Уолтер Мосли - John Woman

“Yes, Underwarden Reese,” Hawkins said.

When the restraints were removed John took a deep breath and realized that he was trembling.

“Mr. Jones,” Underwarden Reese said.

“I changed my name to Woman. I’d appreciate you using that.”

“You have been granted bail,” the prison official said. “This allows you freedom in New York City. You can travel in any of the boroughs but not beyond.”

“How much do I have to pay?”

“That’s already been taken care of, John,” Nina Forché said softly.

“Willie?”

“No.”

“Then by whom?”

“An unknown benefactor.”

“Oh... kay.”

“You will be expected to respond promptly if the court or any prison official calls,” Reese stated.

“I don’t have my phone.”

“I have one for you,” Nina said. “The number has been distributed among those who might need to call.”

“Okay.”

“There are some papers for you to sign.” Underwarden Reese indicated a chair for John to sit in.

In the backseat of a brand-new Tesla sedan John sat next to his lawyer. He wore a black suit that Forché had somehow gotten from NUSW faculty housing.

“How much?” he asked.

“One point three million. No bail bondsman would underwrite it so it had to be in cash.”

“Who would do that for me?”

“You’ll find out, I’m sure.”

“Where are you taking me?”

“To the address that the court has been given for you,” she said.

“Also provided by my mysterious benefactor?”

“Yes. Now, John, we have to discuss your defense. You surprised me by admitting your identity in Phoenix. I thought we had an agreement.”

“I told you I understood what you were saying,” John replied, “not that I would go along.”

“What will be your plea?”

“Guilty.”

“What reason will you give for the killing?”

“I’ve given that a lot of thought,” he said. “The only reason I can give is juvenile depravity.”

“And what about the circumstances?”

“What is it that the Platinum Path wants — exactly?”

“Whatever it is you have to offer.”

“I don’t understand.” John was surprised that she engaged with the question.

“Path members, especially in the upper echelon, see the world differently. They are difficult to predict.”

“Have you ever killed anybody, Ms. Forché?”

“My training will not allow me to answer that question.”

“I have. I crushed a man’s skull under the weight of a heavy metal wrench.”

Forché gazed at her client but said nothing.

“Thank you for all you’ve done,” he told the lawyer. “It feels really good to be free if only for a few days.”

The car came to a stop at the corner of Mott and Grand in what used to be Little Italy.

“What are we doing here?” he asked.

Handing him a key ring that held a worn brass key she said, “I was told that you’d know where you are and where you should go.”

“None of this makes any sense,” John said aloud, not necessarily to his lawyer.

Climbing up to the third floor of the prewar apartment building John worked the familiar key in the very same door he’d been passing through since he was a child.

When he crossed the threshold, she said, “Hi, baby, I’ve been waiting for you.”

“Mom.”

Sitting at the small table in the same window that he’d stared out of as a boy, excited by his mother’s stories of love and lust and life, he felt... unmoored, as he had in a childhood of wandering between Herman’s truth and Lucia’s reality.

“Filo kept the place all these years,” she said after kissing her son then making him sit. “He kept my old things and had a woman clean once a month. He told me if I ever wanted to leave him my life would be waiting for me just the way I left it. He made your bail.”

“I’d like to meet him, to thank him.”

“Soon,” she said. “He wanted me to tell you that if you needed to run he’d understand.”

“And lose a million dollars?”

“You’d be free,” Lucia said with pride.

“Thank him for me, mom, but I’m going to trial.”

“You’ve become a real man, CC. I saw that in Arizona. A real man.”

“Where did you go?”

“Filo called me. The police were coming to arrest you. He said that if I was there it would cause you more trouble than if I wasn’t. So I left.”

John tried to call up a feeling about this most recent abandonment but could not.

“Anything else I need to know?” he asked.

“I’ve done all the shopping and cooking. There’s meat lasagna in the icebox. My number is Scotch-taped to the phone and there’s also a number for a friend of Filo’s if you have any serious trouble.”

“You aren’t going to stay with me?”

“I have to lay low, honey,” she said. “The police know Filo ran with me. I’m not wanted for anything but they might try and set me up or something. The name I use in New York is Rita Wentworth but the cops could have a picture.”

“You know, mom, I spent my whole adult life trying to imagine that I’m somebody else, that the boy who used to sit in this chair was a dream. But now it feels like I could take the Q to Brooklyn and dad would be there reading The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. ”

“I miss him too, baby,” she said. “If I could take it all back I would do it in a heartbeat.”

“You would?” the child asked.

“Don’t you know it.”

Lucia’s black dress hung a bit looser with a longer hem, but it was much like her clothing in the old days of CC’s memories. She was carrying a calico bag, standing at the front door.

“Can I do anything else before I go, honey?”

“Are you a member of the Path, mama?” The last word stuck in his throat.

Lucia Napoli-Jones’s face took on a serious cast that neither CC nor John had seen before.

“No, baby, no. I know who they are and they know me because they know you.”

“What do they want from me? I mean, why set me up to get arrested and tried for murder if they want me to work with them?”

“I don’t know. But I believe they see you as a leader, like a second coming.”

They stood for a moment in silence, then Lucia turned away and went out the door.

As it had been almost twenty years before, there were no books in his mother’s home; just a white leather Bible the spine of which was still unbroken.

After a plate of meatballs and angel-hair pasta John decided to go out walking around Soho, streets he hadn’t stepped foot in since the millennium. On Prince a little east of Broadway he found a bookstore.

After an hour or so looking around the fiction aisles he decided on Chronicle of a Death Foretold, by Gabriel García Márquez, because they didn’t have The Autumn of the Patriarch. There had been a fat envelope on the kitchen table containing twenty-five hundred dollars in twenty-dollar bills. He used one of these to purchase the paperback.

“Hi,” a young woman said.

He was seated at the window of the large Starbucks next to Cooper Union, reading his book. Her face contained equal parts Occident and Orient (as Herman Jones might have said). Slight and not quite pretty she lowered herself into the chair across from him.

“Hello.” John closed the book.

“You want a date?”

John looked her directly in the eye. She cocked her head and gave him half a smile.

“How much?” John asked.

“Seventy-five for hand, a hundred to kiss, and two fifty for it all.”

“You know I, I used to be invisible. Nobody saw me coming or going, or if anyone did notice I was already gone.”