Walter Mosley - All I Did Was Shoot My Man

She stared, giving a wordless response.

“Then you know that men broke into my house and tried to kill me. You know that I know what I’m talkin’ about. If I wanted to hurt you, that would already have happened.”

“We could call the police,” Minnie argued. “We should call them.”

“Maybe so,” I said. “Call them. Tell them about your changed names and Stumpy Brown, about the heist and why you’re working at Rutgers. That would be better than waiting here for the people who tried to kill me.”

I was trying to scare them.

From the looks on their faces I had succeeded.

“We don’t have any money,” Harry said to his wife.

“What do you want, Mr. McGill?” Minnie asked me.

Minnie was a pretty woman. Not as cute as her husband but sexier. Her features were petite and clear-cut. When she got older she’d seem severe, but not yet.

“I don’t want anything from you, Minnie,” I said. “My trip out here was for Zella. I got the names of the people that adopted her daughter and I was going to ask them to meet her.”

“But you found something else,” she said.

“And I gave you my best advice. Four men are dead. They tried to kill me and my family. You were helped by a man working for whoever did the killings, you can bet on that. Take your husband and your daughter and run. I’ll tell Zella what happened. She will have to understand.”

“Where can we go?” she asked. “What can we do? How can we even make a living if these men know everything about us?”

“Fifteen minutes ago you were telling me that you wanted me to leave,” I said. “Now you want my help?”

“Yes, we do.” She took her husband’s hand and held it to her breast. He nodded as I felt he must have often done, acquiescing to his bride’s decision.

The sky was still light but the day was becoming evening. The onset of night made me sensitive to my surroundings.

“I can call somebody,” I said. “He will come and he will hide you for the time it takes me to either follow this thing down or die trying. But if I do this, you have to promise to meet with Zella. She deserves to know her daughter.”

Harry looked to Minnie. She finally nodded.

“Hello,” Johnny Nightly said, answering his cell.

I explained as much as I could over the phone, asking him to come, without the elder Zella, and bring the Quicks and their adopted blood daughter to a safe haven.

“Okay, LT,” he said. “I’ll do it. Luke said that he wanted to teach Zell how to play pool anyway. But I need to tell you something, man.”

“What’s that, Johnny?”

“I’ve gotten to like your client. I wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to her.”

“We’re on the same page, then,” I said.

Just before dark the Quick family and I put a hole in the pine fence at the back of their yard. We walked through the next yard, down the driveway, and out to the street one block over. Nobody questioned us but, even if they did, what could they say?

A dark blue van with no windows was parked at the corner. Johnny Nightly, the deadly handsome coal black killer, was seated behind the wheel. He smiled at me and I nodded politely.

“This here is Johnny,” I said to the Quicks. “Do what he tells you and you’ll have a ninety-nine percent survival rate.”

I would have said a hundred percent except for the time when Johnny made that minor slip. That mistake cost him a serious stint in the hospital and had nearly caused his death and mine.

Harry, Minnie, and Zella the Second climbed into the back of the van. I slid the door shut and slapped it.

Johnny drove off to parts unknown.

Back in the Quick residence I turned off the lights and made sure that all the windows were closed and locked — all except one. A solitary window at the side of the house, where the bushes were thickest, I left unlocked and partly open.

That window opened into the dining room. I put a chair in the little hallway that led from there out to the kitchen. Then I sat back comfortably, doing what PIs do best — waiting in darkness.

I had the whole night ahead of me. If nothing happened by morning, I’d go to Kitteridge and tell him what I knew. He’d probably tell Clarence Lethford. That’d be okay with me.

There was a faintly sweet floral scent on the air, in the darkness. I liked sitting there inhaling that flavor. Many times I had considered getting out of the PI business. As long as I did that kind of work I was vulnerable to my criminal past. But I didn’t want a regular job, a boss, or a business telling me what to do. All I wanted was an unfamiliar shadow that slowly blended with my own.

At eleven forty-seven my cell phone vibrated in its pocket. A few seconds later I took it out to see who had called. It was a 917 area code but the number was unfamiliar.

“My dear and dead friend was instructed to hire Mr. B to cover his tracks,” Miss Nova Algren’s recorded voice said. “And the number he garnered was twelve, not fifty-eight.”

Bingo hired Stumpy. That meant that he also arranged for Minnie to work for Brighton.

At one twenty-nine I was still in the dark, still wondering where the other forty-six million had gone. The phone throbbed again. This time it was an unknown number. I didn’t answer and there was no message.

At two thirty-seven I saw a brief flash of light near the open window at the side of the dining room.

I stood up from my chair.

There came the slightest rustle from the bushes and then the window slowly opened wide. I held my breath with the kind of excitement that had some distant connection to fear. At that moment I was fatherless, childless, and wholly alone in a life that existed only right then and was oddly perfect.

The man who came in was maybe five-seven.

The fever returned in an instant and I welcomed its reckless burn.

Just before the professional killer could begin his late-night prowl I lunged forward with a precision I’d practiced in Gordo’s gym for decades.

He reacted to my presence half a second too late. By the time he’d reached for whatever weapon he carried I cracked his jaw like Barry Bonds hitting a fastball. But, even falling backward, his right foot jutted out in a nearly perfect shotokan sidekick.

I was thrown backward, landing on my ass.

Swiveling on the floor, I rose up moving toward the home invader. I expected that man to be out, but bad men like myself spend endless hours going through the scenarios of street fighting. We have to be ready for adversity.

My opponent had been stunned. He was staggering in shadow, reaching for something on his person. I grabbed a maple chair and swung it at him. I followed the chair, falling upon the man as he grunted in pain.

I hit him more times than necessary but by then my actions were mostly chemical, like a soldier ant or a teenager in love.

From the trunk of my car I had retrieved the tools needed for the confrontation. I had plastic ties for my prisoner’s wrists and ankles, thick black electric tape for his mouth.

In the light I could see that he was white with dark hair. His hairline was receding but I put him at thirty — maybe even younger. I used nylon rope to lash him to a dining room chair.

My hands were shaking from the rush of battle. I took one of the pills that Dr. Bancroft had given me and sat in front of the unconscious assassin while letting the logic of polite society reestablish itself in my heart and mind.

The transition was like one of the old black-and-white movies where Mr. Hyde slowly turns back into Dr. Jekyll. The physics of the change were all internal. The killer in my chest slowly ebbing, leaving its human husk spent and exhausted on the shores of civilization.