Walter Mosley - Known to Evil

"That's Twill for you," I said. "He knew that Mardi needed a job to take care of her little sister, and that I needed someone to sit in my receptionist's chair. You know, his social worker told me that he could be president if he didn't have a record."

Usually Katrina loved talking about the virtues of her children. But she wasn't going to be sidetracked that afternoon.

"Will you at least try, and keep trying, to talk to me?" she asked.

That question was another kind of test. No… a final exam.

At first my body was facing the door, only my head was turned toward Katrina. But I rotated the full hundred and eighty degrees to appreciate her aggressive question. I could have apologized and said I'd try. But what difference would that have made? She wasn't going to leave and neither was I.

"What if I were to tell you that I came up behind a man and shot him in the head?" I said. "Left him leaking blood and brains in some back alley somewhere. What if I told you about a grieving widow and three little kids with no father or life insurance or friends to help them out? Is that the kind of talk you want to hear, Katrina? Is that what you want to share with me?"

My words were both truth and metaphor. I had never been an assassin. But I had destroyed whole families, regardless of that.

Katrina was testing me as I was going out the door to earn our rent and food. Instead of taking the exam, I gave her my own questions to ponder.

She winced at me. Behind her was the nimbus of my headache, some lost soul haunting me for reasons that put fear into my wife's eyes.

"You should go," she said. "We'll talk about this later."

BEING A BOXER, EVEN an amateur like me, one learns to deal with manifestations of pain and concussion. I walked down the street toward Central Park, dragging the headache and the drug-induced mental bifurcation behind me like the chains of lifelong servitude. That's why, for so long, black men dominated boxing. That ring encompassed our entire lives. We were in training from the day we were born.

I entered the park at Eighty-sixth Street and found my regular route. It was a bit off the beaten path, mostly quiet. There were a couple of teenagers getting high on a boulder, and two lovers, whom I heard but did not see, coming to the partially stifled climax of their lovemaking as I walked by.

A big white guy in tattered clothes came up to me when I was almost to the East Side.

"Gimme a dollar, man," he said.

There were arcane tattoos on his hands and face, and probably the rest of him too; old blue and red and yellow stains that had begun to fade and spread.

"Say what?" I asked.

"I said gimme a dollar. And hurry it up before I make it five."

"I tell you what, mothahfuckah. You come here and take it from me."

"I got a knife in my pocket," he warned.

I couldn't help but smile.

I emerged from the park without having to resort to physical violence. The big white guy read my smile the way Barack Obama read the hearts of the American people.

The torch had passed. The old intimidation and fear-mongering had given way to a kind of diplomacy… with teeth.

ON SIXTY-NINTH, ON THE far East Side, was a twelve-story building that had a tennis court on the roof. There well-heeled men and women rented one of the three courts for $120 per half-hour to play tennis under a Manhattan sun or moon.

Shad Tandy taught those who could afford his rates how to strengthen their backhands and their serves.

According to the records given me by Rinaldo, Shad was the son of a woman who once had been wealthy. She was poor now but somehow had managed to get her son into the right schools on scholarships and spit. He had the pedigree and manicure of a young Kennedy and the bank account of the man who tried to take my dollar in the park.

Shad was a shade under six feet, with sandy hair and deep-brown eyes. He had the lithe body of a tennis player, with strong legs and lean arms.

The middle-aged woman he was teaching was thrilled to have him hug her from behind to show how the backhand felt in its execution. I was sure that she paid the four dollars a minute just for that physical closeness once, or maybe twice, a week.

I sat at a table which stood upon a synthetic patch of grass reserved for those waiting to use the courts. I had paid for an impromptu lesson from the thirty-year-old Tandy. The country was going through a serious recession and there were many gaps in the schedule of the courts. I had a briefcase full of money, and so the $120 was nothing to me.

"Can I get you something to drink, Mr. McGill?" Lorna Filomena asked.

The twenty-year-old brunette wore a fetching white tennis outfit replete with short-short skirt, white tennis shoes, and bluish ankle socks.

"You got some cognac in that cabinet?" I asked her.

"No, sir," she said, still smiling, "we only have bottles of water."

"Sparkling?"

"Flat."

"Why not?" I said. "Man cannot live by bread alone."

She went to the door that led to the elevator and bent over. From somewhere she came out with a small bottle of Evian.

Handing me the chilled plastic container, she asked, "Are you really here to play tennis?"

"Why? Don't I look like a tennis player?"

"People don't usually play in a suit and street shoes."

"Don't you like my suit?"

"It's really very nice," she said, putting a spin on the third word to show that she meant what she said. "But it's just not tennis wear."

"Why would I have given you all that money if I didn't want to learn?" I asked.

"I don't know," Lorna speculated. "You asked for Mr. Tandy by name, and I've heard that he's had trouble with people he owes money to."

The playful tone didn't disguise the girl's dislike of Shad Tandy.

"I look like a leg-breaker to you?" I asked.

"I don't know." She leaned against the wall and cocked her head. She really was very pretty. "You sure don't look like a tennis player."

"Who does he owe money to?" I asked.

"Shad's mother is a total bitch," Miss Filomena said. "She has to live like she's rich, but her family lost their money before Shad was born. His father's still in jail. Shad's always doing something to get money. Sometimes maybe he goes too far."

"Did you and Shad have a thing?"

She thought for six seconds or so, decided that she didn't have anything to lose, and said, "Yeah, we did. He gave me all kinds of trinkets and told me even more lies. Then his mother said I wasn't good enough, and he cried when he told me it was over."

"So if I was here to beat a few dollars out of him you wouldn't exactly mind?"

"It would probably take me ten minutes to get to the phone to call the police."

I like honesty in the people I talk to. Nine times out of eleven, truth trumps good intentions.

"Hey, Lorna," Shad Tandy said.

He was running up to us. His middle-aged student had disappeared from the court.

"This is your next lesson, Shad," she said in a very friendly, even perky, tone. "Mr. McGill is a walk-in but I knew you wanted the classes."

They had certainly been lovers. Shad heard the threat in her pleasant voice. He looked at me, saw what she had seen, considered running, and then decided I might catch him, or shoot him in the back, if he tried. He glanced at Lorna, hoping that she just wanted to see his sweat, not his blood.

"Have a seat, Mr. Tandy," I said. "They serve a good water here."

The cell phone vibrated in my pocket but I ignored the request.

"You're here for a lesson, Mr. McGill?"

A door closed and Shad looked up quickly. Lorna had gone and shut us in on the roof. There was no one else there.

When he turned his attention back to me I was staring daggers.

"You owe a lot of money, son," I said.