“That’s right. If I watched the do’, then Useless wouldn’t 175
Walter Mosley
come up and hide stolen property in my toilet. You wouldn’t come up gettin’ me so deep in trouble that I cain’t even think about nuthin’ else. I’m drinkin’ so I don’t have to run down the street yellin’ like a madman done lost his mind.”
I stared at Three Hearts in the backseat. She looked away in disgust. Her disdain made me so angry that I was about to rant some more, but Fearless put his foot on the accelerator, and somehow the gravity pushing me against the seat dis-placed the anger too. I felt a wave of pleasant intoxication and leaned back against the door.
For a long time I stared at Angel’s profile. It certainly was perfect. Daughter, wife, lover, mother — she could have been everything and anything to man, woman, or child. There was haughtiness and a waiting smile, knowledge that you could never have, and simple conversation. She was the woman who was the power behind the king and the widow that survived him.
I hated Angel Allmont, but it wasn’t because of my cousin. I didn’t care about Useless. He could die and never be found.
Three Hearts could light a candle every night for him until the candleholder overflowed with wax and her wood shanty burned to the ground — I didn’t care about them. No. I hated Angel Allmont because looking at her made me feel small.
“So what else?” I said in a voice that was too loud for the small space of the car.
“Excuse me?” Angel said. She wasn’t even looking at me, but she knew what I was asking and to whom my question was addressed.
“You know,” I said. “What else did Sterling know about those white men?”
For a long moment I thought that Angel was not going to look at me. But then she turned and gave me the full treatment.
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“I support my mother, Mr. Minton,” she said. “Her and her sister, my five-year-old son, and a man who once saved me from a rapist.”
Three Hearts put a hand on Angel’s shoulder.
“That ain’t what I asked you,” I said, wondering at the man that lay inside me.
“They were men who . . . enjoyed black women,” she said at last. “They hungered for dark flesh.”
“Your flesh?”
“Paris,” Fearless said again.
“Yes, Mr. Minton, my flesh.”
“Did you use to go with them up to this here cabin?”
“There. Hotel rooms, beach houses, rectory couches, and back-alley slums.” There was distaste on her lips but not shame, not humiliation.
“So you seduced them?” I asked, as if my tongue were a scalpel and her dignity a malignant tumor that had to be excised.
“If you had been there you would see it differently,” Angel said in an even voice. “Their blood was boiling from the minute they saw me. Ullie told me that this was how we could save my family. I would have done a lot worse for them.”
She’d beaten me. Three Hearts was now holding the girl’s hands. Fearless sat there, his posture in the stoic demeanor of respect.
I turned my back against the door. I was falling into a stu-por. Soon sleep would come and take me, just as one day Death would come knocking on my door.
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“ Pa r i s , ” F e a r l e s s s a i d , and I opened my eyes.
“What?”
“Cops.”
I turned and looked out the back window. The flashing blue and red lights caused a chemical reaction in my brain. I don’t know the names of the particular ingredients, but three seconds after I was awakened I was also as sober as a judge.
“I’m pullin’ ovah,” Fearless said. “Get ready.”
My sobriety turned into a microscopic lens then. Fearless saying to get ready meant that he was prepared to go to war.
“Fearless,” I said as he pulled to the curb.
“What?”
