FEARLESS AND FANNY RETURNED at about four. Before I could tell them about the call Fearless started in.
“Paris, it was on the car radio.”
“What?”
“Conrad Till, that’s what. He’s dead.”
“Dead?”
“Yeah. They said about him gettin’ found on account of a, a what you call it, ’nonymous tip. Yeah. Then they said that they took him to Mercy Hospital, but he died in the night a’cause of the wound.”
“He was shot up pretty bad.”
“Yeah, he was. And maybe it killed him too. But you know, I been shot worse than that myself, an’ it didn’t near kill me. I mean maybe he had a weak heart or sumpin’, but I don’t think so. But that’s not what I wanted to tell you.”
“What then?”
“The cop that talked to the newsman. That there they said was Sergeant Latham.”
“Damn,” I said.
“That Latham gets around,” Fearless said.
“What does it mean?” asked Fanny.
“Does Rya still work at Mercy?” I asked Fearless.
“Prob’ly. You know they made her head nurse in the baby section. That’s the kind’a job you hold on to.”
“Maybe we should talk to her.”
“Okay.” With that Fearless went off to the kitchen to call.
“Do you know a guy named John, um, Manly?” I asked Fanny. “Said he was a real-estate agent, but I don’t know.”
“No. Why?”
“He called while you and Fearless were gone.”
Fanny shook her head at me.
“The only weird thing was he didn’t ask for Sol. It was like he knew that he was in the hospital, at least not here. You sure you don’t know his name? John Manly. Talks all proper like he learned English in another country.”
“What can it all mean?” she quailed.
“He’s probably just what he said,” I reassured her. “He probably got your name off of a mailing list and wants to get your house to sell.”
“I’m not interested,” Fanny moaned. “All I want is Solly home and to get on that airplane.”
“What airplane?” I asked.
“We’re going to Israel,” the old lady said. “We have been planning to go all the time he was in prison. We would talk about it in our letters. Now that he was home we had only to buy the tickets and make our plans.”
I had a thought or two about a convicted embezzler planning to flee the country a few weeks after he got out of stir, but whatever he did, or didn’t do, wasn’t important to me right then. I was angry because John Manly was so rude, because Latham had threatened us. I was getting pretty mad, and anger in my small frame is almost like courage.
“How was Sol?” I asked.
“He opened his eyes. Mr. Jones told him that he was protecting me, and he smiled. But he was still too weak to talk.”
“Was he happy to see you and Gella?”
“Oh yes, very much. He loves that girl as if she were his own daughter.”
“What did the doctor say?”
Fanny’s face clouded at that question. She didn’t want to say the words. I understood. I didn’t want to push her. When Fearless returned we were both relieved.
“I called her, Paris,” Fearless said. “She said that we could meet her on her break at eight-fifteen tonight.”
“Meet her? Didn’t you ask her about Till?”
“No. You didn’t say that.”
“What?” For an instant I was angry, even at Fearless. But that was okay. I had to stay mad so I didn’t fall prey to fear. I was in it up to my neck and scared was an anchor that would drag me down to death.
WE DROPPED FANNY OFF at her niece’s house again.
“Too many people seem to know your address,” I told her. “And none of them would I trust with my grandmother.”
That got a smile from Fanny. She touched my wrist with her short, thick fingers.
“Where to?” Fearless asked when we were on our way.
“To where my bookstore used to be.”
Fearless drove because I wanted to keep my mind free to think us out of our troubles. He stayed on main streets in mostly colored neighborhoods so there wasn’t much of a chance of being stopped by the police.
The sight of the burnt-out lot still tore at my chest.
“Damn, man,” Fearless said. “That’s bad. Why he wanna burn you down like that?”
“I don’t know. But it break my heart to see it.”
We went to the convenience store next door, Antonio and Sons. It was owned by an Italian family, but five times out of six you were likely to run into Theodore Wally at the cash register. Theodore had been a neighborhood kid who used to come into Antonio’s on milk-and-bread runs for his mother. Antonio liked him. He gave him a job sweeping when Theodore was twelve and increased his responsibilities over the years until he was a fixture there. I don’t believe he was over twenty-five, but he looked to be forty going on sixty.
