Walter Mosley - Fearless Jones

“Why you quit that market?” I asked.

Theodore tried to look me in the eye, but he couldn’t. He struggled against tears and was mostly successful.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. And then, when he’d gained more of a mastery over his tears, “I’m sorry,” in a surer tone.

“That’s okay, man,” I said. “That’s okay. Just tell me what you know. ’Cause you know I plan to get my due.”

Theodore Wally was as scared a man as I had ever seen. He was trembling, near tears and full of gas, but still he managed to maintain the semblance of a man standing his ground. I couldn’t understand why he was so afraid.

“I’m sorry I burned down your bookstore, Paris,” he said.

“What! You? ”

“He told me to, and I did it ’cause I always did what he said. Mr. Antonio was like my father, you know. I been with him fourteen years, since I was a kid.”

“ You did it?”

“I told him about the man, the man who hit you. I told him that I saw you drive off, and then I saw that man go after you in his car with bull horns. He said to wait till late, an’ if you didn’t come back to burn down your store. He paid me, but I couldn’t stand it, so I quit. He gave me eight hundred dollars. But you can have it, Mr. Minton.” With that he fell on his knees and reached under the sofa, coming out with a manila envelope. He ripped the paper pouch open and grabbed at the tens and twenties as they fell. He went down on his knees again, gathering the money up. When he had gotten it in two fistfuls, he held them up to me and said, “Take it. Please take it and forgive me.”

“Damn,” Fearless said.

I knew what he was thinking, that I had gotten into more trouble in one day than he had in a lifetime. It made me mad, so mad that I slapped the clerk with the back of my hand.

It wasn’t a hard slap, but it caused Theodore to bleed from the corner of his mouth.

“Take it,” he said again.

“How could you do that to me, man?”

“He told me that you’d get the insurance. He said that his lease was up and that he needed to buy the lot next door or he was gonna go outta business. He said you’d get the insurance and that nobody’d get hurt if you was gone. It wasn’t until after that I found out you didn’t have any insurance.”

“Even if I did, where was I gonna get more books? Where was I gonna have a new store if the one I had burned down?”

“He used to send my momma groceries when she was sick,” Wally said. “He said it was all gonna be okay. Just take the money. Take it please.”

I slapped him again.

Fearless was shaking his head.

I hit Wally with my fist, and he fell down upon his knees. The money went every which way. He crawled among the bills gathering and bleeding on them at the same time.

“Why you think I’m in all this shit? Huh? Why you think I’m out here riskin’ my life? It’s ’cause you burned down my store. If I’d’a come home to my place, I would’a let it drop. I would’a let Fearless outta jail and give him a place to stay till everything was okay.”

Theodore wasn’t listening. All he did was grab at the money, weeping blood.

There was an iron crowbar in the corner, next to the window. I picked it up.

“You the one messed up my life!” I yelled.

I didn’t even feel my arm rising above my head. I had no idea I was swinging the crowbar until something stopped the sweep of my arm.

“Paris,” Fearless said. His powerful grip had stayed the execution.

“What?”

“Take the money, man.”

Theodore had gathered the cash again. He clutched it in both hands. I couldn’t take it, so Fearless collected it for me.

While he was straightening out the bills I asked, “How much did you say it is?”

“Eight hundred dollars,” Wally said, “near about.”

“To burn down my life?”

“I’m sorry.”

“I bet ya he paid you more than that,” I said. “’Cause you had to pay somethin’ for them flowers and that monkey bite.”

“I got them from my girlfriend,” he said, finding some backbone. “She kiss me for nuthin’ and tried to make my house like a home.”

By then there was the ice of murder in my veins. Not murder that I wanted to commit, but the murder I had almost done. I had almost killed Theodore, and that frightened me. I never believed it when people said that they lost control, that they blacked out like Morris said and killed without volition. Until that very moment I believed that a man made his own decisions, that the excuse of passion was just a lawyer’s lie.

I WAS TOO worked up to drive, so Fearless took the wheel. He cruised down Slauson, keeping quiet while I fumed.

After a few blocks I said, “Damn. Damn.”

“He couldn’t help it, Paris. You know Antonio been good to him. He probably never even read a book.”

“What difference does that make?”

“He didn’t know what he was burnin’, man.”

“Let’s go see Milo,” I said to my friend. “Maybe he got somethin’ for us.”

“Whatever you say, Paris.”

33

MILO WAS LEANING back in his chair with his fingers laced across his belly and a smile on his lips. He wasn’t on the phone or reading. He wasn’t doing a thing. I got the feeling that he was sitting there, being smug with himself, waiting for us to arrive and hear his glad song.

“Fearless. Paris. How you’all boys doin’?”

“I hope you don’t choke on that canary you swallowed,” I said.

“It’s more like a goose, son. The goose that lays the golden egg.”

“Where’s Loretta?” Fearless asked.

“I thought it was best if she took a few days off,” Milo said, his voice suggesting more.

“I’ll bite,” I said.

“I went to see Lawson and Widlow,” Milo admitted. “I took a business card that said my name was Brown. I told them that I had a client named Love who had found a bearer bond worth a few thousand dollars to the owner.”

I could see that Milo intended to earn his thirty-three percent.

“And what did they say?” I asked.

The bailbondsman sat forward. “At first they acted like they weren’t too concerned. But when I suggested shopping the bond around, they said that that wouldn’t be such a good idea. They let it drop that I could get in trouble if the wrong people found out about the bond. I said maybe I should go to the police. They offered me a finder’s fee right then and there.”

“How much?” Fearless asked.

“Five thousand dollars.”

“What then, Milo?” I wanted to know.

“I said some names then. Leon Douglas. Fanny and Sol Tannenbaum. I said that that wasn’t all, and I wanted some real money for my client or they was gonna be up to their elbows in J. Edgar.”

“So where’d you leave it?”

“I got a answerin’ service under the name’a Brown at a switchboard downtown. I gave Widlow the number and told him to call me inside of a day.”

“Have they called yet?”

“I was waitin’ for you’n Fearless to come ’fore I checked.” With that he picked up the receiver and dialed. He waited no more than the span of a ring and said, “Brown, sixteen-sixty-four.”

Milo looked up and started snapping his fingers at me. He made the motion of writing and pointed at Loretta’s desk. I ran over, finding a yellow pencil and an unused envelope. I brought these back to Milo’s desk.

“Hold on, hold on,” Milo was saying into the receiver. “I got to get a pencil. All right, go on. Yeah. Three- two -one? Oh. Uh-huh. Is that all? Well then I thank you.”

Milo frowned at the words he had written down, then he smiled and said, “They wanna meet us at their office tonight at eight-fifteen. They said that the security guard’ll meet us at the side door in the alley and let us upstairs. What do you think about that?”