Trouble Is What I Do

by Walter Mosley

“One’a those plays,” I repeated. “You know, by some playwright who used to be good but now his stuff is just okay but people go to see it anyway because he used to be good.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re saying, Lee.”

  “Imagine you have a middle-size role in a play like that,” I went on. “Like maybe a hundred lines in two hours. You do it Tuesday through Sunday, twice on Wednesdays and Saturdays, saying the same hundred lines every night. It’s like you got stuck in some kinda TV space-show time loop, performing the same actions over and over, dressed in the same clothes, saying the same words again and again. The only difference is that when you were cast, the character was twenty-five and so were you. But now you’re forty-nine, and you realize that one day you’ll die or get fired; that you’ll be gone, but those same actions and words will be repeated night after night, again and again.”

  “What does any of that have to do with anything we’re talking about?” Katrina asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “What indeed?”

  I stood from the chair, disconnected the phone, and then went out the door.

  All the players knew their parts and lines for the afternoon performance. I could very well be dead before the week was through. So taking a stroll down Broadway seemed like the perfect thing to do.

  I walk a lot. But usually my excursions are, in one way or another, connected to a destination. That morning, I had nowhere to go and nothing to run down. So I turned off my phone and ambled.

  At Thirty-Second I stopped in a hat shop and bought a short-brimmed walnut-colored Stetson that I intended to wear as ornament and not disguise.

  Half a block south of Twenty-Seventh, I stopped at a pawnshop I’d frequented over the years. Usually the hockshop owner would escort me into the back room, where he kept the firearms.

  “Looking for something special, Mr. McGill?” Dido Kazz asked me. He was of indeterminate age, with a receding hairline that formed two horns going back from the brow.

  “I was thinking about a pinky ring for my left hand, Mr. Kazz.”

  This surprised the Greek moneylender.

  “But you don’t wear jewelry,” he challenged.

  “Everybody’s got to change sometime.”

  “Hello, Mr. Wong,” I greeted the senior host of Madame So’s.

  “Good to see you, Mr. McGill,” he said with feigned warmth if not a smile. “Your party is right this way.”

  “I’ve never seen Mama’s closed for a private event.” I was referring to the small sign affixed to the door downstairs.

  “If the clientele is important enough, we sometimes make exceptions.” He turned, walking toward a table set for nine.

  Twill, Catfish, and Justine were already there. The rest of the dining room was empty.

  Twill stood up to clap my shoulder, smiling as always. He would make a great president if our nation were ever woke enough to recognize true value.

  Catfish and his granddaughter were sitting side by side. Twill and I situated ourselves two seats apart.

  “What’s that ring?” my son asked.

  “Twenty-two-carat gold with a five-carat black-star sapphire. Bought it at Dido’s.”

  “You don’t wear rings. And I never seen that hat before either.”

  “Do you have some kind of plan, Mr. McGill?” Justine asked.

  “Of course I do.”

  “And what is it?”

  “This kind of negotiation is not in the telling.”

  “What is it, then?”

  I pretended to consider her question for a full three seconds before saying, “The one thing I need to know before answering you is…What is your plan for this meeting?”

  Justine’s nostrils flared and her eyes widened. She was looking at me, but her focus was far from that room.

  “I plan to tell the truth,” she said.

  “You sittin’ there with Catfish on one side and my son on the other says more than you could ever tell.” The smile this statement brought to her lips belonged in one of her grandfather’s songs.

  She was about to ask something else when Harry Wong brought three more customers to the table. Bernard Shefly, with his arm still in a sling from my son’s bullet, was accompanied by Charles Sternman and Hilton Zeal—generally known as the most dangerous criminal on the Eastern Seaboard.

  Hilton was six two or more, bearing broad shoulders and an honest-to-God violet suit. His face was unpleasant to look at, but he could have been called handsome in a certain light. He had a truly ugly scar across his right cheek, and his skin color was a white man’s version of Catfish’s redbone bronze. He pulled out a chair for Sternman, and Shefly pulled one out for him.

  Sternman didn’t sit at first. He glared at his daughter with something that she must have experienced as vituperation. Seeing his rage and angst made me smile.

  Charles stood five eight and had the shape of a hale penguin. His gut was enormous and his hands thick like bricklayers’ paws. His eyes were a hazy blue, but still they reminded me of his father’s eyes. There was something about the shape of his face that was also reminiscent of the elder.

  “I see you met him,” Charles said to Justine.

  She stared back. There were tremors moving between her neck and her head. The look on her face was spiteful, maybe even with a touch of hatred.

  The father lowered into his chair.

  “Hello, Leonid,” Hilton said. “I’ve been hearing your name a lot lately.”

