Walter Mosley - Fearless Jones

Fearless’s hand was at the opening of his pocket.

I felt my own pistol pressing into my stomach at the belt line.

I wanted to get us up on our feet and going through the door. That was a natural advantage that I was sure Fearless could capitalize on.

“We could take you to her,” I suggested to Minor, “but we’d have to get something for that.”

“Why bother, Paris?” Fearless said. “Go on, tell him.”

I turned to Fearless, speechless.

Fearless smiled.

“Tell him what the Israeli guys said.” Fearless leaned forward across the desk, reaching into his pocket as he did so. “Elana took the bond to these Israeli guys been lookin’ for you. She showed ’em the bond, and they found out that it wasn’t part’a the big money you lost.” Fearless nodded toward Leon and Tricks. “That means he don’t need you no more, Leon. If there ain’t no treasure, then there ain’t no cut. He’ll probably tell that fancy lawyer you got to cut you loose.”

“What’s he sayin’, Minor?” Leon said.

“It’s nothing. It’s a trick.”

“That cop, that Latham, he was workin’ for the Israelis,” Fearless went on. “He took Elana there before Grove called you. You know I ain’t lyin’.”

Minor’s eyes showed uncertainty. I remember thinking that Fearless had probably succeeded in getting us killed.

Mr. Christopher chose that unfortunate moment to practice his German.

“I told you to talk English,” Leon shouted. He pulled a pistol from under his shirt.

“Get down!” Fearless screamed.

He grabbed my chair, upturning it into Milo. We both tumbled over, shouting. Mr. Christopher shouted something else in German. One shot was fired. I was turned on my back, facing Minor, who stood erect like a soldier holding a pistol at arm’s length. He fired and I turned, expecting to see Fearless die.

He was already firing when the bullet entered his forehead. Then the tall and slender black man named Tricks fell straight down in a heap.

Fearless, was on my lips when I realized that it was the cowboy who’d gotten shot. Leon had pressed Mr. Christopher against the far wall and was just firing the bullet into that man’s temple. With terrible quickness he fired randomly in my direction. I didn’t know if he’d hit me or not, but Milo screamed out loud. Two more shots fired. I grabbed for my pistol, but I pulled it out with such force that it went flying out of my grasp into a far corner. Fearless was bleeding, but the baby gun was in his hand rapping out reports. Leon lowered his gun and got a strange look on his face. When he remembered that he was supposed to be shooting, the gun was already too heavy. He slumped down and expired, beaten for the second time in a row.

Suddenly I remembered Minor.

“Fearless! Watch out!” I yelled.

I stumbled up on top of the desk and then fell right on the corpse of the traitor. The shot from Tricks’s gun had found the mark.

“Shit!” Fearless shouted.

“I’m dyin’,” Milo moaned.

Both men were bleeding — Fearless from his left hand and Milo from his upper arm. I went to Milo and pulled off his jacket, then I ripped the shirt off his back. I wadded the shirt up and pressed it against the wound.

“Hold it tight,” I told him.

“I can’t,” he cried.

“You don’t and you’ll keep on bleedin’,” I said. “An’ you know there’s only so much you got to give.”

Milo grabbed the bandage, and I went to Fearless. He was holding a handkerchief on the wound of his left hand and searching the floor with his eyes.

“Damn!” Fearless cursed. “Damn!”

“What, man? What!” I cried.

“My goddamned baby finger,” Fearless said. “Muthahfuckah shot it off!”

“We got to go, man!”

“Not without my finger.”

“What?”

Fearless grabbed my shirt with his good hand and pulled me up close. “Wake up, Paris. That finger got my fingerprint on it.”

I took a deep breath, and in that forced semblance of calm I said, “You get Milo to the bottom of the stairs. I’ll find the finger and be down in a minute.”

Milo yelled in pain when Fearless helped him to his feet. They struggled over the four dead men, climbed through the door, and went shuffling and groaning down the hall.

I turned on the overhead light and searched the bloody scene. I looked all over the floor, under the desk, and even under the four corpses. I was in a kind of shock, sifting around. I got lost there among the dead. At one point I sat down on the floor next to Tricks. He had collapsed into a seated position, looking like a puppet waiting for someone to pull his string. I looked at him, wondering who he was and what had brought him to this final moment. Then I thought that if I was lucky, I’d read about it in tomorrow’s evening edition; if not, I’d find out at my trial.

Down on the floor, next to the man’s knee, was a finger, a curved little digit with a wad of bulging red flesh pressing out where the knuckle should have been. I picked it up and put it in my pocket. Then I got to my feet. I retrieved my discarded pistol and headed for the stairs.

As I walked from the room, Tricks fell over on his side.

34

I JOINED Fearless and Milo, who were hunkered down by the side door. Being the only man not wounded, I was elected to get the car. I drove up to the sidewalk, and Fearless hustled Milo out and into the backseat. They both laid low back there while I drove down the fairly empty streets.

We weren’t out of the woods yet. There I was, a black man driving down the streets of white Los Angeles with no reason that a cop could imagine — except mischief. And what could I say if he pulled us over and found two wounded men in the backseat?

“Fearless.”

“Yeah, Paris?”

“You still got that gun?”

“Naw, man. I wiped it off and dropped it next to the big white dude while you was workin’ on Milo’s arm.”

That was one thing at least. My pistol hadn’t even been fired.

Maybe, if we got away, the cops wouldn’t suspect that there had been others in the room.

“Take Hauser down to Olympic and hang a right,” Milo said. “Take it to Sierra Bonita and go all the way south down to three blocks past Venice. It’s the only two-story house on the block.”

I KNOCKED ON the front door. After a few seconds Loretta Kuroko said, “Who is it?”

“It’s Paris, Lo. Me and Milo and Fearless.”

The door opened. Loretta was wearing a blue terrycloth bathrobe. Beyond her were two small Japanese, a man and a woman, huddled together.

“What happened?”

I told her about the wounds but not how they were inflicted. She had me drive through the driveway and into the backyard. From there we went through the back door and into the kitchen. Loretta’s parents didn’t speak any English, but they showed surprisingly little fear of blood and gunshot wounds or desperate men in the middle of the night. Both Fearless and Milo were washed up and bandaged within a quarter of an hour. Milo, who knew enough Japanese to say may I and thank you, made his bed on Loretta’s couch.

Fearless and I said our thank-you’s and left. I dropped Fearless off at Dorthea’s and then drove over to our apartment at Fontanelle’s court, where I slept fitfully until late the next morning.

When I got up, I knew what I had to do.

So, dressed in the same funky clothes, I drove over to an alley off Slauson and climbed the back stairs to the third floor.

Theodore Wally’s door was unlocked, but that didn’t matter much because you can’t steal from a dead man.

The bullet wound had been fatal but not immediately so. He had been cleaned off and bandaged and put into the ratty sofa’s foldout bed. The covers were pulled up to his chin. His skin was still warm.