“Captain?” the unseen sentry said.
“Kavenaugh,” Kavenaugh replied.
The door came open and we were in a large, sun-filled room, not in the bowels of the Earth. I was disoriented by the sunlight and high ceilings. The man who opened the door wore a dark blue uniform complete with a pistol in a leather holster. He was white, hatless, twenty, and pitifully acned. His only duty seemed to be waiting at that door. It was all very odd.
Kavenaugh pointed across the room and said, “There you are.” He took a sheaf of papers from his leather satchel and handed it to Milo.
“Good luck,” Kavenaugh said. And with that he turned to go back the way we had come.
On the other side of this room was a long wooden table behind which sat two uniformed men. Behind the guards was a cage that contained about a dozen men of all races and ages. Some smoked, a few hunkered down on their haunches, resting against the flat and black iron bars. There wasn’t much fraternizing among these men. They were a footstep away from freedom and had no time for small talk.
“Paris!” someone shouted. I saw him then, Fearless Jones, his hands reaching out to me, his smile cut in half by a metal slat. The guard said something to him, but that didn’t stop him from reaching and smiling.
When we arrived at the table Milo produced a long sheet of paper from the sheaf Kavenaugh had given him. It was covered on both sides in tiny print. There were red and black seals on the document, making it look official. He placed the paper down between the guards and said, “Tristan Jones.”
One of the guards, a man with a red and chapped face, picked up the sheet and pretended to read. His partner, a handsome rake with black hair and a pencil-thin mustache, stared hard at me.
“We had to chain him hand and foot just to get him down here,” the red-faced man said.
Milo did not reply.
“Waste’a money to pay his fine,” Red Face continued. “He’ll just be back in a week.”
Milo lifted his chin an inch but gave no more recognition to the man’s advice.
“Niggers always come back,” the guard said in one final attempt to get a rise out of us.
Milo was quiet and so was I. For some reason these men didn’t want to let Fearless go. He’d done something. Not something bad enough to be held over for, but something. If they could get Milo to blow his cool or Fearless to start ranting in his cage, then they could make a case to refuse release.
Seeing Fearless reminded me of a dozen times I’d seen him hard pressed and unbowed. In a Filmore District flophouse, bleeding and in terrible pain from the cop-inflicted knife wound, he said, “It’s okay, man. Just gimme a few hours to sleep and I’ll be fine.”
I saw him face down three men who had gotten it into their heads to disfigure a pretty boy who had taken away a girl they all wanted. The men threatened to cut Fearless too. “Maybe you will,” he said to them, “and then again, maybe you won’t.”
Fearless was more free in that iron cage than I was, or would ever be, on the outside.
I met Fearless in San Francisco after the war. His dress uniform was covered with medals. Around him were three young ladies, each one hoping to be his friend that night. I bought him a drink, saying that it was because I respected a soldier when really I just wanted to sit down at the table with those girls. But Fearless didn’t care. He appreciated my generosity and gave me a lifetime of friendship for a single shot of scotch.
“Fuckin’ four-F flat-footed fools,” a snaggletoothed white man was saying to me through the bars. “They get mad when a black man’s a hero ’cause they ain’t shit.”
The rake gave the white prisoner a stare, which was answered by a clown’s grimace. When I nodded to the white con, he smiled in answer, Nuthin’ to it.
Fearless was released from the cage. His irons were taken off. From under the table the rake brought out a gray cardboard box and handed it to Fearless.
When the guard pointed at a pen and a stack of forms, Milo spoke up.
“You should check your property before signing the release, Fearless.”
“Aw, that’s all right, Milo,” Fearless said in that careless friendly voice of his. “Why they wanna steal my paper wallet? Wasn’t no money in it in the first place.”
“Check anyway, son.”
6
MILO LEFT US in front of the municipal building. I was wearing the same black slacks and loose yellow shirt I had on when Elana Love dropped in on me — the only clothes to my name since the fire. Fearless wore gray pants and a black silk shirt with two lines of blue and yellow diamonds down either side of the chest. As I said before, I’m a small man, five eight and slim. Fearless is tall, over six feet, and though he’s slender, his shoulders warn you about his strength. He’s also a good-looking man. A group of passing black women attested to that with their eyes. Even a couple of white women glanced more than once.
