Уолтер Мосли - And Sometimes I Wonder About You

I sat in the chair before her desk. It was cobbled from bone also.

The mistress of the mansions lowered into the chair behind her saying, “When I was a child my father told me that they were the bones of his enemies. Later I found out that it was even worse, that he slaughtered three bull elephants to get the right ivory and bone matter for his desk and your chair.”

“That’s worse than people’s bones?”

“Elephants are innocent.”

I was speechless mainly because I believed that she believed what she was saying.

“Why are you here, Mr. McGill?”

“I assume that you heard what I was saying to your man Richards,” I said.

“I did.”

“Good. I hate repeating myself. The man murdered in my office might not have been innocent but I liked him. He was just doin’ his job and people, probably working for you, cut his life short.”

“I have never been the cause of a murder, Mr. McGill. I mean, I pay my taxes and the president uses it to kill people but that’s as far as it goes. If, as you say, people working for me committed such a crime I should want them to be prosecuted.”

“Is that all you have to say to me?” I asked. I could be haughty too.

“What else can I say?”

“What about the murder of Hiram Stent?”

“I’ve never heard of that individual.”

“And Josh Farth?”

Ms. Sidney-Gray didn’t respond immediately. Her gaze honed down on me and there was something almost human in her eyes.

“You’re threatening to go to the police?” she asked.

“It’s not a threat but a duty, ma’am.”

“If it is your duty then why haven’t you already gone to them?”

“There are multiple responsibilities in most men’s lives,” I said. “Women’s lives too. Hiram Stent came to me, I turned him away, and he died. I feel responsible for that. Hector Laritas was trying to protect my property and he died. The police don’t care about the women and children that either man left to fend for themselves, but I do. I was abandoned as a child and so I’m here to give you a chance to do what’s right.”

What might pass for a knowing smile crossed the lady’s lips.

“What do you want?”

“Tell me why you’re after Celia Landis and give up the man who killed the people I represent.”

“You represent the dead?”

“I could just leave and let the NYPD take charge. I know a cop in Manhattan who’s not afraid of any sum of money or persons that bleed blue.”

“Is that a threat?”

“The cop is the threat,” I said. “I am merely the conduit.”

Evangeline Sidney-Gray took in a deep breath through her long, distinguished nose. She moved her head in birdlike fashion, taking me in from a series of slightly different points, like snapshots.

Finally she said, “There’s a library in Cambridge, Mass., called the Enclave. It’s a private institution that gathers collections of old books, documents, and letters. It is a very old organization funded by some of the wealthiest people in the world. Mostly people bequeath their libraries to the Enclave, but now and then they purchase a collection. A few years ago I donated a selection of my great-grandfather’s cache of forty-two-line Gutenberg Bibles. It turns out that, quite by mistake, mixed in with that lot was a thirteenth-century handwritten version of Herodotus’s Histories . It was never my intention to donate that book. It was my father’s favorite manuscript. It was turned over by mistake. I can prove this by my copy of the bequeathing letter to the Enclave.

“This Celia Landis worked for the Enclave and then left. When she departed, my great-grandfather’s manuscript disappeared. I want it back.”

“And are you sure this Celia Landis was the one who stole the book?” I asked. “It might have just been misplaced.”

“She sent me an electronic communication demanding money for the return of the book. She knew its value and that it was not consciously included in the gift.”

“May I see the e-mail?”

“I deleted it.”

“Oh. Okay. Well... let’s say I could do something for you,” I said. “What would that something be?”

“Bring this Landis woman to me.”

“And the manuscript?”

“Of course the manuscript.”

“Why not just the book? You don’t really need the thief if your property is returned.”

“I like to look my enemies in the eye,” Evangeline uttered.

“I could turn her over to the police for the theft,” I said, thinking about her father’s enemies and the material of her desk and chair.

“No. I will pay you one hundred thousand dollars for the woman and the book.”

“That’s a hefty late fee.”

“I’m paying for your discretion, Mr. McGill.”

“Most people already know the general content of the nine books of the father of history,” I said, feeling the need to sound knowledgeable in that room of rarefied access and wealth.

“Do we have a deal?”

“One hundred thousand dollars, you say?”

“Yes.”

“Sounds good. One hundred for me and also equal amounts for Hiram Stent’s and Hector Laritas’s families.”

“All right,” she said as if the amounts were nothing.

“What about Josh Farth?” I asked.

“What about him?”

“What if Mr. Farth resents my intrusion on his business?”

“Mr. Farth works for me,” she said. “He will do as I say.”

“Some of us down below the top floor don’t see the world the same way you do, Ms. Gray. And anyway, I might have a problem with Mr. Farth’s way of doing business.”

“If Josh is guilty of some felony having to do with my requests then he will find himself on his own,” she said, rapping her knuckles once and with finality on the tabletop of bone.

Henry Lawrence Richards, not of the Fantastic Four, was tasked by the woman on the top floor to give me a cash down payment of ten thousand dollars. He handed me a brown envelope with the money sealed inside, the two bodyguards flanking me.

I tore the envelope open and counted the cash, twice, because when I was a child my father taught me that you could never trust the rich.

I flew back to New York’s LaGuardia Airport and took a taxi, arriving at the Tesla Building at 3:56.

I was looking at my watch, just inside the big brass doors of that perfect Art Deco feat of architecture: a huge room replete with blue walls lined with brass plating; pink, black, and green tiled floors done in a curving abstract design, and a broad fresco of workers, naked women, and saints that had no pantheon, just the faith of their people. I liked the classical and yet revolutionary decor despite my dislike of my father and his beliefs. I think I might have smiled a moment before something hard pressed into the right side of my upper back. I looked up at the high reception desk and twisted my lips even before the man behind me spoke.

“Let’s take a walk, Mr. McGill,” an unfamiliar voice said.

I turned my head sixty degrees or so and saw the man I’d first beheld on Monday looking at Marella Herzog and ignoring me. The probable gun he held against my shoulder blade was hidden under the fabric of his dark yellow trench coat. This supposed weapon was held in his left hand, as I could see his right encased in a plaster cast, its swollen fingers poking through.

Beyond the paid stalker’s angry visage I could see that Warren Oh, the Jamaican black-and-Chinese senior guard for the Tesla, was talking on the phone.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Lett?” I asked pleasantly.

“We can go upstairs to your office and you can tell me where Marella Herzog is and how I can get to her.”

“You plan to shoot my receptionist, too?” I asked as if requesting extra butter on my vat of movie theater popcorn.