Walter Mosley: Known to Evil

"Aren't you supposed to be polite or something?"

The lady hung up.

I SHOULD HAVE FELT relief at Strange's departure. If he was gone, didn't that mean the investigation, whatever it was about, was over?

But when working around Rinaldo, loose ends were never a good thing.

I logged on to the New York news engine that the computer whiz Tiny "Bug" Bateman had written for me. This customized piece of software allows me to connect various newswire accounts of specific crimes and criminals-it even taps a special police website using keywords from newspaper and wire accounts.

Wanda Soa had been a cocktail waitress and student at the Fashion Institute of Technology. The man found stabbed to death in Wanda's apartment carried no identification and the police had yet to identify him. No one heard the shot that killed the woman, but the door had been left wide open and a passing neighbor got worried and called the super-a woman named Dorothy Harding. Police were asking for anyone with information to come forward.

There was no mention of the name Tara Lear.

The crime made very little sense. It was unlikely that Wanda stabbed the button man before he shot her, and she certainly couldn't have done it with half her face gone. From what I remembered, the door hadn't been broken open, so someone had probably let the killer, or killers, in.

And what was I doing there? That was my existential question, in hindsight.

A buzzer that I'd never heard before sounded-quite loudly. I nearly jumped out of my chair.

"Mr. McGill?" bodiless Mardi Bitterman said.

It took me a moment to remember the intercom box on my desk. I hadn't used it in the twenty- one months I'd had the office.

Pressing a button, I said, "Yes?"

"There's a man out here who says that he's the new financial officer for the building. He wants to talk with you."

I remembered the guards at the front desk telling me that there was a new bookkeeper who was going through everyone's overtime. They didn't like him, and I still had enough of my union-organizing father's background to side with the working class.

"Send him in, Mardi. Tell him to follow the hall to the far end."

There are no straight lines in the life or labors of the private detective.

In gumshoe fiction, the PI gets on the case at about page six and follows it through without a pause or distraction from his, or her, personal life. He certainly doesn't have to deal with accountants who have been charged by their bosses with the ouster of a suspect tenant: me.

At least he knocked.

"Come in."

Though I had not seen his face clearly, I knew Aura's lover by his height and weight, pinstriped suit, and oxblood briefcase.

The only hint revealing my murderous heart was a momentary flutter of my eyelashes.

"Mr. McGill?" he asked.

I nodded and started counting breaths again.

"My name is George Toller," he said. "I'm the new chief financial officer of the Tesla."

"Oh? I thought CFOs ran corporations," I said.

"May I have a seat?"

I gestured toward one of the blue and chrome visitor's chairs, and Toller sat down.

"You are correct, of course. I run the entire company for Hyman and Schultz. They own nearly three dozen New York properties-thirty-three, to be exact. They have sent me here to clear up some messes left by the previous owners and their representatives."

That was another thing about mystery novels: at the end of the story the crime is solved and that's that. The crook is caught, or maybe just found out. But, regardless, the crime is never carried on to the next book in the series. You rarely find the stalwart and self-possessed dick looking for a perpetrator from the previous story.

I wasn't so lucky. The crimes I dealt with lagged on for years, sometimes decades.

And in this case Toller was the investigator and I was the elusive criminal.

The previous manager of the Tesla, Terry Swain, had embezzled a large sum of money over twenty-some years. The new owners looked a little closer than the previous ones and tumbled to the misappropriations. Around the same time, I was between offices and had found out that there was a beautiful suite recently vacated on the seventy-second floor. I offered to muddy the waters of the investigation for a rock-bottom price on a fifteen-year lease. Terry leapt at the deal and I got him off, even saved his retirement fund for him.

Ever since that time the owners have had it in for me. First they sent Aura to get me evicted but instead we became lovers. Now they sent my ex-lover's lover.

There had to be some kind of meaning to that.

"How can I help you, Mr. Toller?"

"You could pack your things and move out," he said. "I'd be happy to tear up your lease."

He smiled without showing any teeth.

It struck me that he had no idea about the relationship between me and Aura.

"I couldn't give up this view," I confessed.

"Eight rooms and only one employee? Mr. McGill, this is a waste of space."

We hated each other without having ever met. What was interesting to me was that our reasons were so far apart. His sense of propriety was bent out of shape by my shadowy dealings with his masters' property. College had taught him contempt for me. Conversely, my abhorrence for him had a genetic basis. This man had stolen my woman. I wanted to cut out his heart right there on my African-wood table.

I wondered if there were wars between nations that had begun like this, if whole peoples slaughtered each other without even being able to agree on what they were fighting about.

"Is that all?" I asked pleasantly.

"I've taken an office on the forty-second floor," he replied. "My primary purpose here is to negate your contract and to have you evicted, maybe even incarcerated."

Toller was not a day over forty-five but he carried himself like a man of seventy. He was one of those men who came into the world with the weight of years on his shoulders. I could tell by the timbre of his voice and the cast of his eye that he felt he was being threatening. I expected that he could imagine the fear I felt at his words.

I smiled.

"Do they pay you well, Mr. Toller?"

"I do all right."

" 'All right'? That's a lot of money to try and nullify a good-faith contract. Listen to me, man, these empty rooms are mine, just like the little place thirty floors down is yours. I'm not leaving, and you're not taking or sending me anywhere. Okay?"

Finally-a frown.

"I'm very good at my job, Mr. McGill. I have a background in forensic accounting."

And I have a pistol in my top drawer.

The image of Toller kissing Aura came back to me. I could feel the fingernails digging into my palms.

"I haven't broken any laws, Mr. Toller," I lied. "So you can take your red case and your blue suit and do whatever it is a CFO forensic bookkeeper does. I'm staying right here."

"I don't think you understand the seriousness of your situation," he replied.

"What a man don't know," I quoted, "he just don't know."

Something about the phrase inflamed the prig's aesthetic. His left nostril flared and he rose to his feet, hugging the briefcase under his arm like a pet piglet.

"You'll be hearing from me" were his last words before leaving.

THE IDEA OF TOLLER'S investigation didn't intimidate me. I was vulnerable, of course-all people are. Innocent or not, anyone can be made to look bad. And I had enough skeletons in my closet to make a death row inmate seem angelic. But I wasn't worried-not about Toller-just overwhelmed by the circumstances of my life.

Any good boxer can tell you that if you have a sound strategy, and stick to it, you always have a shot at winning the fight. And even if you don't win, you can make it through to the final bell, throwing at least some doubt on your opponent's claim to victory.