“I’m not talkin’ to you, big man,” Fearless said. “I’m just askin’ my friend a question.”
Melvin sized up my friend and understood immediately the implications of any loud protest.
While they regarded each other my eyes met with the young DeLois. The smile she had hidden from Melvin came out for me. She stood up from the couch and walked over to us.
“I was just gettin’ ready to leave,” she said.
Her brown skin shone and her eyes did too.
“Let’s walk her outside, Paris.”
Melvin’s shoulders got all tight but he didn’t say anything.
At the car DeLois told us that she lived some miles away. Fearless said that if she waited in the car we’d drive her home after we finished our business.
Melvin Conroy was gone from the sitting room when we returned. His door was closed when we passed it going down the back hall. We went up to the second floor and down to number twelve, the room Charlotta had told me was hers.
That door was open wide.
Brown was kneeling over the battered and bruised Charlotta.
“What the hell?” Fearless said, and I knew the trouble was about to begin. Fearless never cursed unless he was truly outraged.
He stalked into the room and Brown rose up in a crouch.
“Hold up, man,” Brown said.
But he was too late. Fearless threw a hard and fast right that the smaller Brown somehow avoided. He stood up to his full height, connecting with an uppercut that would have rendered anyone but Fearless unconscious. Fearless just moved with the blow and connected with a left hook against Brown’s jaw. That collision sounded like two stones being slammed together. Brown hit Fearless in the gut with both hands. I knew that they were hard punches because I heard Fearless grunt. But he didn’t slow down. He hit Brown twice, hard enough to send my chess partner staggering back a whole half step.
There were very few men who could stand toe to toe with Fearless Jones.
I looked down and saw that there was a large white-enameled pitcher filled with water next to the unconscious, or dead, Charlotta. I picked up the jug and splashed the two titans. Surprisingly this had the desired effect.
Both men turned toward me.
“It’s okay, Fearless. He’s tryin’ to help her. You too, Brown. We’re not here to hurt nobody.”
The men looked at me a moment. Then Brown went down on one knee. I was even more impressed that he had absorbed so much punishment without showing how badly he was hurt until the bout was called.
I closed the door.
Fearless and Brown knelt on either side of Charlotta.
“She come staggering in about forty-five minutes ago,” Brown was saying. “She said that a white man had beat her, and then she fainted. I brought her up here and tried to make her comfortable.”
“I need a first aid kit and some ice water,” Fearless said.
Brown was up and out of the door before I had taken the words in.
Fearless unbuttoned Charlotta’s blouse and took it off. He scanned her flesh, prodding here and there. I supposed that he was looking for wounds or deep bruises. It was odd looking at the body I had spent so much time with. There was no allure left, only tight little bruises and slack muscles.
“She gonna be all right?” I asked Fearless.
“Yeah,” he said. “I think so. Her head ain’t hurt except for some hard slaps, and these bruises ain’t deep. It’s just some arm punches. First she fainted, then she passed into sleep.”
Fearless pinched her cheek hard and Charlotta opened her eyes.
“What?” she said, and then she sat up.
She realized she was half-naked but that didn’t seem to bother her, at least not at first.
“Paris, what happened?”
“Brown said that you came in and said a white man beat you.”
She gasped with the memory. “Yeah. Yeah. Bastard beat me like a rug.”
“Who?”
“Some man left a message for me. I called him back and he said that he needed to talk about Kit.”
“Did you know him?” I asked.
“Uh-uh. He called Miss Moore and told her that he owned a restaurant that Kit had been in with his girlfriend and that he left somethin’ behind. He gave her his number and she give it to me. She was all mad, sayin’ that if I talked to Kit she wanted her twelve dollars.”
“And you called the man?”
“Yeah. I didn’t know what he was talkin’ about but I was, you know, curious.”
