“Livin’,” Fearless repeated.
Fontanelle smiled, took our money, and went to find the keys.
WE DIDN’T SPEND more than an hour in our new home. Two seven-minute baths, canned soup heated on the gas range, and we were out of the door.
Milo had found out from the white bailbondsman that Leon Douglas had taken a place on Orchard Street just a little south of Vernon Avenue. It was on a small half-lot, but that didn’t matter much because the house was no larger than a shack. The paint was so faded and worn that it was hard to tell if the place had been white or tan or blue.
“Ain’t that your car parked on the lawn, Paris?” Fearless asked.
It was. I wondered if Elana went along with the wheels. Had he killed her? I doubted it.
“Paris?”
“What?”
“What you wanna do?”
On my own I watched or lied or misrepresented. I never took danger head-on if there was a second choice. Fearless was the opposite of me; he moved ahead as a rule. He might use a back entrance or even surprise, but no matter what, he was always going forward.
I considered going up to the front door, but then Leon Douglas returned to my mind. He was an engine of destruction, a stick of dynamite ready to explode.
“Let’s watch for a while, Fearless.”
“How come?”
“Maybe he’s got some accomplices in there. These are desperate men. If we walk in and find ourselves outnumbered, they ain’t gonna let us stroll.”
Fearless didn’t look convinced, but he sat tight. We had a good relationship in the field. He would call me the intelligence officer, while he was the man with the heavy artillery.
We moved down to the end of the block to watch the house from a distance. That street was populated by black people from the South. Almost everyone in that neighborhood was from someplace down in the western South. Texans, Louisianans, some from Arkansas. Southern neighborhoods, even in the North, were friendly in the extreme.
Small children were drawn to us first.
“Mister, why you sittin’ in your car?” a boy no more than three asked Fearless. He was wearing a T-shirt with horizontal rainbow stripes but no pants or underwear.
“Waitin’ for somebody,” Fearless replied.
“He waitin’ for somebody!” the boy yelled at a gang of kids who were standing in the driveway of a nearby house.
The children then wandered down to the patch of grass at the curb next to our car. One girl, probably the boy’s older sister, brought down a small pair of blue pants for the brave scout.
“He don’t like his clothes,” the shy six-year-old told us while tussling with her brother.
They asked us a few more questions and then set up camp there next to the car, playing games and shouting. I was nervous having them there, but Fearless calmed me.
“It’s like camouflage, Paris,” he said. “Nobody gonna be suspicious of kids tearin’ and rippin’ around.”
After the little kids the older ones came by. First it was the twelve-year-old boys on their bicycles and then their older sisters. The girls were young and budding nicely. They were part children and part women, leaning up on Fearless’s side of the car.
“Could you take us to the store?” one fifteen-year-old asked.
“Not my car, honey,” my friend said easily.
“But if your friend wanted to, would you take us?”
I was beginning to get nervous because there was a definite logic to that line of guests. First the babies, then the children, next the boys on bicycles that they dream can fly, after that the young girls who feel the stirrings of womanhood — wary mothers and angry fathers wouldn’t be too far behind.
“That him, Paris?” Fearless asked.
The tree trunk of a man was now wearing yellow pants and a loose-fitting, striped red shirt. He also wore a straw hat, for a disguise I guess. He walked leisurely to my car, dropped into the driver’s seat, and released the emergency brake. By the time he’d rolled down to the curb, the door was shut and the engine turned over. It was a poor way to treat an automobile, but I had no desire to tell him that.
“Follow him?” Fearless asked.
“No. No,” I said. “Let’s go check out the house.”
“I thought you said he might have some friends in there?”
“They don’t know us.”
“What about the girl?” Fearless asked sensibly.
“That girl ain’t nobody’s friend.”
I started the car and rolled away from the curb.
“Where y’all goin’?” the little scout shouted.
TAKING FEARLESS’S QUESTION into account, the first thing we did was knock on the front door. I didn’t think that there was anybody there, but it was always good to be certain.
To my surprise the door swung open.
