Faison house.
“So you think it would be better for all involved if I just dropped out?” I asked the Australian.
“You’ve seen his eyes,” Bradford said.
“Yeah. I’ve also seen ten thousand acres of rice stooped over by just as many poor black Louisiana sharecroppers. You know ten thousand dollars sure enough might make that pain heal.”
“Death is the only real cure to pain, Mr. Minton.”
It might not have been a good argument but it was the truth still and all.
“I’m afraid,” the male secretary continued, “that if you open a door for Mr. Wexler’s revenge he will go so far that even his wealth will not protect him.”
“I’ll tell you what, Brad,” I said. “You got a private line in that big house?”
“Yes,” he said and gave me a card with only a number on it. “You can call me at that number any evening after nine.”
“If I have any questions I’ll call you first. How’s that?”
“Better than nothing.”
28
FEARLESS WAS EATING A CHILI BURGER at an outside counter by the time I made it to Rob’s. The whole place was crowded with late-night customers. There were cops and cabbies, prostitutes and short-straw runners from a dozen companies that drew lots on the graveyard shift to see who had to take the drive for their burgers.
Fearless was talking to two young women who were looking him up and down, hoping that Rob would put something like that on the menu. It broke their hearts when I came up and Fearless shooed them off.
“You late, Paris,” Fearless said. “I was gettin’ worried.”
“You should’a been. I got hit upside the head, hog-tied, kidnapped, threatened with a gun the size of a cannon, and questioned. I was in fear for my life.”
“Well,” my friend said dismissively. “I guess it didn’t turn out too bad.”
“I know it don’t seem like it,” I said. “Especially when it all ended up with me gettin’ paid another thousand dollars and promised yet another nine.”
“Damn, Paris. People just throwin’ money at you.”
“I don’t like it, Fearless.”
“Me neither, man. But we okay now. Ain’t nobody after either one of us.”
“What about Timmerman?”
“He probably dead by now. You know that brick hit him hard. Yeah. If he ain’t dead he’s outta play, that’s for sure.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe. But I’d like to know where all these players are before I can sleep comfortably in my bed. Did you find Maynard?”
“Yeah. I know where he’s at. We could pick him off when he’s goin’ out to work. ’Bout eight o’clock.”
“What we gonna do till then?”
Fearless nodded at an open-air counter across the parking lot from us. The two girls he had been talking to were standing there staring in our direction.
“Lisa and Joanelle,” Fearless said. “I told ’em about your medical condition.”
“What condition?”
“I told ’em I didn’t know the right doctor’s words for it, but down around where we were from they called it big-bone-itis.” He slapped my shoulder and laughed. “They said we could go over to their place. It’s just a few blocks from here.”
I glanced across the lot again. One of them was pear-shaped and the other skinny and short. But they were young and laughing. And I’d almost been killed two or three times already.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go.”
THE EVENING WENT DIFFERENTLY than I had supposed it would.
When we got to the girls’ apartment Fearless produced a pint bottle of blackberry brandy that he’d picked up somewhere. Joanelle, the pear-shaped, walnut-colored young woman, brought out a lump of ice with an ice pick. I chipped at the ice while Little Lisa, a name she answered to, cleared off a space on a traveling trunk that they used for a coffee table. They had paper cups for the brandy and potato chips for salt.
I was wondering how we were going to split up when Fearless said, “Paris, did I ever tell you about the time I crossed over into Germany with three white boys before our army invaded?”
“No,” I said, wondering why he was addressing me as if we were alone.
“It was late in the evening and the CO told us that he didn’t want to see us again until we had blowed up somebody’s bomber planes. I was search and destroy,” he added for the girls’ benefit. “Usually I went out by myself, but because they wanted us to put a dent in an air base they had near the border, they sent two demolition men wit’ us.”
