“Uh, yeah,” I said. “I guess.”
“You talkin’ ’bout Tremont?” Whisper asked.
It was the first time I’d heard that name, but I knew from the context that he was the fat man that Three Hearts had killed.
“What you know ’bout Tremont?” Bobo asked, half rising from his chair.
“Nuthin’,” Whisper said innocently. “I just heard that the cops fount his body. Somebody had shot him in the gut.”
The violence in Bobo’s demeanor melted into grief. Tears sprouted from his eyes, and his hands grasped at nothing.
Ora, who was a small dark-skinned woman, came over and put her hands on his oxlike shoulders. Her face wasn’t beautiful, but the feeling she held for him was.
“Leave him alone,” she told us. “Cain’t you see he’s hurtin’?”
“You want us to leave, Bobo?” Whisper asked.
“No, man. Go on, Ora. These here my friends.”
“You don’t even know these niggahs,” she answered. “They buy you a drink an’ turn your ass ovah.”
“We don’t wanna hurt you, Bobo,” Whisper said, and I realized that in order to be a detective you had to be cruel while seeming to be kind.
“Go on, Ora,” Bobo said. “I ain’t no fool.”
“Fuck you, then,” Ora said to all of us.
She stormed away to be consoled by three or four other barmaids.
“I’m sorry about your friend,” Whisper said.
What amazed me about Whisper was how simple and yet elegant his approach was at this point. If I were trying to get information out of Bobo I would have tried to fool him by making up a dozen lies. Whisper just told one lie and then soaked it in whiskey.
“I tell you one thing,” Bobo said. “Don’t evah put yo’ trust in no light-skin, light-eyed, high-yellah niggah. Mothahfuckah done made Tremont’s chirren orphans, an’ he won’t even let up on a dime. Wouldn’t shed a tear ovah his own.”
He said some other things, but I don’t remember what. I let him go on for a while and then I told Whisper that I had to go see my uncle. I explained to Bobo that my uncle had tuberculosis and needed help around his house.
Bobo told me to make sure that he drank a lot of milk. Milk was good for TB.
I thanked him and ordered another bottle of booze. I figured if he got drunk enough he wouldn’t be able to get in the way of my plans.
Chapter 45
Whisper dropped me off at my bookstore. I hadn’t told him a thing about what I’d learned.
He shook my hand and smiled at me again.
“You got all the right instincts,” he told me. “You don’t tell nobody nuthin’ they don’t need to know and you keep your cool.”
I smiled, thinking that Whisper didn’t know how scared I really was.
“When you want a real job, call me,” Whisper said. “I could always use a partner.”
I drove straight from the sidewalk to Fearless’s bungalow. When I got to the door, I heard Mona crying, “That’s it. That’s it. Oh yeah, baby, you got it.”
At any other time I would have turned away. But I had to knock. Had to.
The protestations of love stopped. Two hard footsteps crossed the floor.
“Who is it?” Fearless asked, not nearly as angry as I would have been.
“Paris.”
The door came open, and Fearless stuck his head out.
“Yeah?”
“I know the whole thing. All of it.”
“We got to do sumpin’ right now?” he asked me.
“No. But I need a place to stay an’ I ain’t got no cash.”
The head went away. A few words were traded in the room, and he returned holding out a key ring with two keys on it.
“Go stay at Mona’s, man. She gonna be here tonight. Stay ovah there an’ I get ya in the mornin’.”
I took the keys and walked across two dewy lawns to Mona’s place.
Her tiny house was well appointed, as I have said, but the best thing about it was her bed. It was high and soft, with ever so lightly scented sheets and blankets. There were half a dozen pillows and an azure night-light plugged into the socket to the right.
I fell instantly to sleep. And I didn’t have even one bad dream.
I woke up once in the night wondering why Fearless didn’t marry Mona. She was the perfect woman from where I lay. I glanced over at the sky-colored night-light and thought about blue tomorrows.
I’m sure that there was something psychological about my emotions, but I didn’t want to know. It was rare that I came upon a night of bliss. I wasn’t about to question it.
I was sound asleep when someone came knocking on the door.
“Yes?”
“It’s Mona, Paris.”
I put on my pants and went to the door.
The look on her face told me that she’d had a pleasant night too.
“You know I almost got mad at you,” she said.
She was wearing a white terry cloth robe and Fearless’s big brown slippers.
“Sorry, babe. I just wanted a couple’a bucks to get a room someplace. But I tell ya this much — stayin’ here made me feel like I was at the Waldorf in the presidential suite. That was the best night’s sleep I ever had since I was a child in my mother’s arms.”
I only meant it as a show of gratitude, but I could see that my words touched Mona. She put her hand on my elbow, leaned forward, and gave me the softest kiss on the lips.
“Fearless waitin’ on you,” she whispered.
I put on my shirt but carried my socks and shoes across the lawns to my friend’s place. Mona had shaken me up with that kiss. It wasn’t a passionate thing, but there was something to it, something I didn’t want to know about when my best friend had just spent the night with her.
Fearless was already dressed in a loose silvery shirt and gray slacks. His brown shoes looked new they were so shiny, and he had a fancy gold watch on his wrist.
“Watch?” I asked.
“Mona gimme it,” he said. “I don’t want her to think I don’t appreciate it.”
Reese roundtree owned a café a few blocks from Fearless’s court. Fearless bought me fried eggs and bacon there. He had pancakes with pecan-flavored syrup.
“I thought Mona wasn’t your girlfriend,” I said at one point, thinking about that soft kiss.
“She ain’t.”
“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.
“He hired the Handsome brothers to grab Three Hearts and Angel.”
“But he was Angel’s boyfriend,” Fearless said.
“Was.”
Fearless squeezed the slender bone between his eyes with a thumb and forefinger. “How does he get in this?”