As Martin Friar approached, Fearless stood up to make room for him on the bench. Realizing, whether right or wrong, who was in charge, Friar waved the Western Union note page at me and asked, “What is the meaning of this?”
His once-handsome features were still rugged and, in certain circles, no doubt, awe inspiring. But there was a glaze of uncertainty over his pale blue eyes.
“Sit down, Mr. Friar,” I said.
He obeyed, and Fearless took a perch on the other side.
“Well?” the vice president in charge of investments asked.
“You know a young black woman named Angel?” I asked.
“Do you mean Monique? Monique Dubois?”
I took out the 3 ¥ 5 I had got from Man. When the steely-faced white man saw it, his colorless lips trembled for a moment.
“Yes,” he said. “That’s Monique.”
“She was your lover?” It was meant to be a question but came out as an accusation.
“We love each other,” he said.
This present-tense reply threw me off a bit.
“You say you love the woman who set you up and then made you the victim of blackmailers?”
“It wasn’t her fault. She was coerced into fooling me. But we, we...”
I don’t know for sure, but I believe that in part of his mind Friar felt that he was being a fool and so was ashamed to divulge further intimacies of his heart.
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s true. Hector and Sterling were using her. I was just wondering what you thought.”
“Where is she?” Friar asked, leaning toward me.
“That’s what I’m trying to find out,” I told the heartbroken executive. “She’s with a friend’a mine, a guy named Maurice.”
“What’s he to her?” Friar asked, without waiting for even a second to pass.
This worried me. I had hoped to find someone who was feeling hate for Angel. Hate is a good source of energy. It makes your allies blind and eager. Love is a much stickier form of fuel. It burns unevenly and often causes internal damage.
“He used to be her lover too,” I said. “But no more. Now they’re just friends.”
The tension easing a little, Friar asked, “What can I do to help?”
He was moving too fast. I needed time to dicker with him, to figure out where he was coming from. Here he wanted to jump right in with both feet, and I still didn’t have a good understanding of his part in the puzzle.
“I, I need some information before I could tell ya that,” I said.
“What kind of information?”
“How did Sterling get to you?”
“I don’t know any Sterling or that other name — Hector, you said?”
I told him about Hector and the little I knew about Sterling, the man in charge.
“I know the Negro is Paul Dempsey. He was the one who ran the game,” Friar told us on that overexposed park bench. “But I don’t know anything about a man named Sterling. I’ve only met black people since Monique and I have been together.”
“When’s the last time you saw Monique?” I asked.
“Two weeks ago,” he said, choking a bit. “She called me and said that she was going away. She said that she was free of Paul Dempsey and that I didn’t have to worry about her anymore.”
“Was she gonna call you again?”
“No. She said that it would be better if I never saw her again.” Friar looked down at his expensive Italian shoes with bitter regret.
There was a very thin gold band on the ring finger of his left hand. The ring had probably always been that slender, but the way I read this man, I imagined that it had once been a big thick gold ring that had worn away over time like a Lifesaver confection under a dripping tap.
“How did you meet her?” I asked him.
“It was a church function. I got a note from a man I know telling me that there was a young Negro woman who had come into a modest sum and wanted some advice on how to make that work for her church.”
“Really? What’s this man’s name?”
“Brian. Brian Motley.”
“A white man?”
“Why... Yes, he is.”
“And how did Mr. Motley come into contact with a young Negro woman?” I asked, trying hard to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.
“He said that he had a friend who had done work with the church, that they didn’t really have a good system set up for their investments, but that this girl really wanted to help out.”
“And then?” I asked.
“I... Well, I met her. She called and suggested a restaurant on Olvera Street. We, we met.”
“I’ve only met her once myself,” I said, feeling every word. “Her eyes are somethin’ else.”
Fearless grunted in agreement.
“I fell in love,” Friar admitted. “Completely.”
“Was that your first time?” I asked.
“I’m married, after all,” he replied. “We have two children. I love my family.”
“I’m sure you do, Mr. Friar. But I’m not asking you if Monique or Angel, or whatever her name really is, was your first lover. What I wanted to know was, was she your first black girl?”
That stopped him for a second. His outpouring of feeling coagulated there, just behind his eyes.
“I don’t see what race has to do with love,” he stated.
“But most people do,” I said. “Most people feel that love is a question of race. I mean, how many interracial couples you see walkin’ down Olympic, goin’ hand in hand?”
“I’m not like that,” he said. “I care for people for what’s on the inside, not the outside.”
“So Monique wasn’t your first?”
“The question is crass, but the answer is no.”
It took me a moment to disentangle that sentence. Once I had it, I asked him if his friend Brian Motley knew about his racial liberalism.
This question brought suspicion to Friar’s gaze; suspicion but no immediate answer. Fearless turned to regard Friar — intrigued, I suppose, by the man’s silence. White Men Loving Black Women, that’s the title of a book someone should write one day.
A pale blue vein appeared on Friar’s milk white forehead.
“This has nothing to do with Brian,” Friar said. “He didn’t even know anything about Monique.”
“Angel,” I said, correcting him. “Just like she didn’t know that this Paul guy was going to blackmail you.”
“I was a fool,” Friar said dramatically. “But that doesn’t change how I felt, how I feel. It has nothing to do with race. Monique is a beautiful woman. She’s sophisticated and well-spoken. She understands how a man thinks.”
“She sure do,” I said, appraising her effect on this man. “Tell me about your boy Motley. How does he fit in this?”
“I once saw Brian at the racetrack with a lovely young black woman. It was obvious that they were intimate. When he saw me he got very nervous. To assuage his fears I made a joke...”
“What kinda joke?”
“I asked him if, if she had a sister.”
Fearless and I both grinned.
“Maybe I was foolish, but I had been married for many years. My wife and I love each other, but a man has needs well past the time a woman is done with such things.”
I liked the way he worded it.
“The women that Brian introduced me to were of another world. They would never run across my wife or her friends. They wouldn’t want to marry... Not until Monique, anyway.”
“She wanted to marry you?”
“I wanted her. I told her we could go to the Caribbean, make a new life down there...”
He reminded me of my own desire to run away to Jamaica.
“... We could have children and love each other. I got down on my knees.”
It was a wonder how getting down on begging knee was a sign of pride for the powerful white man. For people like me it was getting up to an erect posture that was difficult.