Fearless Jones

“Did you call him and ask?”

“I don’t know his telephone number. Morris never writes numbers down, he has a perfect memory.” She was proud of him, and scared for him, but still she wouldn’t call this non-Jewish man.

“You want me to see if I can find this Simon guy and ask him somethin’?”

GELLA BROUGHT ME the phone book. Simon was the only Jonas out of over eighty thousand entries.

“Is he married?” I asked Gella.

“No.”

Maybe it wasn’t only his religion she didn’t like, I thought. “Well then maybe I better go knock on his door.”

I stood up, and so did Gella.

“What’s wrong?” I asked her.

“Nothing.”

“Don’t you want me to go?”

“Yes, but…”

“Don’t you want me to find Morris?”

“I’m afraid.”

“You think he might be with another woman?”

“No.”

“What then?”

“I want to go with.”

“You mean ride with me down to Culver City in the middle’a the night?”

She nodded innocently.

“I cain’t do that.”

“But I must go.”

“Why?”

“Hedva was killed in her own home. In her own house.”

I looked around Gella’s identical dwelling and knew that she was right.

“Listen,” I said. “You might not know this, but cops like to get target practice on Negro men when they see ’em with white women. You get me?”

She nodded.

“So you have to lay low in the backseat if you gonna ride with me, okay?”

“Yes.”

I wanted her to say something else, something to reassure me, but I didn’t know what that could be.

“Okay then. Now go get that bottle’a schnapps, close it tight, and bring it along.”

“You want to bring liquor to find Morris?”

“Medicine,” I said. “Just in case you or me, or Morris when we find him, gets a case’a the nerves.”

30

I WAS DRIVING in a white neighborhood in the middle of the night with an open bottle of peach schnapps in the glove compartment, a married white woman hiding in the backseat, and a stolen .38-caliber pistol next to the gearshift on the floor. It was a far cry from my bookstore days, selling Popular Mechanics and Batman.

“Tell me somethin’,” I called to the backseat.

“Yes, Mr. Minton.”

“Why you gonna trust me?”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

I didn’t know if it was the question or the articulation of black English versus her own Europeanized English that she wondered about.

“I mean, why would you call me or Fearless when your husband goes missin’? Why not call somebody you know, or the cops?”