“I wanted to talk to him a little more,” Latham complained.
“This man is under the authority of this precinct, Sergeant. When you arrest someone in Hollywood, you can have a shot.” Obviously Little Big Mouth didn’t like the sergeant.
I followed him to a large room that was cut in two by a metal grate. On the other side of the grate were large metal shelves with cardboard boxes stacked in them.
A door to my left opened. A lanky police officer walked in, followed by Fearless. My friend was glowering until he saw me. Then he smiled.
“Hey hey, Paris.”
I sighed in response. He knew how I felt. His jaw was lopsided from some heavy
I looked around for Latham, but he was nowhere to be seen.
“All right,” the cop who accompanied Fearless said. “You guys can go now. But we know where you live.”
I had given them my address but neglected to say that the building had burned down.
A man from behind the grate brought our confiscated belongings to the window. There wasn’t much. Twenty- nine dollars in my wallet, the keys to Layla’s Packard, and Fearless’s empty paper wallet.
We went out through the door where Fearless had entered and then to a door that led to the street. It was a side door, so it was fortunate, or maybe unfortunate, that they saw us.
“Gentlemen,” she called from down the street.
At first I didn’t know who it was. I saw two white women with a big white man, that was all.
“That’s the old man’s wife,” Fearless said. He waved at her and took me by the arm.
A thought crossed my mind: for seven dollars I could catch a bus to Frisco and get a room for two dollars a night until a dishwashing job came through. It was the thought of a job, though, that reminded me of my bookstore.
“Come on, Paris,” Fearless said. “I gave my word.”
The women approached us. One was indeed the old woman who cried so hard over her dead husband that she couldn’t tell the arresting cops that Fearless and I were not the attackers. The other woman was taller and awkward looking, somewhere in her twenties. They were accompanied by a big, dumpy-looking guy who wore black slacks with a white shirt that wasn’t tucked in very well. The pale skin around his chin was blue, though I would have bet that he had already shaved for the second time that day. He was taller than Fearless but soft looking, shaped something like a bowling pin. His big hands were worth looking at; the fingers were long and held out straight, making his hands resemble those of a stroke victim.
But he was not paralyzed. He shrank back, clutching those hands to his chest when we moved to meet them.
“I’m so sorry,” the elder woman said. “I saw what they did to you. I’m sorry.”
“We’re sorry about your husband, ma’am,” Fearless said gallantly.
“You the one who looked at me in the lineup?” I asked.
“Both of you,” she said. “They kept trying to make me say that you were the ones who attacked Sol. One of them was tall like you,” she said, looking at Fearless, “but he had a bigger face and dead eyes, and he wore a cowboy hat.”
“A cowboy hat?” I said, thinking about the horns in my side mirror.
The old woman nodded. “When I said no, they told me that you would never be able to hurt me again. I was afraid that they were going to kill you.”
“Are you all right?” the younger woman asked. Her homely face made her concern seem that much more sincere.
“We have to go,” the man said, putting his discomfort into words.
“No, Morris,” the older woman said. “I have to talk to these men.”
“You don’t know them, Aunt Hedva. The police said that this one just got out of jail.”
“Didn’t my Sol just get out of prison?” the diminutive woman asked.
“That was different,” Morris said. “You don’t know them. Why were they even at your house?”
“We were makin’ the rounds,” I said. “Askin’ some’a the older white folks if they needed a gardener, and we stayed to try and save his life.”
The younger woman said, “Hedva told us that these men helped Sol.”
“Be quiet, Gella,” Morris ordered. “For all you know they could all have been working together.”