,” I said primly, “but I asked for Miss Huggins in twelve B. They must have connected me with the wrong room.”

“Who is this?” the man repeated. “Are you the one who called twelve B earlier tonight?”

“Who, may I ask, are you, sir?”

“Police Sergeant Bryant,” he said. “Did you call earlier tonight?”

“I was looking for my friend,” I said. “Miss Huggins.”

“Did you ask for a man named Latham?”

“No. Who is he?”

“He was with the woman in twelve B.”

“Oh my,” I said in a fey tone.

“What’s your name, sir?”

“Is Miss Huggins in trouble, Officer Bryant?”

“I’m asking the questions, Mr...?”

“Is Miss Huggins there, Sergeant?”

“Two men have been shot,” Bryant said, trying the frank approach. After all, maybe I really was a foreigner, far from home and unfamiliar with the legal customs of America.

“And Miss Huggins?” I asked, all aflutter.

“There was a woman. She fled the scene. You say her name is Huggins?”

I chose that moment to hang up.

Nathan and Fearless were having a good old time talking about Fearless’s experience in the county lockup. I came back and downed my drink. Fearless took that as a cue to stand.

“See you later, Nathan,” Fearless said.

“But you didn’t finish your story.”

“Save it for the next time.”

Fearless clapped Nathan on the shoulder, and we left.

WE MADE IT back to Fontanelle’s court near five. I let Fearless have the mother’s bedroom. I took the child’s bed, just a urine-stained mattress on the floor, because I was the smaller of us two. As scared as I was, I needed sleep. We had nothing to go on. Elana’s purse was ripped open and the bond was gone. The bond was gone and we didn’t know who had it. I had a pretty good idea that it was in Elana’s possession, but at five in the morning I hardly even cared.

I slept soundly until I felt a tongue on my face. I opened my eyes and saw Blood, Fearless’s adopted dog. I sat up and pushed him away. Fearless was drinking some hot liquid out of a cup and relaxing, slouched back in his chair. From his demeanor you would have thought that we were on vacation.

“What time is it?” I asked.

“’Bout twelve-thirty.”

“Where’d this dog come from? I thought you left him with Dorthea.”

“I called her, and she told me to come get ’im.”

“What you think Fell gonna say when we got pets in her court?”

“That’s three questions wit’out you sayin’ good mornin’,” Fearless said.

“Good morning,” I said.

Fearless’s face broke out into a friendly smile. “Fontanelle said it was okay. She said that she might even want a good watchdog to protect her garage when she holdin’ stuff fo’ people.”

I got up and pulled on my pants. After using the toilet and washing up, I was almost ready for the day. Fearless was sitting in the blue chair, so that left me the red one. They were both wooden and badly painted. My chair wobbled whenever I shifted.

“Tea?” Fearless asked me.

“Since when do you drink tea?”

“My auntie Leigh Lenore used to drink tea with lemon every mornin’.”

“What’s that got to do with you?” I asked.

“In that jail cell I used to think how much I missed Leigh. I really loved her, and that made me think about tea. You want some?”

I took the tea but turned down the lemon.

“I bought milk,” Fearless said.

“What did Latham say?” I asked.

“I think it was Man. Jam. Manjam,” Fearless said. “Jamman. It was the name of somebody or something, I’m pretty sure.”

“You really think so? All it sounded like was a cough to me.”

“I listened to a lotta dyin’ men, Paris. The trick is you got to keep your heart open. You got to listen wit’ your heart. That’s the trick.”

The tea, from the cracked pottery crock that Fearless had found on some shelf, was hot and made me feel good. I let my eyes close for a moment, which was a mistake because William Grove’s death stare came up in my mind.

I sat up quickly and said, “Let’s get over to Milo’s.”

“SO WHAT YOU THINK we got here, Paris?” Milo Sweet asked me.

We were sitting in his office, listening to the gentle clucking of hens through the heating vents. Loretta was there and so was Fearless, but the discussion was between me and Milo.

“I don’t know, man,” I said. “I mean really — I don’t know.”

“One always knows something,” the bailbondsman replied. “It’s just that we don’t know it all. What is it that we do know?”

I got his meaning and so tried to think. Sometimes I find thinking out loud is the best way to solve a problem. Of course, I’ve also found that thinking out loud is the best way to get yourself into trouble too.

“Well,” I said. “We know that there are people, white people, looking for a bond that Sol Tannenbaum gave to Leon through Fanny and Elana for protection in the joint.”

Milo nodded. Fearless sat back and laced his fingers behind his neck. Loretta let her eyes run up and down his long, strong body.

“We know there’s a real bond because we saw it.”