“Mr. Minton,” Wally said. His fleshy face revealed deep concern over my misfortune. “They been lookin’ for you.”
“Who has?”
“Hey, Fearless,” Theodore greeted my friend and then answered me. “The fire department investigation man and the police.”
“What they want?”
“The fire might’a been because of gasoline, they said, and they wanna know if you owned that place and if you had the bookstore insured. The police was just askin’, they said.”
Theodore looked worried, so I asked him, “What you tell ’em?”
“I said about the man who hit you. I mean I had already told them before and I thought that they would think it was somebody tryin’ to hurt you burnt down the store. That’s all right, right?”
“That’s okay,” I said. “You right too. If they think somebody was after me, then maybe they’ll blame him for the fire. Maybe they’ll find the motherfucker and put him in jail.”
Theodore smiled uncertainly. He wasn’t a dumb man, but he was very shy, more comfortable with numbers and merchandise than he was with looking people in the eye. Antonio loved him because he was a whiz at keeping books and remembering inventory.
“You remember those Messenger of the Divine folks had the store down the street?” I asked.
“Uh-huh. Yeah. They used to buy two jugs’a High Mountain red wine every Thursday before their meetin’. That was the blood.”
Fearless grinned at that.
“Did you know Reverend Grove or Father Vincent?”
“T’say hi.”
“You know where they went when they left here?”
“Uh-uh. No. But…”
“But what?”
“Dorthea Williams used to go to the meetin’s. She used to go on Thursdays and then some other times too.”
“That’s Dorthea from the beauty parlor across the street?”
“Uh-huh. Yeah.”
“How much these barbecue potato chips, Theodore?” Fearless asked, holding up a big bag of chips.
“Twenty-nine cent, but you could just take ’em, Fearless. Just take ’em, okay?”
“Thanks, man.”
I shook Theodore’s hand, but after the usual grip he didn’t let go.
“You need money, Mr. Minton?” the clerk asked me.
“Why? You wanna reach in the register and gimme some?”
“I got some savin’s. I got a little money put away. If you needed to get on your feet…”
“Thanks, Theodore, but I need more than you got to give. But let me ask you somethin’?”
“What?”
“How come you call Fearless Fearless, but you still call me mister?”
11
ACROSS THE STREET and down half a block was a small building with a plate-glass window for a front wall. That was The Beauty Shop, owned by Hester Grey and run by her daughter Shirley. There were three chairs set side by side before the window where a black woman could get everything from gold frosting on her hair to application of the newest skin bleaching techniques.
Shirley was smoking a cigarette, and Dorthea, her number two girl, was putting curlers in a woman’s hair. They were all talking loudly.
From outside it was really nice. The three were almost yelling, you could tell by the posture they took to speak. After yelling they’d laugh hard, but you couldn’t hear a sound through the thick glass. It was like experiencing the deep pleasure of music without being able to hear it.
When we opened the door, a brief moment of mirth reached us before the women clammed up. The room smelled of cigarettes and hair spray. It wasn’t a pleasant odor, but it conjured the memories of many a woman I had known.
“Fearless,” Shirley Grey said. “Paris.”
“Afternoon, ladies,” I said.
Both Shirley and Dorthea had big puffed-up hairdos. That was where the similarities ended. Shirley had a lot of flesh with no figure to speak of and a permanent scowl on her face. She thought she was a raving beauty though. She always wore tight dresses that showed more than anyone wanted to see.
Dorthea was an African beauty who had been brainwashed into thinking she was ugly by movies and magazines. She had straight blond hair puffed out like a white country singer and all kinds of costume rings and beads. Her breasts were trussed up in a brassiere that pushed them out like battering rams, and her long skirt was so tight that she walked like one of those Chinese women with the destroyed feet. Still, her face was elegant with deep brown skin and high cheekbones. Her eyes slanted up, and her teeth were as white as the enamel on a new gas stove.
She showed a lot of teeth when she saw Fearless.
“That was too bad about your store, Paris,” Shirley said. “What happened?”
“I don’t know, babe. I came home and it was gone.”
“Where were you?”
“Out bein’ a fool.”
Shirley shook her head and sucked her tooth. She and her mother had lost all the men in their lives. The father ran off with the number three chair girl. Her brothers were both institutionalized, one by the prison system and the other by the armed forces.
