Уолтер Мосли - And Sometimes I Wonder About You

I was in the taxi on the way to South Station when I realized that I had left my phone plugged into its charger back at the hotel.

When I got to the small table at the coffee kiosk in the great rotunda of the train station, Twill was sitting there with Celia Landis.

“Hey, Pops,” he greeted as I let my weight fall into the extra chair set there for me. It was a bouncy metal chair dipped in blue latex the same color as Harlan Sackman’s suit.

“You didn’t answer your phone,” my son said. “Five minutes more and I was going to take Celia and go looking for you.”

Even though Twill probably hadn’t been to bed, or at least been to sleep in a bed, he was bright-eyed and alert.

“Too many jobs all at once,” I confessed. “One day I’m gonna have to retire.”

“But not today,” Twill assured our client.

“No,” I agreed. “Not today.”

“Remember,” I told Celia. “I’m here representing you and I will do all the talking. You and Twilliam are my silent backup.”

We were ten steps away from the knobless door of Evangeline Sidney-Gray’s city mansion.

Mounting the stairs, I called out loud, “We’re here.”

It was a three-minute wait.

Black and beautiful, but not necessarily likable, Henry Lawrence Richards answered the door. He didn’t speak at all, just led us through the foyer-turned-office and to an elevator that delivered us to Dame Gray’s top-floor library.

The kids stayed half a step behind as I led them to the rich woman’s bone desk. This time there were three calcified chairs waiting for her visitors. I imagined that there was some butler whose sole job it was to get the right number of chairs set out for whatever guests his mistress entertained.

“Mr. McGill,” she said, looking at my wards.

“Ma’am,” I replied with courtesy and a slight bow of my head.

“And who have you brought with you?”

“Twilliam my son and Celia Landis.”

The shadow that moved across the rich woman’s brow was like the image of a planet turning its face away from the sun.

“I wish to speak with you, my dear,” she said to Celia.

“But instead,” I interposed, “you will be speaking to me.”

“I don’t know who you think you are, Mr.—”

She stopped because I stood abruptly. I took Charles’s letter from my breast pocket and leaned over the desk to put it in her hand.

“This is who I am,” I said.

As she paged through the bloody scrawl of her son’s mind, many emotions crossed the elder’s face. She was in turn horrified, saddened, and disgusted. There were even a few times where she showed a brief smile. I suppose these few happy moments came when she recognized the son she bore when he was still innocent — or at least seemed so.

“This is not the full text,” she said, her voice temporarily drained of authority.

“No,” I agreed. “In the last few pages he talks about a place where he kept his souvenirs.”

“His what?”

“You know,” I said, waving my left hand slightly, “fingers, skin, pictures of frightened faces before the subjects were put to death.”

Celia gasped and Dame Gray snapped her gaze from me to the young blackmailer.

“Where is the rest of this letter?” she asked, still gazing at Celia.

“Far away but safe as long as I and my client remain — what should I say... unmolested.”

“Give me those pages now or you will never be safe again.”

My laughter surprised me. After all I’d been through a threat from a face I could see and name wasn’t bad.

“Listen, lady,” I said. “You will do as I say or the Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor online, and the New York Times will all have a copy of the last three pages of your son’s confession.”

Dame Gray was stopped by the threat. She’d probably studied me since our last encounter and knew a thing or two about what I could and would do.

“What do you want?” she spat.

“One and a half million dollars. Five hundred thousand in a trust fund for Hiram Stent’s children—”

“Who is Hiram Stent?”

“The first man Josh Farth murdered trying to get at Celia. Another half a million for Ramona Vasquez, the life partner of the second man your people killed. Then two fifty each for me and Celia here.”

“That’s blackmail, Mr. McGill.”

“I’ve done worse... and so have you.”

“I will not bow down to extortion.”

“Have it your way, Ms. Gray. But I got bills to pay and a few of them come from your people wanting to rob and then kill me.”

“You are preying on my vulnerabilities, my weakness,” she said.

“Lady, your son’s been dead eleven years now. And I’m sure you knew or at least suspected that he was a monster. They didn’t find a suicide note but I bet that he left one; that it told you what he had done and probably where the bodies were. That’s why you believed Celia. That’s why you hired Josh Farth to kill her.”

Celia started crying.

“Twill.”

“Yeah, Pop?”

“Take her out of here. I’ll meet you guys back at the room.”

After the young people were gone Evangeline and I continued our conversation.

“So?” I began.

“My son was a monster as you say, Mr. McGill. But I am not. I have a large family. One granddaughter and two of my grandsons have political ambitions and this kind of notoriety would be a deep wound in our legacy. Can you see that?”

“I’ll send you the names and all pertinent information about the people you have to pay,” I said. “I will also send you the name of a lawyer that will handle the transactions.”

“And the letter will remain safe?”

“It will be destroyed the day you die.”

She scrawled something on a small piece of paper.

“My private e-mail,” she said.

I stood up and almost left but then I remembered that there was one more facet to our business.

“And one other thing, ma’am.”

“What’s that?”

“You will almost certainly get in touch with people like Josh; maybe some of his friends. You will ask them if there’s a way to eliminate me and Celia so quietly that the apparatus I set up will not spring into action.” She stared at me, trying to hide this truth. “But when you talk to them make sure you say that I have an insurance policy and its name is Hush.”

I slept on the train ride back from Boston that afternoon. Twill set up the electronic Go board and I may have placed a tile or two but then everything slowed down and I was having a dream about my father when I was ten and Nikita eight.

Along with my mother we were staying at a vacation cottage in western Long Island that the Communist Party maintained. It was a simple house with three bedrooms and a kitchen, living room, and bathroom with a shower. But Nicky and I loved it because we were only six blocks from the beach. Every morning we got on the communal bikes left by Comrade Hastings, the man who owned the house, and tore out for the water. We spent hours there ripping and running, swimming and exploring.

Nicky usually came back before I did because he’d get really ravenous. I was hungry too but one of my father’s lessons was that a true revolutionary could overcome any physical feeling that controlled his actions. So I stayed longer gazing at the water while my stomach grumbled and Nicky was eating apple pie.

One day I was coming back from the beach alone, proud of my hunger. My father and Nicky were in the front yard. Nicky was squatting down in a corner of the lawn near the curb watching something with intensity. All he wore was swimming trunks.

Back near the front porch my father was looking down at the green hose. The nozzle was pushed into a hole in the soil.