The Awkward Black Man

by Walter Mosley

  “Ms. Frith-DeGeorgio?” Odell Wade said over the line.

  “I’ve searched his house when he was out,” she said. “I’ve checked every file in all of his computers and smartphone. I’ve been through his closets, pockets, drawers, and behind and under each piece of furniture. There’s not one thing about his wife or partner that’s incriminating.

  “I asked him point-blank if he would have killed her if he knew about her infidelity, and he basically said that he felt sorry for her.”

  “Is there some reason you need to tell me all this at four in the morning?” Detective Wade asked.

  “I’m going to his laboratory today.”

  “Oh.” Wade hadn’t even known about the lab until Marilee unearthed that knowledge. “That is important.”

  “What should I be looking for?” Marilee asked.

  5.

  The lab was in the basement underneath a six-story apartment building near Tenth Street and Avenue C in the East Village. The door was solid oak and fifteen steep steps down from the street. There was no knob or handle, only a big yellow button to the left of where the knob should have been.

  Marilee pressed this button and waited.

  A minute later the door swung inward, and there, standing before her, was a god.

  He was tall, six six at least, and darker-skinned even than Martin. He wore a tan T-shirt, black trousers, and no shoes or socks. His demeanor exuded something like power or confidence, knowledge, and intense joy. His eyes were light gray, like those of some cats, and his hands seemed as if they were designed to perform miracles.

  “Ms. Frith-DeGeorgio?” the earthbound deity asked.

  For the moment Marilee was speechless.

  “Are you all right?” the godling wondered.

  “What are . . . I mean who are you?”

  “Lythe Prime.”

  “That’s your name?”

  “And designation,” he said. “I was born LeRoy Moss, but that was a very long time ago.”

  He didn’t look a day over twenty-five.

  “Come on in, Ms. Frith-DeGeorgio. Velchanos is waiting.”

  “Who?”

  “He still goes by Martin Hull out there, but down here he is Velchanos.”

  The man calling himself Lythe Prime turned then, leading Marilee into a large empty room with high ceilings crisscrossed with ancient wooden beams overhead and a concrete floor underfoot.

  “This isn’t a laboratory,” Marilee said, feeling a pang of fear.

  “No,” the divine youth replied.

  He pressed a place on the white plasterboard wall opposite the entrance, and a panel slid aside, revealing a cavernous stairwell.

  While Lythe Prime descended, Marilee took a moment to wonder whether this could possibly be where Martin had murdered his wife.

  “Coming, Ms. Frith-DeGeorgio?”

  The beautiful voice seemed to be calling to some hitherto unknown part of her—her soul.

  The chamber below the first basement level was immense, at least eighty feet wide and half that in depth, with twenty-five-foot-high ceilings. There were eleven long metal tables, most of which held hundreds of multicolored beakers and vases that reminded Marilee of some fantasy palace. One wall held at least six dozen computers on various shelves and ledges. And at the far end of the room, there was a huge metal door that looked like the portal to a big bank’s vault.

  “Velchanos,” Lythe Prime hailed.

  That’s when Marilee saw her lover/prey, in a classic white smock, sitting behind an old-fashioned walnut desk in a corner beside the vault.

  He stood and said, “Hi, Marilee. I’m so glad you could make it. Come in. Come in.”

  She realized that she hadn’t taken the last step from the stairs into the subbasement.

  Lythe touched her arm. This sent a jolt through her like static electricity, only it was a pleasurable sensation. Almost involuntarily she took in a deep breath and walked toward the man whose chosen name was that of a precursor to the Greek god Vulcan.

  How did I know that? she wondered.

  “Come, sit,” Martin said, giving her that goofy grin. “You met LeRoy.”

  “Lythe,” she corrected.

  “What’s in a name?” Martin quoted. “Sit.”

  Marilee did as he asked, looking around the room. There was a scent in the air, something wonderful and fresh.

  “I’m sure you want to know everything,” Martin said.

  “I just wanted to visit.”

  “I seriously doubt that,” Martin replied, in a tone that was certain, almost hard.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Odell Wade convinced his superiors to reopen his investigation of me. I think it was when he realized that I had a new girlfriend.”

  For some reason Marilee was not surprised at Martin’s knowledge.

  “He believes that you really did murder your wife and the doctor,” she said.

  “No doubt,” Martin/Velchanos answered. “Modern men have externalized their thought processes and use their prejudices to divine guilt.”

  “How did you know about Odell?” Marilee asked, twisting uncomfortably in her chair. Even her old fat dress was beginning to feel tight.

  “I have a friend that works as a male receptionist in his precinct.”

  “That’s convenient.”

  “Not at all. Lon Richmond was bed-bound, suffering from a slowly progressive nerve disorder. His mother died, and no hospital would take him. He was the cousin of one of my reconstructive-surgery patients, and so I visited Lon and gave him five injections. After two months, he was out of bed and applying for the job.”

  “A plastic surgeon cured an incurable nerve disease?” Marilee asked. Behind these words she was trying to remember the significance of five injections.

  “As I told you, plastic surgery is just my day job.”

