Уолтер Мосли - And Sometimes I Wonder About You

“You know I hate you, right?” I said.

“I told you I’m not after your woman.”

“It’s not that, Clarence. You killed my mother. You promised me the world and then took it away. You save my wife and then tell me she yours if you want her but you don’t want her. I spent nearly half a century tryin’ to build back the engine of my life and here you come throwin’ a monkey wrench in the gears and ask, what did I do?”

To give him his due, my father didn’t try to argue or explain. He looked right at me, taking his medicine. I imagined that there were scars all over his body from South American torturers that didn’t hurt as much as the truth he was hearing.

“You want me to leave, son?”

“Not till this week is over,” I said. “Twill has to get out from under the mess he got into and it’s still a question whether or not I’ll survive till Monday. You stay a few days more and then you can get out of my life again.”

My father asleep in Dimitri’s room, Katrina next to me in the bed snoring so softly it sounded more like purring, and I never felt more alone in that home. I didn’t sleep at all. Even the darkness could not assuage my conflicted heart. There were three groups of killers after me or mine and three women I had feelings for. None of these people stayed in the right place or were likely to wait their turn.

I wanted to run away with Marella but that would end in tragedy, no doubt. I wanted to live happily ever after with Aura but my life was a Grimm not a grade-school fairy tale. Katrina and my father deserved each other but something in me wanted to tear them apart.

Those were the good things in my life.

Jones, Sidney-Gray, and Marella’s ex-fiancé were the slaughterhouse three; puppet masters vying for my demise with their marionettes lurching forward, wielding papier-mâché knives even as I lay in darkness.

Tomorrow, I thought, I’d turn the tables on my lovers, enemies, and blood. Tomorrow I’d begin my campaign to take back a life that other people, friend and foe alike, had gambled away.

Somewhere around 4:00 a.m. I realized that tomorrow had come.

I got out of bed, took my ice-cold shower, and shambled down the many flights to the street.

“Hey you, motherfucker... yeah you... come here!”

It wasn’t yet 5:00 and I was just passing Seventy-second and Broadway.

He was a big man, dusk-colored in the darkness of morning. Lumbering toward me he bellowed, “Stop right there!”

I had a neat.38 caliber revolver in my blue pocket but I didn’t think it would be called into service.

“Can I help you?” I asked when he came within nonshouting earshot. It occurred to me again that I had become a magnet for both love and trouble since boarding the train from Philly.

“Gimme twenty dollars,” he demanded.

“No problem,” I said. “It’s in my wallet. All you got to do is take it.”

“What?” It was both a question and a threat.

“You heard, man,” I said, getting as much derision in my voice as I could. “Even a dumb motherfucker like you understand plain English.”

His clothes, as well as his heritage, were various shades of brown. He was eight inches taller and a hundred pounds heavier than I, but my hands were bigger. I held up those mitts as I had done on a block not far from there just a few nights before. The last guy was a little smarter however.

Big Brown actually threw a punch at me. I swiveled at the hip, watched the slow blow go by, and then came back with a straight right to his jaw; that set him up straight and back a full step. He was stunned but didn’t seem to know it. He looked at me as if he wanted to ask, “What just happened?”

I waited three beats and when he didn’t resume hostilities I turned to walk on.

Three steps gone I heard a rustling behind me and turned quickly in the event that the man had decided to come after me again. But this was not the case. Big Brown had slumped down on his haunches and was leaning up against a red, white, and blue mailbox at the corner.

I stopped at a twenty-four-hour diner on Thirty-fourth and ordered eggs and bacon, coffee, and rye toast. For forty-five minutes I munched and read the paper. My temple still hurt from where the Jones thug had hit me. Now there was a tingle in the big knuckle of my right hand. I wondered if my beloved honey badger felt aches and pains like I did.

At 7:00 I was in the observation room on the eighth floor of the Tesla Building. Aura had been forced to put cameras in all of the day-rate meeting rooms because various prostitutes, drug dealers, and other not-legal entrepreneurs had started to take advantage of the opportunity.

“I don’t have anything against free enterprise,” Aura said when she showed me the dozen monitors that watched as many rooms. “It’s just I don’t want to get arrested for racketeering.”

Aura had agreed to let Abe Hollyman use Suite 9 to serve me my summons. She told him that she didn’t care about me because I had illegally obtained a twenty-year lease on my suite of rooms; a lease that her bosses couldn’t break. I did have a sweet deal (pun intended) but it wasn’t illegal; I had just done a favor for the last building manager that kept him out of prison. The least he could do was give me preferential treatment.

At 8:37, manicured and still ugly, Josh Farth and two other men in hats, gloves, and sunglasses came into the room. They took out dangerous-looking pistols that had extra-long barrels and sleek designs.

It was unlikely that they’d see the camouflaged lens that watched, so I sat back and appreciated the assassins as they waited for me.

Killing is a profession like any job. Some practitioners are amateurs while others are more professional. Slaughtering cows, pigs, and sheep is a legal arm of the killing vocation; soldiers annihilating warlords’ encampments in Afghanistan are also allowed to massacre without legal consequences. Paratroopers, police officers, property protectors, private security forces, and presidents all have licenses to kill in a broad range of circumstances. Pest exterminators, pet owners, and prison guards are told that there are times when killing is acceptable, even humane. When it came to killing people within the parameters of the law, there was even a moderating term used — “deadly force.”

The men waiting for my appearance weren’t legal and had little concern about the law. None of them were from New York, I’d’ve bet. They’d leave no DNA or fingerprints, images of their naked faces, or signatures. Maybe they planned to kill Aura, maybe even Warren Oh, after the job with me was finished.

My death would be quick and brutal unless they felt I had information... but no; Farth was simply eliminating a rival because I had made some kind of deal with Sidney-Gray.

Competition for entrepreneurs like us in the open market is a bitch.

My heart was beating fast. Even though I was safe, forewarned, and armed on another floor, my primitive brain was fully aware that there were men close at hand that wanted to kill me. I had to exert a good deal of self-control not to go up to their floor and engage them in that battle.

When my phone sounded I jumped. I felt so intimate with my executioners that I believed they could hear me. But they just sat around the door waiting for my arrival.

“My pussy itches,” Marella said when I answered the phone. “What are you doing right now?”

“If it wasn’t life or death I’d be there rubbing ointment on that tickle.”

“You should come away with me, Lee. You know I’m the kinda woman for you.”

Maybe she was.

“Your boy from the train pulled a gun on me looking for you,” I said.

“Really?” she asked in a pedestrian, matter-of-fact tone.