Fearless Jones (19 page)

“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.

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.

Leon Douglas saw my futile gesture and smiled a smile as cruel as Elana Love’s laugh.

Elana gasped. I looked at her, and so did Douglas.

She was looking toward the wall where Fearless had regained his feet.

The grunt of amazement that issued from Douglas’s deep chest was probably the closest thing to a compliment that he ever gave.
He closed on Fearless again and connected with a left hook that even Rocky Marciano would have feared. Fearless went down
halfway, but this time he was up before Douglas regained his balance.

Again Douglas lunged, but this time it was with the intention of catching Fearless in a bear hug. Before the thug could get
his arms into position Fearless connected with a one-two to the head. The gangster leapt again. This time he got his arms
around Fearless and squeezed. He would have certainly broken Fearless’s back except that my friend had his left hand free.
With that mighty mace he landed body blows to Douglas’s right side. One, two, three — and there was no effect — four, five,
six — Leon went down on one knee. By seven and eight Douglas let go and fell back with his fists up but his speed greatly
diminished.

Fearless smiled.

That was the exact moment of the greatest elation that I had ever experienced. Leon Douglas had already beaten me. He had
defeated my heart and my spirit. I couldn’t imagine anyone standing up to his murderous brutality.

And then Fearless smiled.

Leon came at Fearless again. But Fearless was connecting with his own hands of steel. He hit Douglas again and again. You
could see the ugly man’s body shake under the power of the war hero’s blows. In a final act of courage Douglas raised both
arms and came after Fearless. The latter opened up with a barrage of blows to the rib cage. Douglas crumbled, tried to rise,
fell to the floor again, and began to shake as if he were entering the throes of death.

“Where he got the bond?” Fearless demanded of Elana as he flipped Leon over on his back.

The loser had his arms clenched tightly around his ribs and he was talking to himself, though I couldn’t understand what he
was saying.

“In his, in the back of his pants,” Elana stuttered.

Fearless tossed Douglas back over on his stomach and pulled up his gaudy shirt. There was a brown envelope stuffed halfway
down the back of his pants.