“You don’t make a lot of money, do you, Mr. Friar?” I asked. “You manage the rich people’s cash that flows into the church. You visit them at their big houses and drink tea from china cups older than your mother’s mother’s mother. But at home you sweat ovah the bills like all the rest of us. Got a gray-haired wife, and kids in college. Car payments for a car spends half the time in the shop. You got three good suits an’ nobody to wear ’em for, and so when Monique came into your life, you just about changed religions.
“All it would take was ten thousand dollars. Ten thousand.
You saw her make twice that in the time you’d been together.
She never lost. Never.”
“It was eight thousand dollars,” he said through a severely constricted throat.
“Shall we go visit your friend Brian?” I suggested.
“Stay where you are,” a familiar voice countermanded.
210
Th e p i m p l e o n t h e c o p ’ s forehead had burst since the last time we’d met. In its 33 place was a fleshy red sore. Maybe his hat had broken the strained skin, or maybe he’d been in a brawl with some poor soul who didn’t want to vacate his bench.
The cops came over to us, their hands hovering at their billy clubs and pistols.
“Are you okay, sir?” the handsome white policeman asked Martin Friar.
“What’s your name?” was his reply.
“Officer Arlen,” the cop said, his voice developing a defensive tone as he spoke.
“Do I look like I’m in danger, Officer Arlen?”
“I’m asking the questions,” Arlen said, bringing his shoulders up the way a boxer does when he’s forced against the ropes.
“My name is Martin Friar,” Angel’s mark said. “I’m a vice president of UEC there across the street. These two gentlemen have come to consult with me. Do you have a problem with that?”
“This man here,” Pimple Face said, “told us that he was reading a book.”
211
Walter Mosley
“Was he reading a book?”
“He, he didn’t say anything about meeting some vice president guy.”
“Would you two like to come with me across the street?”
Friar offered. “There you can ask about my position and my prerogative to have a private meeting with anyone I wish.”
“We’re sorry, Mr. Friar,” Officer Arlen said. “This man just looked suspicious to us.”
“Why?”
“He was, uh, you know . . . hanging out with nothing to do.”
“Isn’t this a city park, Officer?” Friar asked.
I liked what he was doing, but I was beginning to get nervous. I had never seen a policeman getting browbeaten by a civilian before. I suppose I had never thought it possible.
“Yes, sir,” Arlen replied, “but —”
“But because these men are Negroes you decided that they were up to no good,” Friar said, cutting him off. “This is a free country, Officer Arlen. Men like these have rights just as much as you and I. And if you take away this man’s rights, you are hurting all of us. Do you understand that?”
Two minutes earlier I would have sold Martin Friar down the river for an extra carton of Lucky Strikes. But now I would be more likely to help him than I would Useless.
“Excuse us, sir,” Arlen said. “We didn’t understand.”
The policeman didn’t apologize to Fearless and me. He didn’t really care, but I wasn’t bothered by that. As Arlen and his bad-skinned partner climbed into their prowl car, I had to strain to keep from grinning at them.
Pimple Face glowered at me as they drove off.
“Damn,” Fearless said. “Damn.”
212
FEAR OF THE DARK
“Maybe we should go someplace private,” Friar suggested.
“I got the car parked up the street,” Fearless said.
M a r t i n F r i a r t o o k u s to a very nice one-bedroom apartment on a small street called Bucknell a few blocks from his office. It was on the third floor of a solid brick building and very well appointed. The maroon carpeting was plush and the white walls were bright backgrounds for the real oil paintings that hung from them. There were landscapes and still lifes, tasteful nudes, and even one abstract painting of nested quad-rangles in differing hues of crimson.
“When we have important visitors from out of town, we often put them up here,” Friar explained.
Fearless and I were sitting on a wooden-legged violet couch built for two and a half, and Friar sat across from us on a chair that completed the set. He’d poured us a very good cognac in large snifters.
I nursed my liquor, remembering that I had to keep my mind sharp in order not to be trapped by the sins of my
