“So they said. But you know you cain’t believe all that you read in no papers.”
“Did a lotta police come?”
“No. I mean there was cops in when they first brought him. But they left. Then that one officer, that Sergeant Latham come in. He went to talk to Till, and then, a little while later, Ginny Sidell found him dead.”
“They talked?” I asked, just to be sure.
“Conrad Till was awake and cussin’ two hours after they brought him in. That’s when Latham come.”
“What did Till die of?”
Rya looked away at a blank wall and said, “Heart failure.”
“He had a heart attack?”
She shrugged.
“That’s it? A man comes in shot and they say he had a heart attack?”
“Heart failure,” she said, correcting me. “That’s what always kill ya. That’s how we know. A truck could hit ya and your spleen be in your lap, but you still ain’t dead unless your heart stop.”
She looked at me with her walnut eyes. Fearless checked out the clock on the wall.
“Is somebody going to investigate the death?” I asked.
“Somebody who?”
“I mean, if everybody’s talking about it…”
“Everybody around here got a real job, Mr. Minton. Real jobs and apartments and mouths to feed. Conrad Till was just a year outta prison, an ex-con with a bullet in his chest, found after an anonymous call.”
Fearless didn’t have a job or an apartment or kids to feed. She wasn’t talking about him though.
“Thanks, Rya,” Fearless said. “We really appreciate it.”
“You better watch out where you stickin’ your nose, Mr. Jones,” Rya warned. “Some people might get you all caught up in somethin’ you can’t get out of wit’ a fine.”
Fearless laughed.
“Baby,” he said. “If I was to worry about me gettin’ pulled down under the trouble I see, I’d be in my bed from mornin’ to night. Man wanna kill me or put me in prison, he’s welcome to try it. But, you know, I draw from a deep well, deep as a muthahfuckah.”
It was the profanity that clued me in to how serious Fearless felt. He rarely cursed, almost never in front of women. But when he did, you knew that he meant business.
“YOU KNOW we killed him, Fearless,” I said on the drive back from Mercy. Blood was pacing impatiently in the backseat.
“Killed who?”
“Conrad Till.”
“How the hell you figure that?”
“He was hurting but not dying when we left him. It was the report from the hospital that brought Latham into it. He probably knew that Till was Leon’s buddy. And you better believe that he was the cause of Till’s demise.”
“Why you think?”
“I don’t know. Maybe the questioning got outta hand. Maybe there’s somethin’ we don’t know about Latham. I mean he’s a Hollywood cop, so what’s he doin’ down near Watts and East L.A.?”
“Man, Paris, you got us into a real mess here.”
“I didn’t get into no mess. Mess just fell right on top’a me. I was sittin’ in my store readin’ a book.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. But you could’a walked away. Could’a taken that five hundred dollars you used to pay my fine and started a new store somewhere.”
He was right. There I was bound up with murder and arson and even in trouble with a maybe crooked cop when I could have walked away. Could have but couldn’t anymore. I was no hero but I was stubborn, and, anyway, my five hundred dollars were gone.
“Fearless.”
“Yeah, Paris?”
“I’m sorry, man. Sorry I didn’t get you outta jail before you went in. Sorry I got you thinkin’ you gotta stay with me. I fucked up, man.”
