“You don’t wanna mess with the contents of this bag, man,”
Useless assured me.
“Why not? What you got in there?”
“It’s the stuff Sterling used to blackmail them men.”
“Fearless an’ me know one’a them men,” I said. “Martin Friar.”
“Marty?” was Angel’s first word in a while.
“He sends his best,” I said to the young beauty. “I think he thinks he loves you.”
You couldn’t have read her face with a microscope.
“Leave the bag, Ulysses,” Three Hearts said.
“But Mama . . .”
“Leave it. That’s the devil’s work in that bag. I’m sure Fearless will make sure it gets back to the men that have been wronged.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Fearless’ll do it. Fearless, not Paris. Not your nephew, who you dragged down in the trough with your son.”
Fearless reached down for the bag. Useless took it by the handle.
“Don’t cause a ruckus, Ulysses,” Fearless said.
“Do you have a car, Ulysses?” Three Hearts’s voice was stiff and angry.
“Yeah. Jerry Twist lent me his car.”
“Then let’s get out of here.”
“Two questions, Useless,” I said.
Hearts was about to protest my bastardization of her son’s name, but he put a hand on her shoulder.
“What, Paris?”
244
FEAR OF THE DARK
“Who killed Mad Anthony?”
Useless never could lie very well in the presence of his mother. She forgave him everything and loved him fiercely.
Her passion made him honest, or somewhat so.
“He was tryin’ to kill me, Paris. I swear.”
“What about Hector?”
“Come on, baby, let’s go,” Angel said.
“I don’t know,” Useless said to me. “I shot Tony in a alley off ’a Alameda. He would’a kilt me if I didn’t, but I don’t know about Hector.”
Our eyes were locked for a long minute. I believed him . . .
but that didn’t make what he said the truth.
The three headed for the door. I followed them through the bookstore and out onto the porch. I don’t think I’d ever been angrier. All the trouble I’d gone through, and my aunt still treated me like a throwaway waxed paper milk carton.
“You welcome for our help finding your son,” I called after them. “Make sure you don’t call back any time soon.”
Three Hearts wheeled around and stared at me, her evil eye glowing in the night. But I didn’t care, not one bit. A man can only be pushed so far and then he has to stand up and say what he feels.
“She’ll cool down in the mornin’, Paris,” Fearless said at my back. “She’ll see that you did right by her with the dawn.”
“All I want is for them to leave me alone,” I said. “I’ve had enough. You hear me?”
245
B a c k i n s i d e , Fearless picked up the suitcase that Useless had left in my kitchen.
38 “I’ll hold on to that,” I told him.
“You sure, man?”
“I wanna check it out.”
“Okay, Paris,” Fearless said. Then he chuckled. “You must be boilin’.”
“She drive me crazy, Fearless,” I said. “Here I done helped her do what she want, an’ she still wanna look at Useless like he the one did it all.”
“That’s her baby there,” Fearless said. “You cain’t do nuttin’
about that.”
“It’s not only that,” I said. “Sterling was workin’ for somebody, somebody he was scared of. That means the
