“Yeah,” he admitted. “But I didn’t know what it meant exactly. An’ at the same time I heard it, you shouted. When you called my name it all fell inta place and I jumped.”
I wondered for the thousandth time what it would be like to see the world from Fearless’s point of view. In my world everything was particular and threatening, made up of sharp corners that would cut you if you got too close. But Fearless, I imagined, lived in a liquid world where everything blended together and moved in unison. In his world there were no absolute victors or complete victims, just movement between everything, all the time.
Mona brought me a squat glass of peach schnapps and ice.
That was my favorite drink, and Fearless always kept a bottle in the cabinet in case I came by.
She sat on Fearless’s lap. He whispered in her ear and she smiled.
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“Okay,” she said gladly and stood up. “Bye, Paris. I’m’a go an’ let you men talk.”
I rose and kissed her cheek. She smiled at me and patted my jaw line. As she sashayed toward her apartment, I closed the front door. Fearless had turned on the light before I was sitting again.
“I called you,” he said.
“I stayed out last night. Seemed like a good idea.”
“You got anything more about Ulysses?”
“I think it might’a been him who killed Hector.”
I told him that Jessa had said Useless had stolen something from Hector’s boss.
“He already admitted killing Tony,” I added as a kind of proof.
“Naw, man,” Fearless said. “Ulysses ain’t gonna sneak up on no bad man an’ cut his th’oat. Naw.” Fearless shook his head, but he was wondering.
“That ain’t all,” I said. “Jessa said that Hector’s bossman called an’ told him to meet him at the yard.”
“Bubba’s Yard?”
“I don’t know. Might be.”
“Thatta make sense. Sure would.”
If you lived in Watts or some other poor neighborhood and you owned a fine or fancy car, you might avail yourself of the services of Bubba Lateman’s Yard. Lateman owned a largish piece of property on the borderline between Compton and Los Angeles. He’d built a high cinder-block wall around it and topped that with barbed wire and shards of glass embedded in concrete. He kept dogs that would chew through bone and an alarm system with a bell that could be heard for six city blocks.
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Combine that with a high-powered hunting rifle in the hands of an army-certified marksman and you had the safest garage in the world.
It cost two dollars a day, which was steep in 1956, but if you had a fine Cadillac and you didn’t want it damaged or stolen, you just might pay Bubba before you paid the rent.
Bubba had a capacity of twenty-five cars, Milo’s red Caddy usually being one of them.
“So you thinkin’ that they keepin’ somethin’ in the car at Bubba’s,” Fearless said.
“I think that’s where the rest’a the money is.”
“Damn,” Fearless said. “That’s pretty smart. You know Ulysses might think of it, but he wouldn’t have the car to make it real.”
Nor, I thought, would he be able to run a blackmail operation.
“You ready t’face that evil eye again?” Fearless asked me.
“No,” I said. “Could you do it?”
“Sure thing, man. That’s the least I could do.”
We p a r k e d d o w n t h e b l o c k from Nadine Grant’s home. I sat in the car waiting while Fearless braced the family.
Nadine would put up with them for a while; Useless, after all, was blood to her. But it had to be running rather hot in there.
Useless was a slob and Angel was a stranger. It shouldn’t have been too hard for Fearless to pry my cousin free.
The more I thought about it, the less likely it seemed that Useless would have killed Hector. The risk wouldn’t have been worth it. And even if it made sense, Useless would have 277
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gone after the man with a gun. A knife is a brave man’s weapon. And even though Useless wasn’t as cowardly as I, he wasn’t what you’d have called brave.
I sat in that car with the windows rolled up and the sun beating down. It was getting hot, but I was afraid even to open a window. Just that thin barrier of glass was better than nothing.
I got a little light-headed from the heat but I was only aware of the drowsiness, not its cause. So when Fearless opened the door and said my name, I was surprised. I think maybe I had passed out from all of the exhaustion, peach schnapps, hot sun, and fear.
“Hey, Cousin,” Useless said as he climbed into the backseat.
