“Oh yes,” she said. “He is a wonderful man. The only reason I say this is that maybe he is having trouble thinking. I would come help him for nothing.”
“No need for that,” I said. “We’ll make sure you get paid.”
“Hello, you two,” Katrina said from the doorway.
She was wearing a fancy dress designed for someone twenty, or maybe thirty, years younger; still, she looked pretty good in that pink-and-red party frock. Even from a distance we could see the effects of the wine, smell the perfume, and divine the sex. Elsa couldn’t hide her embarrassment for me.
But I was beyond jealousy that night. I’d solved the case, concealed a killing, saved a life, and had come within a millimeter of murder. In that dress Katrina was the sour cherry on the ice cream sundae of my week.
“Hey, babe,” I hailed. “Elsa says that Gordo’s goin’ home.”
“That’s wonderful,” Katrina exhaled. She seemed to ride the current of her fragrant breath from the doorway to a seat at the far end of the table.
“It was your feeling for him that brought him back to life,” she said. “Your strength, Leonid, and Elsa’s passion for him. No, no, don’t turn away, Elsa, I can see how you feel. I know what it’s like when something crazy gets into your heart.”
Silence followed my wife’s keen perceptions. We were all thinking about something crazy that had gotten into us in spite of all intentions. We didn’t look into each others’ eyes because there was too much truth in that.
Finally Katrina levered herself up on her feet and said, “I really have to get to bed. The girls and I went to that wine bar on Seventy-ninth. Oh . . . too much.”
She walked unsteadily out the door while Elsa and I kept vigil on the truth she’d spilled like a ruptured oil well into the Gulf of Mexico.
“There was a package for you,” Elsa said after a long contemplative pause.
She got up and walked out into the hall, leaving me with thoughts that ranged down the many paths of my misspent life. I started counting breaths and reached seven before Elsa returned.
She held in her left hand a shapeless parcel of brown paper wrapped in thick packing tape. She held the thing out to me and turned to leave as soon as I took it.
It weighed no more than a few ounces, with Leonid Trotter McGill, Apt. 11f penned in a fanciful hand that you got the feeling would have been even lovelier writing in some other language.
I needed my penknife to rip open the tough packaging. Inside the tape and brown-paper shell was a ball of wadded-up newspaper that held the locket loaned to me by Fawn David. It had been cleaned and polished meticulously. There were a few scratches along the sides of the ornament, probably due to the jeweler’s attempt at opening it. I pressed the little button on the side and the disc sprang open.
Within there were pictures pasted to either side. On one side was a photograph of me and my brother, Nikita; on the other was a smiling pair, my mother and Tolstoy—otherwise known as William Williams.
Looking at the photos, I felt numb and stupid. My father had survived years after I thought he’d died, after my mother had perished pining for him.
Maybe he was still alive.
My cell phone sounded. It was a relief to answer.
“LT.”
“Yes, Lieutenant?”
“We went to St. Benedict’s Hospital to talk to Theodore Chambers. He told us that his sister sent him to talk to Tyler but that he only made it to Pelham.”
“And?”
“Theodore told Pelham that he was representing both sisters, that Chrystal had the damning information and that Shawna needed to get paid.
“We went to Arthur Pelham’s residence and asked him to come down to the station for a little talk.”
“What he have to say?”
“He said that he needed to put on some clothes.”
“And?”
“He shot himself in the head in the head.”
I was in an emotional state of shock. The repetition seemed mechanical, as if maybe the phone instead of a human being was doing the talking.
“He killed himself in the toilet?” I asked.
“I guess you were right about something. We’ll start a full investigation tomorrow.”
I tried to have some kind of feeling about the news: joy at the resolution of a case, sadness at the death of a man cornered by his own sins, relief that the trials were over. But in reality I felt nothing. My father might still be alive. Who cared about some lawyer eating a bullet?
55
IT TOOK THREE WEEKS to get a meeting set with Harris Vartan. First he was on a business trip, and then some kind of emergency arose. I spoke to his assistant, Hamish Oldhan.
“I’m sorry, Mr. McGill,” the assistant to the Diplomat of Crime told me. “But Mr. Vartan wanted me to make sure and to tell you that you are uppermost in his thoughts and that he will call you at the first opportunity.”
In the meantime I went out to see Fawn David, ostensibly to return her locket but actually to see if I could find out anything else about the father whom I had in turns idolized, lost, hated, and forgiven, and who I now saw in a shadowy cleft somewhere between reunion and revenge. I had the jeweler carefully and completely remove the picture of my brother and me. Fawn loved the locket and said that she would carry it always.
I scoured the room where my father had lived while I was acting out a criminal life across the river in Manhattan. There were no more clues. He wasn’t anywhere on the Internet or in any of a dozen libraries I’d sifted through.
Elsa took Gordo home to his rooms atop the building no one knew he in fact owned. Katrina made sumptuous meals and smiled more brightly every day. Only the fact that she drank too much let on that there was something unresolved in her life.
