All I Did Was Shoot My Man

by Mosley, Walter

  “ Was your brother there?”

  “No.” Mirabelle brought her hands together around her bare left knee.

  “Then what?” I asked.

  “It was a roof party and it was kind of wild,” she said, twisting her shoulders to show her discomfort. “There were all kinds of things going on. Drugs. Sex. I wanted to leave, but Tonya had hooked up with that actor guy and so I felt like I had to wait.”

  The girl was uncomfortable talking around her parents. Her version of the story to them was PG rated. I knew this and waited for the details to come of their own accord.

  “I went to sit with this girl I met,” she said. “She was African, from Cameroon. We talked for a long time and then this guy I’d never seen before came up to us. He was wearing army fatigues, but I don’t think he was a veteran or anything. He asked if I was Kent’s sister and I said yes. I guess the girl thought there was something going on with us and so she left, and the guy, his name was Roger Dees, sat down next to me.”

  Mirabelle shifted in her seat and sat up straight as if trying to throw off the influence of the young man named Roger Dees.

  “ What did Roger have to say?” I asked.

  “He said that Kent better stay away from the Handsome Brothers because they weren’t going to have their good looks for very long.”

  “And what did you think that meant?” I asked.

  “I didn’t know but it sounded like a threat. I was so upset that I left the party and took a taxi back to my apartment. The next day I went to Kent’s place and told him what happened. He begged me not to tell Mom and Dad, but his friends—these Handsome Brothers, Jerry Ott, Loring MacArthur, and a girl named Luscious—had been involved in some kind of disagreement with some drug dealer guys. He said that it was all settled, that it was just a misunderstanding, and that Roger Dees didn’t know anything.”

  “But you didn’t believe him?”

  “My friend Tate told me that Jerry Ott had been arrested for assault with a deadly weapon and that a lot of kids got their drugs from him. I, I thought that maybe he had been lying to Kent.”

  Looking over at Shelby I said, “Drugs, huh?”

  “It’s not Kent,” the father said defensively. “He just knows these people.”

  “If it’s not that bad, then why don’t you just confront him yourself?”

  Shelby’s hands turned to fists on his knees. His already serious visage hardened.

  “The last time we had a confrontation he left New York and we didn’t see him for two years.”

  “He’s going to NYU,” I submitted. “I suspect he’d want you to keep on paying his tuition.”

  “He’s got a scholarship. He doesn’t take anything from us.”

  “Nothing?”

  I finally sat back on the blue sofa. The cushion was firm. I was pretending to think about the Mycrofts’ problem but really I was thinking about my father; about how I wished that he would have taken me down with him to the Revolution, wherever that was. My heart throbbed a bit, and I realized that the fever was coming back already. This inner heat wave had caused my irrational mental connections.

  Or was it all that illogical?

  Twill was a tough kid and capable of being almost invisible. He’d barely said a word since we entered the room. The value of silence was a lesson most young men never learned.

  I turned my attention back to Mirabelle.

  “Do you ever socialize with your brother?” I asked.

  “Sometimes we get a pizza together or something. He likes to talk about political philosophy—Nietzsche and Lenin mostly.”

  “Could you get together with him and bring a date?”

  “One time he brought that girl Luscious when we had dinner.”

  “Call him up. Tell him that you have a new boyfriend, Mathers here. Tell him to bring the girl and you’ll buy the pizza.”

  “ We’re hiring you,” Shelby said with emphasis.

  “You want me to go on a date with your daughter?”

  “Certainly not!”

  “Then let this happen. Mathers, as you can see, knows how to keep quiet when he should be listening.”

  18

  “JUST GET the lay of the land, Twilliam,” I was telling my son in the cab headed back downtown. “I don’t want you to do anything. Find out what’s what and report back to me.”

  “Okay. All right. But what’s this Mathers stuff?”

  “They don’t need to know your name, and I especially don’t want Kent to know.”

  “ Why not?”

  “Because even though his parents think that he’s an innocent nerd I have some reservations. I don’t want him thinking about you too closely.”

  “Lotsa people know me. You know that, Pops. If I use a fake name and he knows it, that’ll be all the worse.”

  “Just do what I say, Junior.”

  “Okay, you got it. That Mirabelle’s cute anyway.”

  “This is business, son—not pleasure.”

  “And I am on the job,” he said, exhibiting a boyish smile.

  AFTER THAT Twill and I reverted to our roles in the modern world: we started checking our cell phones for texts, forwarded e-mails, and voice messages.

  I had five voice mails and two texts. They were all from people I knew: Breland Lewis of course, Zella Grisham, Zephyra Ximenez, Carson Kitteridge, and Gordo Tallman—the most important man in my life.

