Walter Mosley - All I Did Was Shoot My Man

“Hey, Pops.”

And there Twill was. Even though I had sent him the message to meet me at the outside café I was surprised and delighted to see him.

“Have a seat.”

He pulled up a chair, motioned at our waitress, and ordered a Chinotto soda.

“How’d it go?” I asked.

“I don’t know, LT, I think maybe we should bow outta this one.”

“Your first case and you want to let it go?”

He held out his left hand; a gesture of offering.

“Mr. Mycroft said that he thinks that his son is just caught up in something he don’t get, but the way Kent tells it he’s the big boss. He told me that him and his crew started out robbin’ pimps and drug dealers and small gambling operations. Then, after a while, they started runnin’ their own businesses. He told me that he killed two men himself.”

“You believe him?”

“I believe he’s crazy. Don’t get me wrong, Pops. He’s just another dude doin’ business, as far as I’m concerned, but you the one told me that you cain’t save a fish from drowning.”

I laughed, and the waitress came up with the small bottle of bitter Italian soda and a chilled glass. She was short and wide, with a yard-long smile for my son.

“And that’s not all,” Twill said when the young woman went away.

“What else?”

“Kent told me that him and his father hated each other, that they been at each other’s throats forever.”

“Why’s that?”

“I don’t even wanna go into it, man. Just a lotta gossip, as far as I’m concerned. But we shouldn’t get in it. I know that much for sure.”

“Tell me something, Twill.”

“What’s that, Pops?”

“Why would a guy you just met give you all that?”

“He knew who I was.”

“What?”

“Not that you’re my father or that I’m workin’ for his father,” Twill said, putting up both hands and tamping them against my palpable anxiety. “I’ve done a few things down around the Village. They know me pretty good in his circles. That’s why he had his girl tap me. He thought I was usin’ his sister to meet him so that we could do some work together.”

My son the gangster. I hadn’t brought him in to work for me a moment too soon.

“You should let this drop, Twill. If he’s running a violent crew, I don’t want you to get in the crosshairs.”

“That’s cool. So you gonna drop it?”

“I can’t do that. I promised Breland to see it through.”

“So you gonna keep on workin’ it?”

“Until I agree with your conclusion at least.”

“Well, then... maybe I could get at it another way.”

“What do you mean?”

“If Kent knows who I am, that means I know people that know him and his. I could ask around. I mean, if you still wanna do this thing.”

“You could ask and he wouldn’t know?”

“I can be as quiet as a midnight owl on a garter snake.”

What kind of bedtime stories had I told my son?

After twill left I ordered a glass of red wine and called Gordo.

“I don’t know what you said to Elsa, son, but she unpacked her bags and wouldn’t even talk about leavin’. She made me a plate of meat and potatoes and said she wanted to get in the bed early.”

“You deserve it, old man. She probably figure to be in your will soon so now she gonna sex you to death.”

“One can only hope.”

I hung around the little café until seven. Then I followed Christopher Street over to Seventh Avenue. From there I wended my way south until coming to the Nook Petit. It was a little restaurant, hardly more than a café, on the western side of the street. It was next door to a storefront performance space that had been a makeup store six months earlier and a Thai restaurant six months before that.

Sexy Morgan, the poet, was in a window seat next to the ageless (but old) Sweet Lemon Charles. Between them sat a black-haired woman with pale skin and very beautiful eyes. I couldn’t make out their color but their size and shape said that when it came to aesthetic evolutionary perfection these eyes had topped the scales. Other than that, she was plain. The blouse was a flat blue. I’d’ve bet even money that the skirt underneath was knee-length and black.

Lemon saw me staring, stood up, and waved me in.

When I passed through the front door a woman wearing a bejeweled purple-and-red turban approached.

“Can I help you?” she asked. Her smile was practiced but not insincere.

“My friends are at that table over there.”

“Lt,” Lemon said. “Glad you could make it, brother. Here, sit, sit.”

He gestured at the chair he’d occupied. There was a lot of communication in that offer. He wanted me to sit next to Tourquois, of course, but also the only other chair had its back to the window. Lemon was telling me that he understood how vulnerable I’d feel in that position and also proving, in some symbolic way, that he had left that lifestyle behind. So he sat with his back to the street while I got to sit next to the woman with the lovely eyes.

“Morgan,” Lemon said. “This is the guy I was tellin’ you about — Leonid McGill.”

The sexpot cutie pursed her lips and held her hand out across the table.

“Stanford told me all about you, Mr. McGill,” she said with assumed knowledge in her brown eyes.

“Stanford?”

“That’s my real name,” Lemon said. “And this is the woman I was telling you about — Tourquois.”

A closer look explained why Stanford was particular about calling the teacher a woman. She was probably in her mid-forties, with pale crow’s-feet at the edge of her crystal gray eyes.

She smiled and I nodded my greeting.

“Thanks for letting me crash the party,” I said.

“Can I get you something to drink?” Lemon asked. “Brandy, right?”

“Cognac,” I said.

“Right.”

He went to the bar, merging with the mob of young Village hopefuls drinking and laughing all around.

Morgan still had her lips pursed and Tourquois was looking down at her long, delicate hands.

“Stanford told me that every policeman in New York knows your name and face,” Morgan said.

“He did?”

“Do they?”

“I’m recognized from time to time. But, in my defense, often my face is familiar but not recognized. Now and then somebody might arrest me but they always let me go.”

Tourquois looked up at me and for some reason I imagined her black hair going white.

“Stanford says that he’s out of that life,” Morgan said, her lips no longer puckered for kissing.

“That’s what I say too,” I replied lightly. “And I don’t just say it, I mean it. And I can promise you that I have no intention of pulling your man into anything but maybe that osso buco special they got on that blackboard menu.”

The kiss returned, along with a smile.

“Here you go,” Lemon said.

He was carrying four drinks in his big hands. I’d forgotten about the size of his hands. They were both dexterous and strong. It was said that Lemon’s fists were fearful things in his youth. I was reminded of the boxer’s axiom that if a man could hit hard, he always had a slugger’s chance.

“Champagne for my lady,” Lemon was saying, “dirty vodka martini for Ms. Wynn, VSOP for LT, and gin with a twist for Lenore Goodwoman’s favorite child.”

He placed the drinks professionally and gestured for the waiter; an older white man with a bald head and a smile that wanted to be a frown.

The meal came and talk arose, centering around poets, poetry, poetry readings, and reading in general.

“I believe that the most important book of the twentieth century is Four Quartets by Eliot,” Morgan said with certainty.