Walter Mosley - All I Did Was Shoot My Man

“I know, boy. I know. It’s just that the things I been working on don’t have a learning curve built into them. Either that or they’re very personal jobs that I really need to see through for myself. Can you hold on for a few more weeks?”

“It’s been months already, LT. And you know I had problems sittin’ at my desk in school every day.”

“Speaking of that, have you looked into the high school equivalency test?”

“Me and Mardi go over it two hours every day after lunch, if she’s not too busy. I’ll probably take it in September.”

Since he was five years old he never made a promise that he didn’t keep.

“I will get you a job,” I said.

For a moment Twill’s perpetual smile dimmed, but then the grin broke through again.

“Don’t worry ’bout it, Pops. I know you tryin’. And, who knows? If you hadn’t roped me in here, I might be sittin’ in some jail by now — maybe worse.”

Unlike Achilles (at least since his sixteenth birthday), Twill did not suffer from false pride nor did he deceive himself with unrealistic optimism. He was tough and smart. But, most of all, he saw the world for what it was.

I have always loved him without reservation.

“How you been doin’?” Twill asked with a peculiar slant to his gaze.

“Okay. Fine. Why do you ask?”

“I don’t know. For the past few days your eyes been kinda glassy. And sometimes you look off into space... like, forever.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, feeling as if I was talking to a peer instead of a young man not yet out of his teens. “I’ve been running a little fever. It’s nothing.”

Twill’s smile evaporated for a moment and he nodded, agreeing with some notion that I had not put forward.

I was about to ask him what he was thinking when the buzzer sounded. Looking at my watch, I saw that it was three minutes after ten. A red light was glaring on my desk phone.

I nodded at Twill and he left with a parting nod.

I took in a deep breath, picked up the receiver, and pressed the clear plastic cube that was imprinted with the number six.

“Hello, Breland.”

“I’ve been calling you since early this morning,” the lawyer said, his lack of civility telling me that something was seriously wrong.

“Thanks for helping with Zella,” I said, deflecting his urgency. “I picked her up at the bus station. I guess she called you.”

“Yes. She was very reserved. Minksy at the Rag Factory said that she came in and will be starting work today. I gave Minks your assurance that there won’t be any trouble.”

“Thanks again.”

Then came the necessary lull when I was supposed to ask why he called.

“My phone died,” I explained instead. “That’s why I didn’t get your call. You know, I usually plug it in. But Dimitri moved out and Katrina tied one on. Between those two fiascoes I guess I was a little thrown off.”

“You remember the Mycrofts, don’t you?” he asked, no longer able to hold back his business.

I’d never met the billionaire family, but I knew that the Mycrofts’ live-in maid was Velvet Reyes’s mother.

“What’s up with them?” I asked.

“Shelby called me last night. He was very disturbed.”

“Oh?”

“It’s their son — Kent. They have two children, Kent is the elder. For a while there he was estranged from the family but he’s been back for a couple of years — enrolled at NYU.”

“College man, huh? He need a math tutor or something?”

“Your kind of math, LT.”

“Spell it out, Breland.”

“It has come to the attention of Mr. and Mrs. Mycroft that their son has fallen in with a very bad crowd down in the Village. He’s an extremely emotional and impressionable young man and they fear for his safety.”

It was lawyerspeak. I knew from his elocution that Breland felt pressured.

“What kinda crowd?” I asked.

“We didn’t get into specifics.”

“No? Are we talkin’ about the Little Rascals or the Purple Gang?”

“I’m sure it’s nothing you can’t handle.”

“And what is it exactly that the Mycrofts want me to do?”

“ I want you to go see them and give them any help you can.”

The prospect of visiting a rich man didn’t appeal to me. I hadn’t adopted my father’s political zeal, but I didn’t like the company of the upper classes.

Prejudices aside, however, I am a private detective in a downward-spiraling economy. When the country’s got a healthy GNP the husband or wife wants to know if a spouse is cheating — they’re willing to pay a man like me to find out. But when jobs are scarce that same spouse knows they need the extra paycheck.

“I don’t know, Breland.”

“You don’t know what?”

“These friends of yours seem to have more than their share of trouble.”

“They have more than their share of cash too.”

“The last time I dealt with them I had to break a promise I’d made to myself.”

“It’s not like that this time.”

“You said you don’t know what the problem is.”

“He’s just a stupid college kid, LT. Any trouble he’s in is nothing like the other thing.”

“If it’s so simple why do you need me?”

“Shelby likes to keep things quiet and confidential. His investment fund caters to blue bloods and old money. The kind of folks that don’t appreciate scandal.”

“How much money?”

“Half the Reyes thing.”

I wasn’t worried. I knew that Breland was telling me the truth, that as far as he knew this was a routine job. I wanted him to squirm a bit, however. Having covered up for Velvet still stung.

“It would be a deep favor for me and a good payday for you, Leonid.”

“Just a college kid took a bad turn on the way to the john, huh?”

“That’s all.”

“I’ll tell you what, Breland. I’ll go talk to these people and see if it’s as simple as you say.”

“Thank you.”

“But you have to do something for me in return.”

“What’s that?”

“You still got that old girlfriend, the assistant to the director of the department of records?”

“Jeanette? I don’t see her anymore, not since Madeline and I renewed our vows.”

“But you still know her number, right?”

“What do you need?”

“I want to know the name and address of the family that adopted Zella Grisham’s baby.”

“I don’t know...”

“You want me to go talk to these friends’a yours or what?”

“It’ll cost something.”

“I’ll pay it.”

“I was asking for a favor, Leonid.”

“I did your favor the last time I had dealings with these people.”

“You were paid for that.”

“Not enough to risk spending twenty years in the joint.”

Twill was sitting two desks away from my office door in the long two-sided aisle of sixteen desks. I’d obtained my suite quasi-legally when the previous building manager had a problem that only a guy like me could fix. It involved a fake bank account and re-forged documents. The new owners hired Aura Ullman to get me out, but instead we fell in love.

Aura and I had broken off our liaison; at first because Katrina came back to me after leaving for the Austrian/Argentine banker, Andre Zool, and then because Aura realized that one day I would probably die violently and she didn’t think that she could bear that weight.

Twill was working on a sketch with a yellow number two pencil. For years and years I had seen both my sons make little drawings. I never paid much attention. I guess it was because there was so much to worry about with each one, for different reasons, that there wasn’t much room for simple pride.

The drawing he was working on was a lovely three-point perspective of the hallway before him. It wasn’t angular or forced, a delicate rendition of flowing space — solid and yet suspended like mist.