“We don’t need to fight here.”
“We got to get to Ulysses, man. These cops in the way.”
The squad car pulled up behind us. They shone a bright white light from their car into ours.
“There’s no reason to hurt anybody, Fearless. We’ll get out of this.”
A young white man was coming up to the driver’s window.
He was wearing a policeman’s uniform and trained to enforce a certain kind of law; he was arrogant and sure of himself, but he didn’t know that if I didn’t talk just right he was about to be killed.
“I got it, Fearless. I got it, man.”
The tension went out of my friend.
The police hadn’t made it to the door yet. Fearless was rolling down his window in expectation. But my mind was back down the road we had just traveled. Three Hearts had thought she knew Angel from the first moment she laid eyes on her. She could see something in her the way I saw things in Fearless. Maybe, I thought, maybe Hearts knew something I 178
FEAR OF THE DARK
did not; maybe Angel was not misnamed; maybe I was just blind to her, as many and most were to my friend.
“Step out of the car,” a voice said. There was no “please” at the end of his request.
U n d e r t h e h i g h b e a m s of their car we stood with our hands on the roof of mine. The women were on one side, while Fearless and I faced them.
“Paris Minton?” one white cop asked my friend.
“I’m Minton,” I said.
While the other cop frisked Fearless, my inquisitor patted me down with one hand.
“We’re going to have to bring you down to the station,” the cop was telling me.
“Gun,” the cop searching Fearless said.
“Paris,” Fearless said to me.
“You shut up,” his cop complained.
“Don’t worry, Fearless,” I said. “We’ll pull out of this.”
“Okay,” he said, as my cop snapped the first manacle of the handcuffs on me.
Three Hearts had left her gun-laden purse in the car and was holding her wallet in her hand. The police checked out the ladies’ IDs and told them that they had to bring Fearless and me down to the station for questioning.
“What for?” Three Hearts asked.
“I don’t know, ma’am,” one of them said. “We had his license plate number and name in our hot file. We’re just following orders.”
•
•
•
179
Walter Mosley
Th e y p r e s s e d F e a r l e s s a n d m e into the backseat of their prowl car. I remember, as our captors pulled from the curb, seeing Three Hearts in the front passenger’s seat and Angel behind the wheel of my junk heap. I wondered, as we drove off one way and the women headed in another, if I would see both of them alive again.
180
S o m e t i m e s ja i l i s n ’ t such a bad thing.
I mean, you’re locked down and treated as a 28 threat and a danger, but if you don’t have anywhere to go and freedom contains threats that incarceration does not, then a free meal, a locked metal door, and a hard cot will do.
Fearless and I were searched and thrown into a big cell that had a maximum capacity of twelve. There were fifteen men already in there when we arrived.
Some guy, I don’t even remember who, said something he thought was dangerous when we walked in.
With a smile Fearless told the man, “Come on ovah here an’
let’s get this ovah wit’.” The man could hear the threat in Fearless’s bored tone. He stayed where he was, and from then on nobody bothered us. Two men even vacated their bunks so that we would have a place to rest our weary bones.
Fearless was a paradox in my life. In that cell he was my savior. Just hearing his few words and seeing the steel in his bearing, men stepped back from him and anyone with him.
But when we were back on the streets, Fearless would drag me into danger no matter which way he went.
That’s why I was happy to be locked up. The bars protected 181
Walter Mosley
me. The lack of windows meant that nobody could spy on me.
