Walter Mosley - All I Did Was Shoot My Man

“Sure,” I said. “I mean, I want to but I don’t know what to say.”

“Do you love me?”

“Like seaweed loves the sunlight,” I said in free-association mode.

“I love you.”

“... and the niggers was cowboys and all the white men were cryin’...”

“What can I do, Aura?” I asked.

“I want you back in my life.”

A deep silence set in on me. The people and traffic and crazy woman all stopped making their noises. My mind was like an ovum and her words the impregnating germ. Nothing else could get through. Nothing else mattered.

I forgot where I was going, fought off the desire to sit down on the curb. I wasn’t sure what I wanted; instead I had become something else, transformed by a desire I thought had died.

“Leonid.”

“Yes, Aura.”

“Did you hear me?”

I nodded.

“Leonid.”

“Yes, I heard you. I hear you.”

“Am I too late?”

“If you had asked me that first, I would have probably said yes.”

“Can we try again?”

“I need seventy-two hours to answer that question,” I said. I don’t know why. “Seventy-two hours and I will tell you what I can do.”

“You have seventy-one,” she said, bringing a smile to my face.

“I’ll call you at...” — I looked at my watch — “... four-seventeen three days from now.”

“I love you,” she said.

“Talk to you later.”

The phone rang once and he answered, “Kitteridge.”

“You called?” I asked.

“LT,” he said in way of greeting. “Good to hear from you.”

“What’s the problem, Captain?”

“There’s somebody I want you to talk to.”

“Who’s that?”

“There’s a short street over in Flatbush called Poindexter.”

“I know it.”

“Twenty-six is the address. All you have to say is Lethford.”

“And why am I going there?”

“Because you don’t want those kids of yours to be fatherless.”

I’d called Kit to snap me out of the daze that talking to Aura cast on me.

It worked.

“Somebody’s trying to kill me?” I asked.

“I believe that your name might be on a list somewhere.”

“What kind of sense does that make?”

“You think you’re so innocent that no one could ever mean you harm?”

“No. What I wonder is why would you care?”

“I’m a cop, LT. It’s my job to protect the welfare of even garbage like you.”

I disconnected the call. No reason to argue or protest. I was interested at the obvious anger that Kit was feeling. He rarely showed his feelings. I didn’t much either. That’s why we might have been friends in another life.

Though it was early evening the summer sun still shown down on Brooklyn. I reached the address on Poindexter a little after seven. What looked like a homeless man in gray clothes sat in the doorway of the boarded-up brownstone.

I say he looked like a homeless person because, even though he had the clothes and state of dishevelment down pat, he wasn’t doing anything; not sleeping or reading, drinking or eating, rifling endlessly through his belongings or engaged in an endless diatribe with some imaginary friend — or enemy. For that matter, he didn’t have any belongings — no backpack or grocery cart filled with the necessities and diversions that all humans (homeless or homed) need to survive.

I walked up to the doorway, where the tousled and unkempt black man lounged, and looked down at him.

“Wha?” he said, looking up with eyes both clear and unafraid.

He was in his thirties and fit underneath the loose garments. I could see what was probably the outline of a pistol in his right front pocket.

“Lethford,” I said.

His nostrils flared.

“Get the fuck outta here, main,” he replied.

“I don’t think Captain Kitteridge would like that.”

The pile of gray clothes rose up more like a panther than a broken man. He stared hard at me and then stepped aside.

The door seemed to be boarded, but all I had to do was push and it swung open.

The hallway was dark and narrow. At the far end a faint radiance hinted at but did not necessarily promise light. I walked in that direction, running my left hand against the wall. At the end I turned left, finding myself at the foot of what might have been a stairway.

Two silhouettes came from the sides of the barely visible steps. A bright light shone in my face, blinding me.

“Who are you?” a gruff voice demanded.

“McGill for Lethford.”

“What for?” the other man, who held the torch, said.

I reached out, pulled the heavy-duty flashlight from his hand, and threw it down on the floor.

“What the fuck?” one of them said.

Another light snapped on up above. I took a step backward so that the two shadow men could not grab me.

They were both in street clothes with badges and holsters at their belts. The man on the left, the one I’d taken the flashlight from, looked quite angry. His close-cut hairline was receding and his blue-gray eyes were sparks looking for an accelerant.

“McGill?” a voice from above said.

“That’s me.”

A very large dark-skinned man descended halfway down to the first landing of the stairway. Looking up at him, I remembered a time thirty years before when I let Gordo talk me into climbing in the ring with a natural heavyweight.

The guy’s name was Biggie Barnes and he had fists like anvils.

Don’t let him hit ya was the only advice Gordo gave me at the bell announcing round one.

“Come on up,” the big man said.

I followed in the wake of the giant up four flights. It was a dimly lit journey and my fever made it feel like a ride in a rocking boat. These two elements brought a flicker of fear into the center of my chest.

At any other time I would not have gone to some unknown destination just because Kit asked me to. He was my enemy, my opponent, not a friend.

But I was sick, in love, and seeking redemption. I should have been under the care of two doctors and a Zen monk. Instead I was in Brooklyn with no real way out.

On the fifth floor there were three doors. One of these had a thick dark green curtain hanging over it. The big man pushed the fabric aside and went through. I followed... coming into a good-sized room that was lit by bright incandescent fixtures. There were six desks, here and there, with no rhyme or reason; each had a monitor on it and a plainclothes cop to study it.

The windows were sealed with thick black paper. I counted a dozen small digital cameras, supported on poles of various heights, attached to the walls. The video feeds were routed to the monitors.

The images on the screens were of a social club on Pox Street, one over from Poindexter. Black men and women, many bearing dreadlocks, were coming in and out of the storefront establishment.

I had passed the club on my way to the meeting because I decided to walk around the block before approaching Number 26.

The members of the street-level society sounded like Jamaicans. They seemed rather tough.

“Drug dealers,” the big man said, noticing me staring at a screen.

“You Lethford?”

“Come into my office.”

He led me through a real door this time, into a smaller space that had two wooden folding chairs and a peacock blue phone on the pine floor. No carpeting. He shut the door behind us.

“Sit,” he said in a tone that was neither friendly nor hostile.

The big black man wore a short-sleeved black shirt, black cotton pants, and black shoes. I could tell by his right ankle that his socks were white.

“So,” he said, “do you know why I wanted to see you?”

“Who are you, man?” I replied.