“I’ll be there at nine,” I said.
Kit didn’t like it but he knew enough to lay off.
“Nine,” he said, pointing at me. Then he walked out of the cold, sunny room.
Antoinette and I were left in the room by ourselves.
“Cutting it pretty close to the bone, weren’t you?” she asked.
“I was thinkin’ about that before your boss walked in.”
“Shall we have a seat?”
56
THERE WAS ELECTRICITY coming from Antoinette’s side of our face-to-face. I could tell by the way she looked at me that I had passed some kind of unconscious test that her id gave every black man.
I’m a twenty-first-century New Yorker and therefore have little time to contemplate race. It’s not that racism doesn’t exist. Lots of people in New York, and elsewhere, hate because of color and gender, religion and national origin. It’s just that I rarely worry about those things because there’s a real world underneath all that nonsense; a world that demands my attention almost every moment of every day.
Racism is a luxury in a world where resources are scarce, where economic competition is an armed sport, in a world where even the atmosphere is plotting against you. In an arena like that racism is more a halftime entertainment, a favorite sitcom when the day is done.
That said, Antoinette was one of the racists. She hated her own people because they didn’t see her for what she was. She felt betrayed by black men and then I came along. I brought out a thrill in her heart, and maybe her nether regions. That was all good and well; she was a handsome, brave, and intelligent woman, but I was preoccupied with pain so profound that I could barely tell if it was mine alone.
“ Why did you call the cops and me at the last moment?” she asked. There was a queer friendliness to the question.
“I called you right after Alton called me.”
“You didn’t believe him?”
“He didn’t strike me as the kind of man who makes snap decisions,” I said. “He’d never betray a VP like Brighton unless it was a sure thing. I thought that they must be working together or maybe that Alton was Johann’s dupe.”
“You were wrong.”
“Yeah. I was and will be again. I’ve spent nearly my whole life in the penalty box but that don’t mean I’m not in the game.”
Antoinette Lowry smiled. I don’t think she was aware of it. She’d been looking for a man like me for her entire life. She hadn’t known that either.
“I’m willing to advance your name for the reward,” she said; a queen offering her throne to a brash, conquering barbarian.
“Six hundred and fifteen thousand,” I said.
“Unless we find more.”
“You won’t. Not that you’ll be able to prove anyway.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Alton probably spent twenty years working on this plan. I bet you’ll find that Harlow will have connections planted between him and Brighton. Maybe he’ll have a numbered account somewhere. You won’t be able to tie it to Plimpton. He wanted to kick up enough dust that he could make his getaway in the sandstorm. If Zella hadn’t got out of jail and the police weren’t looking into the heist again, he might have made it. I’ll tell you what though. Let’s break up the reward between me and Zella Grisham. I’ll take seventy-five thousand and leave the rest for her.”
“Really?”
“She spent all those years in prison. Somebody should pay for it.”
“ Why you?”
“ Why not?”
“There has to be more to it than that.”
“Maybe.” I gazed across the short space between us, thinking that everything we see and experience is always in the past: the light from stars, a brief expression of love.
“You’re an intriguing man, Mr. McGill.”
“Most of the time I wish I had become a dull plumber. What are you gonna do, Annie?”
“ What do you mean?” She didn’t balk at the pet name.
“You can’t stay at Rutgers. They need to bury this as soon as possible. You won’t be able to stomach the changes they’ll put you through.”
This was a new thought in the security officer’s mind. I put it there because the passion growing in her was too much for me to deal with right then. I needed time to go over my entire life and put it in order. I might even have to murder somebody before the night was through.
“I got to go,” I said.
“To meet your father.”
“Yeah. To meet my old man.”
“Are you close?”
“I’ll drop by your office sometime tomorrow,” I said. “ We can see about this reward thing then.”
“Maybe we can have lunch.”
“Yeah. I’d like that.”
THE RESOLUTION of criminal cases was often like that—anticlimactic. A little guy with big ideas crushed by the pressures cultivated in his own mind. He’d robbed his own company, had his confederate murdered, and then used the ill-gotten resources to cover his crimes.
I wondered why his wife had left him. Maybe if she had stayed he might never have gone bad.
I’d been walking for nearly an hour before I was even aware of it. I couldn’t remember green lights or anyone I’d passed.
