Walter Mosley - All I Did Was Shoot My Man

“Ladies,” I said.

I went to the pink padded chair beside the maroon sofa and Tatyana moved to rise. Katrina put out a hand and the Belarusian sat back down. This interaction alone told a full story — albeit in a language foreign to me.

“How are you, Katrina?”

“Fine.” The soft smile was not reassuring. “I’ve made lasagna for you and the children.”

“I’m so sorry about what happened.”

“No, Leonid,” she said, “it is I who should be apologizing. Most men support their families with safe jobs at insurance companies and auto garages. I’ve been cruel to you and every day you’re out there with your life in the balance. If one night that danger spills into this house, I cannot blame you. I should have been working, taking some of the weight off of your shoulders.”

“I never asked for that,” I said.

“But I should have taken the initiative. I can see now that it is as much my fault as yours what has happened.”

“Katrina...”

“Tatyana has been supporting her family for years and she is so young,” my wife said. “When I was her age I expected men to buy me things and here she is doing for others.”

This was definitely not the woman I had married. Her words indicated a change so profound that I had no idea how to respond. I was a lone Crusader washed up on the shore of the New World after my ship had foundered, taking with it all hands but me.

“Can I make you a drink?” I asked. Old standards are always the best.

“Cognac,” my wife said.

I looked inquiringly at Tatyana. She shook her head almost imperceptibly.

In the dining room I found Dimitri reading a hardback book.

“What you readin’?” I asked.

“Technics and Civilization,” he said, “by Lewis Mumford.”

“I once read a book by him. The City in History , or something like that.”

I took a seat next to my boy.

Dimitri closed the book, turning his attention to me.

“It’s my fault, right?” he said.

“What?”

“That Mom almost got killed.”

“Of course not. Those men were after me. And it’s not even my fault. I didn’t do anything to them.”

My phone chirped, telling me that it contained a message. I resisted the lure.

“But I wasn’t here,” Dimitri said.

“I was.”

“Yeah... You know, I was thinking, Pops... maybe I should start goin’ to Uncle Gordo’s gym.”

“You got the build for it,” I said, “that’s for sure. But you can’t protect everybody you meet.”

“Just Mom and Taty, is all I care about.”

“What about school?”

“I’ll go back after Tatyana gets her degree. You know I love history and science. But she’ll be able to get a better job quicker than I can.”

I put my hand on D’s right forearm. He put his left hand over my fingers. We hadn’t been so close since he was an infant but still our levels of experience placed us miles and miles apart.

The message was a forwarded e-mail from Bug. Once you help a man with his love life he responds with alacrity. I went to my den and downloaded the pages of data he’d sent.

What he found wasn’t an answer to my problems, not exactly, but it indicated a path I might take.

“Hello?” she said on the fourth ring.

“Ms. Lowry?”

“I didn’t expect you to call so soon.”

“We should meet.”

“About what?”

“Considering the clout of my enemies, I’d rather not say on the phone.”

“Enemies?”

“Anybody who sends cutthroats to my door is an enemy.”

“Do you know the Pink Lady?” she asked.

“Yeah.” I hadn’t been there in years.

“I’m busy right now but I can get there in a few hours, let’s say eleven?”

I poured cognac into a chilled snifter and grenadine and sparkling water into a tall tapering glass. These I delivered to Katrina and Dimitri’s girlfriend before going back out on the street — where I belonged.

Central park is glorious after dark. City lights glow in the distance, making the shadows between the trees even deeper. Many a night when I was on the run from child services and the police I’d slept in the hidden recesses of that man-made wilderness.

It might have been dangerous for some but I was armed and angry. The .25 in my pocket looked like a toy when in my big hand but it could still rip through flesh and bone, spill any man’s blood who wanted to do me harm.

I strolled around the dark paths with impunity, maybe even hoping a little that some poor miscreant wanted to confront the short and fat middle-aged park walker.

Lucky for the unnamed troublemaker, he didn’t see me or was wise enough to keep his distance.

The pink lady was the only classical music nightclub in all New York — maybe even in the entire world. That evening a woodwind quintet was playing eighteenth-century sonatas and chamber music.

There were fifteen or so round tables set in a semicircle around the dais where the musicians performed. There was also a bar. People sat and drank, spoke in soft tones, and appreciated the European precursor to jazz.

Lowry sat alone at a table set farthest away from the players. She was sipping at a bright pink drink of sloe gin and strawberries — the signature cocktail of the club.

“Hey,” I said, taking the seat next to her.

“You found it okay?”

“I used to come here with a friend a long time ago.”

“Really? I wouldn’t expect you to know a place like this.”

“Why not?”

“What did you want with me, Mr. McGill?”

“You were born Dwalla, Iché Dwalla. The name might be from Africa but your people were in Alabama for generations all the way back to the seventeen hundreds. They were Tellfords and Mintons, Mummers and Daltons before becoming Afrocentrists. But you rebelled against that — renamed yourself and went on to Harvard, then Stanford. Your education might seem to some to be at odds with the decision to join the army but I see that as the continued rebuke of your parents’ politics.”

“Impressive,” she said. “You know how to get information. But I don’t have anything to hide. I’m not afraid of your knowledge.”

“I’m not trying to frighten you. I’m just explaining why I wanted to meet.”

“And why is that?”

“I don’t know who’s trying to kill me, Ms. Lowry. I don’t have any millions of dollars. Zella Grisham is innocent. So I figure that it’s either the heist men or Rutgers after me — either of them or both.

“You’ve only been with Rutgers for twenty months. When the heist went down you were entering the armed services as an intelligence trainee.”

A light slowly rose in the dark woman’s eyes.

“Why would you suspect the company that was robbed?” she asked. “Why would they do something like that and put me on your trail too?”

“Maybe not the whole company,” I ruminated. “Maybe just a few parties who set up the robbery. Clay Thorn might not have acted alone.”

“And you think because the hit men were exotics that only someone with power could have set it up,” she said.

“The top heist men could set up a hit like that but these guys didn’t.”

“Oh?”

I told her about Clarence Lethford’s tale of Bingo, and his men. I didn’t say anything about Nova Algren.

“I didn’t know that,” Antoinette said. “I knew that Lethford had been in charge of the investigation but he refused to talk to me. Now I can see why.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, “he probably suspects you guys too. So the only question is, would you follow the bread crumbs if they led you back to your own masters?”

“That’s my job,” Antoinette Lowry said solemnly. “But I have no reason to think that the guard Thorn had anything to do with the upper echelons of Rutgers. The internal investigation after the heist revealed that he had a cousin doing time for armed robbery. We believed that his cousin’s contacts got him to set up the job.”