She didn’t know the name, hadn’t heard it before — I could tell. I could have come up with a story, but I held back.
“Hello?” she said.
Still I remained silent.
“Is anyone there?”
I put the receiver down softly, this time because of caution rather than petty anger. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“What’s wrong?” Fearless asked me.
“I don’t know what to say.”
“What you mean?”
“So far,” I said, “you an’ me been outside the place where Useless an’ them been workin’. Nobody knows us and nobody can tie us up with the crimes.”
“If there is a crime.”
“There’s two dead men, Fearless,” I said. “How much more crime do you want?”
“I mean about the money,” my friend replied. “We don’t even know if there ever was any money in them wrappers.”
“You think Jerry Twist woulda lied about that?”
“Go on,” Fearless said. “Tell me why you cain’t talk to them but you can chatter all ovah me.”
“Drummund don’t know us,” I said. “Katz neither. I cain’t just walk in on ’em, ’cause they’re important men. They ain’t gonna have nobody like you or me walk in their offices, not unless we tell ’em about LaTiara or Useless.”
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“Cain’t tell ’em ’bout Ulysses,” Fearless said. “Hearts wouldn’t like that.”
“That don’t even mattah,” I said. “ ’Cause if we call ’em an’
tell ’em ’bout how we know about them bein’ blackmailed or whatevah, they might just call the cops. They don’t know Hector’s real name, I’m sure’a that, and so when the police ask us and then find Hector dead, where will we be?”
Fearless smiled. Smiled. Here I was explaining how our whole enterprise was stalled in the water, and he just grinned as if I had told a half-funny joke.
“You’ll figure it out, Paris,” he told me.
“Aren’t you listening to me, man?” I asked. “I’m sayin’ I don’t know what to do.”
“That’s okay,” he said. “That’s how everything start. First you don’t know an’ then you do.”
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Th e d ay wa s w e n d i n g into evening while Fearless and I walked along the shore.
25 We were friends, there was no doubt about that, but our relationship was also hard to define. Sometimes I was like the big brother who could read complex documents and decipher the logical knots that faced my simpleminded friend.
At other times he was like the ideal father that had never abandoned me, protecting me from danger. On that particular evening he was this selfsame father who saw my troubles and only said that he believed in me and that I would see my way through in time.
Maybe all true friendships are like that: like rolling rivers rather than edifices of stone. I don’t know. All I had on my mind was how I could get information from Katz and Drummund without them calling the cops on me.
“You tired, Paris?” Fearless asked, as the setting sun ignited the pollutants in the evening sky, making a fiery red sunset that had all of the ecstasy and terror of a heart attack.
“Naw, man. I couldn’t sleep if I wanted to.”
“That’s good. ’Cause you know I think we gonna have to work hard tonight.”
“Why’s that?”
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“Al Rive’s in town.”
“Really? He really came back?” I asked.
“Yeah, brother. First he put his mother in the soup an’ now he wanna hurt Milo for turnin’ on the heat. Whisper fount him out, but before we could get there he was gone. Tomorrow I be full-time either chasin’ Al or bodyguardin’ Milo’s butt.”
“You a good friend, Fearless.”
“Why not? Friendship is free.”
We d r o v e f r o m t h e b e a c h down to Nadine Grant’s many-flowered home.
As we were walking through the gated fence toward the front door, Three Hearts was coming out. She was wearing all white, which was never a good sign. White was what Three Hearts wore when she was bringing God with her on her mission, whatever that mission was. It was lore in our family that Three Hearts wearing white meant that she was going to someone’s funeral — and that someone didn’t need to be dead yet.
