Fear Itself - Walter Mosley

“Don’t be a fool, Paris. Nobody cares about some niggah own a used-book bookstore. They worried about property and money. White-people money, not your little change.”

“Maybe that man beatin’ on your ass didn’t get through to you, Miles,” I said. “But these people serious out here. They will hurt anybody that might even be a little bit in the way. That white man lost his children. I wouldn’t be too quick to mess in with the man he think killed ’em.”

Milo’s eyes were glazed over by the hope for money and power. He wasn’t listening to me. Neither was Fearless as far as I could see. The World War II killer was leaning back in his chair with a smile on his face.

“What you grinnin’ at, fool?” I asked him.

“It’s nice to see Mama with a lady her own age. They could sit and talk all day long, I bet. That’s real nice.”

“Fearless, we got trouble here.”

“What you want to do about it, Paris?” He wasn’t being negative. It was just a question. If I said to go out and roll a stone up a hill he would have pushed up his sleeves and done so, smiling about his mother all the way.

“Milo, you could help,” I said.

“How?” he asked.

“Me and Fearless got a spy might know a guy knows Kit. His name is Honeyboy, and we told him to call your answerin’ service to tell us where we could catch up with him.”

Milo called his service. Honeyboy had left a message earlier in the day. He said that we could find him at an address on Downey Road in East L.A.

Milo had no idea that Honeyboy was really Bartholomew Perry, the man he was looking for. It gave me a great deal of pleasure fooling him like that.

THE ADDRESS THAT BB LEFT FOR US was across the street from the New Calvary Cemetery, a fairly big graveyard in the middle of East L.A. By the time we got there it was closing in on five-thirty. The house was large and painted blue-green with a dark green trim. There were eighteen stairs to a front porch that ran the whole length of the front of the house.

Fearless took the stairs three at a time, so I lagged behind him. At least that’s what I pretended. New places in serious times always slowed my pace.

Fearless was knocking by the time I had reached him. With all those strange stairs and a graveyard at my back, I felt a shiver as I caught up. So I wasn’t surprised when the door opened and a man pointed a gun at us.

I wasn’t surprised, but I was terrified enough to lose my senses.

I fell hard to the floor, rolled, and then tried to rise to my feet. But the fear in my heart was like in one of those dreams where you try to run but you can’t do it, you can’t run because the fear is an anchor in your chest. I rolled on my back and put up my hands, hoping that somehow I could survive the barrage. But what I saw was that Fearless had moved in the opposite direction, grabbed hold of Theodore Timmerman’s gun hand, and delivered a devastating right hook to the jaw of the man who had tried to kill us two times in three days.

Timmerman went down and Fearless disarmed him. Then my friend turned to me, smiling and holding out a helping hand.

“I, I’m sorry, Fearless,” I said.

“For what, boy?”

“I didn’t mean to run. I didn’t even know that I was doin’ it till I was on my back.”

“Lucky you did, Paris. Teddy here thought you had somethin’, so he turned your way. And you know, baby, you better not ever turn away from me if you wanna live.”

TIMMERMAN WASN’T DEAD—at least not quite. His shirt was open, so we could see the nasty bruise on his chest from the brick Fearless had thrown. His jaw was swelling now too.

The house had a professional look to it. There was a living room to the left that might well have been an office. There were dark-stained oak furnishings and white curtains that were closed. Fearless set Timmerman down in a padded oak chair.

“Why ain’t you in a hospital, man?” he asked Ted.

“Fuck you,” the would-be killer replied.

“No, really, man,” Fearless went on. “You got somethin’ wrong there. It ain’t gonna heal without some help.”

The white man’s sallow chest was bruised blue, green, and black. It was like a large dark cloud hovering under his pale skin.

“What you doin’ here?” I asked.

“Fuck you.”

“Where’s BB?”

Timmerman said nothing.

There came a rumble that might have been pounding and a voice that made sounds but no discernible words.

“Go on, Paris,” Fearless said. “I’ll stay with your friend.”

There was a hallway at the back of the room. It was long and also more professional looking than homey. There were no paintings or any sign of somebody living there. After going twenty feet or so I came to a door. The sounds were coming from there.

Still it was just muffled pounding and a muffled voice.

I turned to go back to Fearless. I was going to tell him that I found the door where the noise was coming from. But I stopped halfway. Looking back at the door, I finally convinced myself to do something to redeem my pride after panicking on the front porch.

