Fear Itself - Walter Mosley

I knew a dozen people who went by that name. You met a new one every day or two. It was as common as Smith or Jones—more so among colored people. But still . . .

“Your husband’s not a chess player, is he?”

“He is. How would you know that?”

“And he’s from Illinois but he was born in Mississippi?”

“Where is he, Mr. Minton?” Leora sat up, her sorrow dissipating by the moment.

“No, uh-uh,” I said. “You tell us what’s goin’ on first.”

“Brown is my husband,” Leora said, “but you already know that.”

“You call your husband by his last name?” That was Fearless.

“Everybody does,” I said before Leora could get it out.

“Have you seen him, Mr. Minton?”

“I thought you and he were havin’ problems?”

“Yes, but not like you think,” she said. “He was a gardener at Hampton College when I went there. Nobody liked Brown very much but I loved him and we were married after I graduated. We had Son and moved back to Illinois. But Brown had a, a . . . he had a medical condition but we didn’t know it, not then. At first I just thought that he was just getting used to being married and a father. But . . . He was offensive and rough at times, but then he’d be wonderful. Finally, one day he turned on Son. We decided to put him in a hospital where I could be with him. I sent Son to stay with my mother —”

“Rose,” I said.

“You’ve met her, so you know that she isn’t able to give the twenty-four-hour care that a young child needs.”

“But Aunt Winnie could,” I said.

“Paris, will you let the lady finish?” Fearless chided.

“Yeah. Go on.”

“Well, you know most of it. I mean, you may have heard about Brown but you don’t know him. He’s the most amazing man I’ve ever met. He’s funny and smarter than anybody I ever knew at Hampton, even among the professors. He’s great with his hands. . . . He was in the asylum for a year and a half. I worked full-time to pay the expenses. I only got to see Son once a month or so, I was working so much. Finally we heard about a juju woman down in Louisiana. We were told by a white doctor that he had seen great improvement in a Negro patient who went down to her.

“We went and she treated him with herbs and the like, and there was enough of a change that we could start our life over again. I went to Aunt Winifred then, but she refused to give Son back. She said that Brown was crazy and violent and that she wouldn’t put her nephew into harm’s way like that. Here he’s my son and she had the nerve to question me bringing him to harm.”

“Why didn’t you and Brown just go get him?” Fearless asked.

“I told Brown to stay back in Illinois,” Leora said. “He’s better . . . but even a sane man might come to violence if someone tried to keep him from his son. I thought he was still back home until you just said —”

“So Winifred refused to let Son go back to you,” I said. “Then what?”

“She said that she was going to raise him. I tried to reason with her and she went to a lawyer, Lewis Martini. He’s the one that put my mother’s wealth into Winifred’s hands.”

“Winnie got the power of attorney on Rose?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Damn. She got you comin’ and goin’. Use your own family’s money to keep everybody in line.”

“She thinks that she knows best so there’s no arguing about it.”

“In steps Bartholomew Perry, son of the dear departed Ethel Fine Perry,” I said.

“Yes. Esau had my cousin BB working at the car lot and he didn’t like the work. So he told me that he’d take Son out of there for ten thousand dollars. Once I got him I could go back to Illinois, and Winnie would have a lot of trouble trying to take a child from his mother and father across state lines.”

“I thought you were broke?” I asked.

“He said that I could pay over time,” she said. There was a slight catch in her throat, though. The lie couldn’t make it out of her mouth unscathed.

“I bet he did. So then BB hires Kit to get in there as a gardener,” I said. “Kit takes Son and brings him to BB. How does Maestro Wexler get in with it?”

“You know about that?”

“When Paris digs his claws into a problem he find out everything,” Fearless said. “I told you that.”

“BB was going out with Minna at the time. He told her about what he was doing, because he didn’t realize that she had any interest in his aunt.”

“So it’s just coincidence that she’s in his bed when he plans a kidnapping from the woman her father wants to get the reins on?”

“Yes,” Leora said, and I’m sure she believed it. Why would she think that she was the perfect pawn for the machinations of the white siblings?

“And how does Kit know BB?”

“BB sold some trucks to Kit.”

“So Kit knew BB from the used car business?” I asked.

“BB moved stolen cars,” Leora said. “That’s how he made money on the side.”

“But not no ten thousand dollars,” I said. “And surely not no fifty grand.”

