“We got to give it back, Paris,” Fearless said. “We got to.”
“Why, man? They already stole it. We might get caught tryin’ to put it back.”
Fearless shook his head and started shoving the money in its bag.
“I got the addresses,” I said. “Why don’t you just let me send it?”
“First we need to make sure the cutthroat ain’t a problem,” Fearless said.
“What you gonna do with the money and Hector’s car?”
“I’ll just leave Hector’s car on the street to get towed and then I’ll borrah Mickey Dean’s white Caddy, put the money in the trunk, an’ bring it ovah to Bubba.”
“You sure you wanna mess wit’ that man again?” I asked seriously. “I think he wanna test you.”
“Naw,” Fearless assured me. “I mean yeah, he wonders, but Bubba’s business. The minute I’m a payin’ client, thatta put fightin’ right out his mind.”
Fearless hefted the bag of money over his shoulder and carried it out to the Caddy.
I accompanied him out to the street and watched as he drove away.
A hundred thousand dollars in free money, and my potential partner in crime was the most honest man in L.A.
Chapter 44
The phone began ringing about ten minutes after Fearless had driven off with my windfall retirement fund.
I could have taken that money and moved to Paris, my namesake city, lived on the Champs-Élysée, and listened to American jazz in the bistros and nightclubs. I could have learned Latin and French and married an African princess.
The phone kept on ringing.
I was almost as leery of the phone as I was of people at my front door. Anybody could have been calling me: the police, Three Hearts, the killer pretending to be somebody else.
Why should I answer?
What I needed to do was to find an out-of-the-way motel where I could sleep and read until there was no more trouble roiling around me.
The phone stopped ringing.
I always forgot that it was Fearless’s moral side that did me in in the end. No matter how much money passed through our hands, he always wanted to do the right thing. Here we had money that nobody expected to see again. I had sent the victims the blackmailers’ evidence — wasn’t that good enough?
The phone started ringing again. That worried me. Somebody wanted to get through. If I didn’t answer they might come by.
“Hello?”
“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.
“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.”
Allegra’s dance hall was 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 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.”
The next place was 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.
Harry’s barbershop had been closed 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.
Thad’s bar was last 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 that Bobo had an ex-girlfriend that worked there. He didn’t expect that Bobo would be hanging around an ex, but he was wrong.
Ora, Bobo’s girlfriend, was working serving drinks.
When Whisper asked her about Bobo, she just shrugged and gestured toward a corner with her jaw.
At the corner table sat a big man, a very big man. His shoulders sagged, and all you could see was the top of his uncombed head. The quart pitcher looked like a mug in his large hand.
Whisper and I went to his table. I tried to keep abreast of my new friend, but when we got to within six feet of Bobo, my legs just stopped moving.
Seeing our shadows in his beer, Bobo looked up. His brutal face seemed damaged somehow.
“What?” he whined.
“Bobo Handsome?” Whisper asked.
“Yeah? What you want?”
“Like to buy you a drink,” Whisper said.
I liked the style. I had to remember to use it the next time I wanted to grill somebody.
“Sure,” Bobo said, waving his hand at us.
Whisper ordered a fifth of whiskey and three glasses. Ora, Bobo’s ex-girlfriend, frowned when she received the order, but she kept quiet.
Whisper introduced himself and so did I. We traded shots for a while and discussed baseball. I don’t know a thing about baseball. I knew about the Negro Leagues, but if you asked me what they actually did on the field, I wouldn’t have been able to answer.
But Whisper knew. He seemed to know a little something about everything. Bobo got drunker, and angry, but he wasn’t mad at us.
“You evah have a friend that you really love?” Bobo asked me at one point.