THE DAPPLED SUNLIGHT on apricot-colored walls was the most delicate thing I had seen in a very long time. The lilac-scented sheets were soft and light. Even the mosquitoes silently batting against the outside of the window were a feathery tickle in my mind. But mosquitoes led unerringly to the notion of blood, and blood would always remind me of Conrad Benjamin Till.
Someone dragged a chair across a floor downstairs, and a dog barked. The aroma of coffee blended with lilac. I sat up and looked out of the window. There I saw East L.A. with its carob and magnolia trees, its unpaved sidewalks, and tiny homes flocked with children. Pontiacs and Fords and Studebakers drove slowly toward their goals. Brown- and white-skinned people made their way.
“Hey, Paris,” Fearless hailed when I came to the doorway of the kitchen. He was sitting just outside the back door in boxer shorts and a T-shirt on a chrome-and-vinyl chair, drinking coffee from a porcelain cup.
“Good morning,” Fanny Tannenbaum said. She was standing at an ironing board, working the wrinkles out of my pants.
I was in my underwear like Fearless, but I wasn’t embarrassed.
“What time is it?” I asked.
“Almost nine,” Fearless and Fanny said together. It was like they were old friends, even family.
I walked into the room and then jumped across the floor because of the low growl to my right. It was the mongrel from the night before, chewing on a big beef bone and warning me to keep my distance.
Fearless got up from his perch and came in to join us. “Shut up, Blood,” he intoned. The dog whimpered and ducked his head.
“I named him after last night,” Fearless continued.
“Mr. Jones told me that I should ask questions to you, that he didn’t explain things so good,” Fanny said.
“He did, huh?”
“Have you found out anything?”
“You know a guy named Conrad Till?” I asked her.
“No. Who is he?”
“He’s a black man, maybe one of the ones who came after you and Solly. Somebody shot him —”
“Oh my!” Fanny cried.
“But he wasn’t dead. We called the ambulance. He’s probably fine.”
Fanny sighed with relief. It had been a while since I’d been around someone who would care about a stranger, even when that stranger might have done her wrong.
“Did you find out why they hurt my husband?” she asked.
“No,” I said.
“It’s all so crazy,” Fanny said. She took my pants and folded them. I reached over to take them from her. It was funny, I didn’t mind standing there in my drawers, but I was embarrassed to put pants on in front of her. I turned sideways, and she, sensing my embarrassment, turned to look out of the window.
It felt like there was a sock in the right front pocket, but when I put my hand in there, I discovered a large wad of what I knew was money. Small bills, I figured, that she kept in a can used for household expenses.
“When did you come in?” I asked Fanny.
“Morris brought me over at seven on his way to the bank.”
“Who?”
“Gella’s husband. All the way he’s telling me what I should be doing. I should be careful. I should leave well enough alone. I shouldn’t let whatever Solly’s done get me in trouble. I should tell someone if I know something is wrong. I think he’d give Gella over to the police if he saw her walking on a red light.”
“You don’t like the police, Fanny?” Fearless asked.
“I have seen the soldiers. I have seen them kill. I saw what they did to you. The police are swine.” The vehemence in her voice left no room for argument.
Not that I wanted to argue with her. The best cop I ever saw was the cop who wasn’t there.
The doorbell was three quick high notes, a pause, and then a long tone.
Blood jumped up and started barking. Worry knitted itself in Fanny’s face. I shared her emotion, but Fearless just walked to the front door in his blue boxers and opened it. I went to the kitchen door, Fanny came up behind me.
I couldn’t see who it was, but Fearless knew him.
“Hello,” he said, then he paused and called out, “Fanny, do you want to talk to Sergeant Latham?”
“Uh… um… oh… uh—what does he want?” Fanny asked.
Fearless turned and said something and then turned again. “He just wants to talk, ma’am. I think he wants to know more about what happened yesterday.”
“I guess,” Fanny said.
She and I came into the living room.
Big, blocky, and blond Bernard Latham walked in. He wore a light tan suit that was a bit large even on his frame, designed for quick movement. When I saw him I took a half step backward. That was the fear I’d inherited from his interrogation.
“Did you find out who attacked my husband?” Fanny asked.