Fearless spread a blanket out over the distraught woman.

“Maybe we should let her sleep,” he suggested.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “But lemme ask you just two more questions.”

“Yes?”

“Did Kit bring Son to you after he took him out from your aunt’s house?”

“No, it was like you said before. Kit brought Son to BB and BB turned him over to me. I was so happy to see him. All he wanted was to go see his father.”

“Then why you wanna go and ask Fearless to look for Kit? You already had what you wanted. You had your son. And why would somebody wanna kill the Wexlers?”

Leora turned on her back and stared at the ceiling. Maybe she had hoped that the question wouldn’t come, that we’d overlook the obvious. I wanted to press Leora but I didn’t think that Fearless would stand for it. He was a gentleman and would never allow a lady to be tormented except in the most extreme circumstances.

“Son wasn’t all Kit took out of Aunt Winnie’s house.”

“No? What else he take?” I knew she was going to mention the pendant, and I was ready to argue about the worth of the stone and the fact that Winnie didn’t seem that worried about it.

“A book,” she said, and a whole section of my logic and my mind collapsed.

“What book?”

“A handmade book,” she said. “Bound in leather with sheets of goatskin instead of paper. Handwritten and dating from the early part of the eighteenth century.”

My heart was beating fast enough to burst. I glanced at Fearless. He didn’t seem to have any reaction at all. Maybe he didn’t connect my prize with Winifred’s loss.

“Why would he take that? Was it valuable?”

“It’s a treasure,” Leora assured me. “More valuable than all the other riches of my family put together.”

I really didn’t want to hear any more. I stood up and went to the door. I pushed it open and looked outside as if maybe I had heard something. I was looking for cool air to clear my head but the night was still hot.

“. . . IT’S A FAMILY HEIRLOOM,” Leora was saying to Fearless when I turned back into the room.

My mind was racing for an answer while she spoke. I didn’t want to give up the book. I wouldn’t give up the book. It was mine. I found it.

“. . . for more than two centuries,” Leora said. “The first woman to write in it was Gheeza Manli, the first woman of the Fine family born here in America. From her time until now our family has kept a diary of our American experience.”

“You say it was started in about seventeen hundred?” I asked.

“No, she said eighteen hundred,” Fearless said.

“Eighteenth century,” Leora corrected.

Fearless didn’t know what she meant so he sat back and let us talk.

“So you sayin’ that you got a goatskin book that couldn’t have more than a hundred fifty, two hundred pages that’s got two hundred fifty years of family entries?”

“Three hundred pages,” she said. “And there are four books. They’ve been in our family for generations. The book that was stolen was the first one, the one that Gheeza Manli wrote in. Winifred’s the current keeper. She was going to teach Son to do it.”

“Why not you?”

“I didn’t want to live at home, and Aunt Winnie wouldn’t let the books out of the house. Anyway, she detested Brown because he always stood up to her.”

“And that’s what Kit stoled?” Fearless asked.

“Yes. BB told him about it. When we were kids Aunt Winnie would take us to her secret library and tell us about our family history. BB was never very interested but he knew where it was.”

“Did the Wexlers know?”

“I don’t think so.”

“What about Oscar?”

“What about him?”

“Where does he come into the story?”

“He’s the one who told me about the book being missing.”

“Does Winnie know about it?”

“Not yet. The only reason Oscar knows is that it just happened to be time for him to clean out that little room. Aunt Winnie calls it a shrine.”

My respect for Bartholomew Perry’s intelligence rose then. He sent in a thief to grab his family’s most precious treasure, and if the thief got caught he could say that he was there trying to get a mother back together with her son. If he was lucky Winifred would be so distracted by the loss of Son that she wouldn’t know about the real theft until Maestro Wexler called.

Just about smart enough to get himself hung, my mother always says.

35

FEARLESS ELECTED TO TAKE LEORA to Esau’s. I stayed behind in Milo’s office. It was my time to shine. I knew almost everything, even what people didn’t know. The one piece that was missing was the identity of the man who had killed the Wexlers and Kit. I would have liked to know that man’s face and name for my own security and peace of mind.