But it wasn’t just a case of simple good looks. Fearless has a friendly face, a pleasant openness that makes you feel good. If you look at him, he’ll nod and say good day no matter who you are.
“Fearless,” I said.
“Before you say anything, Paris, I have to have me a cheddar cheese omelet, pork patty sausages, and about a gallon’a fresh orange juice. I got to have it after three months under that jail.”
“Momma Tippy?” I asked.
“They ain’t nobody else,” Fearless said, grinning.
Momma Tippy had a canvas enclosed food stand on Temple Street not twelve blocks from where we stood. In normal times we would have driven there or at least taken the streetcar, but, finances the way they were, we walked.
Fearless limped slightly, but he could walk at a fast clip. On the way, he regaled me with tales from the county lockup. He told about the man he had to beat to be left alone and about the guards who didn’t like him because he never got bothered or upset.
“I tried to tell ’em that I was a soldier,” Fearless reasoned. “That I knew how to take a order if I was in the stockade. But somehow they was mad just ’cause I wasn’t sour and moody. Can you believe that?”
Momma Tippy, a small nut-brown woman from Trinidad, served up seconds and thirds for Fearless at no cost because she felt bad that he had been locked up in a cell.
“M’boy didn’t deserve it,” she said. “Dey always be takin’ ’em. N’you know it ain’t right.”
After commiserations and eggs, Fearless reached across the table and put his hand on my shoulder.
“I know you need me, Paris,” Fearless said in an unusually somber tone. “And whatever it is I’m’onna help ya. ’Cause you know I got it.”
“Got what?”
“At first I was mad that you didn’t pay my fine. But then I was talkin’ to Cowboy —”
“Who?”
“That white dude said about me bein’ a war hero.”
“The one at the courthouse?”
“Yeah. He asked me if you owed me money, and I told him no. Then he asked was we related or if I had ever pulled you outta jail. I didn’t tell ’im ’bout them cops — that’s between us an’ them dead officers. But I started to think that over the years you done helped me again and again and I just kept on takin’ like some kinda dog can’t do for himself.” Fearless pointed a long finger at a spot over my head. “And that’s wrong, man. You don’t owe me to pay my bail. Uh-uh. So from now on it’s even Steven. I’m’a help you and pay you back, and the only time I’ll come to you is for a good meal or a good laugh.”
It wasn’t true. Fearless couldn’t stay out of trouble. But still, I was the one who was wrong. He proved that by forgiving me.
I told him about Elana Love and Leon Douglas.
“Damn, that’s some costly lovin’,” he said when I was through. “So you worried that they still gonna be after you?”
“That, yeah, but I also need to build back my store. I mean, damn, I didn’t do nuthin’. Dude kick my ass then shoot at me down the street. Burn down my store. He got to pay money for that.”
Fearless was looking down at his hands. He didn’t nod to agree with me or say anything at all.
“What you thinkin’ ’bout, Fearless?”
“Jail.”
OUR FIRST STOP WAS the Bridgett Beauty Shop on LaRue. Layla Brothers, Fearless’s last girlfriend before he got arrested, worked there fighting the kinks out of black women’s hair. She seemed happy to see Fearless, though she hadn’t even written him a card while he was in jail.
“You know, honey,” she said unashamedly to my friend, “I been goin’ out with Dwight Turner, and he’d’a got jealous if I started writin’ letters back and forth to you.”
Fearless didn’t seem to care. “We need some wheels, Layla,” he said. “Do you mind if we use your car?”
“ ’Course not. Here.” She took the keys from her purse. “What you doin’ after?”
“Well,” Fearless hesitated, “Paris and I might need the car for a couple’a days.”
“That’s okay. I can use my mama’s car. But you got to sleep at night, don’t you?” Now that Fearless was out of jail, Dwight Turner wasn’t even a consideration.
“Yeah, but…”
“But what?”
“Paris’s place burnt down, and you know I don’t have no apartment. So until we get some business done, we bound at the hip.”
Layla was taller than I with skin the color of unburnished brass. Her long hair had been dyed gold. She was prettier than she made herself, buxom and thin. She looked at me with a sneer that tried to be a smile and said, “I ain’t that greedy.”
Fearless laughed and touched her elbow.
He said, “I understand, babe,” then walked off with me and her keys.
