He wanted their address, and I made up a 23rd Street location. He wanted to go over there right then, but I told him that they were at church.
“On Wednesday?” he asked.
“God don’t take no days off, Mr. Beendoo,” I replied piously.
After that he said thanks, that he would go talk to the parents later that day.
I didn’t leave when he said good-bye.
“Is there something else?” he asked.
“Well,” I hesitated. “Wasn’t there some kind of reward?”
Laval/Landry regarded me with disgust. He looked around and reached for a coin that was on a lamp stand next to the door. Fifty cents! He deserved the trouble I represented.
Fearless told Landry to drop the charges or else he’d have to tell somebody about the bigamy. Milo got involved, leading Landry through how he could make sure that Lucas wasn’t charged with a crime.
Some months later Fearless told me that Landry had offered him a thousand dollars to keep quiet.
“And you didn’t take it?” I said.
“That would’a been wrong, Paris,” Fearless told me. “You know I just wanted to do right by the boy.”
FEARLESS AND I DROVE over to a small house on Ninety-second Place. That was Elbert’s house. I knew that all the comic book kids congregated there when they weren’t at my bookstore. I knocked on the front door, but no one answered. We went around the side driveway. In the back was a red garage. The carport door was pulled down, but there was a side door that was open. We walked in on seven little boys and a full-grown man handing comic books back and forth.
“Hey, Mr. Minton, Fearless,” one of the boys droned.
The man stood up and looked at us angrily.
“Hey, Elbert,” I said to the lanky eight-year-old who had greeted us.
The man squatted back down and started putting his comic books into a brown paper bag.
“Where you goin’, Luke?” one of the boys asked.
“Home,” the man said petulantly.
He was a beautiful young man, tall and muscular with large eyes and lips that belonged on a sculpture entitled
“You got to go with us, Luke,” Fearless said.
The young man’s face broke into tears.
“Why?”
“’Cause if you don’t go to court, then Milo’s gonna have to get the cops after your momma for the bail money.”
The little boys started snickering. I could hardly blame them.
“I don’t want my momma to go to jail,” Lucas whimpered.
“Then come with us,” I said.
Lucas was just one of the kids when it came to the comic books at my store. He dropped by as much as the little ones, wanting to trade old ones for ones he hadn’t read yet.
Most of those comics were torn and tattered. But the ones on the floor were brand-new.
“Where’d you boys get new comics?” I asked Elbert.
“Mr. Wally from the market give ’em ’cause he said he was sorry that our store burned down,” the gawky, fish-eyed boy said.
“Maybe he buy you a new store,” Fearless said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, when his boss giv ’im a little raise.”
20
WE MADE the courthouse before Milo. When he came up to us sitting there with Lucas, he didn’t even give the boy a glance.
“Officer of the court been here?” he asked me.
“Yeah.”
“He sign the boy in?”