  “HEY, LT,” Breland said. “I heard from Shelby that you were a little hard on them. He said that some guy named Mathers and their daughter are supposed to get together with his son. He’s uncomfortable about getting her too deeply involved, but I told him that you were the best and that you wouldn’t put anyone in danger. Don’t make me a liar, okay?

  “About that other thing—Jeanette looked up the adoption papers for Baby Grisham and found that she was taken in by Sidney and Rhianon Quick of Queens. I’ve texted you the particulars.

  “Zella called the office when I was in a meeting. I haven’t talked to her yet, but it sounds like she’s in some kind of trouble already.”

  THE NEXT MESSAGE was from Zella.

  “Mr. McGill, I know I keep calling you with my problems but I’m just telling you something this time. I tried Mr. Lewis but he’s been in meetings all day, and I thought he’d like to know that this woman, from Rutgers Assurance, came to the place he got me the job and then they told me that they had to let me go. The woman’s name was Antoinette Lowry and she told the floor supervisor that the police would be involved.

  “ When I got home Ms. Deharain told me that Lowry had been there too. I thought that she’d kick me out, but she told me that you and her went way back and it would take more than a corporation’s private security force to scare her.

  “That made me wonder. I thought that it was Mr. Lewis who was helping me, Mr. McGill—not you.”

  WE WERE MOVING through heavy traffic on First Avenue. I put the phone down a moment, worrying about the choices I made while under the influence of the fever.

  Mary Deharain was a client from the old days. I’d gotten her husband arrested for a murder that he did commit. Living on her own and lamenting the hard choice she’d made to have her insane husband sent to prison, Mary ran a boardinghouse for folks who liked to live under the radar.

  I’d lodged a lot of clients there. But that wasn’t such a great idea if I didn’t want the client to know that I was looking out for them . . . “. . . NO HARRY TANGELO,” Zephyra said in her message. “No Minnie Lesser either. Harry disappeared before his wife’s trial. He was an orphan so there’s no family. The funny thing was that Minnie’s mother, Teresa Lesser, was easy to find. She lives in the Bronx. I ran a check on any missing persons reports on both Tangelo and Lesser. Nothing there either. I’ll send you a text with Minnie’s mother’s information and anything else I found.”

  . . . and curiouser.

  “I NEED to have a meeting with you, LT,” was captain-at-large Carson Kitteridge’s single-sentence message.
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br />   Kitteridge had studied me over the years. He was my own personal Inspector Javert—intent on making my life miserable. I imagined him rooting around in my trash and going to judges to get wiretapping writs.

  Funny thing about a nemesis, however, is that while they’re studying you you learn all kinds of things about them. I knew what Kit was looking for by the tone in his voice and words he used.

  For instance: Carson only ever used the word need when there was a third party involved. He only asked for a meeting when the crime I was suspected of being involved in was more important than putting my ass in stir. If I was in trouble, he’d just tell me to come down to his office—no ifs, ands, or buts.

  And so, from that single sentence, I knew that there was some cop or team somewhere investigating the Rutgers heist and they wanted to talk to me.

  “HEY, KID,” Gordo Tallman, one of the great unsung boxing trainers of this century and the last, said. “I got me a problem that’s your fault even though I can’t be mad at you for causin’ it. Make sure you get down here soon.”

  I knew Kit because you had to be able to read a predator’s signs. But I understood Gordo because I loved him, because he took me into his gym and taught me the right hook/left uppercut combination while everybody else was telling me that I shouldn’t be angry for my father abandoning us, leaving my mother to die from a broken heart.

  I DISCONNECTED from the voice mail system and noticed that I’d gotten another text while I was listening.

  This message was from Aura Ullman.

  Before reading what she had to say I sent a text of my own, to Gordo.

  I be by in a few hours, G, just have to do one thing first.

  CALL ME, was all Aura’s message said. Two words that meant more than anything else that had been said that day.

  19

  A FEW MINUTES LATER the cab pulled up in front of the Tesla Building. I was still thinking about my messages and how they formed the pattern of my day.

  “Pops,” Twill said.

  “You get out of here,” I told him. “Go up to the office and tell Mardi to give you two hundred dollars out of petty cash. Use it for the pizza and anything else you might need.”

  “ What about you?”

  “I got places to be.”

  I GAVE THE DRIVER a Wall Street address and sat back while he put up a tactical offense against the midday traffic.

  As he struggled silently I thought about Aura.

  We hadn’t seen much of each other in the last half year. I was pretty sure that she was using a private entrance to the building and taking the freight elevator to avoid running into me.

