smiled.
“Hi, Paris. Who’s your friend?”
I walked past her into the house. Fearless followed my lead, closing the door behind him.
“Elana,” I said. “We got to talk.”
“Do you mind if I put on some clothes first?”
“Go right ahead,” I said. “It ain’t nuthin’ I ain’t already seen, and I don’t think it’ll come as any surprise to my friend neither.”
Elana put on a petulant look for a second, but she didn’t really care. She dropped the bathrobe and squatted down to pull a floral-patterned dress out of a satchel next to the couch. She stepped into the brightly colored shift and buttoned up the front. I stole a glance at Fearless while she was dressing. He didn’t seem to be concerned at all. As long as I had known Fearless he proved at least once every day that he was a better man than I.
The room we had entered was almost the entire house. There was one door at the back, which I suspected was to the toilet. That was the only thing missing. There was a stove, a couch, a bed, and a bathtub in the room where we stood, making the house reminiscent of many a country home I had seen. We were standing near a table covered with dirty dishes, crumbs, newspapers, and other, less recognizable, trash. A line of tiny black ants had crossed the floor and then scattered across the table, foraging among the treasures they found there.
“How’d you find me?” Elana asked.
“We didn’t,” I said.
At first she was confused by my answer, but then a little twinkle told me she understood.
“You found Leon,” she said.
Her intelligence did not set my mind at ease.
“I came back to see you the same day I took your car, you know,” she said with a smile that made me wish it were true.
“What for? You tasted my gold fillin’ when you was kissin’ me and you wanted that too?”
“Don’t be like that, Paris. I came back to give you your car and say I was sorry, but the store was burned down and nobody knew where you were.”
There was something easy about Elana Love. All you had to do was talk to her a minute or two and a whole new life appeared before you.
“We want the bond, Elana,” I said.
She sighed and went to the couch, seating herself squarely in the middle.
“You got a cigarette, honey?” she asked Fearless.
He just stared at her, a soldier on reconnaissance duty.
I gave her a cigarette and lit it.
“You were lookin’ for me and found Leon instead?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said, crossing the right leg over the left.
I sat down on the wooden arm of the calico couch and nodded for her to continue.
“Leon came back around your place just before I did. He thought you an’ me were together and figured if he waited long enough, one or the other of us’d show up. It was just about the only smart thing he ever did in his life, and that was just a stupid mistake.”
“Was he with Conrad Till then?” I asked.
“Naw, he had already taken Conrad to my apartment, lookin’ for me. I guess I must’a shot Conrad when they was comin’ after you and me in your car —”
Fearless grunted at that. I couldn’t tell if it was admiration or commiseration with the dumb luck of the dead man.
“Conrad was afraid to go to his own house at first because he was on parole. He thought he could get cleaned up enough so that he could say he was sick without bleedin’ all over whoever came to the door.”
“So then you took Conrad to his place…,” I prompted.
“They made me. They said they was gonna kill me if I didn’t do what they said. At first it was just to take care’a Conrad’s wound.”
“They didn’t mind that you were the one who shot him?”
