Free Fearless Jones by Walter Mosley Page A

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.
    I had been working for all of five minutes when Fearless started yawning. “What you doin’, Paris?” he whined.
    The letter was impossible to reconstruct in the time I had. Itwould have probably taken two or three hours, seeing that it was scrawled in small pale blue letters on both sides of at least
     three pages. To make it even more difficult, the words had blurred from the moisture of the coffee grounds.
    The notes were written in black ink on white paper except for one that was written in pencil and another that was written
     on yellow paper. I concentrated on these two.
    Fearless opened the front door and whistled for the dog, who came bounding in like the loyal family pet.
    “Hey, boy. Hey, boy,” Fearless chanted from the living room.
    I didn’t have to go far to see that the penciled note was a shopping list — scouring powder and Modess napkins were all I
     needed for that.
    The yellow note had San Quentin Prison printed across the bottom. Above that, in black letters, the initials C.T. were printed
     slantways, along with a phone number that had an Axminster exchange.
    There was a phone in Elana’s bedroom, but it was dead, so we let Fearless’s new pet into the backseat and drove toward a gas
     station on Slauson. I didn’t want to bring the dog, but I didn’t have the time to argue with Fearless either.
    I did say, “Don’t you think somebody’s gonna miss his pet?”
    “If he had a collar or license I’d take him home right this minute,” Fearless replied. “You know a dog catcher could be givin’
     him cyanide tomorrow if we just let him go.”
    That was the end of our discussion.
    When we got to the gas station I put a nickel into the slot. C.T., whoever that was, was a long shot. But it was the only
     shot we had.
    He answered on the first ring. “Leon, is that you, man?” His voice sounded like a metal file rasping against stone.
    “C.T.?” I asked, disguising my voice just in case this rough man ever heard me speak again.
    “Who is?” he asked.
    “It’s me — Dingo,” I said. I regretted the name as soon as I said it. I was scared stupid.
    “Who?”
    “Leon told me to call you up. He wanted me to come and get you but —”
    “Get me? Man, I could hardly sit up straight.”
    “Leon said to come help —”
    “You a doctor?”
    “I can take care’a you,” I said, trying to make my fake voice sound certain. “I got a brother used to be a medic in the army
     with me.”
    There was silence on the line.
    “C.T.?”
    “Why you callin’ me that?”
    “That’s what Leon wrote on the paper, man. Ain’t that you? I mean if —”
    “When you gonna get here?” he asked, interrupting me for the third time.
    “That’s why I called. He wrote down your initials and phone, but I can’t read the address. Clinton sumpin’.”
    “Clinton?” C.T. moaned. “Denker, man. Twenty-nine sixty-nine Denker. Super’s apartment.”
    “Be right there,” I said in a husky voice that would have fooled even my mother.
    “YOU GOT my pistol, Paris?” Fearless asked