“Maybe if you gave me a way to get in touch with you,” I suggested. “Then if I ran into Fearless I could tell him where to call you.”

The tall white man looked up over my head into the bookstore. For a moment I think he was considering pushing me aside and looking around for himself. At any other time I would have been afraid that he would harm me or my stock. But I knew that Fearless was upstairs and Fearless, at least in my mind, was proof against any danger.

Timmerman pulled out his wallet and shuffled a small stack of cards until he produced one that read,

Theodore T. Timmerman

Mutual Life of Cincinnati

Claims and Investigations

The phone number was local, however. The ink on the bottom line was slightly smeared.

“Is there a finder’s fee if I can get this to Fearless?”

“Yes,” he said. But I could see that the idea was novel to him. “Sure. Two and a half percent.”

“That don’t sound like much.”

“Out of fifty thousand that’s over twelve hundred dollars.”

“Oh,” I said. “Damn. 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.