brought with him: Van
“Killer” Cleave.
Seeing Cleave there grinning at me was almost enough to send me back down into the crypt.
Van Cleave. He was the living legend of Watts. Only an inch taller than I, he was a giant. Dark-skinned and bright-eyed, he was a killer of vast talent. No man, or group of men, crossed him if they were smart. He was a stone-cold killer, the consummate ladies’ man, and the best storyteller anybody knew of.
Back when he first came to L.A. from Georgia, he was stalked by three white gangsters for robbing a department store that was under their protection. The white men were from down South and used to colored people taking their punish-42
FEAR OF THE DARK
ment. They came into a crowded bar and called Cleave’s name.
Everyone expected him to throw up his table and run, but instead he stood up with his long .45-caliber pistol and casually squeezed off shots.
“Them white men was dead ’fore they knew it was comin’,” Randolph Minor told me the next day.
“Did Killer go back down south?” I asked him.
“No, sir,” Randy, a big man, squeaked. “He went home with Bea Langly. She said that she asked him wasn’t he worried that somebody would tell? An’ he said, ‘They bettah not.’”
And no one did. Killer became a hero overnight. He stood up to three white gangsters and went home with the most beautiful bar girl our city had to offer. After that night he never had to pay for a drink, a haircut, or a meal. Tailors gave him clothes just to say he was their customer. He’d been to prison for another crime. But he survived that too. Van Cleave was as oblivious to danger as was Fearless, but on top of that he was flamboyant and dangerous — just the kind of man our dark manhood needed to maintain our dignity.
I loved hearing stories about Van, but I wasn’t happy to have him in my house. Even standing there with Fearless I felt in peril.
“Hey, Paris,” Van said easily. “Hear you got a problem.”
I gulped and nodded.
“It smell bad,” he said with a wink.
“What happened here?” Fearless asked me, looking around at the debris.
“Somebody broke in an’ tore up the place,” I said. “I heard ’em.”
“I thought you said that the only trouble you had with that white boy was the girl,” Fearless said.
43
Walter Mosley
“It was, man. I swear.”
“Go on, Van,” Fearless said then. “Pull the truck around in the alley and we’ll get everything ready in here.”
Cleave nodded and made his way around the debris to the door. After he was out of the house, I started in on my friend.
“What the fuck you bring him to my house for, Fearless?”
“Because you can’t hardly lift up your arm and we got to take Tiny way out somewhere.”
“But that’s Killer Cleave,” I argued. “You cain’t trust a killer.”
“Yes, you can,” Fearless averred. “He’s the second-most trustworthy man in all Watts. He will nevah talk to a cop. He will nevah turn a brother over. It’s true he will kill you if you cross him, but he won’t evah talk about this night, not to no one. Not evah.”
I knew eighth graders who could think circles around Fearless, but I never met a college grad who owned more truth than he.
F e a r l e s s h a d b r o u g h t a heavy rope. He climbed down into the hole and created a hemp hoist under Tiny’s shoulders. Then he came back to the ramshackle room and pulled the 250 pounds of dead weight up with very little effort as far as I could tell.
I remember thinking that if Fearless and Van had a duel of tug-of-war, my friend would win hands down. But Watts wasn’t some ancient Scottish hamlet. They used guns and knives in my neighborhood, and the killers I was rolling with were duelists extraordinaire.
When we had Tiny laid out on the floor, Cleave returned.
44
FEAR OF THE DARK
He and Fearless hefted the dead man, carrying him through the back porch (which was also my hot-plate kitchen) and out the screen door back there.
I noticed a big hole in the tar paper roof. Tiny had fallen through according to my plan, but the fall hadn’t hurt him.
He’d just busted through the screen door and bounded over the fence.
“How do we get him over the fence?” I asked.
Cleave reached into his back pocket and came out with wire cutters. He snipped a hole big enough to pull Tiny through while Fearless climbed over the top. Van positioned the body and Fearless pulled it through. Then Killer climbed over.
I could neither climb nor crawl with my hurt back.
“I got to go through the house,” I said.
