All I Did Was Shoot My Man

by Mosley, Walter

  I nodded.

  He walked me back down to the dining room and asked kind-faced Officer Palmer to come outside with him.

  ALONE IN THE ROOM with my wife was almost a solitary experience. She was in the same position, mouthing what might well have been the same words. I was concerned about her, but there were other, more urgent things to worry about.

  I called Breland Lewis on his home phone.

  “Hello,” he said, sleep still in his voice.

  “Two men broke in my house and tried to kill me.”

  “How’s Katrina and the kids?”

  “Fine. It has to be the Rutgers thing. You are a possible target. Get your wife and the kids and go somewhere where no one will be able to track you.”

  “Okay.”

  “You still got that phone Bug sent?”

  “Yes.”

  “Bring it with you.”

  MY NEXT CALL was to Twill.

  “Hey, Pops,” he said on the first ring.

  He was wide awake, getting into mischief no doubt, but I didn’t have time to question him. Instead I told him what had happened and that I wanted him to gather up his mother and take her down to Mr. Arnold’s—where she would be safe.

  Twill promised to call his brother and sister on the way up from wherever he was.

  That settled, I pulled a chair up to Katrina’s side.

  “Katrina.”

  To my surprise she sat upright and turned toward me.

  “I am not leaving my house,” she said with conviction.

  “But, baby, these men were pros. You need protection.”

  “I will not leave. This is my home and I intend to stay.”

  “Twill’s coming to get you.”

  “He is welcome here but I will not go.”

  I had come up against this blockade before. There was no moving Katrina once her mind was made up.

  So I went out into the hallway to meet my official nemesis.

  “Katrina won’t leave,” I told him. “The kids will all be here in an hour or so. Can you put a cop on watch at least until tomorrow tonight?”

  “You gonna answer my questions, right?”

  “I’ll try my best.”

  The shade of a smile across Kit’s lips spoke of admiration if not friendship. I was his toughest nut but he never doubted that I’d crack one day.

  “Okay,” he said. “I can have guys downstairs for a few days at least.”

  36

  WE RODE SIDE BY SIDE in Kit’s unmarked dark green Ford sedan. I expected him to take me to the 20th Precinct near my home but instead he drove all the way down to the 5th on Elizabeth Street.

  It was fairly empty at that hour. Kit led me to a subterranean office. When we got there I remembered that he was always on the lookout for an office where he could smoke.

  This was more like a converted storeroom. There wasn’t even a proper desk; just a seven-foot-long folding table and six or seven walnut chairs.

  He lit up a Marlboro.

  “Can I have one’a those?” I asked.

  “I thought you quit.”

  “I did but I slipped earlier tonight, and whenever I do that I give myself twenty-four hours to quit again.”

  We sat on the same side of the table facing each other, puffing away. If it wasn’t for the person or persons unknown trying to kill me, it would have been almost pleasant down there.

  “Let’s have it, LT.”

  “First you tell me the names of the men trying to slaughter me and my family.”

  “No IDs,” he said. “No receipts, documents, passports, not even any scars. The cigarettes they were smoking are European but none of my people could even tell what language was on the packs. These guys were not only professional, they were expensive. Imported, probably from Eastern Europe, like smelly cheese.”

  Damn.

  “So?” he nudged.

  “You realize that I don’t trust the police,” I stated.

  “I’m not trying to trick you,” Kit replied.

  “I know that. I know. But that’s not what I’m sayin’. There are holes in your security. Anything I say to you is safe, but the minute it goes past you lives will be on the line.”

  Kit shook his pack of Marlboros at me. I took the offering.

  He lit me up and tapped his left foot—slowly.

  “ What do you want?” he asked after a spate of silence and smoke.

  “Captain Clarence is right about Zella Grisham,” I said. “She doesn’t know a thing about the Rutgers heist. I don’t know anything about the robbery either.”

  “Okay.”

  “Somebody thinks I do, obviously. I don’t know who it is. If I did, I’d tell you or else I wouldn’t say a word.” This last phrase meant that if I did know, I might have killed them myself.

  “Okay.”

  “So I will cooperate with you as far as I can, but I don’t have any raw data, no evidence, that’s not already in your possession.”

  “But you think Zella getting released has caused this violence?” Kit asked.

  “She’s innocent and should have been set free.”

  “ What aren’t you telling me, LT?”

  “There’s nothing I know that could lead to an arrest,” I said. “That’s a fact.”

