Fear Itself Part 4

"Yes sir," I said. The words just came out of me. Betrayed by four centuries of training, but I didn't worry about that right then.

"Who are you?" the white man asked.

He had a pencil-thin mustache and a crooked face, though you could see by the tilt of his brimless hat that he thought he was handsome. There was a thin gold band on the ring finger of his left hand.

"Cort Stillman," I said, hoping that he didn't wonder about a Negro named Cort.

"What are you doing here?"

"Looking for a Mr. John Stover." I handed over the blue envelope.

Lance Wexler's business card felt like a bomb in my pocket.

"There's no John Stover living here," he said, twisting his already ugly mouth. "And even if there was, what are you doing out back?"

"The lady out front said that there was no Stover. And I told her that I knew that he was staying with a woman on the fourth floor. That's what they said when they brought the package in. You know it's my job to make sure the package gets to the man it was addressed to. They told me at the front desk that they wouldn't take it, so I came in the back way to sneak up and knock on some doors."

Sweat dripped down my spine. I hoped that my face was still dry.

"Let's go down to the front desk and ask them about this," the man said.

He was taller than I and probably stronger. At any rate, I'm not good at hand-to-hand combat. No good at fighting, period. I looked around, hoping for a miracle.

I found it on his feet. I was sure that there weren't three men in six square miles wearing that particular hue of tan shoe.

"Listen, Warren," I said. "We could do each other a favor here."

"How you know my name?"

"If they call my boss and tell him that I snuck in like this, he'd be forced to fire me. You know I cain't have that," I said, ignoring his question.

"How you know my name, man?"

"And there's a certain young lady who would be very thankful that you kept it quiet about what you were doin' to her up on the roof."

Old Warren turned as white as his jacket.

"I don't know if she's married, but I bet your young wife might be upset with you bein' unemployed and a cheat all at once."

Warren looked like he wanted to hurt me, so I grabbed the envelope from his hand and walked out through the swinging doors, leaving him to consider the consequences of l.u.s.t.

8.

I MADE IT TO THE CAR and headed down toward my own neighborhood. As soon as I saw black faces on the street I parked and practiced breathing. My gut was still writhing, and my heart knocked against my chest like Fearless Jones at the door. and headed down toward my own neighborhood. As soon as I saw black faces on the street I parked and practiced breathing. My gut was still writhing, and my heart knocked against my chest like Fearless Jones at the door.

Fearless Jones was my best friend and more trouble than a white girl on the prowl in Mississippi. Here I thought I was smart, sneaking into a white residence, ringing a white man's bell. But I should have known-whatever the worst could have been behind that door, it would have to come to pa.s.s if Fearless brought me there.

It was September. September is often L.A.'s hottest month. Eighty-five degrees. And still I was s.h.i.+vering on the inside.

Fear is the motivating force behind most of my actions. Whatever it is I'm most afraid of takes all of my attention. Right then I was afraid that the cops could place me at the scene of a murder. Forget that the man had been dead at least two days when I was caught by Warren at the back door. Forget that I had probably erased any sc.r.a.p that might have put me in the dead man's suite. If the police liked me for the murder, then I would be the murderer in their book-and their book was the only one that mattered.

I had to know why Kit Mitch.e.l.l was missing, why Leora and Son were looking for him, and why he would have had free entree to a murdered car salesman's apartment.

To answer these questions I pulled back into traffic and drove off toward the office of the bail bondsman-Milo Sweet.

MILO HAD MOVED from his Hooper address, over the illegal chicken distributors, to an apartment building on Baring Cross Street between from his Hooper address, over the illegal chicken distributors, to an apartment building on Baring Cross Street between 109 109th Street and 109 109th Place. Loretta Kuroko-Milo's secretary, girl Friday, and final hope-was sitting in the little front room of the domicile-turned-office. She was forty with the skin of a twenty-year-old and the eyes of some ancient sage. She lived and worked down among black people because of her hatred for the white men who imprisoned her and her family during the war. And she adored Milo with a pa.s.sion that could not be understood in contemporary terms. It wasn't s.e.xual, or at least I didn't think it was. Their bond was like some ancient myth about two ideal characters carrying on their labors through the centuries, living out the drama and foibles of the whole human race.

"h.e.l.lo, Paris," Loretta said. "How are you?"

"Fine, Loretta." I proffered a bunch of dahlias that I'd bought from a florist on Century Boulevard.

"Oh," she said with light in her deep eyes. "Thank you so much."

Milo never brought Loretta flowers or chocolates or even a paper cup of coffee-that wasn't a part of their mythology.

"He's back there. Go right on in," she said. "I'll put these in water."

The hallway, from the front room to the back, was exactly two and a half paces. On the way you pa.s.sed the door to a toilet on the right. That was where Loretta would get her water.