I came to the entrance of the C train at Twenty-third Street. I even went down to the turnstiles with a MetroCard in hand. But I couldn’t go through. The world was closing in on me. Every misstep I’d ever taken had brought me to that hole in the ground. I scurried up the concrete stairs like a coal miner running from an underground collapse.
Most of the men who died at Plimpton’s behest had been condemned because of my actions. Alton Plimpton was my pawn before I ever knew his name. I was a virulent pathogen loosed on the world, wreaking carnage merely by my existence. I had evolved from my father, another deadly virus that rode invisibly and silently on the air—looking for a home in the lungs of children.
AFTER ANOTHER HOUR of walking I decided to take a bus up the West Side, reaching my building sometime after seven. Walking up the stairs, I wondered about the plan in Alton’s mind. He had set up Zella and wanted to keep that subterfuge going. Maybe he’d always planned to destroy Brighton. The police would never get enough evidence to try him for murder but Rutgers would make sure that he paid for his crimes.
THERE WAS MUSIC coming from down the hall of bedrooms, emanating from Dimitri’s room. He was in there with his femme fatale unafraid, and probably unaware, of the dangers she engendered.
Twill’s room and Shelly’s were empty. I was happy not to have to see either of them. Maybe they’d both be better off if I had disappeared like my father had . . . It was then I noticed that there was no scent in the air.
When Katrina was on her game she cooked every night. And she had gotten better. There should have been a meal in the making.
“Katrina?” I called down the hall.
Dimitri came to the door of his room.
“You seen your mother, Bulldog?” I asked him.
“She’s down in the bedroom,” he said.
“How’s it goin’?” I asked him.
Tatyana came out from behind him, wearing one of his yellow dress shirts—and nothing else. She was a gorgeous woman. I noted that fact about every third time I saw her.
“Fine,” Dimitri said, answering my question.
I walked past the young lovers.
“Katrina?” I called again.
OUR BED was unmade. That was a more severe warning than the three chimes of the late-night alarm to my mind. Katrina never left an unmade bed. She tucked the blankets in at hotels and other peoples’ houses. She’d dust a waiting room if you gave her the rag.
HER SKIN was white to begin with but add to that the deep red of the tepid bathwater, from the blood she’d lost, and my wife looked like a dead swan in the darkening waters of her suicide.
“Dimitri!” I shouted.
I had already gotten my arms under her body. I was lifting her from th
e tub, staining our turquoise tiles to an approximate violet.
“Dimitri!”
I heard the first thump of his heavy foot on the wooden floor.
I felt for her pulse but my own heart was beating too fast to feel what little her vein might be giving.
“Dimitri!”
“Mom!” he yelled, coming through the bathroom door.
With the strength of despair he shouldered me aside, reaching for the comatose woman. I went with the push, going to the cabinet for bandages and maybe an anticoagulant.
“Dimitri!” Tatyana shouted. She had jumped on his back, hooking her forearm across his throat. She yoked him while saying, “Let your father take care of her. She needs him to help stop the bleeding.”
As my son fell back he went down on his knees. I used bath towels to dry the skin around the deep wounds on her wrists.
“Call nine-one-one,” I said to the Belarusian.
She darted from the room.
“Mom!” Dimitri bellowed. “Mom!”
I slathered the salve on the wounds and tied the bandages first around the cuts themselves and then as tourniquets applied just below the elbows.
“Hold these,” I said to Dimitri, indicating the bandages on her wrists. “Hold them tight.”
He lurched forward, his knees slipping on bloody water, and did what I asked.
Tatyana ran back in. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to. While Dimitri held her arms I huddled around Katrina’s alabaster body in an attempt to keep her warm.
“Did you leave the front door open?” I asked Tatyana.
She nodded, staring hard at the maybe dead woman in my arms.
57
THE WAIT was oddly peaceful. Tatyana moved up next to me and pressed her fingers against Katrina’s throat.
“I think I can feel a pulse,” she said to Dimitri. “She is living.”
My son’s cheeks were shaking. He was still on his knees, holding his mother’s wrists. I might have been worried about him if I hadn’t slipped into a fugue state in which the only reality was my body’s warmth and the transference of the heat from me to her.
After what seemed like many hours there were banging sounds from the hall.
