When the gun was empty Angel lowered it and her head.
“You got a phone in here?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“Run outside and start screamin’,” I said. “And when the 304
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cops come, tell ’em he was your old boyfriend and that he wanted you back. Tell ’em that he was gonna rob you too.”
Three Hearts was trying to untie Useless, but I told her to stop.
“Tell ’em the knot was too much for you,” I said. “Him bein’ tied will be proof that Hoag was robbin’ you.”
That was it. Fearless and I were out the back and over the fence to the block behind. We heard Angel screaming from that far away.
We took a bus home. I left my car. It would wait for me.
I don’t know about Fearless, but I slept for twenty-four hours after that.
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Th e r e wa s a h e a r i n g to see whether or not a crime had been committed in the shoot-47 ing death of Thomas Benton Hoag. Angel and Three Hearts and Useless all testified.
Thomas Benton Hoag had been Angel’s boyfriend, but she had come to realize that she loved Useless. Tommy came on them at gunpoint, tied Useless up, and told Angel that if she didn’t come with him he’d kill them all.
The judge liked the story, and there was no one to contra-dict it.
A f t e r t h e i n q u i r y Angel asked Fearless about the money. He told her that he’d already returned it to the men that she blackmailed.
Actually he’d given it to Martin Friar along with the list I’d compiled and asked him to return it in the best ways he could.
I told Fearless that we might as well keep the money as Friar, but Fearless said that we could trust the man. Maybe he was right.
Friar did say that we should keep 10 percent as a kind of 306
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finder’s fee. It was some money, enough to support my lazy lifestyle for a year or so.
Useless was angry at our presumptions with his hard-earned, ill-gotten wages. But when I asked him about the money he’d invested with Jerry Twist, he shut up.
Th a t wa s i t . A life worth remembering is hell to live.
A w e e k a f t e r the inquisition Three Hearts, Angel, and Useless left for Louisiana. Two days after that I got a visit from Jessa. I had hoped that she’d just go away, but I should have known better.
She was wearing a nice white cotton dress and there was a red ribbon in her hair just begging to be undone. But I kept my hands to myself.
“Have you heard from Tiny?” she asked me after I made her tea.
“No, I haven’t,” I said. “And I hope I don’t. You know I don’t think that Tiny likes me too well.”
Me talking about him as if he were still alive buoyed her spirits. In her heart I think she knew he was dead, but the lie helped some.
“Can I stay with you, Paris?” she asked toward the end of the visit.
“No, honey. Uh-uh. I like you, but all that mess was too much for me.”
“Did they catch the man that killed Hector?” she wanted to know.
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“I haven’t heard anything,” I said, knowing that Hector had been slaughtered by Tommy Hoag, “but you can be sure that the man who did it will pay for it one day.”
“You really believe that?” she asked, boring into me with those diamond drill eyes.
I nodded with absolute certainty.
“You’re a good man, Paris Minton,” she said.
I preferred to believe that even if she knew the whole truth she would have held the same opinion.
I gave her five hundred of the five thousand dollars I’d made on the fiasco that Useless had brought to my door. I told her to go somewhere new and get a job in a cafe or an office.
“Meet a nice guy and start a family,” I said.
She kissed me at the door, and I barely regretted not lying with her one more time.
When I was in the bookstore alone, after Jessa had gone off into her life, I wondered how Angel and Useless were doing and I was glad that I didn’t have an answer.
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a b o u t t h e a u t h o r
Wa l t e r M o s l e y is the author of the acclaimed Easy Rawlins series of mysteries, including national bestsellers