  “Except maybe yours.”

  “Come on, now, man. You know I can’t sit here and incriminate myself. I did not have anything to do with the robbery. I have no idea who sent those men to kill me.”

  “Lethford wants to talk to you.”

  “I’d be happy to meet with him . . . any time you say.”

  Kit watched me for a few moments before saying, “That was some impressive killing you did. Naked too.”

  “I hope I didn’t embarrass Officer Palmer.”

  “She said that after all she heard about you she thought your johnson would be bigger.”

  “Tell her that the air conditioner was on.”

  I LEFT the precinct with half a pack of Kit’s cigarettes at about seven a.m. Before that I filled out three forms, explaining what happened, and then Kit recorded my statement on a little digital recorder. He made copies of my gun license and my PI’s ticket. The whole deposition took about three hours. I didn’t mind. While speaking and writing I was going over every detail for my own investigation.

  I arrived at the third-floor breakfast joint a little after eight. It was right at the East River and looked up at the Brooklyn Bridge.

  I was met by an offbeat waiter. He had olive skin and a few years on me. He was dressed completely in white, even his shoes, and he was ugly. There’s no other way to describe his countenance. His people hailed from some part of Europe that had been conquered and raped again and again over millennia. His ears were too big and his eyes the wrong color. The index and point fingers of his right hand were huge, as if they had been cut off some giant and grafted on him. All of his teeth were edged in jagged, mangled gold.

  “ We don’t open until nine,” he said in a gruff tone. There was an accent but I couldn’t place it.

  “I’m here to see Clarence Lethford,” I said.

  Hearing this, he turned and started walking across the broad room, with its dozen or so tables. He came to a door and opened it.

  I had not moved from the entryway.

  When he saw this he waved impatiently.

  I approached and saw that this was a small private dining room with three empty tables.

  “Sit here,” the ugly man said. “Lethford will come.”

  I stepped in and the waiter closed the door behind me.

  The walls, floor, and ceiling were cut from the same dirty and reddish brown unfinished wood. The room could have been a hundred years old, cleaned daily by the man in white and his ugly ancestors.

  I sat next to a small window that allowed a view of the bridge and river. It was pleasant in there. I considered resting my head against the splintery wall and taking a nap.

  But instead I made a call.

  “Sorkin S
ecurities,” a bright young voice answered.

  “LT McGill,” I said. “NY-two-six-four-four-jay.”

  “Just a moment.”

  The phone made some clicking noises and then a man’s voice said, “Ron Welton, security analyst. With whom am I speaking?”

  “Leonid Trotter McGill.”

  “Yes, Mr. McGill. What can I do for you?”

  “Somebody broke through my door last night.”

  “There’s no record on our files of your shell being broken.”

  “They used an electromagnet and specially made crowbars.”

  “That must have taken a while.”

  “They were in in under ten seconds.”

  Silence.

  “Mr. Welton?”

  “ We will have a crew out to your house by noon today, Mr. McGill. They will replace and upgrade the system.”

  “I thought every configuration you had was unique.”

  “ We will also launch an internal investigation . . . Are you and your family all right?”

  “No thanks to you.”

  SHELLY WAS at the house when I called. Twill, she said, was having tea in the little front room with Katrina. Dimitri and Tatyana had moved into D’s room. There were cops down on the street, watching the front door.

  “One of them comes up every couple of hours or so to check on us,” my earnest daughter reported.

  “Put your brother on the line,” I said. I didn’t have to tell her which brother.

  I told Twill about the security company. Told him that I needed any extra keys left downstairs in our mailbox.

  “Something’s wrong with Mom,” Twill said.

  “Of course there is. Armed men broke into our home.”

  “No, Pops, it’s more than that. I don’t know how to describe it but there’s definitely something wrong.”

  “I’ll sit down with her when I get home. Is there anything else?”

  “One thing.”

  “ What’s that?”

  “You said that you wanted me to work for you so I could be safe, right?”

  “You wanna quit?”

  “No, sir.”

  SITTING THERE in the dowdy but private dining room, listening to traffic from the street and the clinking clanging of the restaurant workers getting ready for their clientele, I wondered about Velvet, crouching over her spent works.

  Maybe I was being punished for breaking my oath and covering up yet another crime . . . Try as I might I could not muster up any faith in superstition. I laughed and looked up.

  At just that moment big, brutal Clarence Lethford banged into the room.

  37

  “WHAT YOU LAUGHIN’ AT?” he asked, a lion addressing an unruly hyena.

