“Kiko, please.”
“What?”
“Kiko.”
“Kiko?”
“Yes.”
A few hard knocks sounded in my ear and then, “Hello,”
came a sultry voice.
“Loretta?”
“Paris?” she managed to evince both surprise and joy in her tone.
“You said call you, right?”
“I’m surprised you did,” she said.
“Why’s that?”
“I don’t know. You seem to think about some things until all the color is washed out, I guess. What do you want?”
“I got fifty dollars and a yen to hear some jazz.”
“The High Hat?” she suggested.
“I was thinkin’ more in the line with Apollo’s.”
“You know you need a reservation to get in there,” she said.
“I do, but Milo don’t.”
“And you just came up with this idea on a whim?” she asked. She was playing with me, but even when playing, cats use their claws a little.
“No,” I admitted. “I got to find out some things there, but I promise you a good dinner and fine companionship.”
99
Walter Mosley
“I’m not a cheap date, Mr. Minton.”
“I know how to act.”
I p i c k e d h e r u p at her parents’ house twenty-five minutes later. They lived just south of Venice Boulevard on the west side of town.
That night Kiko “Loretta” Kuroko was a sight to behold.
She wore a tight-fitting green gown that had sequins here and there, with a black velvet-and-silk shawl draped on her shoulders. Her black high heels made her taller than I by two inches, and her makeup was just enough to make any man from six to sixty-six skip a step in his gait.
I opened the door for her as her frightened parents gawped from a window of their small house.
Loretta’s whole family had been imprisoned in an American-run concentration camp during World War II. This caused her parents to be afraid of anything outside their small circle and it made Loretta hate all white people.
“Damn,” I once said to her. “My people been under a white man’s thumb for three hundred years an’ I don’t hate all of ’em.”
“That’s because they never lied to you,” she said on that weekday afternoon at Milo’s office. “But I always believed that I was accepted as a person and a citizen. After what I saw, I don’t care what happens to them.”
It was lucky for Milo and the black population of Watts in general. Loretta was a force to be reckoned with.
Th e b o u n c e r a t t h e c l u b entrance at the Knickerbocker was a reptilian-looking fellow named Razor. He 100
FEAR OF THE DARK
was taller than Fearless and broader of shoulder than Mad Anthony. But he smiled, showing more teeth than seemed possible.
“Loretta,” he said, not even deigning to recognize my presence.
“Mr. Hanley.” If Loretta knew you, she knew your last name and often used it as a mark of respect.
Loretta took a step across the threshold and I moved to follow. A big brown hand covered my chest.
“Where you think you goin’, boy?” Razor asked, no longer smiling but still showing his teeth.
I wish I’d said something smart or sassy, but I was flabber-gasted and intimidated. All I could do was stutter.
“Paris is with me,” Loretta said.
“Really?”
“Yes.” Her smile really was something.
“You know you could do a lot bettah than a little man like this here,” Razor said, giving her an up and down look.