LAYLA’S CAR WAS a big Packard. The pink sedan had a straight eight engine that guzzled gas at the rate of ten miles a gallon. We cranked down the windows and lit up Pall Mall cigarettes. Fearless had a perpetual grin on his face, and I was pretty happy too. It had been an act of will for me to leave him in that jail cell, mind over matter. I knew when we were driving that we were supposed to be together, rolling along like two carefree dogs with the wind in their faces.
The Tannenbaum house was just off Brooklyn Avenue in East L.A., the once-Jewish neighborhood that was being repopulated by Mexicans. The house was a smallish yellow job. With two floors and six windows facing the street, it had a few bushes but no trees. The lawn was lovely, however, green and manicured.
“Nice place,” Fearless said as we walked up the concrete footpath to the door.
“Any place is nice if it got walls and don’t smell like smoke,” I said.
“Any place is nice if it ain’t got bars an’ it don’t smell like piss an’ disinfectant,” Fearless corrected.
I knocked on the door, wondering what kind of lie I could use on whoever answered. I expected thirty seconds at least before anyone showed. But the door swung open immediately. A tiny woman wearing a white blouse like a man’s dress shirt and a long flannel gray skirt stood there. There were spots of blood on the blouse.
When she saw our faces she was petrified. An elderly man lay on the floor behind her dressed exactly the same as she was, only the skirt was a pair of trousers instead. There was blood coming from the side of his head and also from his left shoulder.
“Leave us alone!” the woman cried, trying to push the door closed. “Don’t kill us!”
“What happened?” Fearless asked. He held the door open against her feeble shove and took a step across the threshold.
“I called the police,” the woman warned.
Fearless hesitated a moment, no more, but in that delay I realized that jail had hurt him.
“Go away!” the woman cried.
Fearless was already kneeling down over the man and peering into his pained face. I came to his side. I mean, I couldn’t very well run when I had brought us to that door. At any rate, Fearless had the keys to Layla’s car, and running on foot in L.A. is like bullfighting in a wheelchair.
“Get me something to put under his head, Paris,” Fearless said.
Behind me was a parlor of some sort. I grabbed the cushion off of a couch while Fearless said to the woman, “I need a bandage, something to stop the bleeding.”
“Please don’t kill him,” she cried.
Fearless grabbed her arm, forcing her to look down into his eyes. “I’m not gonna hurt him, but he might bleed to death if you don’t bring me a bandage or sumpin’ to stop the bleedin’.”
“Oh,” the woman uttered. “What should I do? What should I do?”
Looking around for an answer, her eyes lit upon me.
“Go get the bandages, lady,” I said.
“Oh. Oh yes.” She scurried along, slowed by the long skirt, through a door that swung open and back.
“Who are you?” the man was asking Fearless as I shoved the cushion under his head.
“Fearless Jones.”
“Are you here to rob me?”
“No.”
The man turned his head to me and asked, “What about him?”
“That’s Paris,” Fearless said. “He’s a friend.”
The pale man nodded in relief.
“What happened to you?” I asked.
“They came to take the money,” the man said to Fearless. “They vanted to, but I said no.”
“Here it is! Here it is!” Mrs. Tannenbaum said, rushing through the swinging door. In her hands was a small white pillowcase.
“Take it, Paris,” Fearless snapped. “Put some pressure on that shoulder.”
“Why did they do it? Why did they do it?” Mrs. Tannenbaum was chanting. I didn’t like her color. It was way past Caucasian on the way to chalk.
“They were trying to rob you?” I asked Sol.
“They vanted the bond, the money.” There was a dreamlike quality to his voice. He was going into shock.
He reached up and grabbed Fearless by the fabric of his silk shirt.
“Don’t let them rob Fanny,” he said.
“It’s a bet,” Fearless said.
“Oh God,” the wife cried.
Sol shuddered and tried to rise, but the pressure I was putting on his shoulder restrained him. The pain of the exertion made him wince, then he passed out.
There was a grim look on Fearless’s face. I knew from experience that that meant trouble for someone.
“He’s dead,” Mrs. Tannenbaum said simply and quietly. A whole lifetime of dread ending with a hush.
“Police!” a man’s voice commanded.
I tried to think my way back to the bookstore when it was still standing, but there was no escaping the hand that caught me by the shoulder and flung me to the floor.