  “Speaking it too,” I said.

  “You and your son should walk away from this table,” Hilton advised. “Walk away and you’ll do fine.”

  “I’m not worried, Zed.” I used the letter of his name to show how brave I was. “Reputation can get you into a fracas, but it does not ensure you getting out again.”

  My knowledge of the alphabet didn’t faze him, but I think he was honestly surprised that I did not pick up my marbles and head for the door.

  “There’s no need for you here,” Charles Sternman said, finally looking away from Justine to regard me. “This is a family affair.”

  “I’m the one who called this meeting,” I told the living embodiment of the founding of our nation. “And what it’s about is Mr. Catfish Worry and your alliance with these thugs.”

  “Thugs?” Bernard Shefly said.

  “You and your nigger son are nothing,” Charles said. I got the feeling that this was an example of the intermittent release of deep antipathies that had festered in his heart since he was a child.

  “Shall we get on with it?” Hilton suggested.

  “There are still two empty chairs,” I pointed out.

  “Who…” Hilton didn’t have time to finish the query, because at that moment Harry Wong brought Ernie Eckles and Hush to our table.

  “Misters Zeal and Shefly certainly know the man named Hush,” I said to Charles. “He’s what’s known as an iceman, in modern parlance. But they might not recognize our Mississippi friend, Ernie Eckles.”

  The timing couldn’t have been better, and neither could the reactions of the most dangerous criminal in New York and his wounded henchman.

  Ernie and Hush filled the chairs between me and my son. Hilton leaned over to whisper something into Sternman’s ear.

  “What?” the billionaire said.

  Hilton shared a few more words.

  “So?”

  Hilton was about to say more when Sternman shoved him off.

  Then Bwana said, “My friend here tells me that you gentlemen are men to be reckoned with, that you are men who wield some kind of power. Well, I want you to know that you have no idea what true power is. I have friends in the FBI and CIA, Mossad and MI6. All I have to do is snap my motherfucking fingers, and people like you disappear.” He showed us that he did indeed know how to snap. “But rather than cause unpleasantness, I’ll pay you to walk away. This old man is already dead, and the rest of you will join him if you aren’t careful. He and you and even these men with me are less than nothing, not worth
the sweat off my balls.…”

  Sternman kept up his escalating rant, spittle popping from his lips, a seemingly uncontrollable sneer mutating every other word. The diatribe caused fear in me; not for myself but for Charles. Catfish was Ernie’s mother’s friend. The Mississippi Assassin could kill Sternman right then, and there wasn’t a man in the room who could stop him—with maybe the exception of Hush. And Hush, I was sure, would not intervene.

  I was trying to come up with the words that might quell Sternman, but as it turned out, I didn’t have to worry.

  “Shut up!” Justine said, rising with the shout.

  The astonishment on her father’s face told me that she had never stood up to him before.

  “We all know your power and your money,” she spat. “We know the dangerous men you work with and your whores. No one on this side of the table cares about any of that. Not Mr. McGill or me. My grandfather is your father—that’s what’s important. I learned that from a letter written on the back of an ancient page torn from the journal of one of our ancestors who came across on the Mayflower. The book it came from is in our private library. And that letter was written by your mother, claiming that this man’s blood runs in your veins and mine.…”

  Charles’s brow shone with sweat. His fists clenched on the table before him.

  “That’s why this morning,” Justine continued, “before I came here, I sent photocopies of that journal page, back and front, to the Wall Street Journal, the New York and London Times, the Trib and San Francisco Chronicle. I also sent copies to your friends Thomas Lively, Patrick Foreman, and Marion Lowe. Your close associates who love white people and hate brown.”

  Charles Sternman got to his feet then. He wasn’t as steady as his daughter, but his passion was at least as deep.

  “You, you wouldn’t,” he stammered.

  “I did, Father. By the time you get home you will be outed as an African American in every headline, on every news channel. And if anyone challenges it, I’ll send out a dozen samples of my blood. My Negro blood.”

  I was watching at just the moment when Charles Sternman’s spirit broke. His healthy skin turned ashen. His superior expression became that of a man pleading with the reality in his mind.

  Justine would probably rue her words and actions one day. But that afternoon, she was an exultant Valkyrie.

  Charles backed away from the table, knocking his chair to the floor. Then he stumbled toward the exit. His henchmen followed.

  Before going out, Shefly turned and pointed at Twill. The gesture seemed to say I’ll be seeing you.

  That was a mistake.

  “He’s always been a monster,” Justine said over bowls of pork fried rice, black-pepper beef, and sautéed bok choy. Mama So’s food is excellent fare. “He abuses everyone, but they put up with it because he’s so rich.”

