Уолтер Мосли - And Sometimes I Wonder About You

“Bullets and everything.”

“Melbourne wouldn’t have had him do that. He must be acting on his own. I mean you humiliated him when you dunked his ass in the elevator.”

“I don’t know why everybody has to take everything so personal,” I said. “I mean boxers get beat up in the ring every day and they don’t go pullin’ guns on people.”

“If I had the power to love I would love you, Lee.”

That might have been the most romantic thing any woman had ever said to me.

“Look, Mar, I’m into somethin’ right now. Let me call you back.”

“All right. Don’t forget my itch.”

As soon as I disconnected the call, the phone sang out again. This time it was Aura.

“Hey, babe,” I said, hosting a completely different spectrum of emotions.

“Are you all right?”

“Lookin’ at your boy and two of his friends holding guns and waiting patiently.”

“Did you call Kit?”

“Sure did.”

Watching Josh Farth sitting there so patiently awaiting my death was unsettling. I felt that I had to do something but there was nothing to do. At almost any other time I would have controlled my anxiety by practicing Zazen breathing, counting my breaths until my thoughts released.

Instead I took a card from my pocket and entered a phone number.

The phone rang once, twice... Josh turned his head quickly... three times and he reached for his jacket pocket.

“Hello,” he said into the phone and my ear.

“Mr. Farth?” I said.

“Mr. McGill? How can I help you?”

His confederates were now looking at him.

“I’ve been considering your case and...”

“And what?”

“I don’t know if I can take it.”

“Why not?”

“It feels wrong.”

“Can I come to you and discuss it further?” he asked. “I mean I have already paid you.”

“Well... yes of course. I’ll have to return the deposit, I guess. I have a meeting set for ten. Why don’t you come up to my place about noon?”

“I’ll be there.”

At that moment there came loud knocking and a muffled voice from outside the meeting room that said something I couldn’t make out. Josh disconnected the call and all three killers got up on their feet. There was no sound for the surveillance equipment but their attention was on the door.

Josh Farth said something loudly at the door. He waited a few seconds and then said something else. One of his partners, a heavyset man wearing a bulky gray suit, moved back toward the corner farthest from the door. Josh and his other friend put their weapons on the conference table. He then said something to his fat friend in the back. After a few words back and forth the big man put his pistol down. The other friend reached for the door and opened it.

With surprising speed the fat man took up his gun again and started shooting. He shot the other man, not Farth, in the back and kept on firing. Then it was like a strong wind, a hurricane, blew into the meeting room. Josh and his big friend were hurled from the door by the hail of bullets.

All three men were dead in less than nine seconds.

There were a dozen cops on the fifteenth floor when I got there, maybe four minutes after the shootout. Ten minutes later there were closer to fifty official representatives of the city in and around Suite 9. Two dozen police in plainclothes and uniforms, at least ten paramedics, even a dozen or so traffic cops were placed around the exits to keep gawkers, building employees, and regular customers away. Warren Oh and his number two, Lena Brass, were there.

One of the traffic cops held up a hand to repulse me but a regular cop intervened.

I made it to the side of the doorway to Suite 9 and peered in.

I had seen dead bodies before. There was no attraction for me. I just knew that Kit was going to be angry and I needed him to feel that he was working for the law and not for me.

Two cops had been shot; one through his left hand and another in her bulletproof Kevlar vest. She was winded and he looked chagrined, like a lumberjack more ashamed of having lost control of his saw than unhappy about the fact that he was bleeding.

Kit had come out of the suite and was approaching the woman cop when he noticed me.

“What the fuck you get me into here, LT?” he asked. “Three calls on you this week and every time it gets worse.”

“You got somebody could oversee the aftermath?” I asked.

Kit understood and turned.

“Sanchez!”

“Yeah, Captain!” a man said from the other end of the hall.

“Take over till I get back.”

We didn’t speak in the elevator or on the walk down the hall to my suite. We didn’t utter a word until we were both seated in my office.

“Don’t get mad, Kit,” I said. “I came to you in good faith. Aura called about a man wanting to meet with me without me knowing it. I told you that. That’s why you brought so many cops with you.”

“Dead bodies are never appreciated downtown,” he said. “And this new mayor really comes down hard.”

“They shot first.”

“How do you know that?”

“Aura has a camera on all her day-suites.”

“It’s recorded?”

“No,” I lied. “I turned off the recorder when I got in.”

“The NYPD is not here to eliminate your enemies.”

“Not my enemies, Kit, your suspects.”

“Suspects in what?”

“If you look close enough I’m sure you’ll find that it was these three that killed the security guard in here and also that Hiram Stent you said had my name in his pocket.”

“So you did know Stent?”

“Yes I did but I didn’t know it at the time you asked. A few days ago a man calling himself Bernard Shonefeld made an early morning appointment. He said that he was looking for a missing woman and would I help?”

“What woman?”

“Honey Larue,” I said. “It was a stripper’s stage name. He said he didn’t know if it was real. He offered me seventy-five dollars to find her but I demurred. I didn’t care if he was a stalker but seventy-five dollars does not nearly cover my nut.”

“What does this have to do with Hiram Stent?”

“When you asked about him I looked him up on the Net. When I saw his picture I realized who he was.”

“And you didn’t call me why?”

“I would have, Kit. I was busy and when we talked last night I just didn’t think about it.”

“And so why do you think these three after you have anything to do with Stent?”

“Because one of them came to me the day after Shonefeld and offered me ten thousand dollars to find a Honey Larue.”

“Which one?”

“The guy wearing the coal-gray suit.”

“But you didn’t know that when you called me,” he said warily.

“No. I had no idea who was going to show up.”

“And Alexander Lett doesn’t have anything to do with it?”

“I thought you had him in jail for that gun.”

Carson bit his lower lip. I knew that this meant great consternation for the excellent policeman.

“It wouldn’t be Lett anyway,” I said. “He’s working solo looking for a woman he thinks I know.”

“Do you know her?”

“I met her once and that’s it,” I said. “But listen, Kit, it turns out that Twill has a guy on the inside of Jones’s organization.” I knew that this bit of news would stop any other conversation.

“You put some kid in jeopardy with a madman like that? How’d you let that happen?”

“He was already in. A kid they call Nathan came to Twill, told him about Jones, and asked could my son help him dig out. Twill came to me. I asked you about him but Twill hadn’t told me about this Nathan.”

“I wanna meet this kid.”