Fearless Jones Read Online Free PDF Page B

jumpers, but it still
     burned him when he felt that he was being had.
    “I can’t do it, Paris,” he whined. “It would set a bad example.”
    “I’m not tellin’ anybody, Miles.”
    “Can you at least make it thirty?”
    “They burned down my store, man,” I said. “They took my money and my car and burned down my goddamn store.” My voice cracked
     and I had to blink hard to shut down my tear ducts.
    Milo began rapping his knuckles on the desktop. His look changed. It was no friendlier, but the animosity was now aimed at
     some unknown perpetrator.
    “Your bookstore?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Why?” There was pain in Milo’s voice.
    “I don’t know, but if I don’t do somethin’ soon, they might burn me down too.”
    “Shit, Paris. What did you do?”
    I pondered his question. I had asked it a hundred times of Fearless Jones. I couldn’t believe the trouble he’d get into and
     all he would say is,
I didn’t do nuthin’, Paris. I was just mindin’ my own business.
But what had I done? How could I have avoided Elana Love and Leon Douglas?
    “I’on’t know, man. Maybe God looked down and saw all the shit I done got away wit’ an’ decided to mete out my punishment just
     when things started to get good.”
    “Amen,” Milo said. “Amen to that.” He shook his head and smiled, then he looked at his watch. “It’s too late to get him out
     today. I’ll drop by the courthouse on my way home and make the arrangements, but we have to go get him tomorrow mornin’. Where
     you gonna sleep tonight?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Loretta,” Milo called across the room.
    “Yes, Mr. Sweet?” she replied.
    “Pull out the cot. Paris is gonna be our watchdog tonight.”
    “Yes sir.”
    AT FIVE-THIRTY , when Milo and Loretta went home, I started going through the phone books of L.A., looking for Love. I found four listings.
     I called the numbers, asking for Elana, but of the two that were still connected there was no clue. The two that had been
     disconnected were an Alvin Love in Santa Monica, which I doubted would be fruitful, and an E. E. Love on Twenty-eighth Street.
    I lay back and read the newspaper after exhausting the phone book. Then I had a notion. In the phone book there was only one
     Tannenbaum. The first name was David, not Sol, but his address in East Los Angeles was the same one Elana had given to me
     the day before, on Hazzard. We’d been headed to his house when Leon and his friend tried to run us down. I considered dialing
     the number, but then I held back. One thing I was sure of: surviving Leon Douglas was going to take more subtlety than a call
     announcing how smart I was.
    I turned out the lights at about nine. Milo’s canvas cot was no more than a stretcher held aloft by crossed sticks of oak
     at either end. I lay there, the wounded soldier, the man who never asked for war and wouldn’t benefit from its outcome.
    Up until that moment I had been going on reflex: running and hiding. But on that stretcher, in that coffin-shaped room, with
     only the occasional squawk of a dreaming hen to break the silence, I decided what I needed and what I had to do. It didn’t
     matter that I was small and weak or even that I begged for my life when that man was slapping me. None of that mattered becausethat bookstore was what made me somebody rather than just anybody. Burning down my store was just the same as shooting me,
     and somebody would have to make restitution for that crime.
    LORETTA WAS in at eight o’clock exactly. I made coffee for her in the little kitchenette that they had built in the closet.
    “Nine years with Mr. Sweet and he never even bought me a coffee,” she said, smiling at me.
    I had put away the folding cot under the kitchenette counter and returned all of the phone books. Loretta went to her desk
     and started working immediately. I sat at Milo’s desk, thinking how lucky I was to have friends.
    Milo shamed me with his generosity. Here I was trying to bail