Only the best and worst of men could make that claim.
“How did you come to bail us out of jail, Mr. Twist?” I asked again.
“Answer up this time, Jerry,” Fearless added.
He gave a slight shrug and said, “Ulysses called me and asked me to do it.”
“Ulysses?” That was both of us.
“Yeah. He called and said that he saw his mama an’ them an’ they told him that you was arrested. I called cop houses till I fount you.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because Ulysses axed me to, that’s why. I done told you all that I’m doin’ business wit’ him.”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know. He called from a phone booth, said that he was with his mama an’ that girl, that Angel.” Jerry smiled at the thought of her. There was something obscene about a man that ugly lusting after a goddess.
He made a turn on a block three numbers lower than Nadine’s.
“You could stop anywhere around here,” Fearless said.
“I’ll take you to the do’, man,” our driver offered.
“Here’s fine.”
“Whatevah you say.” Jerry pulled to the curb, and I jumped out, followed by Fearless.
I put my head in the window before he could drive away.
“You know about that cabin Useless stay in around Angeles National Forest?” I asked.
“Sure do.”
“You know where it’s at?”
“Red house on Bear Pond Lane,” he said without straining his memory. “Got a airplane wind vane on top. It’s off Route Seventeen. The exit have a sign for fresh honeycomb underneath it. You take that exit, make a right, and go till you see Bear Pond Lane. Turn there an’ go a mile or two. You’ll see it.”
When he drove off I actually had a chill.
“What was that all about?” I asked Fearless.
“I don’t know,” Fearless replied. “It was like a wild hyena had run ya down and then he lick yo’ hand instead’a rippin’ a steak outta yo’ thigh.”
“Uh-huh.”
There was a liquor store at the corner. Fearless and I went in to buy orange soda, potato chips, and devil’s food cupcakes. We were starving. After eating our junk food meal at the bus stop bench we strolled on down to Nadine’s.
She hadn’t left for work yet. As a matter of fact, she was still dressed in her housecoat. The robe was mostly white with some pink and green sewn in. It looked more like an overgrown pot holder than anything else.
“Hi,” she said to us at the door. “I wondered when you were going to bring her home.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Hearts, of course.”
“She ain’t here?”
“She was with you.”
We came in and sat around a small dining table.
Nadine was the kind of woman who overdid everything. Where there should have been one chair she’d put three; where a three-foot table would fit nicely she’d place a table five feet in diameter. There were seven prints of paintings hung from the wall and little doodads all over the place.
“So you got taken off to jail an’ that devil girl took off with Hearts?” Nadine asked us.
“We couldn’t help gettin’ arrested,” I said.
“Hm.”
“Does my aunt have your phone number?” I asked then.
“Of course.”
“And she haven’t called?”
“Wouldn’t I tell you if she did?”
“Nadine,” I asked. “Could you stay home from work today?”
“What?” she gasped. You would have thought I’d asked her to take off her clothes and lie out on the bed.
“My aunt may call you,” I said calmly. “She might be in trouble. If you aren’t here when she calls, we might miss the only chance we have to help her.”
“I use my job to pay the rent,” Nadine explained.
“You have sick days.”
“But I’m not sick.”
I’m so used to people who steal and cheat and lie that when I’m faced with someone like Nadine I’m thrown off balance. Nadine would have walked a city mile to return an extra nickel she got in change from a fifty-dollar transaction. Her idea of life was to look back over all the decades of work and play and be able to say that she never did a wrong thing or took advantage of a single soul. She’d turn on Jesus if he broke a commandment, wouldn’t have a choice.
“Call them,” I said. “Tell them you need a personal day — that there’s a family emergency and you need to stay home to man the phone.”
No lie there.
But still Nadine hesitated.
“You know I don’t live no fast an’ loose life like you, Paris Minton. I have responsibilities.”
I could have told her that running a bookstore was a responsible position. I could have told her that trying to save Three Hearts’s life was something important. But instead I said, “Please. For my auntie.”
Nadine never did say yes, but we left with the tacit understanding that she would stay home. She even let us borrow her red Rambler.
The ride out to the country would have been nice if it wasn’t for our mission. The old pines seemed sage and peaceful. The grasses waving in the breeze were lovely. We climbed out of the Los Angeles basin, leaving the dirty yellow miasma of smog beneath. There was fresh air and wild birds and blue sky behind billowy white clouds.
“There’s the honey sign,” Fearless said, pointing at the rude painting of a beehive leaning up against an exit sign.
We took the exit and the turn, drove seven miles to the Bear Pond Lane turnoff, and went two more miles to the red house with a weather vane in the shape of an airplane.
There was no driveway or lawn, just a large square of dirt in front of the house. Behind stood tall, dirty green pines.
My car was parked in front of the house. When I looked in the window I saw that the key was in the ignition.
The thing I remember most about that country cabin was the quiet. It wasn’t that there was no noise but that each sound was particular, as if it were waiting its turn: Fearless’s door slamming, a robin’s cry, the wind through a welter of leaves and pine needles. Even though I was tense and worried, I recognized the beauty of the moment.
“Nice, huh?” Fearless said. Then he took the pistol out of his belt and made sure the safety was off.
I followed him to the front door.
He knocked.
No answer.
He knocked again. I tried the door, but it was locked.
Fearless motioned for me to follow him around the back.
There was a well-swept dirt path leading around the side of the house, marked off from the wild by a white lattice fence. Big white flowers bloomed here and there.
The back door was unlocked.
The cabin was just one big room with a thirteen-foot ceiling and rustic furniture. There was a cast iron woodstove against one wall — that was the kitchen. Other than that the left side was a living area with couches and chairs. The right side had a big bed with a thick mattress and animal furs for blankets.
Everything was neat and tidy, which told me that Useless had probably not been around very much. The only things out of place were one turned-over chair and a good deal of half-dry blood in the center of the pine floor.
Without a word we searched the house. Actually, I searched while Fearless moved around. He didn’t have the kind of concentration to look for clues.
It was all a waste of time. There wasn’t a personal item in the cabin. Not a name or bus ticket, not a photograph or letter. All there was was a drying pool of blood and a fallen chair.
Chapter 31
I followed Fearless on the ride back to Los Angeles. We dropped Nadine’s car off at her house and went in to see if Three Hearts had called.
She hadn’t.
Things had gotten a little more serious, and I was forced to take a chance.