Уолтер Мосли - And Sometimes I Wonder About You

“And what, may I ask, is that?”

“I thought that the guy, the burglar Fortune, was settin’ Liza up for somethin’ but the deeper I got the more I came to understand that this Jones is the real thing. He got him a goddamned army and nobody seems to know about it. And once you get in you can’t ever get out — not ever.”

“And are you in?”

“All the way up to my nuts.”

I smiled then. There was something undeniably lovable about my sociopath boy.

“Are you compromised in any way?” I asked.

“I can’t be sure. I only met the dude once. He wears this fake beard and contacts that make his eyes a different color. The way he looks at you is spooky. Anyway — I heard him askin’ about Fortune so even if I’m in good with him, Liza and her boy might not be. That’s why I was goin’ to her place. I was gonna offer to put her at Mardi’s for a few days.”

“What if you asked Uncle Hush to do that?”

“That’d be like keepin’ a Christmas Club account at Fort Knox.” Twill listened to his elders and therefore had many of our outdated references.

“You tell your client,” I said. “I’ll ask Mr. Hush.”

I handed the phone to Liza and leaned forward over the seat.

“Twill needs you to put up his client for a few days,” I said to the killer who was something like a friend.

“Twill?” Hush uttered. “No problem. She knows the rules?”

“I’m willing to bet she’s a fast learner.”

By the time I leaned back Liza was handing me the phone.

“Twill says that he wants me to stay with Mr. Hush,” she said with trust in her voice that very few innocents ever had for me.

“Is that all right with you?”

“Can I call my parents?”

“Only if you don’t tell ’em the truth. You really don’t want anyone comin’ around Mr. Hush when he’s feelin’ protective.”

“Are we in trouble?” she asked me.

“You already know the answer to that.”

I waited in the car while Hush walked Liza up the stairs to his twelve-million-dollar mansion on Fifth Avenue not a block from Washington Square Park. Hush had more security surrounding his home than most senators or CIA spooks. Tamara, his wife, and Thackery, his young son, would take care of Liza while I worried about my own son’s chances at survival.

While I waited I called the Chambre du Roi, telling them to inform my date that I might be a few minutes late if she got there before me.

When Hush returned I moved to the passenger’s seat beside him.

“You sure it’s okay?” I asked.

“Everybody loves Twill,” he replied. “The restaurant now?”

On the way up Sixth Avenue, just around Forty-second Street, I asked, “Have you ever heard of a guy named Jones runs an army of underage thieves?”

“No. New York?”

“Down in the tunnels.”

“Wow. You need to find out more?”

“Twill’s already down there. What I have to do is figure how to pull him out.”

“Need help?”

“Maybe later.”

Around Fifty-fifth Hush said, “Dude from the federal government asked me if I could kill a foreign head of state and make it look like natural causes.”

“Oh?”

“If I couldn’t do that, maybe I could make it look like some other unfriendly leader or group did the deed. Seven figures, legal, no tax.”

“Damn.”

“What do you think I should do?”

“You need the money?”

“No.”

“I thought you wanted to try and go the other way,” I said. “I mean whether it’s official or not, blood on your hands is still blood.”

“Yeah. Yeah. But you know, LT, I’ve been gettin’ this itch.”

I didn’t need to ask what needed scratching.

“Ever since I quit killing for pay I want to hurt people,” he continued. “I never felt like that before. Everything was cut-and-dry in the old days, you know? I killed for my supper and the dinner was always good.”

Sometimes there’s nothing to say; no rule book to quote, no homily that has weight. There are things about being a human that cannot be excused or even understood. Hush wanted to go out and murder someone just to get his passion under control. That was crazy — but so were thousands of truly senseless deaths from Palestine to Kandahar to Congo.

The car came to a halt and I saw that we were at the restaurant.

“So?” Hush asked.

“How long ago this guy come to you?”

“A week.”

“Give it another week,” I said. “Think it over. Maybe go to the Zen monastery upstate and meditate a day or two. Then, when seven days are up, call me and we’ll talk again.”

Hush gave me one of his rare smiles and held out a hand.

When we shook I couldn’t suppress the little shiver of fear that ran down my spine.

The Chambre du Roi was a big round room with tables set out in an off-center spiral. I got there at 8:12. Monique, the hostess, installed me at a booth that was in the outermost circle. I needn’t have worried about Marella waiting for me. She didn’t get there for another twenty-two minutes.

She stopped at my side of the stall before I had the chance to stand, and leaned over gracefully giving me a wet kiss on the lips. She was wearing a red dress that was close-fitting on the torso but flouncy below the waist.

“You look delicious,” she said.

“You took the words right out of my head.”

Depositing herself in the seat across from me, she smiled prettily and cocked her head to the side.

“I asked them to bring a Beaujolais when you got here,” I said.

“Thoughtful and sexy,” she replied.

I usually feel a lump in my throat when a woman riles me but with Marella the bulge was in my chest. I think she could see the impact she was having because she pursed her lips and let her lovely dark head loll a little farther, bringing her right shoulder up like the back end of an oil derrick.

The wine came along with menus.

“You order for me, Lee,” she said. I couldn’t remember anyone ever calling me Lee; some encounters are just unique.

“I may have to answer my phone from time to time,” I apologized. “My son works for me and he’s in a little trouble.”

“I guess I’ll have to punish you for that.”

“Okay.”

“What kind of trouble is he in?”

“He’s in the company of killers and thieves but they haven’t recognized him for what he is... yet.”

“That shouldn’t be any problem for a strong man like you.”

There had been many times in my life that I’d come across just the right woman at the wrong time, but it was rare that I chanced upon the perfect wrong woman at just the right moment.

We toasted and I almost forgot my problems.

“You sounded tense on the phone last night,” Marella said.

“Son’s in deep shit, wife tried to kill herself three months ago—”

“You’re married?”

“Yeah.”

She shrugged, tossing off this knowledge as unimportant, and I fell a little deeper into the dark passion she offered.

“I turned down a client two days ago,” I went on, “and he was murdered. The man who killed him, I believe, hired me this afternoon. Somehow I have to take all of that and make it right again.”

“My problems are small potatoes compared to yours,” she said, somehow managing to be both light and serious at the same time.

Before I could speak the waiter came to tell us the specials; at least he tried to. I cut him off, ordering the chef’s specialty Canard la Maison for myself and coq au vin for Marella.

When he left I said, “You probably have a close relationship with your father.”

Frowning, she asked, “Why do you say that?”

“Because only old men use the term ‘small potatoes.’ ”