I went to the door and quickly pulled it open so as not to lose heart.

Opening doors wasn’t lucky for me during that period.

I thought it was the Mummy who fell out on top of me—if the Mummy weighed two hundred and twenty-five pounds. All tied up in sheets, bleeding, and yelling through the gag he wore. It took me a few moments to realize that the monster wasn’t attacking me but struggling to get free from the bonds. It took a moment more to recognize Bartholomew thrashing and screaming under the knots of gauze.

Before I grasped the situation I yelped. It wasn’t a scream of terror or even a shout. At least I could be proud of my reserve.

Regardless of the dignity I maintained in my mind, Fearless came running with the wounded white man in tow. I looked up at him, on my back for the second time in less than ten minutes, and said, “I found him.”

“MOTHAHFUCKAH COME UP TO MY DOOR and pointed his gun at me,” Bartholomew was telling us.

The skin over both eyes was so swollen from the beatings that he was barely recognizable. He was bleeding and had lost a tooth. Timmerman might have been hurting but he was still dangerous.

“He kept askin’ who was lookin’ for me. I didn’t say nuthin’ and he just started beatin’ on my ass.”

“And so you give us up so he could beat on us too,” I added.

“No I didn’t. I had already called that number, all I said was that you was gonna call me. That’s all,” BB said. “You know he had me so tied up I couldn’t even breathe in there.”

I wanted to sneer but then I remembered choking in the trunk of Louis’s car. I would have given up the secrets of the atom bomb to get out of there.

***

“WHAT ELSE YOU TELL HIM?” Fearless asked.

We were back in the sterile living room. Ted was tied up with the same sheets that had bound BB.

“I, I told him I didn’t know why you were lookin’ for me,” BB said. “And then he beat me so bad that I had to give him something. I had to.”

The expression on my friend’s face was impossible to read. BB saw something there that scared him, because he shrank in his chair.

“Who you tell about bein’ here?” Fearless asked at last.

“Nobody.”

“You already give us up to a killer, brother. Don’t lie too.”

“I just told him that you was gonna call. If I didn’t he would’a killed me.”

“That’s what you told him,” Fearless said. “Who did you tell that you’d be here?”

“Nobody, man. Nobody at all.”

“Uh-uh.” Fearless shook his head. “And you know how I know that?”

BB shook his head too.

“Because this white man come up in here after you. He wasn’t goin’ door to door lookin’. He knew right where you were.”

“What is this place?” I asked.

“It’s a house my father’s church bought as a home for some of its old people. It’s a church house.”

“And how’d you get here?”

“I went to my father after you found me. I told him that I needed to hide. He had the keys and gave them to me.”

Fearless glanced at me and smirked. There was too much blood and pain in the room for me to share his humor, but I knew what he meant. We had a path to follow now. And following was always better than being stalked.

“What about you?” Fearless asked Theodore Timmerman.

“Fuck you.”

“That’s all right, brother. Yeah. You just keep on sayin’ that. But I’m sure your mama don’t want them to be the last words on your lips before you die.”

“You’re not gonna kill me,” Teddy said, I thought rather hopefully.

“No,” Fearless agreed.

He crouched down next to the chair Teddy was tied to. Then he took a long finger and jabbed it lightly in the center of that dark cloud in Timmerman’s chest. The pain shuddered through Milo’s ex-agent like a quake through a dying engine. He tried to inhale but his lungs stalled and a dribble of blood appeared at the corner of his mouth.

“You taste that?” Fearless asked. “That’s the end comin’ up outta you. All I got to do is leave you here, man. That’s all, and you’ll be dead before sunrise.”

Timmerman was still trying to recover from the deep hurt that Fearless had pointed out. He took small breaths, jammed his eyes closed, and clenched his jaw tightly.

After a few moments of this agony he looked up and said, “Fuck you.”

My friend laughed and shook his head.

Ted Timmerman had won Fearless Jones’s respect.

32

FEARLESS REMOVED TIMMERMAN’S shoes and pants, gagged him, and bound his hands behind his back. I drove Ambrosia’s Chrysler up the driveway next to the big impersonal house and Fearless took our captive and pushed him on the floor of the backseat.

“You better not let nobody but Jesus know where you light next time, Barty,” Fearless suggested at the back door.

