Part 2 (1/2)

”Oh,” I said. ”d.a.m.n. Well, let me ask around and see if I can come up with something.”

Timmerman grinned again. ”Can I use your toilet, Mr. Minton?”

”Sorry, but I got a girlfriend in the nude back there. Well, she's not exactly a girlfriend. I mean, we just met each other last night. There's not too much privacy and I don't wanna get her all upset with some big man walkin' in. You see what I mean.”

We were both liars. Almost everything we'd said to each other was a lie.

He nodded, looked up over my head again. I got the feeling that he wanted to catch a glimpse of a naked black girl.

”Well,” he said, still hesitating, still looking for a way in. ”You have my number.”

The big man in the poorly chosen clothes walked away, taking the six wooden stairs of my front porch in two strides.

”Mr. Timmerman.”

”Yes, Mr. Minton.”

”Fearless got a lotta friends. How come you came to me?”

The white man looked at me a moment. He was trying to figure out where I stood in his business.

”Sweet,” he said at last. ”Milo Sweet was listed as a contact for Mr. Jones. When I went to him he gave me your name.”

It was time for me to think. Was the bail bondsman holding paper on Fearless? Was that why Fearless was on the run?

No. Fearless wouldn't lie to me. Not unless it was to protect me, or maybe he was protecting someone else. No. The story was too complex for his style of lying. Fearless's lies were no longer than a few sentences, sometimes no more than a word or two.

”Good-bye, Mr. Minton,” the man who said he was in insurance said. ”Call me the minute you hear from Mr. Jones. Time is money, you know.”

He crossed the street, climbed into a brand-new, maroon-colored Pontiac, and drove off.

”Who was he?” Fearless asked at my back.

I hadn't heard him come up behind me but that was no surprise. Fearless's job in World War II was to get behind German lines at night and ”neutralize” any military man or operation that he came across.

”I don't know,” I said. I closed the door and walked back toward the porch. ”But he said that Milo gave him my name so that he could ask me about you.”

”Me?”

I went back to the kitchen to fix breakfast, but when I got there I realized that my appet.i.te had gone with Theodore T. Timmerman.

”Did you jump bail, Fearless?”

”No.”

”Does Milo have any reason to be after you?”

Fearless shook his head.

”He said his name was Timmerman, Theodore. You ever heard of him?”

Fearless could exhibit the blankest stare imaginable.

”He said that you inherited some money,” I said. ”You got any rich relatives or friends that care for you like that?”

The ex-a.s.sa.s.sin hunched his shoulders. ”Who knows? Maybe.”

”Probably not.”

”Why you say that, Paris?”

”He called you Fearless, not Tristan. Seems to me that anybody care enough about you to leave you fifty thousand dollars would at least know your legal name.”

”Fifty thousand. d.a.m.n. I hope you wrong, Paris. You know I been lookin' for fifty thousand dollars my whole life.”

That made me laugh. Fearless joined in. I pulled a box of Shredded Wheat from a shelf on the wall and some milk out of the ice chest that stood in for the refrigerator I planned to buy one day.

After we sat down to breakfast I started asking questions in earnest.

Questions is what I do. I read my first book two weeks after learning the alphabet. It wasn't that I was smarter than anybody else, but it's just that I wanted to know anything that was hidden from me. My mother used to offer me candy if I'd be quiet for just ten minutes. But I could never stop asking why this and why that, not until I learned how to read.

Somebody might think that a man who's always probing-putting his nose where it doesn't belong, as my mother says-would be somewhat brave. But that couldn't be further from the truth about me. I'm afraid of rodents and birds, bald tires, fire, and loud noises. Any building I've ever been in I know all of the exits. And I've been known to jump up out of a sound sleep when hearing a footstep from the floor below. as my mother says-would be somewhat brave. But that couldn't be further from the truth about me. I'm afraid of rodents and birds, bald tires, fire, and loud noises. Any building I've ever been in I know all of the exits. And I've been known to jump up out of a sound sleep when hearing a footstep from the floor below.

That's why I own a bookstore full of books, so that all my questioning can be done quietly and alone. I didn't want to ask questions about Fearless's whereabouts or activities. But after that big white man showed up at my door, I needed to know if my friend's problems were going to spill over onto me.

5.

”. . . NO, PARIS,” FEARLESS SAID. ”I told you all I know about it. Leora and Son were lookin' for Kit, and the next thing I know the cops are askin' around about me.” ”I told you all I know about it. Leora and Son were lookin' for Kit, and the next thing I know the cops are askin' around about me.”

”And you haven't talked to Milo in two months?”

”Maybe three,” he said. ”Last time I saw Milo was at The Nest. He was there with a nice-lookin' woman. I think her last name was Pine.”

”What about Kit?” I asked. ”Did you find out anything else about him?”

I had asked it all before, but I'd learned from long experience that Fearless didn't have a straightforward way of thinking. He never remembered everything all at once. I asked him questions the same way the police questioned a suspect: with the hope of finding what wasn't there rather than what was.

Fearless rubbed his hand over the top of his head. His ideas, though often deep and insightful, came from a place that he had very little control over. If you asked him, ”How did you know that man was going to pull out a knife?” he might utter some nonsense like, ”It was the way he lifted his chin when he saw me walk in the room.”

”Somebody said about the Redcap Saloon,” Fearless said.

”O'Brien's Bar?”

”Yeah.”

”Who said about it?”