  We loved each other, but I was married and living a life that seemed hell-bent on destruction. Aura could have handled either situation, but dealing with both was just too much for her.

  I tried to decipher her message but found that it was beyond my abilities and so I took two more aspirin, sat back, and started counting my breaths until reaching ten, at which point I started the count over again.

  “MISTER?” the small brown-skinned cabbie said.

  I’d been sound asleep in the back of the cab. It was an animal nap—dreamless and broad.

  THE ENTIRE first floor of the block-long office building comprised the Rutgers Assurance security system. First there was a desk where you made your bid for admission.

  I started out by asking to speak with Antoinette Lowry. When asked the nature of my business I let it drop that I represented a woman named Zella Grisham. This proposal, along with a state-issued picture ID, caused the visitors’ turnstile to unlock. I passed through and walked down a wide pale green hallway that had no doors or other ornamentation. I suspected hidden cameras backed up by computer software and human wetware that studied the travelers there looking for clues to their motives.

  By the time I reached the next room, carpeted in deep red and furnished all in mahogany, the receptionist had prepared a badge with my name and picture on it. She was young, possibly Korean, and smiling.

  “Go down this hall, Mr. McGill,” she said, gesturing in case I was deaf or didn’t speak English, “and take the second elevator on your right.”

  The orange passageway was also spacious and bulged out in places where there were elevator doors. When I got to my destination I realized that there was no button to push.

  All that security and they were still ripped off for fifty-eight million dollars.

  I wondered if some member of the security force noted my smile.

  THERE WERE more hurdles to pass before I got to the modern antechamber with a solitary, rather aged receptionist and a tan couch. Needless to say I passed every barrier: like a flightless bug making his way into the interior of an insect-eating plant.

  There were no magazines or other distractions there, in what seemed like my own private waiting room; no clock or monitors, wall calendars or framed photographs of the gray-headed sentinel’s family. She, the hard-eyed receptionist, was white and wrinkled. She wore glasses and had not smiled in years. Behind her desk was a tan door, off center in a bare white wall.

  I sat for maybe three minutes before taking out my cell phone.

  This action caught my guard’s attention.

  I had no new messages.

  For a few moments I considered calling Aura and finally decided that this wasn’t the right environment to talk about lost love. But I had the phone in my hand and so I decided to call my daughter—why not?

  I began entering numbers.

  “No cell phone usage in the building,” the nameless picket said.

  I smiled, nodded, and brought the phone to my ear.

  “Hi, Dad,” she said after the third ring. She sounded a little out of breath.

  “Hey, doll.”

  “How are you?”

  “I was worried when you didn’t come home last night.”

  “I stayed at Gillian’s house. We had like a slumber party, five of us girls.”

  “ Was it fun?”

  “Yeah. Was there anything you needed to talk to me about?”

  “I’m sorry about your mother. She’s having a tough time.”

  “I know.”

  Somebody cleared his throat just then.

  I looked up to see a little guy in a light gray suit and a burgundy tie, not silk. He was wisp thin and had a mustache that was once black but had frosted over a bit. The invasion of white hairs was a subtle warning to the thatch on his head.

  “Mr. McGill,” he said.

  I held up a finger and said, “But you don’t have to worry about her, baby. I’ll make sure that she’s okay.”

  “I know you will, Dad.”

  “Talk to you later?”

  “Okay. Bye.”

  I folded the phone and pocketed it, stood up and realized that the little guy was still taller than I.

  “No cell phone use in the building,” he said.

  Had the receptionist called him? I didn’t hear her. Was there a special button under her desk expressly for cell phone emergencies?

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “I’ll have to ask you for your phone,” he said, holding out his left hand.

  “More than that,” I said. “You’ll have to take it.”

  The little white guy had bushy eyebrows that furrowed. There was no gray in them yet.

  “You’re here to see Miss Lowry?”

  So he hadn’t come for the phone.

  “Yes.”

  “My name is Alton Plimpton,” the man said. “I’m a general manager for Rutgers.”

  “ What’s that exactly?”

  “All senior receptionists answer to my office,” he said proudly.

  I could tell that he expected me to be very impressed.

  “And Miss Lowry?” I asked.

  “She’s not here and her supervisor is indisposed, so I came over to see if I could help.”

  “Miss Lowry doesn’t report to you?”

  “No.”

  “Does she work for your boss?”r />
  “Um . . . no.”

  “Then you can’t help.”

  “But she isn’t here.”

  I sat down.

  “I can’t think of any place I’d rather wait. What else could you do in a room like this?”