Уолтер Мосли - And Sometimes I Wonder About You

“Why you need me?” I asked, turning the notion of a criminal on holiday around in my mind. “I mean you’re the whole business on your own.”

“It’s good to have a strong man in the wings,” she said. “And even people like us need somebody to talk to from time to time.”

Despite my better nature, my desire to make up for my transgressions, I was tempted by this woman. She had touched a part of me that I hadn’t even known existed.

“We could take a piece of the next score and set up a trust fund for your wife and kids,” she offered.

“You don’t really care about the money,” I said, experiencing a sudden epiphany.

Marella smiled.

“Money’s nice,” she said. “It’s necessary, too, but... But I like to feel alive, you know? Love and money are fine but they’re only useful if they bring you to life.”

“And do you love me?” I don’t think I’d asked that question since my single-digit years.

“That’s not really a possibility for people like us now is it, Lee?” she said.

She reached out and took my damp penis in her left hand. As it engorged, her smile broadened. Looking in her eyes I realized that I was ready to go with her, to leave my family and office, loved ones and enemies to fend for themselves.

She had me, so to speak, by the balls.

Her stare brought to bear a will that was bending me like she was my dick. I didn’t resent her power any more than a bear resents the warmth of the sun waking him from blissful hibernation.

It was 5:00 a.m. and Marella was my escape hatch, my enlistment papers for the Foreign Legion.

It was 5:03 and the tune of the song “Seventh Son” played on my cell phone.

I reached for the phone while Marella clung to my erection.

“Twill?” I said on a hollow breath.

“Hey, Pop.”

“What do you need?”

“From the sound of it maybe what you gettin’.”

One of the reasons I loved Twill was that I couldn’t hide much from him. With this thought I realized that I did have the potential for love. My erection waned and Marella released her hold on me.

“Where are you?” I asked my son.

“At the front of your hotel. That GPS shit work like magic.”

“I’ll be right down.”

“Are you leaving me, Lee?” Marella asked as I was pulling my pants up.

“I got to get downstairs and see about my son.”

“You know what I’m asking.”

“When I was your age, Mar, I did everything you’re doin’ now. I stole and cheated and lied and worse. Meeting you makes me realize that I miss those wild days. I miss it. I got friends that miss it. But I know, and you should know, that one day one of us would have to stab the other in the back — have to. That’s as much a fact as Gregor Vincent’s gold.”

There was a feral genius glowing in Marella’s eyes. She nodded ever so slightly and then shook her head.

“A few nights like the one we just had might be worth a knife in the back,” she speculated.

“Not if you see it comin’.”

“Will I see you again?” she asked.

“I’ll fix this thing with your DC ex,” I said. “And I’ll come spend the night again if you still want that.”

She kissed me with a fierce passion and then kissed me harder.

Twill was parked in front of the hotel in my 1957 dark green Pontiac. I smiled at the young man and the car; both boy and machine were classic in their own way.

When I was putting on my seat belt Twill handed me a paper cup of black coffee.

“Thanks,” I said. I took a big gulp of the bitter liquid, burning my tongue and groaning.

“What’s wrong, Pops?”

“Burned my mouth.”

“No, man,” he said. “You still actin’ kinda off.”

I had brought Twill on as a trainee detective to keep him honest; but if the truth be told he, more often than not, performed that function for me.

“I feel like a kid when his testicles have just descended. Nothing’s the same and somehow I know that it never will be again.”

He turned over the engine, pulled away from the curb, and asked, “She that good?”

“You know you should respect your father.”

“Cecil’s?” he asked instead of taking the bait.

“Sure.”

Down in a part of Chinatown that used to be Little Italy is a workman’s coffee shop simply called Sicily. It opens every morning at four thirty and serves breakfast until just about twenty past eight. Over time the people that frequented the diner began calling it Cecil’s.

The restaurant had a counter that sat nine, and six tables. Tomas and Donna were the owners, cooks, janitors, and dishwashers of the establishment. When they opened the place, sixty years earlier, they had been married but then Donna had an affair with a wannabe gangster named Michael. Tomas divorced Donna, who in turn married Mike, who was then gunned down by a real gangster.

Tomas and Donna still ran the breakfast joint. I only ever heard them talk about the work they were doing. Once, when he was nine, Dimitri asked me if Tomas and Donna were still in love.

“There are things in the world more important than love,” I said to him.

Those words came back to me as Twill pulled up to the curb across the street from Cecil’s Sicily.

We sat in a corner booth that I liked. I ordered oatmeal because my stomach was a little raw from too much booze and agitation. My son had half a grapefruit and a rasher of bacon. Old Italians, Chinese laborers of various ages, and a few knowledgeable partygoers at the end of their night were there eating and talking in low tones.

“Fortune’s gone missing,” Twill said after Donna took our order. “I went to his room over on Avenue D. Somebody had broken down the door.”

“Any blood?” I asked.

Twill shook his head.

“So maybe the ones busted in missed him, too,” I suggested.

“That’s like I see it. But you know he ain’t gonna make it long if Jones has his people after his ass.”

“It’s a big city,” I offered. “Fortune might be the kind who knows how to hide.”

Donna brought our fruit, cereal, and meat on a cork-lined cherrywood platter.

“Don’t see you in a long time, LT,” she said.

“Not enough trouble around here anymore,” I said in way of explanation.

“Used to be your old man and his brother would come here when they was just kids,” Donna said to Twill, one bony fist on her skinny hip. “They’d eat honey cakes and ham and then help Tomas empty the garbage.”

“How old was he?” Twill asked, though he’d heard the story a dozen times.

“LT was twelve-thirteen and Nicky was two years less than that. They come and listen to the old gangsters after a night of partying or maybe a job. That’s where both boys learned all their bad habits.”

“We got customers,” Tomas shouted. His back was turned and he was leaning over the grill.

Donna sucked a tooth and moved on.

“Jones got a LoJack on all his people,” Twill said.

“What?”

“It’s this tube that they put under the skin, usually behind the knee. He got this one nurse cut you open, shove it in, and then sew up the wound with one stitch. I got one the first day. Fortune told me that Jones got this computer that locates people good as your GPS.”

“Damn.”

“You better believe it.”

“So he could look and see that you’re here right now?”

“Naw.”

“Why not?”

“Bug.”

Tiny “Bug” Bateman had lived and worked for a decade in a cellar under the apartment building he still owns in the West Village. But after he started dating Zephyra he abandoned that property and bought a brownstone on East Twenty-ninth. His computers and other electronics occupied the upper floors and the basement of his new place, but at least now he spent most of his time aboveground.