  “You sent him in there as a spy?”

  “Most definitely.”

  Not for the first time, Marilee wondered if Martin was insane. She glanced behind her chair and saw Lythe Prime standing there.

  “What was in those injections?” she asked Martin.

  He smiled and nodded.

  “What are you grinning about?”

  “You,” he said. “I’ve just told you that I’m spying on the NYPD, and they have assured you that I’m a murderer. Here you are in a closed space with me and a man who looks as powerful as a professional athlete. All that, and you ask the only important question.”

  “So, are you going to answer me?”

  “The human body recognizes categories of cells. I have discovered that if I place a small amount of a certain cell type in the HMT-1 hinny, that parasite will be ferried to the part of the body that resonates with the passenger cell type.”

  “You can target organs,” Marilee heard herself say.

  “The brain,” Martin said, “the heart, spinal cord, liver, and any gland I choose.”

  “And what do you use these parasites for?”

  “Open the vault, LeRoy,” Martin replied.

  He stood and ushered Marilee toward the stainless-steel door.

  The man once called LeRoy Moss entered a combination on a number pad and then turned a great lever that looked something like the chromium wheel of an ancient sailing ship.

  When the door swung open, a gust of very cold air flowed out. Just when Marilee started to shiver, the gray-eyed god draped a full-length fur coat over her shoulders. He handed a like garment to Martin.

  The three then entered the vault.

  “Don’t you wear something?” Marilee asked Lythe.

  “I don’t get cold too easy,” he said with a smile.

  Along the left side of the vault was a twelve-foot-high glass-like cabinet with hundreds of shallow drawers.

&n
bsp; “For seven years I did volunteer work for a medical facility in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was an interuniversity research lab that did autopsies on people with exceptional qualities: scientists, savants, athletes, and those with odd bodily quirks—”

  “Like people that are impervious to cold,” Marilee suddenly realized.

  “Just so,” Martin said. “When I became a trustee of the lab, I began harvesting cells from the best, the brightest, and the strangest specimens that humanity had to offer.

  “I brought those harvests here and began to create cocktails for the next step in human evolution.”

  “You experimented on poor people who came to you as a plastic surgeon,” Marilee accused.

  “I started with dogs. Once I was able to transplant memories and thought processes, once I was able to successfully alter breeds, sizes, and senses—only then did I begin my work on humans.”

  “But there must have been many failures,” Marilee challenged.

  “Yes,” Martin Hull agreed. “And some of them suffered; some died. But as a rule they were people suffering serious ailments, like Lon Richmond. I always told those first guinea pigs what the potentials were—and what the dangers.”

  “You call them ‘guinea pigs’?”

  “What else can I say? I used them as test subjects, and a few score of them died.”

  “Is that what happened to your wife?”

  “She left before my tests began. I would have injected her in her sleep, but she ran off looking for happiness in Europe.”

  “My mosquito bites,” Marilee said.

  “You’re at least an inch and a half taller,” Martin said. “And that dress looks very tight on you.”

  Before she knew what she was doing, Marilee slapped Martin, hitting him with such force that he fell to the floor of the vault. Then she reached down and lifted him with strength she’d never had before.

  That’s when LeRoy/Lythe Moss/Prime grabbed her and pulled her out of the big repository of cadaver cells.

  6.

  They met at a coffee shop on Prince Street in Greenwich Village. Marilee had left a simple message on Detective Wade’s home phone—“I have something”—and gave the address of the coffee shop.

  “He has the cellular remains of dozens, maybe hundreds of corpses in his basement,” she said. “And, and, and he’s experimented on people, many of whom have died from his experiments.”

  “What kind of experiments?” Wade asked.

  “He injects them with parasites.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “He’s a monster.”

  “Did he do anything to you?”

  “No,” Marilee said. She was afraid to confess about her expanding body, about her once hazel eyes that were getting lighter each day.

  “Will you sign an affidavit about what you saw in his basement?”

  “Yes. Yes I will.”

  The day that Dr. Martin David Hull was brought to trial, Marilee Frith-DeGeorgio crossed the Canadian border headed for Montreal. She was now six foot two, with pearl-gray eyes and skin the color of alabaster. When she moved into the small studio apartment in Montreal-South, she opened a document on her PFP web address. There were seven e-mails in her virtual mailbox. Six of these were from lovers who wanted to see her again; one was from lytheprime@everchanging.uk.

  Dear Valhalla,

  Velchanos has directed me to inform you that he bears you no ill will; that he understands why you had to betray him. He also wanted me to answer one question you asked and two you didn’t.

  About the five injections: 1) is a collection of data-cell clusters culled from some of the most brilliant minds in the world, 2) are similar clusters that contain the equations to best manipulate this information, 3) is a growth formula that allows the body to reach what he calls our god-potential, 4) is a small cutting from a Miss Ota Wangazu who is the only known adult to have produced viable stem cells, and 5) are a few liver cells from different donors who never experienced a sick day in their lives.

