“Sounded like she was last night.”
“We friends, Paris,” Fearless said. “It was just a night together.”
“So that was just like shakin’ hands?”
Reese only had two tables inside his place, but it was early enough that his only customers were people on the way to work.
“No,” Fearless said.
“She looked like a chicken sittin’ on a ostrich egg when I seen her this mornin’,” I said.
“What you sayin’, Paris?”
“I’m sayin’ that Mona wasn’t just bein’ friendly up in there.”
Fearless took in every word and nuance, making them into convictions and feelings that held more truth than most men were capable of. He might never have understood what I was saying, but after hearing my words he would do the right thing, which was better than most men could ever do.
After twenty seconds of serious consideration, Fearless smiled.
“What’s wrong, Paris?”
“What you mean?”
“I mean why you pesterin’ me? Ain’t you got a problem to solve?”
“Thomas Benton Hoag,” I said.
“Who?”
I explained about Angel’s old boyfriend, the high-yellow real estate man.
296
FEAR OF THE DARK
“He hired the Handsome brothers to grab Three Hearts and Angel.”
“But he was Angel’s boyfriend,” Fearless said.
Fearless squeezed the slender bone between his eyes with a thumb and forefinger. “How does he get in this?”
“Real estate,” I said. “His company is a white company, and Sterling was in real estate too. Maybe Sterling knew some white dude, a potential client, who liked black girls and he came to Tommy askin’ ’bout a girl who could show him a good time. That brings us to Angel. One thing leads to another, and an opportunity for blackmail emerges. After a while Tommy’s in the catbird seat, targeting white men who have their hands on money but don’t have no money themselves.”
“So Angel was in on it from the beginning?”
“Maybe her. Maybe there was other girls. I don’t know.
Angel don’t mattah. It’s Tommy the one.”
Fearless let the words wash over him. You could see him imagining not so much the details of the crime but the qualities of the man.
“So he like a pimp?” Fearless said at last.
“Yeah,” I said. “Not to mention a kidnapper, a killer, and a blackmailer.”
Fearless nodded and asked, “So what next?”
“There’s one problem,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“That suitcase.”
“Where is it?”
“I burned it.”
“Then it ain’t a problem,” Fearless reasoned.
297
Walter Mosley
“Where it came from is the problem,” I said.
“Ulysses said he took it from Hector’s house.”
“But we know he didn’t,” I said. “How’s he gonna be so lucky to get there after the killer kills Hector and before the deaf neighbor calls the cops?”
“So what you think?”
“I think Angel had the bag.”
“An’ where’d she get it from?” Fearless asked. He was getting nervous, tapping the toes of his left foot on the wood floor.
“Either from Hector after she killed him or from Thomas after he did.”
“You think she in it wit’ him?”