“Shirley, can I borrow Dorthea for a moment?” Fearless asked.
We decided while approaching the beauty shop that Fearless would ask for Dorthea. Women were much more likely to say yes to him.
“Can’t you see that she’s workin’?” Obviously Shirley didn’t see it our way.
“Oh, that’s okay,” Dorthea spoke up. “Mrs. Calhoun don’t mind waitin’. Do ya, honey?”
Up until then I hadn’t looked closely at the woman in Dorthea’s chair. She was older and with a stern, strawberry-brown face. She had white-rimmed glasses and hard eyes. Her stern countenance was cause for surprise because it broke out into a big smile for Dorthea and the prospect of her talking with a good-looking man.
“Go on, honey,” Mrs. Calhoun said. “Me an’ Shirley can talk mess without you for a while.”
Before Shirley could object, Dorthea took off her white apron and scooted toward the door. We were right after her.
Outside, the three of us convened at the curb, but I might just as well have been the fireplug as far as Dorthea was concerned.
“What you wanted, Fearless?”
“Did you know them Messenger of the Divine peoples?” he asked.
The light of love faltered in her eyes.
“Did you?” I chimed.
“What’s this all about, Paris?” Now that she was angry she talked to me.
“Dorthea, honey, I don’t wanna fight with you…”
“I ain’t fightin’ I just —”
“I don’t wanna fight, so I’ll cut this short. I need information on them Messenger people because I think it was somebody after them came and burnt down my store. You know I lost everything and somebody got to pay.”
“Them’s religious people, Paris,” Dorthea said. “They wouldn’t do nothin’ like that.”
“I don’t think they did it,” I assured her. “But somebody didn’t like ’em did.”
“Who?”
“Did you know Reverend Grove?” I asked.
“Why should I tell you?”
“Five dollars,” I said.
Dorthea looked left and right, then she said, “You gotta car?”
“Right across the street.”
“Take me around the block then.”
We got into Layla’s Packard. Fearless drove and I sat in the back.
“What you wanna know?” Dorthea asked.
“Do you know Grove?”
“Yeah. William. He from Arkansas. He came in as Father Vincent’s head deacon, but after just a year he was so popular that he forced Vincent into semiretirement and took over the whole ministry even though they say he ain’t really ordained. That man can preach. He make you feel like he’s God and you the only one he care about.”
“But he took the church away from the pastor was there?” Fearless asked.
Dorthea nodded. “Brought in his own deacons and everything.”
“Did you know a woman around there called Elana Love?” I asked.
“What about her?” She certainly did, and she didn’t like her either.
“Did you know her?”
“She was all over William. I mean, sometimes they’d go in the back while Vincent was deliverin’ the sermon for him. It was just sad the way they was.” Dorthea curled her lip the same way that Shirley had.
“Did they do anything but sermons there?”
“What you mean?”
“Anything illegal?” I was thinking that the church had something to do with the money or bonds or whatever and maybe Dorthea had heard about it.
She said, “No,” but there was something else on her mind.
“Come on, Dorthea. Ten bucks.”
“You won’t tell?”
“Swear,” I said, drawing an X across my heart with my finger.
“Brother Bigelow from over there sold me a pearl ring one time for fifteen dollars. It was a real nice one. He said that he got stuff like that sometimes and that if I knew ladies in the beauty shop wanted some good jewelry cheap, I should bring them to him.”
“Did you?” I asked.
“Uh-uh. It’s one thing just buyin’ a ring, but I didn’t want to be a fence.”
Fearless turned to her and smiled.
“Good girl,” he said.
She would have beamed at any compliment he gave.
“Why did the church move away?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Really. But it was all of a sudden. One day they was just gone. Everything. You remember.”
“Do you know where they went?”
Dorthea looked me in the eye. She was measuring me.
“Why should I tell you, Paris?”
Before I could think of a lie Fearless said, “You can tell me, honey.”
“Well,” she said. “I like you, Fearless, but I wanna see my money before I say anything else.”
I counted out five wrinkled one-dollar bills followed by a five.
“They was in Compton three weeks ago, down on Alameda somewhere. At least that’s what I heard.”
“You know the address?”
“Uh-uh. But you could find it if you looked.”
