The problem was, Fearless didn’t ever feel like he was in trouble.
“Don’t worry,” he’d tell me. “It ain’t all that bad.”
And then someone was shooting at us, and Fearless did some impossible maneuver, and the gunman was disarmed, and Fearless was there smiling, saying, “You see? I told you it was all right.”
So when I heard that knock on my door at 3:51 in the afternoon, I moved the hem of the drape expecting one thing, but instead I saw Ulysses S. Grant IV staring up into the mirror and waving.
“Open up, Paris. It’s me.”
I was a fool. I knew it even then. So what if Useless saw me in my mirror? I didn’t have to open the door. I could have walked upstairs, opened up a copy of
“Come on, Cousin,” Useless said. “I know you there.”
I should have walked away, but Useless worried me. The 3
Walter Mosley
kind of trouble he brought was like an infection. He never had a simple yes-or-no kind of problem; it was always “You’re already in a mess. Now how do you plan to get out?”
I opened the door and stood to bar his entrance.
“What do you want?” I asked him.
“Let me by, Cousin,” he said with a grin. “I need some ice water.”
“I’m not askin’ you again, Useless.”
We were the same height, which is to say short, and he was fairly light colored, where I am considered dark (that is unless you see me standing next to Fearless Jones). Ulysses S. Grant IV, whom everyone but his mother and Fearless called Useless, was a petty thief, a liar, a malingerer, and just plain bad luck.
His mother and mine were half-sisters, and I’d been dragged off by the ear because of him as far back as I could remember.
As young as nine years old I was avoiding Useless.
The last time we’d seen each other was at my previous bookstore. He’d come over asking for a glass of ice water and use of the toilet. After he’d gone I didn’t think much of it. But that night, while I was sleeping, I began to worry. Why had he been there? Who drops by somebody’s place in L.A. for a glass of water?
It was three o’clock in the morning, but I pulled myself out of bed and went into my bathroom. I searched the medicine cabinet and behind the commode and in between the bath towels stacked on a shelf. Nothing.
I made coffee in my hot-plate kitchen and then went back to lift the heavy porcelain lid off the tank of the toilet. Down in the tank was a waterproof rubber sack filled with gold chains of various lengths and designs. Solid gold. The whole thing must have weighed two pounds.
4
FEAR OF THE DARK
That was 4:00 a.m.
Fearless was at my place in less than half an hour and he took the swag to hide it elsewhere.
I was in bed again by five.
At 6:47 the police were at my door with a warrant.
They went right to the toilet. Somehow they managed to shatter the lid.
It was late morning before they stopped turning over my bookstore. Those cops flipped through more books in that one day than most librarians do in a year.
After all that they arrested me. Milo Sweet, the bail bondsman, got me a good lawyer who told the cops that they had nothing on me and that any accusations made against me had to be proven or at least strongly indicated.
A week later an ugly guy named Jose Favor came by my house.
“Where the gold, mothahfuckah?” he said to me right off.
One of his nostrils was wider than its brother, and the knuckles of his fists were misshapen, probably from beating on smaller men like me.
“You will have to speak to my agent,” I told the man, who had already grabbed me by the collar of my shirt.
“Say what?”
“Fearless Jones,” I said, and he let me go.
“What about him?” the ugly black man with the round eyes asked.
“He told me that anyone wanna know anything about gold they should come and see him.”
Jose didn’t say any more. I never heard about the gold again. Fearless came by the next week and took me to Tijuana, where we drank tequila and met some very nice young ladies 5
Walter Mosley
who taught us Spanish and made us breakfast four mornings in a row.
I hadn’t seen Useless since then and I hadn’t missed him for a second.
“ I ’ m i n t r o u b l e , Pa r i s , ” Ulysses said, looking pathetic.
“So?”