The back room was larger than the front, but it seemed smaller because of the eight file cabinets that Milo had against three walls. In those archives he had the records of his days as a lawyer-before he was disbarred-and as a restaurant owner, bookkeeper, and car insurance salesman. He'd also been a fence and a bookie, but I doubted if those records were still intact.

"Paris," Milo shouted. It was his normal voice, but even Milo's whisper was loud. "Have a seat."

"Thank you, Milo," I said.

He was sitting behind a maple desk, in a red leather recliner, under a naked hundred-watt bulb dangling from bare black cord. The chair in front of the desk looked like some sort of starved four-legged animal. I was afraid that even my few pounds would be the last straw.

But I sat anyway. The legs strained but held.

"What can I do for you?" Milo asked.

Milo's skin color wasn't as dark as Fearless's, but it was close. He was a couple of inches taller than I and a few inches shorter than Fearless. His feet and hands belonged on someone who was much larger, and his body was naturally powerful. But Milo wasn't a physical man. He was a thinker, a reader, a man who understood power but who was forever blocked from holding its reins.

Milo could quote pa.s.sages from a thousand poems, do problems in calculus and trigonometry, but if you waved a stack of hundred-dollar bills under his nose he would forget his own name.

"Kit Mitch.e.l.l," I said.

The delay between hearing the name and his next breath was enough to let me know that Ted Timmerman had something to do with the Watermelon Man.

"Who?"

"Don't f.u.c.k with me, Miles," I said. "You know as well as I do that you done sent Fearless down a dangerous road. You know it."

Milo pulled out a cigar.

If I didn't know that I was in trouble before, that stogie was the final proof. Milo smoked to hide his nervousness-and he never got nervous until the walls were caving in.

"Talk to me, Milo."

"What do you know, Paris?"

"Enough to put you in prison."

The bail bondsman's eyes widened. I liked that for two reasons. One was that I had gotten to him, raised the stakes. And also I liked to see bright white eyes against black skin-it made me feel like home.

"I don't know nuthin' 'bout no prisons," Milo said. "I know money and I know power, that's all."

"So which one did you send Ted Timmerman out after?"

"You met Mr. Timmerman, then?"

"Milo, do I have to go get Fearless? I mean, do you want to do this song and dance with him?"

"I'm not afraid. I haven't done anything wrong."

I snorted.

Milo blew out a cloud of smoke.

It was hot in that room. I was sweating even though all I had on was green gardener trousers and a white T-s.h.i.+rt. Milo wore a three-piece suit with a red tie knotted up to his throat, but he was still dry as a bone.

"What's goin' on, Milo?"

"Money, son," the dark-skinned ex-lawyer proclaimed. "Only money, and nuthin' else."

"I got twenty-three dollars seventy-five cents in my pocket," I said. "And compared to Fearless I'm a millionaire."

"I know you got money in the bank," Milo said. "Money in the bank and papers on that bookstore. You ain't broke."

Milo had been an equal third partner when Fearless and I got our thirteen thousand dollars and almost killed. His money was gone too. But Milo had squandered his cash on foolish investments. He wanted to be rich so bad that he never had a dime.

"Winifred Fine come to see me four, no five, five days ago," he said.

"And?"

"That's Winifred L. Fine." Milo p.r.o.nounced the name as if he expected me to faint dead away.

"Yeah. I know her. The one own that fruit market down on Avalon."

"And three gas stations, two hardware stores, and Nathan's Bakery," Milo added.

"She own Nathan's too?"

"She also make Madame Ethel's Beauty Supply line."

"Never heard of it," I lied.

"Black women all over Georgia, Tennessee, Florida, and Alabama use Madame Ethel's."

"When did you get to be such an expert on women's beauty products?"

"I'm an expert on money," Milo said. "Money, boy. Big money. And when Miss Fine come to me five days ago and says that she needed to locate her nephew, I knew that big money was on the rise."

"What nephew?"

"Bartholomew Perry."

"BB's her blood?"

"You know him?"

"Seen 'im around. He come down Watts all the time, thinkin' he's slummin' just 'cause his daddy owns that used car lot." An alarm went off in my head but I didn't let it show.

"So you know where he hangs out?"

"Naw. I just seen him. At Baptiste's mainly. That's all."

"What was he doin' when you seen 'im?"

"Stuffin' his fat face," I said. "He'd bring his high-yellow and white girlfriends down there."

"All right now," Milo complained. "Ain't no use tryin' to run a man down like that. I'm sure he got black girls too."

"Not that I ever saw."

"But you don't know everything. You don't know s.h.i.+t."

"Whatever you say, Miles."

"How would you like to have a real bookstore?" he asked me. "New books on finished oak shelves with a real cash register, not just some cigar box with the lid ripped off?"

"Sure." My pulse quickened in spite of common sense.

"Winifred L. Fine can do that for you. She can take a hole in the wall like you got and make it into a co-orporation."

"What you sayin', Milo?"

"Like I said-Miss Fine asked me to find Bartholomew."

"He jump bail or sumpin'?"

"No."