hemp rope, his dick stuck out, and his piss all over the floor?”
“I don’t know about all that,” Fearless chided, “and neither do you. All I know is that a man’s wife deserves to know when he’s dead.”
“He left a suicide note too,” I said.
“He did?”
“Yeah. I took it.”
“Now why you wanna do that?”
“’Cause sometimes I must think that I’m you,” I said.
“What’s that s’posed to mean?”
“First off, he wrote it to a prostitute named Lily. The whole thing was written to her.”
“Girlfriend?”
“By the hour,” I said. “And that ain’t all. Morris the one killed Fanny.”
“No.” Fearless turned to me in wonder.
“Morris wrote it down that he told her on the drive over to her house that the man he had been working for, Zev Minor, a man she had never met, was actually a guy named Zimmerman. He was feeling guilty over what happened to Sol and scared about what might happen still. Fanny went a little crazy when Morris told her that. She screamed at him and yelled at him and said that she was going to raise hell. He dropped her off and then got scared. He said that he went to his car and then came back to knock on the door, but she wouldn’t let him in.
“And then he went around to the back to kill her?” Fearless asked.
“No. At least he said it was just to talk her out of going to the police. It seems that the policies that Minor had been writing weren’t exactly legal and Morris was listed as the agent for all of them. He said that he went to the back door, but she wouldn’t let him in. Then she said she was calling the police. When he saw her pick up the phone he went crazy. He broke the window in with a rock. After that he said that he didn’t remember anything until he came back when we were there.”
“I don’t get it,” Fearless said. “Why would Fanny go to the police? She said she didn’t like the cops. An’ even if she would go, why would she tell on her own family? I mean, I know she didn’t like the boy, but damn.”
“It’s ’cause of Minor. Morris wrote it in the note,” I said. “He said that he’d been working for the man who called himself Minor. But his name was really Zimmerman, a Jew that worked with the Nazis to fool wealthy Jews who had hidden their wealth from the Germans. He told the Jews that they could buy their freedom, but it was a lie.”
I glanced over at Fearless. His jawbones were standing out because of his clenched teeth. No black man liked the notion of the concentration camps; we had lived in labor camps the first 250 years of our residence in America. And for Fearless it was even worse; he had actually seen the camps. He knew the price of this treachery firsthand.
“Why would Gella’s husband work for a man like that?”
“He didn’t know at first. Minor came to him after Sol was convicted and gave him a part-time job working as an art insurance agent. Then, after a few months went by, Minor told Morris that he was working secretly for the Israeli government. He said that Sol had embezzled money that was meant to go to Israel. Sol was already in prison, and Minor wanted Morris to find out from Fanny what he’d done with the money. Slowly Morris figured out that Minor was Zimmerman, but by then he got greedy. Morris tried to find out from Fanny where the money was. But Sol was too slick, he had covered up his business. Fanny didn’t know anything, and there were no records left to be found.”
“And where was this money that Sol could steal it?” asked Fearless.
“I don’t know for sure, but as close as I can figure, Minor was selling off the art treasures through Lawson and Widlow and then giving the buyers some kinda fake history through his insurance company. Lawson and Widlow must have been holding the money, and when Sol found that out, he embezzled it and converted it into bonds. When Morris couldn’t get a line on the dough, Minor came up with Plan B.”
“Leon,” Fearless said with conviction.
I nodded. “Reverend Grove went to Lawson and Widlow with the bond he was holdin’ for Elana. They went to Minor or Zimmerman or whatever you wanna call him. He must’a told them about Leon’s deal with Sol, and Minor went to work getting Leon outta prison.”
“All that was in the note?” Fearless asked.
“Naw. Just about Minor, and Morris workin’ for him. I been figurin’ the rest out myself. Minor figured that the
