“There’s a way round back,” Fearless hissed.
I went with him from the lunar shade of a large stand of bird-of-paradise to the shadow of the house.
Behind the house stood a smaller, two-story building. There was a faint light coming from a few of its many windows.
We made our way to the front door, which was locked, and then around the sides, looking into windows as we went.
There was one window near the ground that was to the basement. There was a slightly stronger light coming from there. I peered into that portal, down into a room that was at least twenty feet below. There I beheld Three Hearts and Angel sitting across from each other at a wooden table. The room they were in was small and, I thought, probably locked.
I went to get Fearless. When he saw them he said, “I don’t think there’s anybody else here, Paris. Let’s just break a windah an’ get them.”
“You got your gun?”
“Do a robin have wings?”
The window didn’t look large enough, so we broke down a door at the back of the extra house.
We came in through a kitchen. The house was dark, and we left it like that, making our way, trying doors as we went.
“Paris,” Fearless said after pushing open a door.
Just hearing my name caused a pain in my chest.
“What?” I cried.
“It’s some steps leadin’ down.”
I wanted to run away. I would have run if I was alone. The thought occurred to me that we could have called the cops and given them the address on Hugo. We could have told them that there were women trapped in the basement.
233
Walter Mosley
There were tears on my face and the wide-eyed corpse of Lionel Sterling in my mind. I had forty thousand dollars in the trunk, but what difference did that make when my chest was about to explode?
“Come on, man,” Fearless said. “Let’s get this ovah wit’.”
A light snapped on and I gasped, falling to one knee. I knew someone was about to open fire on us. I closed my eyes to pray.
“Paris,” Fearless said.
When I opened my eyes I realized that he had turned on the basement light.
He took a step down on the pine plank staircase. Every step he took sighed like a crying woman. I came after, unable to keep my hands from shaking.
After thirty-seven cries downward we reached a concrete floor. Fearless found another light switch and flipped it. There was nothing in the ten-by-ten room except a sturdy and unpainted wooden door.
“Hearts!” Fearless yelled at the door.
“Fearless? Is that you, baby?” she cried.
Maybe I would have been relieved to hear her voice, but I was trying to hold down the fright Fearless had given me when he shouted. The darkness had brought me back to my own basement and the corpse I’d sat with down there. Fearless could have turned on a dozen lights and it still wouldn’t have been enough for me.
“Hold on, Hearts,” Fearless called. “We’ll get you out. I just gotta jimmy this lock here.”
It was a serious padlock held down by brass fittings that a jailer would have been proud of.
234
FEAR OF THE DARK
“I cain’t pull off the lock wit’ my hands, Paris,” my friend told me. “I gotta go upstairs an’ find sumpin’ to pry it with.”
I clamped my teeth shut so that I wouldn’t beg him to stay. I nodded, hoping that he didn’t see my fear.
Fearless patted my shoulder and made his way back up the stairs. I leaned against the door and slid down into a crouch.
“Fearless?” Three Hearts called. “Are you still there?”
“It’s me, Auntie,” I said, my voice a little high.
“Paris. How did you find us?”
The words jumbled in my mind as I tried to find an answer.
We found a man who had been destroyed. We killed a man.
We found some money. We buried a guy in a strawberry field.
I got dizzy and nauseous.
“Paris,” Three Hearts cried. “Paris.”
“I’m here, Auntie. Fearless is gettin’ somethin’ t’break the lock wit’.”
