207
Walter Mosley
“I don’t see what race has to do with love,” he stated.
“But most people do,” I said. “Most people feel that love is a question of race. I mean, how many interracial couples you see walkin’ down Olympic, goin’ hand in hand?”
“I’m not like that,” he said. “I care for people for what’s on the inside, not the outside.”
“So Monique wasn’t your first?”
“The question is crass, but the answer is no.”
It took me a moment to disentangle that sentence. Once I had it, I asked him if his friend Brian Motley knew about his racial liberalism.
This question brought suspicion to Friar’s gaze; suspicion but no immediate answer. Fearless turned to regard Friar —
intrigued, I suppose, by the man’s silence.
A pale blue vein appeared on Friar’s milk white forehead.
“This has nothing to do with Brian,” Friar said. “He didn’t even know anything about Monique.”
“Angel,” I said, correcting him. “Just like she didn’t know that this Paul guy was going to blackmail you.”
“I was a fool,” Friar said dramatically. “But that doesn’t change how I felt, how I feel. It has nothing to do with race.
Monique is a beautiful woman. She’s sophisticated and well-spoken. She understands how a man thinks.”
“She sure do,” I said, appraising her effect on this man.
“Tell me about your boy Motley. How does he fit in this?”
“I once saw Brian at the racetrack with a lovely young black woman. It was obvious that they were intimate. When he saw me he got very nervous. To assuage his fears I made a joke. . . .”
208
FEAR OF THE DARK
“What kinda joke?”
“I asked him if, if she had a sister.”
Fearless and I both grinned.
“Maybe I was foolish, but I had been married for many years. My wife and I love each other, but a man has needs well past the time a woman is done with such things.”
I liked the way he worded it.
“The women that Brian introduced me to were of another world. They would never run across my wife or her friends.
They wouldn’t want to marry. . . . Not until Monique, anyway.”
“She wanted to marry you?”
“I wanted her. I told her we could go to the Caribbean, make a new life down there. . . .”
He reminded me of my own desire to run away to Jamaica.
“. . . We could have children and love each other. I got down on my knees.”
It was a wonder how getting down on begging knee was a sign of pride for the powerful white man. For people like me it was getting up to an erect posture that was difficult.
“So you say this Brian introduced you to more than one
“It wasn’t like that,” Friar said.
“I hope not. ’Cause it sounds like prostitution. That could be blackmail lettah numbah two.”
“They were young women looking for a good time. We went to clubs and restaurants. Every now and then we’d take a weekend on the beach in Ensenada.”
“How many?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he lied. “Five.”
Or fifteen.
“And did money ever pass hands?” I asked.
209
Walter Mosley
Friar moved his head to the side like cocking the hammer of a gun. But he didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to.
“But that wasn’t the way it was wit’ Monique,” I said. “Oh, no. Monique came to you bringing money with her. Thousands of dollars. And when you asked her where she got it, she took you through private jazz clubs and into back room poker games. She raked in thousands of dollars and spent the rest of the night whispering in your ear.”
Martin Friar’s gaze had moved to his hands, which lay helplessly in his lap.
