Fearless Jones (7 page)

“I, I have a spare in the trunk,” Morris said. “There’s no room.”

“I can take them,” the younger woman said. “I drove my car from home.”

“I forbid it!” Morris shrieked.

He took a step toward her. She shrank back a half step. Morris grabbed her by the arm, and Fearless tensed up. I was afraid
we’d be right back in jail, but Fanny saved the day.

“Get your hands off of her,” she commanded.

Morris clenched his fist hard for a moment, then he let his wife go. He locked eyes with me. I could see his rage at being
forced into line by a woman. He muttered something and then stalked off down the alley.

“I’M GELLA
, the younger woman said on the way to the car. “Hedva’s niece.”

“Paris Minton,” I said. “And this here is Fearless Jones. Thanks for takin’ us.”

Gella smiled and looked away. She was shy and near ugly, but there was something fetching about her awkwardness, something
that made your hands feel that they wanted to reach out to make sure she wouldn’t fall or get lost.

Gella drove an assembly-line prewar Ford. It was painted black and didn’t even have a radio installed. A spare machine, it
was spotless and unadorned. Fearless and I sat in the backseat, while Fanny and her niece rode up front in silence. It was
only a short ride, ten or eleven minutes. On the way we passed many white and turquoise and blue little houses, all sporting
neat lawns and white cement driveways. It was around six o’clock, dinnertime for working people. Through many windows and
open
doors, you could see brown-skinned and some white-skinned people eating at family tables.

A few men were standing out in front watering the grass, or maybe lugging a trash can. Any man that saw us drive by stopped
what he was doing and looked. That’s because Los Angeles was still a small town back then, and most residents were from the
country somewhere. They treated their surroundings as familiar and friendly, and they wanted to know who was driving on their
street.

There I was swallowing the slow trickle of blood from the cuts inside my mouth, being driven through a blue-collar paradise.
I had the irrational notion that I could just ask that gawky white woman to stop the car and I could open the door and walk
out into a peaceful life, leaving the trouble I was in behind. But before I could speak up, we were pulling into the Tannenbaum
driveway. Layla’s pink car was still parked at the curb. Fearless was there next to me, pressing his swollen jaw. There was
no escape.

When we were all out of the Ford, Fearless went up to Fanny and shook her hand.

“I promised your husband that I wouldn’t let anybody rob you, Mrs. Tannenbaum,” he said. “So if you need me…”

Fanny looked up at Fearless with an expression that many women had for him. There was trust and hope and even faith in that
gaze. Gella and I exchanged worried glances.

“Have you eaten?” Fanny asked us.

“Why no, ma’am,” Fearless said.

“Hedva,” said Gella.

“What, dear?”

“I have to go home.”

“Go on then, I’ll call you.”

“But…” Gella let the word hang in the air, obviously meaning that Fearless and I were the reason she could not leave.

I didn’t blame her. Her uncle had been stabbed, she had just been to the police station, her husband was angry and scared
enough to have raised his hand to her. And then there we were with our disheveled clothes and bloody faces, looking like thugs.

“Go home to your husband,” Fanny said flatly. “I’m fine.”

“But…” Gella said again.

Fanny raised her voice and fired words in a language I did not understand. The meaning was harsh though — that was evident
by the lowering of the younger woman’s gaze.

“I’m sorry, Auntie,” the girl said. She looked at us and hunched her shoulders in an apologetic sort of way. Then she went
to her car and got in.

As the engine turned over, Fanny said, “Come in, gentlemen.”

We followed her through the front door we’d been to earlier that day. This time we were ushered in with a smile.

Fanny was five feet tall, tops. Her husband had maybe an inch on her. The house reflected their height with its low ceilings
and small chairs. The rooms were tiny, even for me.

She sat Fearless and me down at a round table in an alcove off of the kitchen. The meal came quickly and in courses. We had
cabbage stuffed with ground beef, potato dumplings that she called knishes, chicken soup with rice, and chopped chicken livers
on white bread. It was all delicious. For me, a man who had faced death twice in the last two days, it was a king’s feast.

After she made sure that we were eating, Fanny made a call. She wasn’t on the phone very long, and when she got off she was
weepy and sad.

“That the hospital?” Fearless asked.