But the biggest problem was Winifred Fine’s family journal. That was what everyone was after. That’s why people were getting killed. And I wanted that book for myself. The only thing I had ever wanted more was the ability to read. When I was a child I fantasized about a book like that, a book written by intelligent Negro minds that told the truth about some shred of our history. I didn’t care so much about slavery or racism. I didn’t want to know about abuses as much as I wanted to know what people were thinking, my people. Everybody else had it: the English, Irish, French, and Russians; the Chinese, Indians, Tibetans, and Jews; even the Mayans and Egyptians had hieroglyphics, and the Australian Aborigines had paintings that went back before all of them. The stolen book was all of that and more for me.

Was it worth my life? No, but maybe I wouldn’t die. There was no one except possibly Fearless who knew I had the book. He wouldn’t turn me over. All I had to do was make sure I knew who the threat was. If I knew the threat I could avoid the problem. That’s what I told myself.

Greed will make even a meek man into a fool.

I CALLED A NUMBER and a man I knew answered, “Fine residence.”

“Tell me about Brown.”

“Excuse me? Who is this speaking?”

“You know who I am, Oscar, and you know what I’m talkin’ about too. So let’s not be stupid this late in the game.”

“Are you crazy, man?” the once-rich butler asked.

“I got this number from a man that got it from Brown. You’re the only one in the house he’d be callin’, and that’s because you brought him out here to find that book before Winifred found out it was gone.”

Silence is almost always an admission, usually of guilt. When you run out of retorts, replies, rejoinders, and responses there must be truth on the table with you out of money and cards.

“What do you want?” Oscar asked.

“Why did you send Brown after those white people?”

“I did no such thing. If he went after them that was his decision. I only told him about that Kit Mitchell. I told him that Kit stole the book, that if he found it he could keep Winifred from ever threatening to take his son again.”

“And what you supposed to get out of all that?”

“That book means more than the life of any member of this family. We must have it.”

“You could give Maestro what he wants,” I suggested.

“He doesn’t have the book. I’ve already spoken to his agent. What is it that you want, Mr. Minton?”

It was a good question, a very good question.

“I don’t know, Oscar. I really don’t. Did Leora know that you had gotten in touch with Brown?”

“No. I called him because I knew that he would do anything to protect his family. She wanted him to stay away for the same reason.”

“Why did you give Leora Kit Mitchell’s address instead of Brown?” I asked. And then, “Or did you tell him too?”

“I did not,” Oscar said. “I told Leora because she’s reasonable. If Kit had the book she could at least start to discuss terms with him. Who can tell what a man like Brown might have done?”

“You think he killed the Wexlers?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“What do you know?” I asked.

“That Kit Mitchell came in here and stole our family history. He acted as if it was Son he was after but the book was his real intent. I didn’t mind about the child. A boy should be with his parents.”

“And what about the book?”

“Do you know what it contains?” Oscar asked.

“Yeah. It’s a diary. A family history.”

Oscar grunted at my quaint understatement. “We are the only Negroes in all the New World who can follow our heritage back to the beginning, back to Africa. I know of six generations of my African heritage across a dozen different nations.”

“Shouldn’t something like that be in a museum?” I asked. “Or maybe the Library of Congress?”

“It’s ours. Our history, not theirs. The Negro population isn’t ready yet to receive it. They wouldn’t know the value of such a treasure—not yet.”

“I see. And you think it’s worth the multimillion-dollar deal Maestro Wexler wants to make.”

“It’s worth everything.”

From what Rose had said, Oscar was a man who had thrown away everything once already. I wondered if Winifred was of the same opinion.

“What will you give me if I can get the book?” I asked. “I mean, I hear that Maestro Wexler is willing to pay fifty grand.”

“We will double the offer.”

“You talkin’ for Winifred?”

“She will do what is necessary.”

“Well, I ain’t seen a book like that. But I’ll put it up on the top of my list. I sure will.”

I put the receiver in the cradle and sat back in Loretta’s swivel chair. Milo’s hunger for money was worming in my gut. At the same time I wanted to steal the Fine family chronicle for myself.

I had about twenty-five hundred dollars left from the money I’d been given. Twenty-five hundred was good money in 1955. Even if I had to share it with Fearless it meant a year of easy living and no worries.

But a hundred thousand dollars was a whole lifetime. I could buy a house, build my business, and be set for life. And I had the book right in the trunk of Ambrosia’s car, with Fearless Jones as my Cerberus standing guard.