Уолтер Мосли - And Sometimes I Wonder About You

Tan Man stopped and leaned against the bar behind me. Johnny Nightly took the same position behind the billionaire.

“What’s your name?” the young/old man asked.

I told him the truth.

“Aren’t you the one who took her from the train?”

I told the story from my point of view.

“But,” Melbourne stammered, “but he was there only to deliver a message.”

“There was no message.”

“He was supposed to get her alone,” Melbourne said. “I know how much she treasures her privacy. He told me that she kept avoiding him and then you, you interfered.”

“Huh,” I grunted, pondering his words. “That may have been right. But it doesn’t say why he came up on me with a gun at my offices.”

“You broke his wrist and put him in the hospital. Alex is a proud man. Pride sometimes makes a man stupid. I should know.”

“You didn’t send him to retrieve the ring you gave Ms. Herzog?”

“Certainly not,” he said with real conviction. “I understand why she took the ring. She needed money. I had lost my temper and broke it off with her. She had every right, every right...”

“You can see where she has a whole different interpretation about your intentions,” I said.

“Yes. Yes, of course. She’s a woman alone in the world. She must protect herself.”

Anybody who tells you that they’re a good judge of character is telling you the truth but still they’re wrong. The best liars are impossible to read. They not only give misinformation, they become the lie. I thought I knew what I was looking at, but Melbourne could have been better than I was. There’s always somebody better. Mardi had deeper perceptions than I ever did. For all I knew, Jones’s man Fortune was a genius of misdirection.

I believed Melbourne but, at the same time, I knew I could be wrong.

“Are you in contact with Mar?” Melbourne asked.

“She calls me at certain times to see how I’m proceeding,” I admitted.

“She pays you?”

“Yes.”

“What if I were to pay you?”

“That would most probably be a conflict of interest.”

“But I told you,” he said, oh so honestly, “I don’t want the ring.”

“So? George Bush told me he was the education president.”

“I need to speak with her.”

“That’s up to her,” I said. “My job is to make sure that no more men with guns come trying to get to her.”

“After getting the firearms charges dropped I called Mr. Lett back home.”

“Excuse me if that doesn’t mean much.”

“Can you ask her if she’ll meet with me?”

“I could ask but I’d have to give her a good reason.”

“I want to give her another engagement ring,” he said. “I want to apologize for losing my temper and saying the things I did.”

If he was a liar he was good; if he wasn’t he was a fool.

“Mr. McGill?” he said after maybe a minute of silence on my part.

“Yes?”

“Will you give her the message?”

I hesitated.

“I’ll pay anything,” he added.

“Anything?”

Melbourne Westmount Ericson and I talked for eight minutes more. I timed it on a wall clock over Johnny Nightly’s shoulder. It was the most productive eight minutes I had ever spent. When it was over, two-thirds of my work problems had been, tentatively, solved.

On the 3:00 p.m. train back to Manhattan, Johnny and I continued the game. We were averaging fifteen minutes a move so when I placed my knight in a position that might lead to check I went down to the exit area near the toilet and made a call.

“Hey, LT,” Hush said. He almost sounded happy, human.

“How’s it goin’ with the houseguests?”

“The boy said that he went out for cigarettes but I think mainly he wanted to buy some weed in the park.”

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“I told him that I’d kick him and the girl out if he does it again, but it was already too late. Somebody saw him and by the next morning they were walking back and forth in front of my place.”

“I’m on a train right now but I can get there in two hours.”

“No need, brother.” There he was calling me brother again. “I took care of it for the time being.”

“Are you going to move to a different location?” I asked. “I could get Twill to take the kids.”

“No. I got Tam and Thackery out through an underground tunnel I had built. They went to Baltimore but me and the kids gonna stay.”

“You sure you don’t need me to come by?”

“I’ll call you if I do.”

Johnny hadn’t moved yet. He was staring at the board, circling the end of his nose with the tip of the index finger of his right hand. His handsome head was tilting to the side. There was a modicum of joy in this pose.

“You look like you havin’ a good time, Johnny.”

“It feels good playin’ against somebody can play back.”

“I like the game,” I said. “It calms me.”

“It’s not just the game.”

“What do you mean?”

“My father told me that you got to know where every piece is and where they all might go if you just wanna stay in the game. That’s you, LT.”

“Did you ever ask your father what you can do if your opponent was better than you?”

“Yes I did.”

“And what did he say?”

“You be better too.”

I left Johnny at Penn Station at around 6:00. We had made eight moves on the ride back. There was no talk of money because I knew he expected me to wire five thousand dollars into his checking account for “services rendered.” I’d send him a W-9 and alert the government. Even killers had to pay taxes.

Katrina was weeping.

When I had worked all the locks and opened the door she looked up but didn’t have the strength to come to me. She was sitting in a hickory chair from our dining room that she’d dragged down the hall to the foyer. So I knelt down beside her chair, embracing her as best I could.

“Leonid, Leonid,” she cried, “what have I done with my life?”

“Three beautiful children just for starters, babe.”

“You were always there even though I was so angry, even though I had lovers.”

“I wasn’t no rose all that time.”

“But you gave me this apartment and paid all our bills. You didn’t have to stay but you did.”

I had. There was no denying that I had stayed. But whenever she left I didn’t go after her. Our connection was both absolute and static. I wondered how to say that without hurting her.

I didn’t have to try because the doorbell rang.

“Oh,” Katrina said, and I knew the story that had led to our vestibule encounter.

“Don’t worry,” I said, and then I kissed her before standing.

I didn’t look through the peephole nor did I ask who it was. Katrina had called him and dragged the chair to the door to wait for him.

I opened the door and said, “Hey, Clarence.”

“Trot.”

An hour later Katrina was asleep in our bed. I had carried her down and tucked her in. Ten minutes after my father got there her mood had lightened.

“You didn’t call me,” my father said. We were sitting in the little front TV room drinking port and eyeing each other.

“I thought that there was a man in DC who had put out a contract on me. I went down there to face him.”

“Was he really trying to kill you?”

“Probably not.”

“Why were you worried that he was?”

“The same reason you might be.”

“I just came over because she was so sad and you weren’t here.”

“She didn’t call me.”

“You were out of town.”

I couldn’t argue there.

“I don’t want to argue with you, son.”

“But, Clarence, we skipped the whole Oedipal thing. How can I ever be a man if I don’t kill my father? Metaphorically speaking, that is.”