If there were more assassins coming, me and my family were dead.
“Down here!” Tatyana shouted. “ We’re down here!”
THE HOSPITAL we were brought to was called the Sisters of the Consecrated Heart. It was little more than an infirmary on 112th Street but the staff was professional and they seemed equipped for the emergency.
Helen Bancroft arrived at the same time we did. Tatyana had called her. I never asked how she came across the name.
Helen told us that it was a double waiting game.
“First she has to survive the night,” she said, “and then we have to hope that the damage is not permanent.”
Dimitri sat in a chair at the foot of the bed, his big hand clutching a metal rod that was part of the frame. Tatyana stood behind her man. She had her hands on his big shoulders, her chin perched on the top of his head.
I could see the pain in my son. For the first time I realized that his dour disposition was due to an extraordinary sensitivity. As big and brutish-looking as he was, Dimitri was delicate, even fragile. The frail ex-prostitute who caressed him was the strength he needed to survive this world.
“Daddy,” Shelly whined as she came into the single room. She was wearing a rainbow-colored dress that showed off her slim figure.
I stepped to the side so that she could see her mother.
“Oh no,” she cried, rushing past me to Katrina’s side.
“Hey, Pops,” Twill said.
He had on an emerald linen suit over a silken orange shirt. He looked serious and mature.
He put an arm around my shoulders and asked, “How you doin’?”
Twill was very nearly the only person who was concerned with my well-being; the only one who expected nothing in return.
“It’s bad, Twilliam,” I said. “Dr. Bancroft says she might not make it.”
“I knew something was wrong,” he said. “She just wasn’t actin’ right.”
“You told me. I should have listened closer.”
“You couldn’ta stopped this, Pops. Moms always been in charge’a her business. You know she cross the street when she wants to. Fuck the lights.”
I laughed for the first time that evening.
Twill went to his brother and actually kissed him. He patted Tatyana’s arm and then moved to sit with his sister.
My son the Godfather.
THE WAIT was hours. Somewhere around midnight Dimitri passed out. Helen gave him a sedative after that and found a bed for him on another floor. Tatyana followed him up there, afraid, I’m sure, of what he might do if left to his own devices.
At seven minutes after two Twill told me, “I’m goin’ home to get some rest. I figure you’ll be here tomorrow and somebody should cover the fort. Soon as Mardi finds out you know she’ll be here, so that only leaves me.”
I took his hand and asked, “How are you, boy?”
He held my gaze and smiled.
SOME TIME AFTER FOUR Shelly was napping in her chair. If the machine next to Katrina was right, her vital signs had improved.
“Seldon told me that you came to his house,” Shelly said. Her eyes were barely open.
“Sorry about that.”
“ Why’d you go there?”
“Lookin’ for a fight, I guess.”
“I love him, Daddy. He wanted to come here with me but I told him you wouldn’t like it.”
“No, I wouldn’t. But that doesn’t matter.”
“ Why not?”
“If you hadn’t been with him, that gunman’s bullets would have found you in the bed. His desire for you saved your life. That’s a natural fact.”
I took a deep breath and remembered something. The memory must have shown on my face.
“ What is it?” Shelly asked.
“I was supposed to meet somebody for a late dinner. I completely forgot.”
“You can call them tomorrow.”
“I don’t have his number.”
Click here for more books by this author.
ALSO BY WALTER MOSLEY
LEONID MCGILL MYSTERIES
The Long Fall
Known to Evil
When the Thrill Is Gone
EASY RAWLINS MYSTERIES
Blonde Faith
Cinnamon Kiss
Little Scarlet
Six Easy Pieces
Bad Boy Brawly Brown
A Little Yellow Dog
Black Betty
Gone Fishin’
White Butterfly
A Red Death
Devil in a Blue Dress
OTHER FICTION
The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey
The Tempest Tales
Diablerie
Killing Johnny Fry
The Man in My Basement
Fear of the Dark
Fortunate Son
The Wave
Fear Itself
Futureland
Fearless Jones
Walkin’ the Dog
Blue Light
Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned
RL’s Dream
47
The Right Mistake
NONFICTION
This Year You Write Your Novel
What Next: A Memoir Toward World Peace
All I Did Was Shoot My Man Page 27