  Your first unasked question is: Why did he decide to become so involved with you? Velchanos says that he needed passion in his life; that he was guilty of playing God and needed the chance for forgiveness. On his first date with you he was only looking for temporary companionship, but after a month he saw in you his salvation. He hoped that by exposing you to his treatments and telling you what he’d done that you might, after considering everything, send him a card telling him your verdict.

  And finally, a question you didn’t ask and maybe never even thought of: Why hasn’t Martin Hull grown and developed our gray eyes? He knew that he would be arrested and that there would be a worldwide witch hunt for his patients. He wanted no markers for treatments to be lifted from his body.

  Yours, LeRoy/Lythe Moss/Prime

  P.S. There are 12,306 surviving patients that received Velchanos’s treatments. They have all gone into hiding, both to keep away from the official investigation that must come and to continue the Revelation—our name for the great change that this process will ultimately cause. You should stay in hiding. Your betrayal will not protect you from detainment, interrogation, and ultimately vivisection.

  I have destroyed the lab. Only the living bodies of our tribe can be used against us.

  Rereading the letter, Marilee realized that it had been written, almost wholly, in Latin. She migrated to Australia, kept her ex-husband’s last name, and adopted Valhalla as given forename. She moved to the outskirts of Melbourne and there studied her mind and her body, looking for the deliverance of the human species.

  Between Storms

  After the storm had passed, Michael Trey just didn’t want to leave his apartment anymore. There was something about the booming thunder and the dire news reports, the red line across the bottom of every TV show warning residents to stay inside and away from windows, even if they were closed and shaded. Subway tunnels were flooded, as were the streets. The airports would be closed for the next four days, and the Hudson had risen up over the West Side Highway, causing millions of dollars in damage in Lower Manhattan.

  The mayor interrupted TV Land’s repeat of an old Married . . . with Children episode to report that the National Guard had been called out.

  President Obama had taken a train (a train!) to Manhattan to address New Yorkers everywhere, telling one and all that he had declared them a disaster. He wore a white dress shirt with thin green and blue pinstripes. He didn’t wear a tie, because he was getting down to business—that’s what Michael thought. Even the president was afraid of the havoc that nature had wrought.

  It didn’t matter that the sun was shining the next day or that the skies were blue and cloudless. The storm, Michael knew, was hiding behind the horizon. And there with it was a hothouse sun, crazed terrorist bombers, and women with HIV, hepatitis C, and thoughts of a brief marriage followed by a lifetime of support. In North Korea they were planning a nuclear attack, and there was probably some immigrant on the first plane after the storm infected with a strain of the Ebola virus that would show symptoms only after he had gotten past customs.

  Michael didn’t go to work the next morning. The radio and TV said that most public transportation was moving normally. Traffic was congested, however. Three sidewalks in Manhattan had collapsed from water damage. Just walking down the street someone might get killed or paralyzed.

  Europe’s economy had almost failed again, except that the Germans bailed out the Greeks with money that neither of them had. China was going to take over the American economy and make Michael and everyone he knew into Communist slaves living in dormitories and eating boiled rice.

  But if no one could buy the goods, then China’s economy might fail, and it would engage its two-hundred-million-man army to reclaim all the money we borrowed to pay for the health insurance of undocumented, Spanish-speaking, job-stealing illegal immigrants.

&
nbsp; There were microbes in the water after the storm. Militant Muslims had used the cover of the downpour to plant explosives under churches and big businesses. They weren’t afraid of the rain, like Michael and other poor Americans who just wanted to work until retirement . . . never came.

  The phone rang on the morning of the third day that Michael had not gone in to work at Prospect, Farr, Grant, and Heldhammer.

  Michael picked up the receiver but did not speak.

  “Mike?” someone said. “Mike, is that you?”

  “Michael is not here,” Michael heard himself say. Immediately he felt warm and safe behind the subterfuge of those words. He wasn’t at home and therefore couldn’t be reached, couldn’t be touched, burned, infected, blown up, or experimented upon by sales scientists working in subterranean desert laboratories for the superstores.

  A lifetime of the nightly news and conspiracy theories woven into TV shows, movies, and even commercials; of the racist/sexist/classist schemes of Big Business and its political candidate shills; the private prisons, police, billionaires and millionaires, movie stars and pop stars and country stars and serial killers: all this came together in Michael’s mind in his apartment three days after the disaster that he finally understood would never end.

  “Mike, it’s Finnmore, Ron Finnmore. Mr. Russell is wondering where you are.”

  “I’ll leave Michael the message,” Mike said, and then he cradled the phone.

  After hanging up, Michael had the urge to giggle but suppressed it. He knew that if he showed any emotion, soon they’d say he’d gone crazy and take him away.

  “Yes,” he said, when the secretary answered the phone. “I’m calling for Mr. Trey. He’s not coming in today because of inclement weather.”

  It was raining, and so Michael felt justified.

  “It’s just a few showers,” Faye Lesser, Thomas Grant’s assistant’s secretary said.

  “That’s how the last storm started. What if he got there and it came down like that again? Who would feed his cat?”

  Michael didn’t have a cat. He didn’t have a fish or even a plant. If he had had a plant it would have died, because he hadn’t put up the shades since the storm.