“Yeah,” the sergeant replied. “You and your two darkies here.”
Fearless’s greatest strength is also his greatest weakness; his fists had a mind of their own. Given the right circumstances Fearless could hit a man so fast that later on, when the man recovered, he couldn’t remember what had happened.
Reluctantly I moved to stand between Fearless and Latham.
“If you have come to my house to insult my friends, you can leave now,” Fanny said.
I liked her more every minute.
“I thought you said that you just met these boys yesterday?” Latham asked.
“They have no place to stay, they saved my husband’s life, and for that you beat them. What else could I do but offer them a bed?”
Latham grinned and chortled. “Maybe they’re in that bed with you.”
“In what?” I asked, me, a man without a paddle or rudder.
“Her husband’s a convicted embezzler,” Latham told me. “He’s all mixed up with the underworld. A real Jew. Good enough that he took the money and covered the trail so well that they could only get him for the tip of the iceberg. But there’s millions missing. They just have to find out how he made it disappear.”
Millions. My brain became a fine screen, filtering out everything but the notion of money.
“That’s a lie, and you’re a liar,” Fanny said in that tone of hers. “Solly told me that he never stole anything, and he wouldn’t lie to me.”
I’d’ve lied to Saint Peter for just a hundred thousand dollars.
“Is that all you have to say?” the cop replied.
Fanny was too angry to speak.
“Maybe you think you can get away with it. But I’m watching you.” He expanded his hands to include me and Fearless. “All of you.”
“Every cop I ever seen been watchin’ me, officer,” Fearless offered. “I once spent three months on a Texas chain gang for spittin’ on the sidewalk instead’a the street.”
“If you could do that, I guess you’d kill for some good money, eh, son?” Latham asked.
“I wouldn’t rob ya,” Fearless replied. “But I would spit on you after you was dead.”
That was the line right there, the line that should never be crossed with a cop. Once you stood straight up and looked him in the eye he had to knock you down, or the whole system would stop working.
The problem was that Latham couldn’t knock Fearless down. He didn’t have backup, and they were in close quarters there in the doorway. I knew from his war stories, and from that dark San Francisco night, that Fearless was trained to kill professional killers hand to hand. If Latham tried to do something, Fearless would do something back, and there was nowhere for a man to run after he’d killed an active member of the LAPD.
I was trying to think of a way to head off the inevitable when Fanny started screaming, “Get out of my house, you Cossack! Get out of here! Out of here!” She ran at Latham, and I leaned back against Fearless.
“Get off ’a me, Paris!”
“You can’t help Fanny if they got you.”
Fanny was pressing to get Latham out of her house, but he didn’t budge.
“I could take you all down now,” Latham assured us. “But I’ve got time. We know the crime, we know the criminals. You won’t be free for long.”
“And where is it you’d take us to?” I asked. The question I hoped would be a buffer between the cop’s stupidity and Fearless’s rage.
“What?” Latham asked.
“You gonna take us to the Hollywood jail?”
Latham’s right eye twitched. That was the whole story right there, that twitch. All I had to do was figure out what it meant.
“If we are not under arrest, then go,” little Fanny said.
Latham took his time staring at her and then Fearless and me in turns. The glare was intended to frighten, and I guess it worked if you consider that I was scared for his life. Finally he left. Fearless stood at the open door, watching him go.
“What do you know about this millions stuff?” I asked our host.
“He made it up,” Fanny said. “He had to. We don’t have that kind of money. And why steal it if not to spend? We don’t have children to leave it to. Why live here?”
“Hmm. Yeah. I don’t know,” I said. “There was once a woman lived down the road from us when I was a kid. She was poor as corn husks, barely kept the flesh on her bones. We all thought that she couldn’t have made more than a dollar a week the way she lived. But she must’a made two, because when she died at eighty-eight they found three thousand silver dollars hid up under her bed.”
“You’re welcome to look under my bed, Mr. Minton.”
10
FANNY HAD CALLED the hospital before I woke up. They told her that Sol was being given a series of blood tests and X rays and wouldn’t be able to have visitors until the afternoon.
After breakfast I spent a couple of hours on the phone trying to get a line on the Messenger of the Divine church. I called every religious group listed in twelve different counties and every soul that I knew. I wanted to ask Reverend Grove a question or two; like when had he last seen Elana Love and was she driving my red Rambler.
