“Yeah.”
“They said somethin’ about an emerald necklace reported stolen.”
“What about it?”
“They said that Kit had stoled a necklace and did I know anything about that.”
WE GOT TO MILO’S BLOCK JUST AFTER EIGHT.
Fearless pulled up to the curb directly across the street. I was making sure that my door was locked when I noticed a white man coming out from the concrete pathway to the side of the apartment building that housed Milo’s office.
Theodore Timmerman was wearing the same mismatched brown clothes he had on at my doorstep.
Something in the way he moved, something stealthy and sly, made me call out.
“Hey you, Timmerman!”
When Theodore turned, the gun was already in his hand.
Fearless’s name was stuck in my throat. If that white man’s bullet had hit me I would have probably died calling out to my friend. But Mr. Jones was faster than either one of us. He dove low and hit me in the thigh. As I went down I heard the crack of gunfire and made a sound that even now embarrasses me to remember.
I was saved from being shot, but nowhere near safe. Teddy Timmerman fired once again, tearing up turf not two feet from my head, and then he took aim.
Fearless, who was on the ground next to me, reached for something and then leapt to his feet. Teddy swiveled but again not fast enough. Fearless threw some missile that caught the fake insurance man in the chest. I heard his grunt all the way across the street.
Teddy started shooting wild and ran down the street to his car. He must have had another gun in there, because he took potshots through his window. Finally he got the car started and threw it into reverse. The last we saw of him he was speeding backwards down Baring Cross.
“Wanna go after him, Paris?” Fearless asked. He wasn’t even breathing hard.
“No, man. Let’s go check on Milo.”
18
THE DOOR TO MILO’S OFFICE WAS OPEN wide, but Loretta’s front room looked none the worse for wear.
Going through the hall to the office I tripped over my own feet and Fearless had to catch me. I held on to him for a moment, because it was hard for me to regain my balance. I was so scared after being shot at that my internal organs were quivering.
Milo’s office had seen some violence. One of his files was overturned and the spindly visitor’s chair was upside down. Milo was not in sight.
Then we heard a deep bass moan that could have been a sea lion sunning himself in Monterey Bay.
Bloody and bruised, Milo was on the floor behind his desk.
“Thug,” he said. “Try and bully me. See what that gets him.”
Fearless lifted the portly bail bondsman with one hand and his chair with the other. It was a show of strength that was almost impossible, but he did it with such ease that most people wouldn’t have even noticed.
Once he was seated, Milo began to cry. It wasn’t fear or weakness but rage at being so mistreated.
“You hurt?” I asked our sometime employer.
“He wanted Miss Fine’s name and address,” Milo said. “Said he was gonna kill me if I led him wrong.”
“I thought he worked for you.”
“Me too. I used him before. He’s always good if I got a white jumper, and he’s even proven all right on Negro cases. But he got somethin’ up his nose out there. A way to make some money, you better believe that.”
Milo loved money. He would be balancing a checkbook on his deathbed.
“Is he the reason you called me?”
“Yes sir,” Milo intoned. “He called up last night and asked me for the client’s name. At first he was all friendly, but when I didn’t give him what he wanted he got rude. And when that didn’t work he said that he’d be down here, like he was the father and me the wayward son.”
“What did you have him doing for you, Milo?” I asked.
“Lookin’ for somebody,” he replied.
“Kit Mitchell?”
“Who it was don’t matter,” Milo said with an attempt at finality in his tone.
“If it were Kit it do,” Fearless said simply.
Milo heard the threat in those words. He knew that he was a small fish and that Fearless was a man-eater. He knew when to back down.
“Yeah. It was Kit,” he said.