  “You wanna go back out that door and start over? Or should I just leave now?”

  “You better watch out, son. I’m not the kinda man you can fuck with.” Lethford took three steps and was standing over me.

  “I already killed two men today,” I replied easily, “and it’s still only morning. So bring it on, mothahfuckah, bring it on.”

  The huge cop stared down at me. I was ready for the fight, actually welcomed the chance.

  But instead he pulled back an ancient spindly chair and lowered his bulk onto it.

  “You don’t want me for an enemy, McGill.”

  “Kit said you wanted a meet,” I replied. “Here I am.”

  Rage was a regular part of the policeman’s makeup. But he was disciplined.

  “Zella Grisham had nothing to do with that Rutgers heist,” he told me.

  “I know that.”

  “How do you know?”

  “ What does the color red look like?” I replied.

  “Huh?”

  “Go on, man. What else you want from me?”

  “ Where is Grisham?”

  “Safe.”

  “Safe where?”

  “You know I’m not gonna tell you that.”

  “I could throw your ass in jail.”

  “Throw all you want. I bounce.”

  That brought the wisp of a smile to the rough customer’s lips.

  “Let me tell you something, Captain Lethford.”

  “ What?”

  “After this meeting you’re going to write a note, saying what we said and what your impressions were.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Five minutes after you file that note I could get it delivered on the fax machine of my choosing.” If looks could kill . . . “So,” I continued, “if I tell you where Zella is, I know that she will be dead in the time it takes for one phone to talk to another. I don’t know you. I can’t trust you. But I will say that Zella is safe and she’ll stay that way.”

  After swallowing a little more wrath he said, “There’s only two reasons that I’m not sweating you in an interrogation room right now. The least is that word came down from on high to lay off Leonid Trotter McGill . . .”

  This wasn’t the first time I’d been told that officialdom in the NYPD had put a shield around me.

  “. . . the greater,” he continued, “is that the most respected man on the force, Carson Kitteridge, says that if anybody will find an answer to these killings, it’s you.”

  “Kit said that?”

  “Question is, what do you have to say?”

  “I know you think I’m seven kinds of guilty, Captain. That I either stole millions or that I’m trying to get at the money now. I’m innocent of your suspicions regardless of how much you doubt me. But now you’re here, talking about killings, and last night two men tried to murder me and my family—real professionals. That said, I’m listening to you.”

  I took out a cigarette and lit it. The policeman didn’t try to enforce the smoking ban.

  “Bingo Haman,” he began, “Mick Brawn, and Simon Willoughby. That’s the heart of the most successful heist crew in the whole country. I was pretty sure that it was them that did the Rutgers job.”

  “So why didn’t you arrest them?”

  “Somebody called the DA and said that Zella Grisham had written in a diary about her plans to kill Harry Tangelo. They said that the journal was in her storage unit. Some overzealous cop snipped off the locks. He found no confession but he did uncover fifty thousand dollars in counterfeit Rutgers wrappers.

  “I was taken off the case and they sentenced Zella as hard as they could.”

  “Haman, Brawn, and Willoughby,” I said. “That was the crew?”

  Lethford bobbed his long, angry head.

  I remembered Sweet Lemon talking about the deaths of the henchmen.

  “ What about the point man?”

  Lethford’s aspect became suddenly still.

  All those years ago, when Gordo put me in the ring with the heavyweight named Biggie, I got in a lucky punch in the seventh round of an eight-round fight. It was an unorthodox roundhouse right, landed flush on the tip of the big man’s chin. Biggie’s face froze like Lethford’s did in that private dining room. Biggie had stopped moving forward for a good three seconds. If my left side hadn’t hurt so much, I might have been able to make some kind of combination and change the tide of the one-sided fight. As it was, I was able to survive to the bell. I was on my feet at the end of round eight too but the judges liked Biggie for the contest.

  “You know you’ll never get as deep into this shit as I can,” I said to Lethford. My side didn’t hurt that morning.

  When the cop was still quiet I asked, “Is the point man dead too?”

  The point man is a counterstrategist who might also gather information for the heist crew. As a rule this man works only with the leader of the crew and offers not only information but also a second pair of seasoned eyes on The Plan.

  This armchair tactician never goes out on a job. He simply advises and supplements intelligence. When it’s all over this passive partner receives a modest percentage of the take.

  “No,” Lethford said. “I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t think so? Either he’s dea
d or he’s not.”