Fanny nodded and took a chair.

“Is he okay?”

“He came awake for a little while,” Fanny replied. “They said that he’s sleeping now and shouldn’t have company. Not even
me. Not even me.”

“I’ll go down there and wait with you if you want,” Fearless said. “We could just sit outside and wait. If you’re close family,
they’ll let you wait all night.”

“No,” she said. “I’ll sleep tonight and go in the morning. But thank you.”

It was kind of quiet after that. Fearless got up and served himself more soup, and I played with my fork, wishing I had a
home to go to.

“Your niece didn’t want to leave you alone with us,” I said just to make some noise.

“You’re not white and not Jewish. She’s heard all kinds of stories, and she’s a suggestible girl. But she has a good heart.”

“But maybe she’s right,” I said. “You don’t know us. Don’t you think it’s strange that two black men show up at your door
after another black man tries to murder your husband?”

“Stop tryin’ t’scare her, man,” Fearless told me.

“No,” Fanny said. “No, it’s all right. I’m not afraid of you, Mr. Minton. You helped Sol even though I was screaming and yelling.
You did too, Mr. Jones. If I would have come on a bleeding man and somebody yelled at me, I would have run away. You went
to jail. They beat you. I’m not afraid of you. It would make more sense if you were afraid of me.”

“Why we gonna be afraid of a pretty young girl like you, Fanny?” Fearless asked with a grin.

“Because all I had to do was nod my head and you would be murderers in jail.”

That pulled Fearless up short a second, but then he smiled again.

“Well, I ain’t ascared’a you, and you don’t need to be ascared’a us,” he said. “We wouldn’t hurt nobody like you. It’s like
I said, I’m gonna make it my business that nobody else messes with you.”

“How you plan to do that, man?” I said, fed up with how silly they both were. She
shouldn’t
have been taking strangers into her home, and Fearless was nuts to want to protect somebody he didn’t even know.

Fearless gave me his sour look. For someone else that look could have meant trouble, but it was nothing to me.

“You got a wallet with no money in it,” I continued, “a borrowed car that’s low on gas even when the tank is full, you don’t
have an apartment, and my place is burnt to the ground. You an’ me lucky to keep anybody from messin’ with us.”

“Oh my,” Fanny declared.

“It don’t matter about a house, Paris. I’ll find us some place to stay. And I don’t need no money to stand up to some coward
wanna be messin’ wit’ old folks. If I have to, I’ll pitch a tent right here in the front yard and take a shovel for my bayonet.”

“Grass salad and earthworm steak, is that what you gonna eat?” I taunted.

“Excuse me,” Fanny Tannenbaum said in a small voice.

Fearless and I both turned our heads toward her. It was an odd thing to realize that we had begun to ignore her the same way
that her nephew-in-law had ignored us earlier, the same way that white people had been ignoring us our entire lives.

“Yes, Fanny?” Fearless said.

“You gentlemen can stay here for a few days if you wish.”

I was stunned by that. I had done some traveling in my life. Fearless had been on three continents and then some, but neither
one of us had ever experienced that kind of generosity. White people didn’t open their doors to questionable young black men.
Hell, there weren’t many black folks I knew that would be so brave, or foolish.

“It’s the least I can do,” Fanny said. “You saved Solly’s life and… and…” — she hesitated and then drew a deep breath — “…
and I am afraid to stay here alone.”

“You got your niece and nephew a couple’a blocks away,” I said. I was surprised that she offered us a place to stay, but that
didn’t mean I wanted to take her up on the offer.

“That putz couldn’t save himself from walking down a hill,” she said disdainfully.

It wasn’t that funny, but Fearless laughed loud and long.

“What’s that you say, Fanny?” he crooned. “He can’t walk wit’out fallin’ down?”

The old lady started laughing too. She laughed so hard that she doubled over in the chair with her head on her knees. She
forced herself to stand, still laughing, and went to a cupboard where she located a pint bottle of peach schnapps. She poured
all three of us generous shots in squat glasses. The liquor was strong, and good. We finished off the first pint and put a
serious dent in a second.