Elana Love looked better every time I saw her. She was wearing a short brown bathrobe that barely covered the tops of her brown thighs. Her hair was wrapped in a towel. That lovely flat face considered us a moment and then smiled.
“Hi, Paris. Who’s your friend?”
I walked past her into the house. Fearless followed my lead, closing the door behind him.
“Elana,” I said. “We got to talk.”
“Do you mind if I put on some clothes first?”
“Go right ahead,” I said. “It ain’t nuthin’ I ain’t already seen, and I don’t think it’ll come as any surprise to my friend neither.”
Elana put on a petulant look for a second, but she didn’t really care. She dropped the bathrobe and squatted down to pull a floral-patterned dress out of a satchel next to the couch. She stepped into the brightly colored shift and buttoned up the front. I stole a glance at Fearless while she was dressing. He didn’t seem to be concerned at all. As long as I had known Fearless he proved at least once every day that he was a better man than I.
The room we had entered was almost the entire house. There was one door at the back, which I suspected was to the toilet. That was the only thing missing. There was a stove, a couch, a bed, and a bathtub in the room where we stood, making the house reminiscent of many a country home I had seen. We were standing near a table covered with dirty dishes, crumbs, newspapers, and other, less recognizable, trash. A line of tiny black ants had crossed the floor and then scattered across the table, foraging among the treasures they found there.
“How’d you find me?” Elana asked.
“We didn’t,” I said.
At first she was confused by my answer, but then a little twinkle told me she understood.
“You found Leon,” she said.
Her intelligence did not set my mind at ease.
“I came back to see you the same day I took your car, you know,” she said with a smile that made me wish it were true.
“What for? You tasted my gold fillin’ when you was kissin’ me and you wanted that too?”
“Don’t be like that, Paris. I came back to give you your car and say I was sorry, but the store was burned down and nobody knew where you were.”
There was something easy about Elana Love. All you had to do was talk to her a minute or two and a whole new life appeared before you. Maybe everything could be different, I thought. But then I remembered that Leon might be back any minute.
“We want the bond, Elana,” I said.
She sighed and went to the couch, seating herself squarely in the middle.
“You got a cigarette, honey?” she asked Fearless.
He just stared at her, a soldier on reconnaissance duty.
I gave her a cigarette and lit it.
“You were lookin’ for me and found Leon instead?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said, crossing the right leg over the left.
I sat down on the wooden arm of the calico couch and nodded for her to continue.
“Leon came back around your place just before I did. He thought you an’ me were together and figured if he waited long enough, one or the other of us’d show up. It was just about the only smart thing he ever did in his life, and that was just a stupid mistake.”
“Was he with Conrad Till then?” I asked.
“Naw, he had already taken Conrad to my apartment, lookin’ for me. I guess I must’a shot Conrad when they was comin’ after you and me in your car —”
Fearless grunted at that. I couldn’t tell if it was admiration or commiseration with the dumb luck of the dead man.
“Conrad was afraid to go to his own house at first because he was on parole. He thought he could get cleaned up enough so that he could say he was sick without bleedin’ all over whoever came to the door.”
“So then you took Conrad to his place…,” I prompted.
“They made me. They said they was gonna kill me if I didn’t do what they said. At first it was just to take care’a Conrad’s wound.”
“They didn’t mind that you were the one who shot him?”
“I told ’em that it was you shootin’ out the windah,” she said.
“So now Douglas thinks it was me killed his friend?”
“I’ont know what he’s thinkin’,” Elana protested. “Anyways, I worked on Conrad’s wounds, and then Leon forgot how mad he was and started lookin’ at me like a man looks at a woman.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said.
“You cain’t blame me,” Elana said as if we had a relationship that had gone bad. “I’m alone out here. Men all gruff and mean, lookin’ at me like I’m a piece’a meat.”
“Look how you dressed,” I said.
“Look how you just pushed your way into my house,” was her retort.
I didn’t have anything to say to that.
“You see,” Elana said. “There’s people out there kill me in a second. Sure I took your money and your car. But I left the five dollars in your shoe. And if you weren’t out after me now, you’d be safe while my life is still on the line.”
“I wouldn’t be here if your boyfriend didn’t burn down my motherfuckin’ store,” I said, getting hot.
