And Sometimes I Wonder About You (26 page)

W
hen I opened my eyes my father, Clarence, was sitting next to the bed. I could see through the hospital room window that it was early morning. I knew that there was some kind of opiate in my system because the pain in my shoulder was there but it wasn’t.

“Trot,” my father said to my open eyes.

“How’m I doin’?”

“No organs,” he said. “You were a pint and half down but they gave you a transfusion.”

“I’ll need a blood test in a few weeks,” my mouth proclaimed.

“Why’s that?”

“He stabbed somebody else and then ripped into me,” I said lazily. “That’s mixing bodily fluids for real.”

“Oh.”

“How did I rate a single room?” I asked.

“Police protection,” Clarence said. “Hmm. Where I come from those two words are mutually exclusive.”

I laughed and coughed, reached out, and my father took my hand.

We might have talked some more. I’m pretty sure we did but I can’t remember what was said.

When next I opened my eyes Twill had taken Clarence’s place in the chair next to my bed.

“…yeah, Pop,” my son was saying, “those guys we fought at the construction site reported in. They asked around until they found my name and then yours. That was all Jones needed. He was so hyped up comin’ after me and you that he didn’t know what the cops was doin’ until it was too late.”

“Did they find out who he was?” I asked.

“Julius Sneed. He ran a private organization that contracted with the city to help children and adolescents in jeopardy. Been doin’ it twenty-three years.”

“I guess he’s dead.”

“Yeah. He was the last one to die, though. The guy he stabbed and the one you hit died immediately but they had Sneed in this hospital. Even said that he had a good chance to pull through. Hush came down here with Fortune and Liza. He said he would wait and see what’s what, but then word came down that Sneed had a heart attack. Six bullets in the torso and he died of a heart attack.”

“White guy?”

“Mostly.”

And that’s how it went for the next day. Aura came and then Katrina with my father. Katrina was very worried. She assured me that she was going to get a job and take care of us like I had done for so many years for her. No one told my daughter because she would be shattered seeing me in a hospital; but Tatyana and Dimitri came. Taty sneaked in a small bottle of cognac.

The doctor, Christopher Omen, dropped by to tell me I was a lucky motherfucker, his actual words.

And then I woke up in the middle of the night. Visiting hours were over. The moon was three-quarters full through the window.

“You’re awake,” she said. She was wearing the same deep coral dress she had on when we first met.

“How’d you get here?”

“Twill called me.”

“How’d he call you?”

“We traded numbers for something just like this. I didn’t expect him to use it so soon.”

“I thought you’d be in Fiji by now.”

“We’re leaving for Hong Kong tomorrow.”

“He’s treating you right?”

“You’re the only man I ever met knew how to treat me, Lee.”

There was nothing left to say. If I wasn’t so drugged up we probably would have had sex. As it was we held hands for a while, then she kissed me.

I closed my eyes and it was morning again.

“Where are you going?” one of the two policemen guarding my door asked.

Two cops! I thought they must be considering putting Kit in the chief’s office. That bust must have netted him a whole month on the news.

“My best friend is getting married this afternoon,” I said simply.

“The doctor has to release you,” said the other cop, a black man with a belly that suited him for a job like this.

I didn’t even answer; just walked past them looking for an elevator or, failing that, an exit sign.

I
’d never seen a boxing gym so festive and nonviolent.

Streamers and flowers and pastel silk everywhere. There were boxers in borrowed suits and all kinds of black people from Houston,
Texas—relations
of Sophie Bernard. She and my kids and my wife and my sometime girlfriend had done a great deal of the last-minute planning. The only contribution Gordo made was the jazz quintet that usually played in an uptown hotel near Lincoln Center.

It was nice hearing live jazz at a wedding.

The ceremony would be in the center ring. The minister, Lucius Crow, was a Bernard family friend. He’d performed the ceremony for Helen and Gordo thirty-some years before.

“Hey, LT,” a familiar voice said.

Bug was wearing a pink tuxedo, blush white shirt, and a red bow tie, reminding me a little of Paulie DeGeorges. Zephyra was standing next to him in a jade-and-cream gown. She was breathtaking. Tall and black and smiling like those Valkyries I loved.

“Thanks, man” was all Bug had to say.

Later on Zephyra told me that I was right to call her.

“David gained twelve pounds in the forty-eight hours I was gone,” she said.

Twill was wearing the same suit he’d pretended to be Melbourne’s assistant in. He was there with Liza and Fortune and a young cocoa-colored woman named Véronique who spoke only French. Her black skin glistened and Twill seemed to bask in that glow.

I traded a few sentences with Véronique but then Liza took me aside and handed me a hefty envelope.

“I tried to give this to Twill,” she confided, “but he said the agency is yours and you collect all monies.”

“How much you got in here?” I asked her.

“One hundred eighteen thousand dollars.”

“That’s too much.” I laughed at myself and how much I must have changed to be turning down serious money like that.

“No,” Liza said, holding up her hands when I tried to return her money. “I decided when Twill took the job that I would pay the cost of the necklace I gave Fortune if he got us out safe.”

Clarence and Gordo were in a far corner regaling each other. I didn’t really like it that they got along, but I figured that that was my problem and I’d just stay away and keep it to myself.

“LT,” Kit said. He didn’t say but I’m sure that Twill invited him to the festivities.

“They make you chief yet?” I asked.

“We failed to find his blackmail files,” the cop said as if we were on the site of an active investigation. “You got any ideas?”

“Me? You the one took him down.”

“And you’re the one that killed him.”

“I just shot him.”

Kit had to smile at that.

“Doesn’t look like he groomed a successor. His confederates, the other ones you killed, were Joe Riley and Max Brown. Not their real names. I don’t think we’ll ever ID most of the people in his syndicate. Most of them came in as kids under ten.”

I was listening but I saw something across the room, something that needed attending.

“Leonid,” Hush said when I walked up to him. He was talking to Johnny Nightly.

“Hey,” I said, eschewing using a name for Hush. “Johnny, can I have a minute with my friend here?”

After Johnny was gone I said, “I didn’t know you knew Gordo?”

“We met before.”

“You here for the wedding?”

“No. I just wanted to congratulate you on surviving and to say thanks.”

“Thanks for what?”

“Bringing me those kids. Putting me in that danger took away all the tension. I knew you were going to be here so I just dropped by to tell you that I told the government men no.”

My half-Asian daughter, Shelly, hugged me and kissed me and asked a hundred times if I was okay. She saw me as her father and no mirror in the world would dissuade her. We sat side by side through the ceremony. Katrina sat with Clarence. Iran Shelfly was Gordo’s best man. A woman named Reesa was Sophie’s maid of honor.

As the ceremony unfolded I began to cry. That was the biggest surprise I’d had all week. Something about love and ceremony and big changes at the last minute got to me.

Lucius Crow was asking Gordo if he would love, honor, and respect and I looked up, tears brimming in my eyes. Aura was sitting on the other side of the ring looking at me. Whatever she saw touched her and she blew me a kiss.

Walter Mosley
is the author of forty-nine books, most notably thirteen Easy Rawlins mysteries, the first of which,
Devil in a Blue Dress,
was made into an acclaimed film starring Denzel Washington.
Always Outnumbered,
adapted from his first Socrates Fortlow novel, was an HBO film starring Laurence Fishburne. Mosley is the winner of numerous awards, including an O. Henry Award, a Grammy Award, a PEN America Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Langston Hughes Medal. A Los Angeles native and graduate of Goddard College, he holds an MFA from CCNY and now lives in Brooklyn.