Walter Mosley - The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey

“My baby couldn’t do nuthin’ like that,” Nina said, her eyes begging him.

“How long aftah you told Alfred was Reggie killed?”

“A, a, a day and a, a, a day and a half.”

“An’ you didn’t think nuthin’ about that?”

Nina’s hands were back at her mouth again. She shook her head and tears squeezed out from her eyes.

This is the mother of Reggie’s children , Ptolemy thought, the mother of my blood.

“I’m a good woman, Mr. Grey.”

“But did you tell Alfred that you was goin’ away with Reggie?”

She nodded almost imperceptibly.

“Did he say he wanted you to stay?”

She nodded.

“An’ what else did he say?”

“That I was his woman. That I belonged wit’ him.”

Ptolemy thought about his great-great-grandniece and -nephew again, this woman’s children.

“Why you wanna run around wit’ him, treatin’ Reggie like that?”

Nina looked away.

“Did you know?” he asked.

“No,” she said to the splintery wooden deck.

Ptolemy looked out across the street and saw Hernandez gazing back at him. His heart thudded against his rib cage like the kicks of an angry mule against a barn door. His mind felt as if it might explode. He took out one of the Devil’s pills and swallowed it without water.

He felt the life-preserving, life-taking medicine work its way down his dry gullet. It was a painful journey. Ptolemy thanked Satan for the ache.

“Did you suspect?” he asked.

“Why you wanna bother me ’bout all this?” Nina cried. “Why you doin’ this to me?”

Hilly came out on the porch to see what was wrong.

“Go away, Hilliard,” Ptolemy said. “This ain’t none’a your nevermind.”

The boy snorted and went back in the house.

When Hilly was gone, Ptolemy said, “Reggie took care’a me an’ you did him dirt. I got to ask. I got to find out who killed him.”

Nina stopped crying. Ptolemy thought she finally understood that Reggie’s death didn’t give her a right to blubber and moan.

“I asked him,” she said.

“Who?”

“Al.”

“An’ what he say?”

“He slapped me. He knocked me down. He told me that he wouldn’t nevah have Reggie’s kids in his home.”

“An’ that’s the man you run to when Reggie wanna be wit’ you an’ have his family wit’ you?”

“Al was my first man evah, Mr. Grey. I was wit’ him when I was just thirteen an’ thought I was grown. I just don’t know how to say no to a man like that. I loved Reggie,” she said. “I loved him, but I just couldn’t help myself.”

The pill began to work. The fire in Ptolemy’s mind extinguished, leaving the cold he’d felt in Coydog’s treasure cave. The old man shivered and closed his eyes.

“You murdered my boy,” he said.

Nina shook her head, but it was a weak denial. It was more like she was saying, I didn’t mean to. I couldn’t help my feelings.

“So I will make sure that Robyn makes sure that you get enough to live on, to take care’a them babies.”

“But Al won’t take ’em,” she cried.

“I ain’t talkin’ to Al.”

That girl you was with sure was pretty, Mr. Grey,” Hernandez was saying on the drive back to Ptolemy’s home.

They were sitting side by side in the front seat. Ptolemy wore the bright-red seat belt across his chest. He felt that the wide band made him seem small, like a child.

“She told me that her boyfriend mighta murdered my great-grandnephew.”

“Oh.”

“What’s all them tattoos on your arms, Hernandez?”

“Just memories.”

“Back when you was young and wild?”

“Just back when,” the driver said. “Things change, but they don’t get better.”

They drove for a while. When Hernandez came to a stop at a big intersection he said, “She could be lying to you, Mr. Grey.”

“Yeah.”

“You know some crazy kids who lived a few blocks away from my house said that my cousin Hector had got their little sister drunk and pulled a train on her with his boys.”

Ptolemy didn’t know what a train was exactly, but he could guess.

“They come and killed Hector and his main man, Pepe,” Hernandez continued. “I know that Hector didn’t do it ’cause I was wit’ those crazy kids’ sister by myself. And we were gettin’ high, but there wasn’t nobody else there.”

“Yeah,” Ptolemy said again.

The light changed and Hernandez drove on.

“Aren’t you gonna ask me what I did, Mr. Grey?” the driver asked ten blocks further on.

“Why would I?” he replied. “Either you killed them or her or you didn’t do nuthin’. Any way you go, you left with a dead brother and a lie.”

They didn’t talk again until Ptolemy climbed out of the limo in front of his house. He offered Hernandez five dollars as a tip but the Mexican waved it away.

“You all right, Mr. Grey. Watch out, now.”

He came home to an empty apartment. Everything was clean because Robyn cleaned every day. She swept and mopped and dusted and washed. She even ironed Ptolemy’s clothes and hers.

When Robyn did come home he told her that they would have to go see Moishe Abromovitz again.

“All the way down there, Uncle? Why?”

“’Cause I made a mistake an’ told Niecie that you was gonna take care’a my money. You know the minute I drop dead she gonna get some kinda lawyer and try to take that money from you.”

“Niecie wouldn’t do that.”

“Baby, I know that’s what you think. You think Niecie love you and care about you. But all that’s just in yo’ head.” As Ptolemy spoke he realized that Coy had been coming to life in his mind for the past weeks; that his murdered mentor was coming back to see him through this delicate negotiation at the end of his life. “Niecie love you as long as you sleep on the couch and do the things she don’t wanna do. She love you when the old men come around to look at you and you get behind her skirts. But when she find out how much money you gonna get, she won’t love you no more. She won’t ever again. She gonna say you stoled her rightful inheritance.”

“You wrong, Uncle,” Robyn said, “Aunt Niecie wouldn’t evah hate me like that.”

Ptolemy reached across the small kitchen table to take Robyn’s strong hands in his big one.

“I know how you feel and I respect you,” he said. “But do you believe in me?”

“Yes.”

“An’ do you respect me?”

“Yes.”

“So go wit’ me to see Moishe so that I can make sure that your money is yours. And if Niecie come aftah you aftah I’m gone, then I want you to light me a candle on this here table for seven days. Will you do all that for me, baby?”

“I won’t have to light no candle, because Aunt Niecie ain’t nevah gonna think I’d steal from her.”

I have three red apples, two oranges, and a sausage I bought from the market,” Nora Chin said.

They were sitting across from each other at a large conference table of the Terrence P. Laughton Mental Services Center of Santa Monica. Moishe Abromovitz, the old man in the middle-aged man’s body, and Robyn sat at the far end of the table. There was a large tape recorder sitting between Ptolemy and the psychiatrist. The spool of recording tape rolled steady and slow.

A big black fly buzzed past Nora Chin’s face, but she didn’t move or flinch.

“Today’s Robyn’s birthday, Dr. Chin,” Ptolemy said. “She’s eighteen today.”

“How many apples do I have, Mr. Grey?” she responded.

“Two,” he said. “Two apples, three oranges, and a sausage. You know pork sausage an’ applesauce would make my whole day back when I was a boy.”