I was smiling with them after a while, feeling pretty good. So when Fearless said, “Sure, Fanny, we’ll stay here with you,”
I didn’t see anything wrong with it. After all, we were already there, and it was after nine; we didn’t have a home to go
to, and I still had some questions to ask about Elana Love.

I made a little nod and said, “Well, if we got to go, we might as well be eatin’ good and feelin’ high.”

FEARLESS GOT IT
into his head to wash the dishes. Fanny offered to help, but he said that he missed simple chores after his twelve weeks
in jail. He’d already explained to her that he’d gotten into an altercation with three mechanics that tried to cheat him.
I thought that that would turn the sweet old lady against us, but instead she said, “My Sol was in jail. It’s a bad place
where many good men go.”

SHE AND I RETIRED
to the sitting room while Fearless hummed and played in the soapy water. Sol had a glass box filled with English Ovals, an
imported cigarette. I smoked a few of these while we talked.

“I take it you don’t like Gella’s old man,” I said.

She made a quizzical face that suddenly became bright. “Oh,” she said, “you mean the putz.”

“Yeah.”

“He’s a coarse man,” Fanny said. “Not rude or foul-mouthed but unfinished, without manners, like a pig farmer or a policeman.”

“You don’t like the cops either?”

The schnapps made conversation easy.

“When I was a child,” she said, “the police, the army, and the pig farmers were our enemies. Morris isn’t bad, he’s just stupid
about things. He’s always coming around offering to work on the house, to cut the grass. He’s telling me that he wants to
help when
Sol” — she sighed and looked to the ceiling — “when Sol was in prison. He’s always telling me he wants to help, but I tell
him no. He thinks I’m too old to be bothered with a checkbook or the plumber, but I’m not.”

“What was that he said just before he stomped off?”

“I don’t remember,” Fanny said, but she did.

“Swatted?” I prodded. “Swear?”

“Svartza,”
she whispered.

“What’s that mean?”

“It means black, but not in a nice way,” she admitted.

“Oh.”

“I would never be bothered with him, but Gella loves him — because he’s fat.”

“Huh?”

“That’s true,” she said, widening her eyes as much as she could. “She loves him because he’s so big and fat she thinks that
he can protect her.”

“Protect her from what?”

“Her family was from Estonia, like us. Only they moved to Germany after the First World War. Her father, Schmoil, Solly’s
brother’s son, was a rich man and smart.” Fanny pointed at her temple to show me the degree of his intelligence. I realized
then that she also had had a good share of schnapps. “We left Europe after they moved. Schmoil stayed on and did business.
He owned three newspapers but sold them when he saw what was coming. He put all of his money into his art collection and moved
it to Switzerland. Then he moved his wife and
kinder
to Vienna. He thought that they would be safe there.”

“That don’t sound too safe.”

“A wife, a grandmother, three uncles, and seven children,” Fanny said, “and only him and Gella survived. They were all betrayed
by a Jew, but my Solly saved Schmoil and Gella.”

“He did?” I said. I found it hard to believe that the little old man I’d seen could have saved anybody.

“When Schmoil and Gella ran, my Sol hired smugglers in Italy to put them in barrels and take them to Africa. Then he bought
them passports and brought them here.” Fanny had been whispering, and I could see why. Whatever he did, it didn’t sound legal.

“Wow,” I said. “Damn. That’s a great thing. That why they put him in jail?”

“No. They said he was a thief,” Fanny said sadly. “I don’t know. He sold his tailor’s shop and went to work for those goy
accountants.”

“Who?”

“Lawson and Widlow. He went to work for them.”

“If he was a tailor, why’d they need him?”

“He did his own bookkeeping for years, and he went to work for almost nothing. He stayed late every night finishing everything
they gave him. He stopped laughing with me, and then one day the police came and take him away.”

“And then,” I said, seeing my opening, “after he was in jail a while, a woman named Elana Love came to your door.”

“You know her?” There was surprise and anger in the old woman’s voice.

“You see, Fanny,” I said, “Fearless an’ me aren’t really gardeners…” I related, more or less, the story of me and Elana Love.

“And this man, her boyfriend,” Fanny asked when I was through, “he’s the one that hurt Sol?”

“I don’t think it was him in the cowboy hat, but he was probably the other one. I’d bet on it.”

“But you will find out because you want the money back for your store,” she said.