Walter Mosley - Fortunate Son

Thomas went to bed happy and fell into a dream.

He was in his alley valley again, and all the trash was gone. No Man and his wife were in the oak tree with a dozen parrot chicks crying for food. Skully was there and so was Pedro. Bruno was sitting on the other side of the fence reading a Fantastic Four comic. Thomas was sitting in the shade of the big oak watching the sun creep across the floor of the alley toward his feet. He was feeling completely relaxed when the surface he was sitting on started to shift.

He jumped up and realized that he was sitting on Alicia’s tomb. The head cinder block fell away, and Alicia sat up. At first Thomas was happy to see his old friend come to life, but then he noticed that the tattoo on her left breast no longer read Ralphie but now said Clea.

“Don’t touch me,” Alicia said in a voice much like his mother’s.

He wanted to obey, but his hands moved forward with a will of their own, and even though she screamed, his fingertips grazed her neck. Instantly she fell back dead. An earthquake shook the alley. Tall buildings that had never been there before began to fall. No Man flew away, and the oak toppled upon Bruno — Thomas came awake unable to breathe, unable to yell, but the shout was in his throat.

“Hello?” Eric said, answering the call. It was 3:27.

“Eric.”

“What, Tommy?”

“If something bad happens I want you to tell Clea that I really love her.”

“Nothing’s gonna happen, Tommy.”

“And I want you to know how grateful I am for you going back East with me and helping me.”

“What’s wrong?” Eric asked.

“I just had a dream. But it was really real. Everything went wrong all at once. The whole world fell apart in a earthquake.”

“You remember what you told me about the moon, don’t you?”

Thomas took a deep breath, another.

“Yeah, but... things have been goin’ so good, Eric. A whole year now and nothin’s wrong.”

“That’s okay, Tommy. You just had it bad, that’s all. Bad things might happen again but not so bad that you won’t be happy.”

“No?”

“It was just a dream. Just a dream.”

“Just a dream,” Thomas echoed. He could feel the sleep returning behind his eyes.

“Go back to bed, man,” Eric said. “It’ll all be fine in the morning.”

But Thomas was upset all day at work. He knocked over a steel smoker filled with chickens. He cut himself in the afternoon, and if it wasn’t for the fast work of Michael Cotter he might have lost a lot of blood.

At the end of the day, when Michael was driving him back, Thomas said, “You should have turned left.”

“Aren’t we gonna have that toast? There’s this great bar I know on Little Santa Monica.”

“I don’t know, Mike,” Thomas said. “I don’t feel much like celebrating.”

“Aw come on, Lucky. It was just a can’a chickens and a slip. You’re gonna be fine.”

Cotter pulled into an almost invisible driveway and up next to a beautiful fountain. A doorman wearing a uniform came out and opened Thomas’s door. Another uniformed man opened Michael’s door and said, “Welcome back, sir.”

“What is this place?” Thomas asked his friend.

In the foyer there were several well-dressed men and women walking, talking, waiting for an elevator.

“It’s a hotel bar,” Cotter was saying. “You know, hotels have the finest bars and restaurants.”

The handsome young smoker led Thomas into a large room filled with small tables. At a table in a far corner sat Kronin Stark.

“What’s goin’ on?” Thomas asked. He stopped walking.

“Mr. Stark has something to tell you... about your brother.”

For a moment Thomas was half back in his dream. He felt as if the hotel floor were buckling under his feet. He pitched forward, but Cotter caught him and helped him to a chair in front of the giant.

“I hear congratulations are in order,” Stark rumbled. “Clea Frank is coming to California to be with you.”

“What do you want with me?” Thomas said. “And what about my brother?”

“Your brother is about to go to jail for quite some time,” Stark said.

“You’re crazy. Eric hasn’t done anything.”

“As you will,” Kronin replied with a slight bow. “Take a ride with me and I will explain the details.”

“I’m not goin’ anywhere with you.”

“Fine. Leave then.”

Thomas looked at Michael, who smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

“What’s going to happen to Eric?”

“Come with me and you shall be enlightened,” Stark said.

A Cape Hotel doorman opened the back door of the silver Rolls-Royce, and Stark crawled in like a badger waddling into his hole.

“Get in on the other side,” he said to Thomas. “Terry will drive us.”

“I’m not gettin’ in the back with you,” Thomas said.

“Suit yourself. Sit next to Terry then.”

Thomas got in the front seat next to the man he knew as Michael Cotter.

“Your name is Terry?” Thomas asked.

“Sure,” the sudden stranger replied. “Where to, Mr. S?”

“Let’s go up into the canyons. I like it up there.”

The one-time smoker drove off, turning right on Little Santa Monica.

Stark leaned forward and handed Thomas a large red envelope.

“Take it,” Stark said. “Look through the photographs.”

There was a thick sheaf of eight-by-ten glossy photos. They were pictures of Monique and Madeline, Harold and Clea, Minas Nolan, Ahn, and another half dozen people that Thomas did not recognize. He paused at the photograph of a black woman in a straitjacket who was screaming hideously.

“That’s Nelda Frank,” Stark said. “Your girlfriend’s sister. A nice group, isn’t it? Good-looking people. You would never think that that sweet-looking Vietnamese woman is in the country on forged papers or that stolid Harold Portman has been embezzling funds from his boss for years. Your grandmother’s insurance company doesn’t know that she lied about a preexisting condition when she bought her policy. The doctor that kept her records back then has recently agreed to make amends for his wrongdoing.”

They were crossing Sunset, beginning an ascent into the hills.

“What I do to you, man?” Thomas asked, sitting with his back against the door, looking into the backseat.

“Three nights ago I sat with your brother and my little girl. She smiles at me. She kisses me hello, but her joy in me is over. She’s moved out of my house and chosen her man. My life is empty because of Eric Tanner Nolan.”

Stark brought both hands to his face as if he were about to melt into tears, but he did not cry. Instead his fat hands folded into fists.

“She’s gone from me and is never coming back. If your Eric died tomorrow, she wouldn’t even cry on my shoulder. He has taken her heart from me.”

“You crazy,” Thomas said.

“Yes, I am,” Kronin conceded. “That’s an important fact for you to understand. I am crazy, and I will destroy the lives of everyone you know if you don’t do exactly what I tell you to do. That’s just how crazy I am. Your former nanny will be thrown out of the country or into a federal penitentiary, and Harold will be in prison too. Your grandmother will die from the cancer in her stomach. Your stepfather will be sued by half a dozen angry patients, and Clea’s sister will fare far worse.”

Silence settled in on Thomas. All the words he knew dried up and flaked off in his throat.

“You yourself will be tried for the murder of a Jane Doe buried under cinder blocks in an alley inhabited only by you. There’s no statute of limitations on murder, is there, Terry?”

“No, sir,” the man once known as Michael Cotter said.