There was a certain urgency behind my search because I was bothered by Latham’s visit. Why had he come? L.A. cops didn’t make friendly visits to warn you that they were watching. They didn’t come to the door unless they were serving papers or making an arrest.
So I went on thinking and calling, fretting and drinking Fanny’s homemade lemonade. She spent the morning baking noodle pudding and making meals for later. She told us that cooking calmed her nerves. We didn’t complain. Both Fearless and I were bachelors, and when a woman came around she did very little cooking — food, that is.
Fearless played catch with Blood. They were completely happy roughhousing and relaxing on the sunny lawn. Since he was just out of the lockup, a day in the sun was heaven for him.
At one Fearless took Fanny and Blood to pick up Gella and go for a drive down to see Sol and maybe let the dog have a run in the park. I couldn’t see where they needed me, so I stayed by the telephone making useless calls.
“Hello,” one man answered.
“Council for the Baptist churches of greater L.A. county?” I inquired in my pretend official tone.
“Yes.”
“I was wondering if you could help me find a minister.”
“A particular minister?” the soft-spoken secretary asked.
“A Reverend Grove or a Father Vincent. They’re affiliated with a church called Messenger of the Divine.”
“Never heard of the institution,” he said with quiet distaste. “Doesn’t sound like one of our congregations at all.”
“No Grove or Vincent?”
“What is this concerning?”
“An exorcism,” I said.
“A what?”
“I got a white man locked up in my basement and I wanna see if an old-time Holy Roller can call the devil out of him. That way maybe I can save the world from his evil… Uh-oh, he’s trying to break out of his cage. I’ll call you back.” I hung up and laughed a mean laugh.
Before my venom was through, the phone rang. I had the immediate and irrational fear that somehow the Council for the Baptist churches knew the numbers of the sinners that called them. I let the ringing go on for a while before answering.
“Tannenbaum residence,” I said brightly.
“May I speak to Hedva Tannenbaum, please?” a man asked. He spoke in perfect but not necessarily American English. His tone was haughty, that’s really the only word for it. The words were mannered, but the voice was not.
“Who’s askin’?” I said in response to the voice.
There was a moment’s hesitation and then, “John Manly.” The name didn’t sound right on his tongue.
“Well, Mr. Manly,” I said. “Mrs. Tannenbaum doesn’t want to speak to anyone just now. She’s had a pretty rough time of it the past few days and doesn’t want to be disturbed.”
I was being hard on Mr. Manly for no other reason than that his tone reminded me of the snootiness of the secretary at the Baptist Council.
“To whom am I speaking?” Manly inquired.
“To whom,” I replied, “doesn’t matter. What matters is that Fanny isn’t gettin’ on the phone, so either you gonna tell me what you want or we gonna break off the connection right here and now.” For an instant the image of that bureaucrat sitting at the window of the courthouse flashed through my mind.
“Excuse me? What did you say?” Manly asked.
I realized that, in my anger, I had slipped into the fast-talking patter of my neighborhood. Manly hadn’t understood my brilliant barbs.
“What do you want me to tell Fanny?” I asked, now patient.
“I must speak to her personally. It’s very important.”
“Maybe to you, but Fanny’s got other things on her mind. Does she know you?” I asked.
“What I have to tell her is very important.”
“I’ll give her the message. What’s your number?”
“Tell her now, while I am waiting.”
“No.”
There were big red-and-purple flowers, shaped like bells, clustered on a bush outside the sitting room windows. A sleek green hummingbird appeared next to one of them. From one to another that hummingbird milked five of those flowers before Manly spoke again.
“It’s about business,” he said. “I’m a real-estate agent. I want to know if she’s interested in selling her house.”
“I don’t think she’s movin’ nowhere right now, but gimme your number and she’ll call ya.”
He finally relented and left a number. It was a Hollywood exchange. “Room three-two-two,” he added.
I hung up and wondered about that number on the way to the window. The hummingbird fled at my approach. I could hardly blame him; when a shadow the size of a mountain looms up above you, you run first and worry about what it could be later on — from the safety of your nest. If you had a nest, that is.
