“Where were you when Sanderson busted in?” I asked.
“On the way to Albany. I had to commit my wife and father to an institution up there.”
“They confessed to you?”
His left shoulder rose an inch or two.
“Lana told me what she had done after you left today. She said that when she found out that her son might have been murdered while she was living her life, making no effort to get in touch, well, she lost her mind and hired Sanderson to do those terrible things. She’s getting help.”
“How does your father fit into this, Mr. Hull? You know he tried to have me killed.”
“When Sanderson overheard Fell talking to your answering machine he went after you. After he was arrested, Lana confided in my father. They knew each other from the sanatorium, too. He still had his old contacts, and access to money. That’s over now. I have receivership over all his assets, and he will not be allowed to contact anyone outside of Sunset.”
“So your wife has four people murdered, and your father tries to kill me, and all they get is a ticket to the country.”
“They’re my family, Mr. McGill. I met Lana at the sanatorium when my father was first there. She was—she is the most beautiful being I have ever known. What would you do if you were me?”
The same thing. Only I didn’t have millions to burn.
We sat there together in silence, both of us slumming in different ways.
“What can I do for you, Mr. McGill?”
“I don’t need anything,” I said. “Your father’s man gave me a briefcase full of cash already.”
“I want to do something
for
you,” he said, “not buy you.”
I pretended to think for a moment but I already knew what I was going to say.
“There’s a little red-and-gold painting by Paul Klee you have in a hall downstairs,” I said.
“Yes?”
“Hannah says that it belongs to her.”
“It does.”
“She said I could have it.”
“It’s priceless.”
“And yet, I’m told, your wife bought it.”
55
M
rs. Selma Guttman was in San Francisco visiting with her daughter for three weeks. Through a website advertising temporary rentals that Zephyra kept tabs on I was able to get her a place for that time. It cost two thousand dollars but it was worth it.
The place was ideal. She had a window that looked out on the street with a table set before it, and even a rocking chair.
At 3:03 a.m. on a Tuesday morning I was sitting at that window, rocking slowly and waiting.
A light-colored Ford had gone around the block three times. It crept down the street after a final pass and then parked a few houses away. The lights went out and for a while the Brooklyn neighborhood was calm again. It wasn’t until 3:28 that Tony the Suit got out of the Ford, which was undoubtedly stolen, and made his way to A Mann’s front door.
Tony had thought that I should kill Mann, for all the money I was insisting on. But I demurred.
“Killing is not my business,” I told the mid-level gangster. “I traffic in information.”
Now Tony was getting out of his car, a pistol resting in his pocket next to the key I had made for the ex-accountant’s front door.
Tony crossed the street quickly, then silently walked onto the porch. And for a while everything was quiet again. Then lights came on all over the house. Five black cars with flashing red lights on their roofs converged in front of the place and a dozen men and women of law enforcement jumped out.
People surged out of A’s small home, carrying with them Tony Towers, in handcuffs, followed by Mr. A Mann in a T-shirt and dark trousers, cradling the aged dachshund in his arms.
The accountant and the dog were the newest members in the witness protection program. He could only hope that they would keep him as safe as he kept himself.
Tony would probably be dead soon enough. Because of the information Mann could give them, along with the conspiracy to commit murder, GTA, and possession of an unlicensed firearm, the gangster would be their yellow bird before long. None of his business associates could live with that. I could only hope that this was the outcome Harris Vartan was looking for. But even if it wasn’t, this was the only choice open to me.
“YOU LOOK TIRED, Pops,” Twill said later that morning at the breakfast table.
Katrina had made the family buckwheat cakes along with broiled thick-cut applewood-smoked bacon.
“So that you might sleep peacefully, my son. How’s Mardi?” After they arrested her father, her uncle sent for her and her sister. They went to Dublin.
“She says she’s happy,” he said. And then, “I was thinkin’ about what you said that day. And I promise that I will come to you with any more problems like that. At least till I’m twenty-one.”
THE HOUSE WAS empty by noon.
I went down the hall to my den and sat down behind the desk, across from the little painting where a squiggle’s face had abandoned him to become the sun. It was a lovely thing, beautiful.
I took out my cell phone and entered a code.
“Hello,” she answered knowingly.
“Can we meet for a late lunch?” I asked Aura Ullman.
“A restaurant or my place?”
“I need to talk,” I said. “But I think it should be in a public space for now.”
“Okay,” she said and I felt once more that I was falling, but I didn’t mind at all.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Walter Mosley is one of America’s most celebrated and best-known writers. His mystery novels, including the now classic Easy Rawlins series, are routinely on the
New York Times
Bestseller List, and his books have been translated into more than twenty languages. He has won numerous awards, including the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award (given to work that increases the appreciation and understanding of race in America), a Grammy, the Sundance Risk-Takers Award, and the PEN Center USA’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Mosley served on the board of directors of the National Book Awards and is past president of the Mystery Writers of America. Born and raised in Los Angeles, he lives in New York City.