When I turned around again, he was still looking for a way to invade me.
“How much longer do you plan to be here?” he asked.
201
Walter Mosley
“I don’t know, Officer. I’m readin’ a book. Haven’t you ever read a book? It takes time.”
If he were a soldier and I were the enemy, the look in his eyes would have told me that he intended to kill me the next chance he got.
“We’ll be driving by in an hour,” he told me.
“Good,” I said. “I’ll see you then.”
I t r i e d t o g e t b a c k into my book but I couldn’t stop thinking about all the words the police and I had spilled. It was a complex meeting, what with the Communist publication, the racist miscomprehension, and my barely conscious desire to be put back in a cell.
This last detail was very important in light of the other two.
I was a black man seeking incarceration because I felt comfortable in that state. If I were a braver individual, I would have become a revolutionary at that very moment. But as it is, I only remember it because of Useless and his determination to share his bad luck with family and friends.
F e a r l e s s r e t u r n e d i n forty-five minutes or so. He looked very dapper in his charcoal-colored chauffeur’s uniform. I took a blank Western Union form, scribbled down a note, folded it so that it appeared to be sealed, and addressed it.
Fearless carried the dispatch to do its work.
•
•
•
202
FEAR OF THE DARK
H e c a m e b a c k o u t and sat there with me. I was a little worried that the cops might return, but I suppose they had found some real police work to keep them busy.
I tried to explain to Fearless about Communism and the American police state, and about me playing my part in the farce, but he didn’t understand.
“That’s just the way it is, man,” Fearless said. “Cops wanna mess wit’ you, you got to put ’em in their place.”
I looked at my friend, not for the first time thinking that even though we were as close as two men could be, we didn’t live in the same world — not at all.
203
N o t l o n g a f t e r F e a r l e s s returned from his mission at United Episcopal Charities, 32 a man came out the double glass doors. The white man had once been young, and hale, and handsome. He had probably been over six feet tall twenty-five years ago. Now he was five ten with silver hair and a gray blue suit that almost made up for the ravages of time.
The man carried a yellow slip of paper in his left hand. He transported this paper across the street, jaywalking toward me and my friend from another world.
I wasn’t worried because I was buoyed with the kind of synthetic confidence that Fearless inspired.
As Martin Friar approached, Fearless stood up to make room for him on the bench. Realizing, whether right or wrong, who was in charge, Friar waved the Western Union note page at me and asked, “What is the meaning of this?”
His once-handsome features were still rugged and, in certain circles, no doubt, awe inspiring. But there was a glaze of uncertainty over his pale blue eyes.
“Sit down, Mr. Friar,” I said.
He obeyed, and Fearless took a perch on the other side.
“Well?” the vice president in charge of investments asked.
204
FEAR OF THE DARK
“You know a young black woman named Angel?” I asked.
“Do you mean Monique? Monique Dubois?”
I took out the 3 ? 5 I had got from Man. When the steely-faced white man saw it, his colorless lips trembled for a moment.
“Yes,” he said. “That’s Monique.”
“She was your lover?” It was meant to be a question but came out as an accusation.
“We love each other,” he said.
This present-tense reply threw me off a bit.
“You say you love the woman who set you up and then made you the victim of blackmailers?”
“It wasn’t her fault. She was coerced into fooling me. But we, we . . .”
