Fear of the Dark

“I just wanna sit for a while, Fearless. This next step gonna be a big one, an’ I wanna clear my head. You know?”

My car was parked two blocks down. I walked there with Fearless and got a book out of the trunk before he drove off.

Then I went back to my park bench and pretended that I was just an everyday Joe hanging out in the park.

Th e t i t l e o f t h e p a p e r b a c k b o o k was Aelita, written by Alexei Tolstoy and published by Raduga Publishers, Moscow. I had gotten the newly printed copy from a socialist librarian who worked in Santa Monica. He’d told me that this was a translation of a Russian novel by a guy who had been through the early days of the revolution. Most of the books he had written were naturalist novels, but this was science fiction. He thought I’d find it interesting.

I did.

At that time I, and most other Americans, believed that 199

Walter Mosley

Russia didn’t allow for any kind of independent thinking, that all Russians lived in similar barrack-like rooms and were brainwashed so that they couldn’t really have an imagination.

But the first few pages of this book brought this belief into question. There was nothing overtly political about the story.

It was more about adventure and love and men seeking their destiny among the stars.

I was amazed that any Russian could have such thoughts.

“You there,” someone said in a loud, unfriendly voice.

It was a policeman hailing me from the passenger’s side of his patrol car.

“Yes, Officer?” I was determined not to stand and walk toward him.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Reading a book,” I replied. I held up the Communist-con-doned fiction in case he didn’t believe it.

For a moment the young white patrolman didn’t know what to say. So he leaned over to conspire with his partner.

They parked, disembarked, and walked over to flank me and block the sun.

“Stand up,” the officer who had spoken to me before said.

His only distinguishing characteristic was a red pus-filled pimple on the left side of his forehead. Other than that his brown-eyed, thin-lipped, brown-haired, frowning visage was something I had seen again and again throughout my life.

His partner was taller and deadly handsome but with nearly the same features. The contrast of like images intrigued me, but this wasn’t my show.

I stood up, holding my book like a talisman.

“What are you doing here?” the handsome man asked me.

“Reading my book,” I said.

200

FEAR OF THE DARK

“What are you doing reading here?”

“I like the literary quality of the statuary.”

That bought me three seconds of silence.

“Let me see your book,” the handsome speaker said.

I handed it over. He flipped through the pages, looking for contraband, no doubt. If he had read the frontispiece, he might have decided that I was a Communist; he might have arrested me for espionage. But his imagination wasn’t at all intellectual.

He was looking for swag, for small packets of heroin. He was looking for the kind of contraband he thought someone like me would be carrying.

“Let’s see your wallet,” he asked when the book search turned up nothing.

I obliged.

After fumbling through my well-ordered documents, he said, “Tell me something, Mr. Minton. Why aren’t you at work?”

“I am,” I said. “My book.”

“Your job is reading?”

“In a way. I own a bookstore on Florence. I’m considering ordering a dozen copies of this book. But since it’s a translation, I’m trying to see if it’s of a quality to justify such an investment.”

Three seconds more.

“Why don’t you go to a park near your store?”

“I like this park,” I replied.

“Turn around and lean against the bench,” was his answer to my flippancy.

He searched me down to the cuffs in my pants.