Walter Mosley - All I Did Was Shoot My Man

“Now that’s what I do every time I’m tempted — by anything. I plan that to be my first book. I call it Sour Lemons, Sweet Nevermind .”

The grifter was beginning to get to me and that’s always a problem. The best con men believe their stories up until the moment they let you down. They’re telling you the truth, they’re telling you the truth, they’re telling you the truth, and then, all of a sudden, they see a different light, take the money and run, before either one of you knows what happened.

“What you call me for, Lemon?” I asked.

The question snapped him out of his reverie of poetry and sex, bad thoughts and the alternative of words never spoken by a woman that died before he went wrong.

“I asked around all over the place, LT,” he said. “It was easy enough ’cause I had a name. I was at a readin’ last night and there was this woman there that Morgan knows, Tourquois Wynn. Tourquois used to be a adjunct creative writing professor at Hunter College. When she was there, five years ago, she had this older black man student named William Williams. He was in her fiction class.”

The chill that flowed into where fever had lain for so many days almost made me shiver. I considered various inappropriate responses: 1) I thought about hitting Lemon with a roundhouse right, knocking him unconscious; 2) I might have taken off, running up the street, back to where there were no answers to unanswerable questions; and, 3) I entertained putting my fingers in my ears and chanting, “Nah, na, na, na naaa, na, na, na, naaaa, na na, na, na na, na.”

“This Tourquois still at Hunter?” I pronounced the name as he did — Tur-kwa.

“No. She got a tenure-track job at NYU after her first book of poetry won the Sanders Prize. She told me that Williams said that he named himself after a writer because before, when he was a politico, he said that the movement ground him down until he was just a mirror. He said that when a man becomes simply a reflection that writing is the only honest thing he can do.”

That simple explanation meant that the man in the fiction class was my father, Clarence Tolstoy William Williams McGill. There was no doubt in my mind. I had to clasp my hands to keep them from shaking.

“Did she know how to get in touch with him?”

“Said she hadn’t talked to him since that class five years ago. I believed her. But me and Morgan said that the three of us should meet up for a early dinner at the Nook Petit down on Seventh at seven. You could come with. Maybe you got a question she can answer.”

“Why you doin’ this, Lemon?” I asked. It was a reflex question, like right cross after a left hook to the body.

“Favor.”

“I thought you were leavin’ my world behind.”

“That’s right. I stay out of the life. But everybody says that you don’t mess wit’ gangsters no more, LT. And even if you did, a guy like me might need a friend someday.”

“Someday is fine, but how much do you want right now?”

“Nuthin’, man. All I ask is that you remember that I gave you this.”

I’ve always liked the West Village, through all of its varied incarnations. When I was a kid it was a wasteland, with lots of factories and old Italians, the Meatpacking District, and even a few private homes. As time went on would-be artists, aspiring models, and prostitutes (of various persuasions) moved in. There were late-night clubs where jazz musicians sometimes showed up after their uptown gigs.

Back then it wasn’t a tourist destination, with overpriced trés chic clothes shops and big hotels; you didn’t have to plow through crowds of tourists or the investment bankers who transformed every building into million-dollar plasterboard condos and seven-thousand-dollar-a-month one-bedroom apartments.

The West Village had changed, and changed again, but it still had charm. After a little wander I sat myself down at an outside café on Hudson south of Christopher. There I ordered a café au lait with almond biscotti and waited for inspiration.

I missed the old West Village. I missed my fever too. Both felt like history to me; places where I could hide.

“Hello?” she said.

“It’s me.”

“Mr. McGill?”

“Yeah.”

“Is there something wrong?” Zella Grisham asked.

“No. I’m just sitting here on the street, waiting to meet a friend of my father’s.”

“Oh. Then why are you calling?”

“This and that. I might have a line on the people who adopted your daughter. I’m going to get in touch with them in a few days, saying that you’d like to meet.”

“What are their names?”

“I need to make the first contact, Zella.”

“She’s my daughter.”

“Not in the eyes of the law, and we need to keep the law from looking too hard at you.”

She had no words to say about that.

“What else?” she asked. “What else did you have to say?”

“How are they treating you there?”

“Mr. Nightly has been very kind. He’s had family that spent time in prison.”

“You should keep your head down,” I said. “Lotsa people interested in that heist. Some of them still think you might know something.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, keep your head down. I will find out what’s goin’ on and tell you when you can come back up for air.”

“What about Harry?” she asked quickly before I could disconnect.

“He went missing right before your trial.”

“Killed?” There was real distress in her voice.

“I doubt it. Usually when somebody’s murdered there’s a body or at least a complaint about a missing person. I think he must have moved away. But don’t worry, I’m still looking.”

“Um.”

“What?”

“I don’t really understand why you’re helping me but Johnny says that you’re somebody I can trust... so... thank you.”

“No problem.”

While i was composing a text message a call was coming through. I sent the text and answered, “Hello, Breland.”

“Mycroft called and asked where we were on the case. He wanted your number but I told him that it would probably be better for me to be the go-between.”

“Smart.”

“Do you have anything?”

“Tell me something, Breland.”

“What’s that, LT?”

“Is this like the other thing we did with this guy?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, do you want me to save an innocent boy or to get a rich kid out of a jam of his own making?”

“You think that Kent isn’t just a kid out of his depth?”

“Might not be.”

There was silence on the other end of the wireless connection. Breland Lewis had a brilliant mind; a lawyer’s mind, but brilliant still and all. It felt good that he was using that intelligence on my question.

“I guess that would just be a case of a silk purse and the sow’s ear,” he said.

“Glad to hear it,” I said, “because you know I’m plum out of spot remover.”

“Keep me informed.”

Talking about the billionaire made me think of my father. As much as I disliked the arrogant Mycroft, at least he was trying to help his son; at least that.

My father had taught me to hate the rich. He called them the enemies in a class war that every man, woman, and child was a part of because the division of labor was the Maginot Line between us and our destroyers.

I loved my father and so believed him. And because I believed him I hated men like Mycroft. It took me a long time to understand that I stood on both sides of the battle that every resident of the modern world faced. I was a grown man before I understood that Mycroft, in spite of his privilege, could have luck just as bad as Zella’s. His money was a force to reckon with but it could not shield his soul.