Nadine never did say yes, but we left with the tacit understanding that she would stay home. She even let us borrow her red Rambler.
Th e r i d e o u t t o t h e c o u n t r y would have been nice if it wasn’t for our mission. The old pines seemed sage and peaceful. The grasses waving in the breeze were lovely. We climbed out of the Los Angeles basin, leaving the dirty yellow miasma of smog beneath. There was fresh air and wild birds and blue sky behind billowy white clouds.
“There’s the honey sign,” Fearless said, pointing at the rude painting of a beehive leaning up against an exit sign.
We took the exit and the turn, drove seven miles to the Bear Pond Lane turnoff, and went two more miles to the red house with a weather vane in the shape of an airplane.
There was no driveway or lawn, just a large square of dirt in front of the house. Behind stood tall, dirty green pines.
My car was parked in front of the house. When I looked in the window I saw that the key was in the ignition.
The thing I remember most about that country cabin was the quiet. It wasn’t that there was no noise but that each sound was particular, as if it were waiting its turn: Fearless’s door slamming, a robin’s cry, the wind through a welter of leaves and pine needles. Even though I was tense and worried, I recognized the beauty of the moment.
“Nice, huh?” Fearless said. Then he took the pistol out of his belt and made sure the safety was off.
196
FEAR OF THE DARK
I followed him to the front door.
He knocked.
No answer.
He knocked again. I tried the door, but it was locked.
Fearless motioned for me to follow him around the back.
There was a well-swept dirt path leading around the side of the house, marked off from the wild by a white lattice fence.
Big white flowers bloomed here and there.
The back door was unlocked.
The cabin was just one big room with a thirteen-foot ceiling and rustic furniture. There was a cast iron woodstove against one wall — that was the kitchen. Other than that the left side was a living area with couches and chairs. The right side had a big bed with a thick mattress and animal furs for blankets.
Everything was neat and tidy, which told me that Useless had probably not been around very much. The only things out of place were one turned-over chair and a good deal of half-dry blood in the center of the pine floor.
Without a word we searched the house. Actually, I searched while Fearless moved around. He didn’t have the kind of concentration to look for clues.
It was all a waste of time. There wasn’t a personal item in the cabin. Not a name or bus ticket, not a photograph or letter.
All there was was a drying pool of blood and a fallen chair.
197
I f o l l o w e d F e a r l e s s on the ride back to Los Angeles. We dropped Nadine’s car off at her 31 house and went in to see if Three Hearts had called.
She hadn’t.
Things had gotten a little more serious, and I was forced to take a chance.
Mad Anthony was probably dead, probably murdered. I wanted to stay away from Katz and Drummund, the men the murdered man had beaten. I wanted no connection with a murder, and so Mr. Friar, at United Episcopal Charities, became the object of our labors.
The office was in a three-story brick building on Olympic, about a mile west of downtown proper. There was a small park across the street that had on permanent display a cast iron statue of a woman wearing a Spanish veil. She was crying, and her hands were held out about a foot from either side of her face. There was no plaque for explanation, no reason for or account of her pain. The statue made me like the small recre-ation area. The mystery of the sculpture allowed casual viewers to come up with their own reasons for such powerful emotions.
198
FEAR OF THE DARK
At the edge of the small patch of green was a bench that gave us a good view of United Episcopal Charities.
“What’s the plan, Paris?” Fearless asked me.
“You still got that chauffeur’s uniform you used to wear?” I replied.
“Uh-huh.”
“You wanna go and get it and put it on?”
“Sure.” He stood up.
“While you at it, you could stop by that Western Union office on Manchester and pick me up a blank form there, maybe three or four.”
“Sure thing, man. What you gonna do?”
