“Paris,” the voice intoned.
“Yeah,” I said resignedly.
“I don’t give information over the phone.”
“Come on by, then,” I said.
“Be there in five.”
More trouble. Whisper could find his way into any problem. He was a real private eye. I couldn’t shake the notion that it was him who had me walking in front of those armed men.
It was him who was saved by my diversion.
But even in my self-centered despair, I knew that I had asked Mr. Natly for help. He wouldn’t have been calling me if I hadn’t called on him first.
Above my telephone I had a big round wall clock with a sweeping second hand.
Exactly three hundred seconds after I hung up there was a knock at the door. I just opened it. If it was some armed killer, then so be it.
Whisper smiled and stuck out a hand for me to shake.
I had met the detective a dozen times in my life. He had never before, to my recollection, offered to shake hands.
His fleeting smile came and went. I offered him tea and he accepted.
We went into my kitchen and sat down like friends.
He used three sugars in his English Breakfast. That surprised me.
“That was a good thing you did the other night, Paris,”
Whisper said.
“I was so scared I couldn’t even run,” I replied.
287
Walter Mosley
“Scared is the detective’s best friend,” he said. “Scared makes you look harder and think longer. Scared keeps your hand on the wheel and your eye on the rearview mirror.”
“Sounds like a heart attack waitin’ to happen,” I said.
“Naw, man. You get used to it. Find yourself sitting in your chair thinkin’ ’bout things nobody else will get to for days.
After a while you take actions before the fear moves you. Not so many people could be a detective, but you could, Paris.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Yes, you do. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be askin’ after Mannheim and the Handsome boys.”
He had me there.
“You find ’em?” I asked.
“Bobo,” he said with a nod. “I decided to concentrate on him. I’m guessin’ you wouldn’t want to see ’em all together.”
“Where?” I asked, cutting to the chase.
Whisper smiled again. He took out a slip of paper with a list of four places scrawled on it. These places, I knew, were the leg breaker’s hangouts.
I took the list and looked it over. They were joints I wouldn’t have felt comfortable going in for any reason. The names were often heard along with reports of fights, knifings, arrests, and murder.
“You want some company, Paris?” Whisper offered.
“Damn right.”
“Let’s go, then.”
A l l e g r a ’ s D a n c e H a l l wa s no more than the frame of a barn behind an ironworks factory on Hooper. Back there you could lose your life in a second. It was early and no one was 288
FEAR OF THE DARK
dancing. There were a couple of potheads smoking in the yard, but Bobo was nowhere in evidence.
“Should we ask about him?” I asked the professional.
“Not unless you want him to disappear on ya.”
Th e n e x t p l a c e wa s a Texas barbecue stand on Santa Barbara. It was rumored that Bobo ate there at least four times a week. He wasn’t hungry right then.
H a r r y ’ s B a r b e r s h o p h a d b e e n c l o s e d temporarily by the police. There had been a murder over a poker game in the back room, so Harry took off a week or so, until the police got tired of checking their seal.
Th a d ’ s B a r wa s l a s t on our list.
The physical bar at Thad’s was small, but there was a big room for clientele once they had something to drink. There were four bartenders, serving cheap beer, mostly. Whisper had kept Thad’s for last because he’d been told