“What you gonna do wit’ him?” BB asked.

“Don’t worry ’bout him. Worry ’bout yo’self, man.”

I opened the door to the car but then I closed it again.

“BB.”

“Yeah, Paris?”

“Tell me about Rikki Faison’s house.”

“What?” he asked with a weak grin and slight shrug.

“Don’t fuck with us, BB. Tell me about that house and what you were doin’ there.”

“You got to go, Paris,” Bartholomew complained.

“Fearless,” I said.

“Uh-huh,” he replied. He got in behind the wheel and I ushered young Prince Perry back inside the church house.

“Tell me about Minna, man,” I said after the door was closed behind us.

“She was my girlfriend, that’s all. We been messin’ around for three, four months.”

“And?”

“And . . . well. One night she said that her brother heard that I was related to Aunt Winnie. She said that we could get a hold on her that we’d be able to make a big payday. Big.”

“So what you do?”

“I got together with Kit and we hatched up a plan.”

“What plan?”

Bartholomew stared into my eyes. His visage was a rueful one. I think he wanted to unburden his heart.

He shook his head instead.

“No, man. You might find out along the way, but if Aunt Winnie ask you you tell her you ain’t heard it from me.”

“I hope you know what you doin’, brother,” I said. “Call Milo’s number when you know where you gonna be. And don’t forget to use the name Honeyboy. Don’t use your own name.”

You could see that he didn’t want me to leave him alone there. Being tortured will bring out the communal spirit in most men. But he didn’t want to beg. At least he had that much pride.

***

WE DROVE TO GENERAL HOSPITAL and pulled into an alley across the street. It was closing in on seven-thirty by then and so the alley was empty. Fearless untied Timmerman, took him out of the car, and set him up against a wall.

“You can come after us or sign yourself into the emergency room across the street,” my friend advised.

Then he climbed back into the car and we drove off. Through the back window I could see the white man struggling down the alley. I wondered what his decision would be.

“That boy got some nuts on him,” Fearless said as we cruised down State Street.

“In his head.”

“Well,” Fearless opined. “Yeah. Most’a your brave men is a little bit crazy. Either that or they pushed up against a wall. But I got to hand it to your boy there—he not backin’ down for nuthin’.”

We got the home address of Esau Perry from his son. We told BB that it would be better if we found out from his father that night who he had spoken to about his whereabouts.

Esau’s house was on Piru Street, not far from his car lot. It was a rare brick home, with a fireplace and patch of lawn not even big enough to sun on.

Fearless knocked on the door and we heard a young child squealing from inside. A few moments went by. It was almost fully night by then. The last shreds of daylight were far off on the western horizon, a jarring combination of ember-orange and deep blue.

The door opened and Esau stood there, still in his coveralls. The child chirped out a glad note from somewhere in the house.

“Yes?”

“Mr. Perry,” I said. “Sorry to bother you at night, sir. But we have a problem that we thought you might want to know about.”

He knew something was up. He knew that he was involved too. That’s why he didn’t slam the door on us or at least ask me more about what I meant. Instead of a challenge he stood aside for us to enter.

He led us into a kitchen that was painted and furnished all in yellow, under a yellow light. There was a large young Mexican woman sitting on a small chair playing with a little brown boy who resembled Henry from the comic strips.

“Hey, Son,” Fearless said.

The boy looked up at my friend with a sense of confusion and wonder and said, “Hi.”

“Take him up to his bed, Trini,” Esau said to the woman.

“Okay, baby,” she replied, speaking volumes about their relationship with two small words.

The boy protested verbally but he let Trini pick him up and carry him out of a back doorway. As they left, Son held out his arms toward Esau. The older man’s arms moved toward the boy, saying good-bye and reaching too.

“How’s BB?” Esau asked after Trini and Son were gone.

“He might be dead if Fearless here wasn’t faster than Jesse Owens at a Nazi barbecue.”

“That white man hurt him?”

“Oh yeah,” I said. “He installed a sun visor over his eyes.”

“Shut up, Paris,” Fearless said.

“No. No. I wanna know why a father would send a man like that out to kill his own son.”

Esau went to the kitchen counter and poured himself a shot from a quart bottle there. He downed the drink and poured another.

“He took Son.”

“What?”

“He come out here and took Son.”