The Artist, Bisbe, disappeared off the face of the earth. Chrystal and her six nieces and nephews moved into Cyril Tyler’s rooftop home with little worry of him slaughtering them in their sleep. Ira Lamont called the office one afternoon and asked if I’d like to give him a rematch.
“You caught me off guard,” the cowboy complained. “If I knew you was a boxer I’d have planned it different.”
I just hung up on him.
Two days later Chrystal called to tell me that Cyril would be out of town for a few days.
“I hear you,” I said. “But you and me both know where that’d go.”
“Are you afraid?” she asked.
“Petrified.”
“So is that a no?”
“Yes, it is.”
AND THEN ONE EVENING, sometime after ten and before Katrina returned from her night out with the girls, my cell phone sounded.
“Hello?”
“Mr. McGill,” a man said.
“Hamish.”
“Tomorrow afternoon. Anywhere in Manhattan you want. Shall we say about two?”
“The Red Lantern on Forty-eighth,” I said. “I’ll be bringing two guests.”
TWILL, IRAN, AND I arrived at the Oceanus Hotel’s premiere restaurant at one. I wanted some time with the young men before Vartan arrived. He wasn’t meeting me for the meal at any rate. The young men had hamburgers and I ordered a simple pasta laced with butter and shavings from a black truffle.
“You should come into the gym sometimes, Twill,” Iran said. “I could put some muscles on you.”
Iran was used to the pecking order of the streets. He was a dominant character who liked to keep the younger thugs in line.
“I don’t think so, Mr. Shelfly,” my favorite son said.
“Why?” Iran pressed. “You like gettin’ your ass kicked?”
“It’s the refutation of the three ems.”
“Huh?”
“I don’t need money, mamasitas, or muscle to make me a man. And if anyone wants to question that, I got a whole pocketful of answers.”
I didn’t laugh because Iran was a good kid and deserving of respect. But I did wonder where Twill picked up the word “refutation .” He was full of surprises.
“You hear from your brother?” I asked to head off any possible confrontations.
“Him and Tatyana be home Thursday.”
“Our house?”
“Naw. You know Moms wouldn’t be happy with that. They stayed longer ’cause Taty knew where her man had holed up a little cash. They got me to get ’em a place in Prospect Park.”
I was just beginning to decipher the ramifications of Twill’s statement when Harris Vartan entered the dining room. His threethousand-dollar suit was the color of raw copper, and the jade ring on the baby finger of his left hand was brighter than emerald.
As he walked up to the empty seat a waiter came out and placed a plate laid out with a broiled chicken breast, Frenchstyle green beans, and two boiled new potatoes. Another waiter waltzed over to place a goblet of blood-red wine at his right hand.
“Twill,” the Diplomat greeted. “Mr. Shelfly.”
No idea how he got Iran’s name, but I wasn’t surprised. Harris Vartan lived in Chicago but knew more about New York than Mayor Bloomberg.
After we’d all muttered our hellos, Harris took a bite of chicken and a sip of wine.
“Excuse me, Harris,” I said, “but it’s hard for me to tell who’s working for whom. You sent me on a journey that nearly twisted my head off.”
“Is he still alive?”
“He was fifteen years ago.”
“Any clue as to where he is now?”
“Why do you need to know?”
Vartan placed both hands on the table and looked me directly in the eye.
“Because,” he said, “Clarence taught me everything of importance that I ever learned.”
I smiled, while my two young charges shifted with mild discomfort.
“You’re his son and you deserve to know the truth,” Vartan said. “You have been working for me because . . . this is my debt—now paid.”
He ate a little more.
The young men remained silent, and so did I, for a time.
“Iran here has a problem with a stupid man,” I said halfway through Vartan’s meal.
“Oh?”
“If you owe me something I’d like you to solve that problem.”
“Give him Hamish’s number and consider it done.”
After that the ice was broken and Harris engaged Twill and Iran in a conversation about basketball. I listened, mostly. The words meant nothing to any of us.
When the meal was over we all walked out onto Forty-eighth Street and Harris got into a limo sedan.
“Who was that guy?” Iran asked me.
“Nobody,” I said.
“What now, Pops?” Twill asked.
“I’d like to offer both you boys jobs working for me,” I said.
“Sorry, Mr. McGill,” Iran said. “Gordo already said he wants me to be a part-time manager at the gym. I think I’m better suited for that kinda work. I mean, I’ll be happy to help out if you need anything, but the gym’s a better place for a guy like me.”
“Okay. You do what you think is right.”
Iran shook my hand and punched Twill’s arm. He ducked his head and turned to walk away.
“You really want me to work for you, Pop?” Twill said when Iran was out of earshot.
“More than anything, son.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because you’re the finest man I’ve ever met, and because I’m your father.”
ALSO BY WALTER MOSLEY
LEONID McGILL MYSTERIES
The Long Fall
Known to Evil
EASY RAWLINS MYSTERIES
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
OTHER FICTION
The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey
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
This Year You Write Your Novel
What Next: A Memoir
Toward World Peace
Life Out of Context
Workin’ on the Chain Gang
Walter Mosley_Leonid McGill_03 Page 25
