Tiny was dead. If the bullet in his brain hadn’t killed him, his broken back from that fall would have finished the job. He wasn’t going to rise up and kill me in that cellar. All I had to do was sit there and wait for Fearless to return and everything would be just fine.
That last thought was the wrong one to have because it aroused a question. When would Fearless return?
Milo went to bed before ten every night. He had a switch-board answering service that connected to him or Loretta on alternating nights in case an important call came in. Fearless would drop Milo off, pick up his helper, and return to get me out of that hole. If everything went well, I figured, he’d get there no later than 11:30.
It was the
What if there was a shoot-out with Albert Rive and he got the drop on my friends? It could happen. Anybody could die. And Fearless was the only person in the world other than me who knew about the crawl space under the floor.
Even if my back was in perfect condition, I wouldn’t be able to push that heavy bookcase off the trapdoor. If Fearless didn’t make it back in time, I would die.
38
FEAR OF THE DARK
The cold in my chest was like a new ice age creeping down toward my feet. I was a fool and I was going to die because of it. I sat in the corner, turned out the light, and buried my head in my hands.
A moment later I forgot about all my worries.
I heard a footstep above me. I almost called out, but then I thought that it couldn’t be Fearless because not enough time had passed. And it couldn’t be anyone else who was there by acci-dent because Fearless had padlocked the front door for sure.
Someone had broken in. He was walking around, sending shelves and furniture crashing to the floor. I heard glass shattering and table legs crying across the wood floor. And whereas just a moment ago I was afraid that no one would ever find me in the tomb below my home, now I was scared that whoever it was searching my house would kick the blue carpet, discover the trapdoor, and climb down to kill me.
I felt around Tiny’s pants, locating a fairly large pock-etknife. This I unfolded and held in both hands. Maybe I could wound the invader before he knew I was armed.
That was the worst night of my entire life. Everything that happened was a potential threat. No matter what I did, Death was dogging my tail.
A f t e r q u i t e a w h i l e the footsteps and crashing sub-sided. After ten minutes of silence I turned on the light. The fears then began to pile up like stones in an avalanche. I worried about carnivorous insects burrowing after Tiny and then deciding they’d like to have living flesh too. I wondered how much air there was in the underground room and if I’d have enough to last me until Fearless returned, if he returned.
39
Walter Mosley
Then my fears became more complex. I worried that the burglar hadn’t left but gone into hiding. Maybe he was lying in wait for me. Maybe he had come to kill me but bumped off Tiny because the big white fool had come on too strong. Now the killer was waiting in shadows for me, and when Fearless got there he’d be ambushed and I’d die of starvation there under the floor.
The fears heaped up so heavily on my mind that I retreated into a mild catatonia where all I could do was sit and stare.
I was sure that my death was imminent and so for one of the very few times in my fretful existence I knew no fear, only hopelessness.
40
I h a v e n o t b e e n a b l e to spend more than a few minutes in a completely dark room since that 7 April Fools’ night 1956. I always have a candle and a match somewhere nearby and one of those pale blue night-lights that parents have for frightened children plugged in the wall of every room in my house.
Blackouts in plays and movie theaters never fail to give me the willies.
After my four or five hours with Tiny and every fear that my mind could manufacture, I promised myself that I would never be such a fool again. It didn’t matter that going down into the temporary tomb probably saved me from whoever had broken in. No. I would rather have faced Death himself than the fear I experienced. I couldn’t turn on the lamp because if someone was lying in wait he might have seen the light through the floor. So I huddled in darkness, my mind a cold sea of dread.
A f o o t s t e p . Another. Then there were the sounds of two men walking boldly across the room.
“Paris,” Fearless called out.
41
Walter Mosley
“I’m here,” I said, but my tone said
Somebody mumbled something and Fearless said something back. There was a chortle from one of them, but I couldn’t tell which one.
I heard the bookcase move and the trapdoor came open, flooding my abyss with electric light from above.
“Damn,” a man said and snorted. “It sure do smell bad.”
I had reached the ladder and grabbed the rungs, but between the blinding light, my silent terror, and the growing pain in my back, I was unable to climb.
“Come on, Paris,” Fearless said. I looked up and saw his dark and smiling face. “One foot after the other.”
After four steps, Fearless grabbed me by the forearm and lifted me into the light. I landed on my feet and looked around.
Everything that had been upright was on the floor: books, bookcases, tables, and chairs. Everything had been tipped over, opened, and turned out. The only things standing upright were me, Fearless, and the man he had
