His eyes could have belonged to a dead man, they were so fixed. He didn’t seem to be breathing. I hovered there an inch or so over the floor.
Even though I’m often frightened, I have never been afraid of Fearless. I felt such a deep kinship with him that he never scared me.
When he let me go I stumbled but remained on my feet.
“Where is she?” he asked.
“Ambulance took her,” I said. “Gella went with them.”
“What you got?”
I considered my words carefully then. I knew he was close to killing, and I was taught never to point a loaded weapon at somebody unless I intended to shoot.
“Grove called me. He’s gonna meet us at the Charles Diner at nine.”
“He do this?”
“Naw. Naw, I don’t think so.”
“He know who did it?”
Before I could answer, Blood started barking and Morris Greenspan rushed in.
“Blood!” Fearless commanded, and the dog, still growling, stood down.
“Where?” Morris Greenspan asked. He was looking around the room. His eyes stopped on the floor of the den. “Gella said it was in there.”
The big, sloppy man was nearly in shock. His eyes were wide and his voice was strained to cracking. He lurched into the den and looked around, twisting from side to side.
“What happened?” he shouted, and then he fell to the floor just like a two-year-old throwing a tantrum. “What happened?”
He jerked and flailed around on the carpet for a while, but I didn’t mind. At least the spectacle distracted Fearless. After a minute or so we helped Morris back to his feet and sat him down in a chair.
“Why would anyone… how could they?” he said, and then he cried in earnest.
It was a deep, mournful wailing with no modesty or shame. He cried from his eyes and nose and mouth. He bent forward in the chair and called out for his Fanny, his Hedva. It was more like a pagan priest who had witnessed the death of his patron deity than a man who’d lost an in-law.
It was a full ten minutes before the lament subsided.
“How did you hear about it?” I asked.
“Gella called me at work from the hospital. She said that they were taking her to the police station to talk.”
“What did she tell you?”
“That Hedva was dead!” he declared.
“Did she want you to pick her up or meet her?”
“She, she… I guess.”
“Then why did you come here?”
“I thought I could do something. I hoped I could do something. I wanted to help.”
“But she’s dead, man,” I said. The anger probably came from my own frustration. “She’s dead, and your wife needs help down at the cops.”
“Leave him alone, Paris,” Fearless said.
Blood growled to back up his new master’s command, but he wasn’t sure if he was growling at me or Morris.
“No,” Morris said. “He’s right. I should go.”
“You better not drive,” Fearless said. “We’ll take you.”
GELLA WASN’T too much better off than her husband. She was sitting at the far end of the long bench in the entrance room of the Boyleston Heights precinct. There were a few others seated here and there. Mostly Mexicans. Mostly women. Waiting for their men, I guess. Nobody seemed happy.
One young woman, she couldn’t have been twenty-five, had four small children running around, a toddler holding on to her skirts, and a baby in her arms. The children laughed and played on the hard floor, explored the area in front of the sergeant’s desk, and watched as three brown men were brought in in chains.
