Уолтер Мосли - Odyssey

“I don’t want you to think that I only see you as an object.”

“I don’t object.”

“I mean that it’s not just the sex why I like you, Toni.”

“You don’t like havin’ sex with me?”

“I love it.”

“Then what’s wrong?”

“Sometimes I think you’re just doing it and saying it because you know that’s what I like — what I need.”

“So? You don’t think I need this dinner? You don’t think I need to see your eyes bright up when you look at me in them tight purple panties?”

“It seems so... so primitive.”

“Primitive like animals?”

“Yes.”

“Ain’t you a animal, Sovereign?”

“I’m not going to win this argument, am I?”

“You could win it and lose me.”

“No, thanks.”

That was on a Tuesday evening. Toni left the next morning near noon for her job at the hairdresser’s. Sovereign spent the afternoon exercising and listening to a collection of Chopin piano concertos, took a cab up to 86th Street, met with Offeran, and came home.

It was a little before five when the buzzer from the downstairs doorman sounded.

“Yes?”

“A Drum-Eddie to see you, sir.”

Sovereign’s mind went blank for a few moments. He stood there holding the phone with one hand and pressing his chin with the middle finger of the other.

“Mr. James?” the doorman said.

“Send him up, Jolly.”

His fists were clenched again. Sovereign waited in the hallway, holding the door open with his shoulder. The wait seemed interminable. There was a thrumming in the muscles of his back and a return of the ache between the knuckles of his hands.

He knew, was sure, that this was not his brother coming up the elevator. Maybe the FBI had sent an agent, or it could have been another personal representative like Monte. The moth and the bumblebee vied over control of his chest. He was hoping that Toni would come over and protect him.

Protect him?

The man coming down the hallway was tall, slender, and bald. Clad in a dark shirt and trousers, he wore a white waistcoat and had a festive scarf hanging loosely about his neck.

He had the right coloring for Eddie.

The mustache wasn’t evident until he was only a few feet away. It wasn’t razor-thin but well trimmed. His smile almost annihilated the meager swath of lip hair.

“You look exactly the same, JJ.”

“Drum... is it really you, man?”

The taller, more slender man embraced Sovereign and whispered, “You never did see it comin’, bro.”

Arm in arm the brothers walked into the apartment. They sat side by side on the white sofa, all four hands holding on to one another.

Sovereign had the urge to kiss his brother on the lips but did not, this prohibition brought about by a dream he once had of kissing his father’s corpse good-bye.

“Eddie.”

“Yeah, Jimmy J?”

“You said that they called you Jinx nowadays.”

“I been lucky.”

“I don’t know whether I should ask you where you’ve been or why you’re here.”

They released hands.

Drum-Eddie got up from the sofa and moved to the red chair, where he sat back expansively and crossed his left leg over the right.

“Nice place you got here,” he said. “How long?”

“More than twenty years.”

“I’ve changed countries more often than you’ve moved out of neighborhoods.”

Eddie’s eyes were the same. He’d lost his hair but maintained a young man’s physique. His eyes still danced and played.

Sovereign felt like Scrooge in the presence of a magical sprite that had come out of time to laugh at him.

“I missed you, man,” Sovereign said.

“I knew it must’a hurt you when I ran but I didn’t have a choice. My, um, confederates weren’t of the proper quality, and so when the law got their hands on one of ’em I had to go.”

“But you could have come back. There’s a statute of limitations, isn’t there?”

“Once the law marks you there’s no loophole big enough to wriggle through, Sovy. Shit. Feds throw you in jail for havin’ knowledge of a crime or for crossin’ a border without proper notice. Anyway, North America’s all right, but there’s fun to be had on at least four other continents — fun and profit.”

Tears flowed from Sovereign’s eyes and he was not ashamed.

“Damn, JJ, where’d you learn how to cry?”

“It was goin’ blind. Blindness opened up my eyes.”

The brothers talked well into the night. When Sovereign suggested that they go out for dinner, Eddie said that he’d rather have delivery pizza.

“You know the one thing I always miss the most about the U.S. is its pizza. Thirty years go by and pepperoni and tomato sauce is still the same.”

The man named Drum spent a long time explaining his crime.

“It just happened,” he began. “You know I had that job for the construction gang in downtown L.A. that summer — the one that Pops made me do when the lawyer got me off of that joyridin’ beef. That’s where I met Landry and Peters.”

“Who were they?” the older brother asked.

“Two white ex-cons got jobs through this federal program. They told me all about prison and robbin’ liquor stores. I was young and thought their stories were cool.

“And then I got to know this girl work in the main office named Tricks. I think it was Trixie at first but it just got cut down. She took a likin’ to me, and because she was five years older she thought that maybe she could give me a biology lesson or two. It was up in her bed that I learned about the deal that a whole group of construction companies had with Manufacturers Bank. They would switch off which branch they’d use for the money when the workers cashed their checks. That way a bank robber couldn’t predict where to hit. But they hired a teenager, two white ex-cons, and a young white woman hungry for a boy like I was. You know, it seemed like a perfect setup, and I made the plans with Landry and Peters. And it would have gone off without a hitch, but Landry liked to drink and he talked about me in some bar.”

“You?” Sovereign asked.

“Yeah, man. He hated black people before he met me, but once we started hangin’ out he realized that he was wrong. He was braggin’ on how smart I was, bein’ a fool in doin’ so.”

“That’s how the FBI found out about you?”

“The morning after the robbery they grabbed Peters and he told them that I was the mastermind, which was true, and that I had stoled the money for the Black Panthers, which was not true. He said that we were buyin’ guns and was gonna kill cops in Culver City or sumpin’. Landry disappeared. I think he was killed. He had expensive tastes and was in debt to some rough people. They held Peters for a long time while lookin’ for me. He confessed to the crime but never had to face his day in court.”

“So they think you’re a terrorist?”

“That’s right.”

“Then why are you here?”

“ ’Cause I’m worried about you, my brother. I’m worried about you.”

“That’s like the raja worried ’bout the earthworm,” Sovereign said.

“You remembah that story?” Eddie asked. “Granddad loved that one.”

It was a tale that someone had told their grandfather about an East Indian king who was so steeped in his belief in God that he wouldn’t even step on an earthworm. The story was supposed to explain a reverence for life, but Eagle James just laughed.

A man cain’t kill a earthworm would starve in three days. You know he wouldn’t be able to eat a rabbit or even a potatah. Shit. Scientists say that there’s all kindsa life too little to see in your water. Man cain’t kill a earthworm really have to love God, ’cause he’ll be up in heaven before you know it .