  Ernie and Hush left a few minutes after Charles and his men.

  “Why he hate black peoples so much?” Catfish wanted to know.

  “I never understood it,” Justine replied. “I always thought that he was so full of spite that he was happy to have anything to hate, from bad weather to the electric bill. He once slapped a boy who kissed me in the summer garden. Hit him so hard that Felix fell to the floor.”

  “He’s my son,” Catfish rued. “I should have brung him with me. Ernestine would’a understood.”

  “I hate him.”

  They talked like that, back and forth, not really addressing each other. It was as if they were piling dead wood on different sides of a bonfire.

  Twill and I ate heartily. At the end, Harry brought out four bowls of bitter melon parfait for desert.

  “This is delicious,” Justine said of the just slightly sweet pudding.

  “What now?” I asked Catfish.

  He was looking right through me, calculating the mathematics of loss.

  “I guess I done all I could,” he said at last. “I got me a new granddaughter an’ at least my son knows who he is. Lamont says that he wanna come back to New York an’ study at this jazz school you got. Maybe if he study that music, he won’t come up with the same answers I did.”

  “You’re going home to Mississippi?” Justine asked.

  “That’s where my Ernestine is buried.”

  “Can I come with?”

  “What about your fiancé?”

  “I’m pretty sure he had his heart set on a white girl.”

  I told Twill to lie low for a few days.

  “That’s okay, Pops. I got some business to see after in San Diego anyway.”

  I didn’t ask about his business; that’s the wisdom of age.

  Lamont, Catfish, and Justine left for Biloxi the next day. The men had come by bus, but they returned on a private jet.

  For the next few days, I tried to locate Bernard Shefly. I’d taken to sleeping in the office and avoiding Katrina’s calls.

  On the fourth day, I received a small envelope through the mail. My name and office address were rendered by an ancient typewriter. Inside was a small white card folded in half. The only printing was the word Condolences in the lower right-hand corner on the front of the card. Within the fold was a recent article from the Boston Globe. A naked corpse with no hands or head had been found near Silver Lake in Newton, Massachusetts. The dead man had been shot in the left shoulder a week or so before his demise.

  The card was from either Hush or Ernie; I have my suspicions which one, but it doesn’t matter.

  The next morning it was announced that Charles Sternman had committed suicide in the night. A week later, there was a photograph in the New York Times showing Justine Sternman and an unidentified elderly African American man standing at the graveside. There was speculation about the identity of the man, and his relation to Justine and Charles. One Post reporter noted that only the man, whom I knew as Philip “Catfish” Worry, seemed to be near tears.

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  About the Author

  Walter Mosley is one of America’s most celebrated and beloved writers. A Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America, he has won numerous awards, including an Edgar for best novel, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, a Grammy, PEN America’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and several NAACP Image Awards. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages. Mosley’s short fiction has appeared in a wide array of publications, including The New Yorker, GQ, Esquire, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, and Playboy, and his nonfiction has been published in the New York Times Book Review, the New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, and The Nation. He is the author of the acclaimed Easy Rawlins series, including most recently Charcoal Joe. He lives in New York City.

  Also by Walter Mosley

  John Woman

  Down the River unto the Sea

  THE EASY RAWLINS MYSTERIES

  Charcoal Joe

  Rose Gold

  Little Green

  Blonde Faith

  Cinnamon Kiss

  Little Scarlet

  Six Easy Pieces

  Bad Boy Brawly Brown

  A Little Yellow Dog

  Black Betty

  Gone Fishin’

  White Butterfly

  A Red Death

  Devil in a Blue Dress

  The Further Tales of Tempest Landry

  Inside a Silver Box

  LEONID McGILL SERIES

  And Sometimes I Wonder About You

  The Long Fall

  Known to Evil

  When the Thrill Is Gone

  All I Did Was Shoot My Man

  Debbie Doesn’t Do It Anymore

  Parishioner

  The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey

  The Gift of Fire / On the Head of a Pin

  Merge / Disciple

  Stepping Stone / Love Machine

  The Tempest Tales

  Diablerie

  Killing Johnny Fry


  The Man in My Basement

  Fear of the Dark

  Fortunate Son

  The Wave

  Fear Itself

  Futureland

  Fearless Jones

  Walkin’ the Dog

  Blue Light

  Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned

  RL’s Dream

  47

  The Right Mistake

  NONFICTION

  Twelve Steps Toward Political Revelation

  This Year You Write Your Novel

  What Next: A Memoir Toward World Peace

  Life Out of Context

  Workin’ on the Chain Gang