Walter Mosley - All I Did Was Shoot My Man

Maybe I was being punished for breaking my oath and covering up yet another crime... Try as I might I could not muster up any faith in superstition. I laughed and looked up.

At just that moment big, brutal Clarence Lethford banged into the room.

“What you laughin’ at?” he asked, a lion addressing an unruly hyena.

“You wanna go back out that door and start over? Or should I just leave now?”

“You better watch out, son. I’m not the kinda man you can fuck with.” Lethford took three steps and was standing over me.

“I already killed two men today,” I replied easily, “and it’s still only morning. So bring it on, mothahfuckah, bring it on.”

The huge cop stared down at me. I was ready for the fight, actually welcomed the chance.

But instead he pulled back an ancient spindly chair and lowered his bulk onto it.

“You don’t want me for an enemy, McGill.”

“Kit said you wanted a meet,” I replied. “Here I am.”

Rage was a regular part of the policeman’s makeup. But he was disciplined.

“Zella Grisham had nothing to do with that Rutgers heist,” he told me.

“I know that.”

“How do you know?”

“What does the color red look like?” I replied.

“Huh?”

“Go on, man. What else you want from me?”

“Where is Grisham?”

“Safe.”

“Safe where?”

“You know I’m not gonna tell you that.”

“I could throw your ass in jail.”

“Throw all you want. I bounce.”

That brought the wisp of a smile to the rough customer’s lips.

“Let me tell you something, Captain Lethford.”

“What?”

“After this meeting you’re going to write a note, saying what we said and what your impressions were.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Five minutes after you file that note I could get it delivered on the fax machine of my choosing.” If looks could kill... “So,” I continued, “if I tell you where Zella is, I know that she will be dead in the time it takes for one phone to talk to another. I don’t know you. I can’t trust you. But I will say that Zella is safe and she’ll stay that way.”

After swallowing a little more wrath he said, “There’s only two reasons that I’m not sweating you in an interrogation room right now. The least is that word came down from on high to lay off Leonid Trotter McGill...”

This wasn’t the first time I’d been told that officialdom in the NYPD had put a shield around me.

“... the greater,” he continued, “is that the most respected man on the force, Carson Kitteridge, says that if anybody will find an answer to these killings, it’s you.”

“Kit said that?”

“Question is, what do you have to say?”

“I know you think I’m seven kinds of guilty, Captain. That I either stole millions or that I’m trying to get at the money now. I’m innocent of your suspicions regardless of how much you doubt me. But now you’re here, talking about killings, and last night two men tried to murder me and my family — real professionals. That said, I’m listening to you.”

I took out a cigarette and lit it. The policeman didn’t try to enforce the smoking ban.

“Bingo Haman,” he began, “Mick Brawn, and Simon Willoughby. That’s the heart of the most successful heist crew in the whole country. I was pretty sure that it was them that did the Rutgers job.”

“So why didn’t you arrest them?”

“Somebody called the DA and said that Zella Grisham had written in a diary about her plans to kill Harry Tangelo. They said that the journal was in her storage unit. Some overzealous cop snipped off the locks. He found no confession but he did uncover fifty thousand dollars in counterfeit Rutgers wrappers.

“I was taken off the case and they sentenced Zella as hard as they could.”

“Haman, Brawn, and Willoughby,” I said. “That was the crew?”

Lethford bobbed his long, angry head.

I remembered Sweet Lemon talking about the deaths of the henchmen.

“What about the point man?”

Lethford’s aspect became suddenly still.

All those years ago, when Gordo put me in the ring with the heavyweight named Biggie, I got in a lucky punch in the seventh round of an eight-round fight. It was an unorthodox roundhouse right, landed flush on the tip of the big man’s chin. Biggie’s face froze like Lethford’s did in that private dining room. Biggie had stopped moving forward for a good three seconds. If my left side hadn’t hurt so much, I might have been able to make some kind of combination and change the tide of the one-sided fight. As it was, I was able to survive to the bell. I was on my feet at the end of round eight too but the judges liked Biggie for the contest.

“You know you’ll never get as deep into this shit as I can,” I said to Lethford. My side didn’t hurt that morning.

When the cop was still quiet I asked, “Is the point man dead too?”

The point man is a counterstrategist who might also gather information for the heist crew. As a rule this man works only with the leader of the crew and offers not only information but also a second pair of seasoned eyes on The Plan.

This armchair tactician never goes out on a job. He simply advises and supplements intelligence. When it’s all over this passive partner receives a modest percentage of the take.

“No,” Lethford said. “I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think so? Either he’s dead or he’s not.”

“Bingo was good. We thought we knew who his adviser was but we were never sure. The person we suspected is still alive but...”

“You don’t know for sure if he ever worked on the job.”

Lethford nodded.

“Let me talk to the man. I might be able to make headway where a legal inquiry would not.”

“Why should I trust you?”

“Because the best cop in New York told you to.”

Clarence blinked twice and then squinted. He stayed that way for quite a few seconds; much longer than it took me to kill two men.

“Miss Nova Algren,” he said at last.

“A woman?”

“The best in the business. She retired two months after the Rutgers thing. Living in a retirement home near Saratoga Springs.”

Before i left the Ugly Man’s diner Lethford gave me an envelope with photographs and details of the deaths of the Haman crew. I shuffled through the file in the taxi on the way up to a parking garage near my apartment.

When I was at the entrance I decided to hoof my way back home.

The door was still broken on its hinges. But when I tried to push it open I found that it held fast.

“Anybody home?” I called through the crack.

“Here, Daddy,” Shelly piped.

I heard something on the other side and then the heavy door was dragged open.

Seeing my daughter made me swallow hard. She was wearing an off-white dress that was broad at the hem and close fitting above the waist. I grabbed her up in my arms and squeezed tight.

“Daddy, you’re hurting me.”

“I’m sorry, baby girl. I’m so sorry.” I put her down.

“It’s not your fault and I wasn’t there.”

“No,” I said, “you weren’t.”

Her smile was a little crooked, probably because my gaze was so hard.

“What’s that I smell?”

“Mama’s cooking.”

In the kitchen Katrina was standing over her great-grandmother’s stewpot mixing with a big wooden spoon that was older than any of her children. Tatyana was sitting at the kitchen table, mincing onions.

There was nothing right about that scene.

“Hey, babe.”

It took Katrina a moment to stop what she was doing and turn to me but when she did her smile was resplendent. She was wearing the pink dress that buttoned up the front and a floral apron that I hadn’t seen in years.