the Santa Monica Pier, midway between the ocean and the boardwalk. I climbed down the long stairway from the park to the beach and then trudged along the shore-line to that place.
Along the way I didn’t think about anything bad or threatening. I had come to the dead end of my abilities and that had led to a blank wall. There was nothing else I could do. I was actually too afraid to consider doing anything more. The blood down Hector’s chest made me blind and deaf. I wasn’t built for that kind of confrontation.
I made it to my place in the sand and sat down with no blanket or bottle of beer. It was just me sitting on hot silicon under a brutal sun. The heat moved around me, that and the cacophonous music of the waves.
I didn’t even have a hat; nor did I desire one. I wanted the sun to beat down on me; I wanted the waves to crash senselessly. I was an innocent man, but no one would believe it. The 150
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only solace I had was the pulse of an ocean that had been there before there was even a fish to befoul it.
A c l o u d c o v e r e d t h e s u n for a moment, and my head felt a momentary coolness.
“Hey, Paris,” the cloud said.
Fearless sat down next to me on the hot bed of sand.
“Hey, man,” I replied. “How’d you get here?”
“Amos taxi.”
“I’ll pay you for the fare.”
“Your mother ain’t sick, is she?” he asked.
I shook my head no.
“You ain’t bleedin’, broken, or dyin’ as far as I can see. So don’t be too sad.”
I laughed and threw a play punch at him. He blocked me out of reflex, and I almost began to cry.
“Tell me what happened,” Fearless said, and I unburdened myself about the dead man and the white girl and my feelings of helplessness.
“Damn,” Fearless said at the end of my tale. “Somebody sneaked up on him and cut his th’oat like that? That’s serious bidness there. That’s a assassin doin’ his job right. An’ what was the white girl doin’ wit’ ’im?”
“Hector musta killed Tiny,” I said. “That’s all I can think.
And then, and then . . . And then either he grabbed Jessa or she ran with him.”
“Why she wanna run with the man kilt her man?” Fearless asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe Tiny started takin’ it out on her when I got away. Maybe Hector came in and didn’t like seein’ a 151
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woman bein’ beat by a man. If that’s the way it came down, then she might’a run with him because he saved her. On the other hand, he might’a killed Tiny out of self-defense and then took the girl to keep her from talkin’. For that matter, Jessa might have snuck up on Hector an’ cut his throat to get away.
“I ain’t worried about any’a that. It’s Useless’s part in it that bothers me.”
“I don’t even see how Useless comes in,” Fearless agreed.
“I see how it might happen,” I said. “It’s just that I don’t know why.”
I realized that in the presence of Fearless Jones I had the courage to think again. It was a fleeting thought.
“How so?” Fearless said.
Two young white women wearing one-piece bathing suits walked near us. One of them looked at Fearless and smiled.
He smiled and waved, and the two women scurried away laughing, throwing him sideways glances.
“Hector and Useless were in business getting money from white men over some kind of blackmail or threat,” I said.
“Useless was cheating Hector — that goes without sayin’. . . .”
Fearless chuckled and I went on. “Hector’s after Useless and somehow Useless decides to use me for his shill. Either he gonna leave somethin’ with me or tell Hector, or somebody Hector knows, that he did. That way he have Hector comin’
after me while he gets away with his plans.”
“What plans?”
“He’s been movin’ money through Jerry Twist. Maybe he wants to go where the money is.”
“And Hector comes up on you but finds Tiny and the white girl,” Fearless said.
“Yeah. And then, when I’m down in the basement with the 152
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body, he comes back and searches for whatever it is Useless said he gave me.”
“And then he comes back again lookin’ for the dictionary,”
Fearless said.
“Yeah.”
