Walk a Black Wind

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Most of us pass through life without ever meeting real danger or fear. We slide from day to day, and nothing very bad happens. We like it that way, I think, even if we do sometimes feel that life is flat. But fear and horror come to some of us, and we meet it in different ways.

There are some who face it naked and early and come to terms. Nothing ever scares them again, or even worries them. They are the great, the saints, and the monsters. Then there are some who see fear once and are destroyed. If they go on, they are hollow shells. Most neither come to terms nor are destroyed. They simply endure the moment, survive, and never know how they will meet fear the next time.

The man who came to my one-window office that Thursday in late October had met fear or horror or both.

“Two weeks ago I met a girl,” he said. “She’s dead, Mr. Fortune, murdered. I want her murderer caught.”

He was my height, about five-foot-ten, broad and solid in a good blue pin-stripe business suit under a navy topcoat. His olive-colored face was faintly Latin, clean-shaven and deeply lined, but somehow youthful despite the deep wrinkles. I guessed his age at about forty-five. He held a blue homburg where he sat in my one extra chair, and his thick hair was dark brown and coarse. There was no gray in the hair, and his hat was unusual these days. The business card he placed on my old desk explained the hat: John F. Andera, Sales Representative, Marvel Office Equipment, Inc. Salesmen were among the few who still always wore a hat.

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