Fearless Jones by Walter Mosley Page B

opened the door, but before she could exit, Fearless reached out for her shoulder.
    “You wanna go to Rackman’s tonight?”
    Looking at his hand, Dorthea said, “Yeah.”
    “Paris and me gotta do somethin’ at eight, but I could be down to get you by ten-thirty.”
    “You could pick me up at the Charles Diner on Eighty-ninth. I’m supposed to see my sister there.”
    They lingered for a moment, him looking at her and her looking at his fingers, and then she climbed out. Fearless watched
     her Chinese shuffle into the shop before he drove off.
    “Man, don’t we have enough to do without you makin’ dates in the middle?” I asked.
    “I been in jail for three months, Paris. You know I’m starvin’ for what Dorthea can feed me.”
    “Oh,” I said. “Oh, yeah.”
    “Paris?”
    “Yeah?”
    “Where’d you get that money?”
    “What money?”
    “That money you give Dorthea.”
    “Borrowed it from Milo.”
    I could see in Fearless’s eyes that he knew I was lying, but he didn’t press it. That’s the kind of friends we were.

12
    RYA MCKENZIE WAS a stern young woman with close-cropped hair and walnut-colored eyes. Her skin was the color of forest shadows, and her judgment
     was swift. If she didn’t like you, you knew it and stayed away, but if she was your friend, you’d never want for anything
     that she could provide.
    She kissed Fearless and shook my hand, greeted us both with brief hellos, and then led us from the nurses’ station for pediatrics
     to a small room furnished with a long, rickety table that supported a coffee urn, three boxes of sugar-glazed doughnuts, and
     a small stack of paper cups and plates next to a jumble of disposable utensils made from wood.
    “When did you get out of jail?” Rya asked Fearless when we were all seated on folding chairs.
    “Yesterday. Paris paid my fine.”
    “So what kinda trouble you in then?” she asked me.
    “Conrad Till,” I said, as blandly as I could manage. It was nice to see her disapproval turn into something wary.
    She half rose from her squeaky chair and looked around for spies.
    “What you got to do with that?”
    “Conrad was a friend of a woman I need to find. His name came up when I was lookin’ for her, and then I heard he’d died.”
    Fearless nodded, going along with my half-lie. He had a philosophy about lying.
It’s okay as long as you ain’t hurtin’ nobody,
he told me one drunken night.
Matter’a fact a lotta times a lie is better’n the truth when the whole thing come out.
    “I don’t know nuthin’ ’bout no foul-mouthed murdered man,” Rya said.
    “You say he’s foul-mouthed,” I said. “But the evenin’ papers said that he never regained consciousness.”
    “So they said. But you know you cain’t believe all that you read in no papers.”
    “Did a lotta police come?”
    “No. I mean there was cops in when they first brought him. But they left. Then that one officer, that Sergeant Latham come
     in. He went to talk to Till, and then, a little while later, Ginny Sidell found him dead.”
    “They talked?” I asked, just to be sure.
    “Conrad Till was awake and cussin’ two hours after they brought him in. That’s when Latham come.”
    “What did Till die of?”
    Rya looked away at a blank wall and said, “Heart failure.”
    “He had a heart attack?”
    She shrugged.
    “That’s it? A man comes in shot and they say he had a heart attack?”
    “Heart failure,” she said, correcting me. “That’s what always kill ya. That’s how we know. A truck could hit ya and your spleen
     be in your lap, but you still ain’t dead unless your heart stop.”
    She looked at me with her walnut eyes. Fearless checked out the clock on the wall.
    “Is somebody going to investigate the death?” I asked.
    “Somebody who?”
    “I mean, if everybody’s talking about it…”
    “Everybody around here got a real job, Mr. Minton. Real jobs and apartments and mouths to feed. Conrad Till was just a year
     outta prison,