“And all you wanna know is why are they coming back after Sol?”
Fanny nodded.
“There’s just one thing,” I said.
“What?”
“Fearless thinks he can live on air, but we need that money. After what he told Sol, he won’t let you pay us a dime.”
Fanny nodded again and patted the back of my hand.
“Leave me your pants and shirt,” she said.
“Say what?”
“Leave your clothes out here when you go to bed. I’ll wash them and iron them in the morning and then I’ll put the money in your pockets.”
Fearless came in only a few moments after the deal was sealed.
“All clean and dry,” he announced. “I stacked ’em in the dryin’ tray though, ’cause I didn’t want to put ’em away wrong.”
“That’s okay.” Fanny was beaming. “I can do that.”
I jumped up then. “But it better wait till tomorrow.”
“Why?” both Fearless and Fanny asked.
“If we wanna protect Fanny, then we got to find out what they came here for,” I said. “And one thing about crooks, they don’t stay in one place too long.”
8
WE DROPPED FANNY OFF at her niece’s house, which was only three blocks away on Marianna Avenue. It made sense not to leave her at home with Leon Douglas on the loose.
Fanny gave us the keys to her house.
“We’ll call you in the mornin’, Mrs. Tannenbaum, ’cause you know we’ll probably come in late at night,” Fearless told her at the front door. Fearless was a gentleman and would never just leave a woman off at the curb. I wandered up there with him.
Morris Greenspan answered the door.
“What do you want?” he asked us.
“They’re my houseguests, Morris,” Fanny said.
“You can’t come in my house,” he said, somehow taking Fanny’s explanation as a request.
“Then we’ll leave you here,” I said to Fanny.
“No,” Fanny said. “Morris, apologize to my friends.”
“You don’t even know them, Aunt Fanny. They aren’t family.”
“We better be goin’, Mrs. Tannenbaum,” Fearless said. He hated seeing any man get humiliated.
“These men are my guests,” Fanny repeated, looking up at her nephew-in-law.
The glower on the young man’s face was the same when he was eight, I was sure. Sullen and on the verge of a pout, he might have stood there for half an hour before saying hello like a good boy.
“Mr. Minton. Mr. Jones,” Gella Greenspan said as she appeared at her husband’s side. The homely girl and her bearish, sullen husband made an ungainly pair. She took the big baby’s arm. “Would you like to come in for coffee?”
It wasn’t that Gella was any less afraid of us. She was just raised better.
“We have to go,” I said. “Thanks anyway. See ya, Fanny, Morris.”
The sloppy bowling pin grimaced.
“Call me if you need anything,” Fanny said.
“We’ll pick you up in the morning,” Fearless promised.
Then we left the unmatched set of relatives to argue manners and race over coffee and rolls.
I HAD THE ADDRESS of E. E. Love written down on a scrap of paper. Fearless drove us to the Twenty-eighth Street abode. The small, single-story gray house was surrounded by sagging trellises that were heavy with vines of golden roses. There was no light on, no car in the driveway, but still we knocked at the front door.
No answer.
A big dog came strolling down the street. It was a light-colored, short-haired and meaty mutt that nearly shimmered under a granite streetlamp. I saw him before he saw us. He did an almost human double take and then started barking for all he was worth.
“We better get outta here,” I said.
“We ain’t even got here yet.” Fearless went down on one knee and held out his hand.
The barking dog got braver and braver. Growling and gurgling murder he advanced on Fearless, who for his part looked like a modern-day African saint. The dog snapped and then he sniffed. He pushed his nose against Fearless’s hand, then plopped down on the ground, turning over onto his back to show his belly.
Fearless scratched the dog and then stood up, his new best friend at his side.
There was a black, lift-top mailbox attached to the wall next to the front door. It was stuffed with mail. I pulled out an envelope wedged in at the side. By match light I read the name Miss Elana Love scrawled in purple ink.
“This is the right place,” I said.
Fearless’s dog growled in anticipation. Fearless pushed him by the neck toward the front walk, and the mutt seemed to understand the command. He padded his way to the curb and stood there daring some phantom intruder to try and go by.
I went around the side of the house, testing windows. On the third try I was successful. Once inside I went straight through the gloom to where the front door should have been. It was there. Fearless snaked in, closing the door behind him. I found a lamp on a table and turned it on.
After making sure that the house was empty we decided to separate to make our search. The whole front of the house was the living room. It was just a couch and two chairs with a stand-up maple bar on top of two mismatched blue throw rugs. The rugs were ugly. One had a diamond pattern, and the other was covered in small white dots.
At either end of the living room was a door. One led to the kitchen, the other to her bedroom. Between these two rooms was the toilet.
Elana’s bedroom was simple enough. A single bed with pink sheets and a dresser with a mirror and chair. The window looked out on a fence cordoning off her three-foot-deep backyard. I went through the drawers of the dresser, the closet, the pockets of her clothes. I checked under the sheets and between the mattresses, on the window ledge and under the bed. There was nothing there. Nothing. She had three dresses in the closet and only one pair of shoes.
Fearless and I met in the bathroom. Two towels on a chrome rack, a half-used bar of white soap, and no floor mat. In the trash can there were a towel and a wad of cotton bandages clotted with a good deal of partially dried blood. I poked at the dressing with a handy toothbrush, but Fearless reached in and pulled out the bloody rags.
“Somebody been wounded pretty good,” he said.
“No shit,” I replied.
I went over the kitchen again because Fearless didn’t have the patience to search for anything smaller than an elephant. There wasn’t much to see there either. A jar of instant coffee, white bread, and an open can of condensed milk.
“I bet she only stays here now and then,” I said. “She probably only keeps the place in case her boyfriend of the week has a change of heart.”
“You think?”
“No clothes to speak of, no food,” I said. “And even a blind man wouldn’t have carpet like that under his feet.”
Fearless laughed at that. He was slender, but he had a fat man’s laugh. For a moment there I realized how much I had missed my friend.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get outta here.” I led the way through the kitchen door back into the living room. We were almost out of the door when I stopped.
“What is it, Paris?”
“I didn’t look under the kitchen sink. Did you?”
“No.”
“I better look.”
“You think she under there?” I couldn’t tell if he was serious or joking.
I FOUND a tin wastebasket beneath the sink drain and dumped the contents out on the kitchen table. There were tiny bits of paper, coated with once-wet coffee grounds, torn from several notes and at least one letter. I pulled up a chair and started sifting through the mess.