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