“Leon didn’t burn down your store.”
“If he didn’t, then who did?”
“I don’t know. But he asked me the same question when he grabbed me off the street.”
“That could just be a lie,” I said.
“Why he wanna lie about that? Why he wanna burn your place down anyway?”
“So what happened with you and Leon?” I asked.
“We went to see William. Leon fount out where he was through a fence he knew.”
“Leon the one messed up his face like that?”
“What are you, a cop?”
“Just talk, sister,” Fearless said.
The timbre of his voice drew a strange stare from Elana.
“Yeah,” she said, answering my question. “Leon slapped him around a little but —”
“But then he realized that the good William was tellin’ the truth and you still had the bond,” I said to cut off whatever lie she was going to tell.
“If you know so fuckin’ much, then why you askin’ me?”
“Does Leon have the bond?”
Elana’s nod was as subtle as a first kiss.
“What’s he plan to do with it?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she lied.
“Is the bond here?”
“No,” she said. “He like me, but he don’t trust me.”
“Smart kid,” I said.
“So we got to get the bond from this Douglas,” Fearless said to me.
Elana Love was beautiful, but she had an ugly laugh, cruel and cold. “You’re pretty, Paris’s friend, but you don’t have the stuff to take Leon Douglas down.”
Fearless gave her a smile and a salute.
“What did you do after you braced Grove?” I wanted to get the conversation back to business.
“We went to my place, but the cops were there. I guess somebody found somethin’a mines at Conrad’s.”
“Why did your boyfriend kill Fanny Tannenbaum?” Fearless asked.
For the first time Elana lost her poise. “What?”
“Don’t act like you don’t know what he’s talkin’ about,” I said. “Somebody killed her. I’m almost sure that Leon and his friend the cowboy went to Fanny’s house after we got away. He stabbed Sol and ran. Cowboy or Leon just went back to finish the job.”
“I don’t know about Tricks, but I been wit’ Leon almost every minute,” Elana said uncertainly. “An’ why go after her if we already had the bond?”
“Maybe he wanted more,” Fearless suggested.
“No,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Because. Because Leon knows a man who’ll pay a lotta money for just one bond. He thinks that if he can follow down one, then all the rest’a the money that the old Jew stole will be easy to find.”
“I don’t get it,” I said.
“Sol took money from somebody he worked for.”
“Who?” I asked, just to see what she would say.
“I don’t know. Leon says that there’s this guy wanna get that bond ’cause he thinks that the serial numbers will lead them to a lot more money.”
“When does this guy pay off?” I wanted to know.
“Leon’s the only one who knows him. We have to wait for Leon to make the deal.” Elana didn’t sound satisfied with Leon having control.
“You know Leon might remember how you tricked him and tried to cheat him after he gets his hands on all that money,” I suggested.
Elana thought over the possibility.
“But he’s the only one could get the money,” she said.
“No,” I said. “Your friend Grove knows how too. He’d be a lot easier to deal with.”
I was sure that Elana was thinking of how to get the bond and go to her old lover. If Fearless and I had walked out right then, Leon would have been bondless and dead by sunset.
“You wanna throw in with me and Fearless?” I asked.
Elana was wondering about the offer when I heard a familiar-sounding motor drive up almost to the front door. A car door slammed. Four seconds later the front door flew open. Leon Douglas, gaudy as a butterfly and ugly as a stump, filled the doorway with an instantaneous murderous rage.
22
ELANA LOVE MOVED to a neutral corner where she could wait to see which side would win. I could hardly blame her.
Leon scanned the room quickly. He registered Elana, now in a dress, passed over me without a pause, and then looked at Fearless. He may have recognized his former cell-block neighbor, or maybe not.
The fireplug gangster moved even faster than the first time I saw him. He went straight at Fearless and clocked him on the jaw with a blow that sounded like a twenty-pound hammer on stone. Fearless almost flew backward, hit the wall, and slid to the ground. Douglas turned toward me then.
“I remember you,” he said.
I reached for Sol’s pistol, then remembered that I’d left it under the front seat of Layla’s car.
