“Fearless, what the fuck I’m’a do about this?”
That started him chewing on his bottom lip. He shook his head, staring at the body.
“Call the cops?” he asked.
“Come on, man,” I said. “What the hell can I say to the cops? That I was fuckin’ his white girlfriend on the floor when he busted in? They hang me for that right there.”
“You right,” Fearless agreed. “Even if the girl did it, she’s 31
Walter Mosley
probably long gone by now, and if they catch her all she got to do is cry rape and say you shot the guy.”
“Maybe we should bring Milo in,” I suggested.
“Uh-uh. Unless Milo see dollar signs he won’t do nuthin’.
Anyway he’s not gonna put himself in trouble for us.”
“So what do we do?”
“How come you standin’ funny, Paris?” Fearless asked me.
“What the fuck that got to do with anything?”
“Okay. I’ll tell you what. You lift his feet and I’ll get his shoulders.”
I knelt and grabbed Tiny’s ankles. When I tried to lift them, a spasm went through my right shoulder that sent me to the floor.
“Now you wanna tell me ’bout how you standin’?” Fearless asked.
“Okay, yeah, I fell an’ hurt my side. So what?”
“So if we don’t tell the cops and we don’t tell Milo, then the only thing we can do is get rid’a yo’ friend here. But he too big for me alone. And you don’t have the strength to help, not with that hurt back.”
I wanted to scream. How could a bookworm like me get into so much trouble over a meat loaf dinner?
Fearless smiled.
“You get too upset, Paris. Don’t let it bother you. We just need some help.”
I couldn’t even talk.
“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “Let’s put our friend here down 32
FEAR OF THE DARK
in your cellar. I’ll drive Milo around until he goes to sleep at his hideout and then I’ll get somebody we can trust to help.”
Under the rightmost bookcase in my store was a blue carpet covering a trapdoor. This door led to a small brick-lined cellar that had come with the building. I don’t know what the previous owners did down there. It didn’t have a hot-water heater or even an electric outlet. It wasn’t big enough for a pool table.
I’d always thought that the original owners might have been crooked in some way and they installed the underground room as a hideout in times of trouble.
I had had Fearless run a wire through the wall so that I could have light down there, but other than that I hadn’t changed a thing.
Fearless moved the bookcase and I kicked the carpet away.
I also pulled up the trapdoor. Fearless dragged the heavy corpse to the hole and dropped him in.
“Hey,” he said in a moment of sudden inspiration. “We could just bury him down there.”
“Naw, man. Naw.”
“Why not?”
“Jessa’s not here but she’s somewhere. Sooner or later she’s likely to talk to somebody and then they will talk to somebody else. One day somebody’s gonna talk to a cop, and he’s gonna come here with a hard-on and a search warrant. Naw. We got to get rid of Tiny.”
“Okay,” Fearless said. “Throw that carpet back down there.”
I did as he said, but before he could move the shelves I stopped him.
“Maybe I should go down there with him,” I said.
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“What for?”
“I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know who killed this man.
Maybe he gonna come back. Maybe Jessa already talked to the cops. I can’t go with you ’cause Milo’d get suspicious. But if I’m down there, nobody gonna find me.”
S o I c l i m b e d d o w n the short ladder into the ten-by-ten-foot brick-lined hole. Tiny had fallen on his head and broken his back in the fall. His torso was bent in a most unnatural pose. I clicked on the reading lamp I had down there, and Fearless closed the hatch. I heard him moving the bookcase and sat myself on the floor in the corner — as far away from Death as I could manage.
34
B e f o r e h e l e f t , Fearless called down through the floorboards, “Paris, you
