The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey (29 page)

“I’ma get Robyn to go to the bank wit’ you an’ start a account with nine hunnert dollars,” Ptolemy said.

Hilly turned his head away from the TV to look at the old man.

“Then I’ma set it up to put eight hunnert dollars in there ev’ry mont’.”

“You only get two hunnert an’ sumpin’ a week from retirement,” Hilly said.

“That ain’t all I evah got, boy,” Ptolemy replied. “Maybe if you didn’t steal from me right off the bat, you’da learnt sumpin’.”

“How come you let Robyn do your business, Uncle?” Niecie asked. “You know that girl ain’t nuthin’ but trouble. I only took her in outta the goodness’a my heart. But she’s bad news. You cain’t trust her. An’ you know I’m the one sent her ovah there in the first place.”

Ptolemy saw trouble in Niecie’s eyes, trouble he’d lived with all through his life. He saw lawyers and lawsuits, maybe even threats and drive-bys coming from his one slip.

Ptolemy got to his feet, steadying himself by placing a hand on the back of the chair.

“Where you goin’, Pitypapa?”

“I’ma leave.”

“Don’t go.”

“Oh yeah, honey. I’m gone. I can see from talkin’ to you that there ain’t nuthin’ but trouble in the future. I’ma cut that off right here and now. I shoulda known that givin’ you a little sumpin’ would make you want everything.”

“No. I was just warnin’ you ’bout that girl.”

“Not another word, Niecie. Not one more word or I will cut you off without a dime, without evah speakin’ to you evah again.”

Niecie Brown saw the iron and the clarity in her uncle’s eyes. She saw the intelligence surging up in him, the certainty in his words, and even in the way he stood.

“I’m sorry, Uncle,” she said.

“Nina,” Ptolemy said.

“Yes, Mr. Grey.”

“Come on out on the porch with me,” he said. “Hilly.”

“Huh?”

“Bring me an’ Nina two chairs out there.”

The boy frowned.

“Do what your uncle tells you to do, Hilliard,” Niecie commanded.

 

 

 

Letisha and Artie could be heard from the inside of the house, jumping and shouting. The tinny speaker of the pink TV made unintelligible noises while adult footsteps sounded at unexpected intervals. Helicopters roved the skies over South Central L.A. as brown and black folks passed beneath the aerial scrutiny. Ptolemy saw Hernandez leaning against the hood of his car across the way, while little Mexican children played around him on a curbside patch of grass.

Ptolemy thought about the world he lived in. It seemed to him that he had died and was resurrected twenty years later in an old man’s body, but with the sly mind of a fox or a coyote. He was an ancient predator among great-bodied herbivores, under a desert sky filled with metal creatures that had passed down from man.

“Why you smilin’, Mr. Grey?” Nina asked.

“You know, Nina, you are probably the most beautiful woman I have evah seen in ninety years.”

Reggie’s lovely young widow smiled and looked away.

“Mr. Grey!”

“Oh yeah,” he said. “I had a wife named Sensia.”

“That’s a pretty name.”

“And she was a beautiful girl. But not as beautiful as you.”

Nina turned back to the old man, wondering with her gaze where he wanted to go with this line of flattery. “Really?”

“Oh yeah. And Reggie loved you too. He loved you so much that when he found out that some other man had caught your eye he decided to take you down to San Diego so that he didn’t have to share all that loveliness.”

Nina’s smile froze. Her head moved back an inch.

“What?” she asked.

“I got a trust in the bank,” Ptolemy said. “It’s set aside for my family. There’s money for your chirren’s education and their wed-din’ days.”

Nina’s expression changed again. Ptolemy wouldn’t let her get a bead on his intentions.

“Yeah,” he said. “And I made a gift for Reggie.”

He took an old gold coin from his pocket. The date on the coin read 1821.

“This here twenty-dollar gold piece. It’s worf five thousand dollars or more to a collector. I got twenty’a them for Reggie. He told me to hold them for you.”

Nina brought both hands to her mouth.

Ptolemy put the coin back in his pocket.

“But before I hand them ovah I got to know how my boy died.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I, I don’t know who shot him.”

“What about Alfred?”

“No.”

“Did you tell him that Reggie was takin’ you and the kids away?”

Nina tried to speak but could not.

Sirens blared and suddenly four police cars raced past Niecie’s house and on down the street.

“He couldn’t, Mr. Grey. My Al couldn’t do nuthin’ like that.”

“What was he in prison for?”

“No.”

“Was he wit’ you when Reggie was killed?”

“I’m a good woman, Mr. Grey . . . a mother.”

“Was Alfred wichyou when they opened fire on Reggie on the front steps of his friend’s house?”

“My baby couldn’t do nuthin’ like that,” Nina said, her eyes begging him.

“How long aftah you told Alfred was Reggie killed?”

“A, a, a day and a, a, a day and a half.”

“An’ you didn’t think nuthin’ about that?”

Nina’s hands were back at her mouth again. She shook her head and tears squeezed out from her eyes.

This is the mother of Reggie’s children ,
Ptolemy thought,
the mother of my blood.

“I’m a good woman, Mr. Grey.”

“But did you tell Alfred that you was goin’ away with Reggie?”

She nodded almost imperceptibly.

“Did he say he wanted you to stay?”

She nodded.

“An’ what else did he say?”

“That I was his woman. That I belonged wit’ him.”

Ptolemy thought about his great-great-grandniece and -nephew again, this woman’s children.

“Why you wanna run around wit’ him, treatin’ Reggie like that?”

Nina looked away.

“Did you know?” he asked.

“No,” she said to the splintery wooden deck.

Ptolemy looked out across the street and saw Hernandez gazing back at him. His heart thudded against his rib cage like the kicks of an angry mule against a barn door. His mind felt as if it might explode. He took out one of the Devil’s pills and swallowed it without water.

He felt the life-preserving, life-taking medicine work its way down his dry gullet. It was a painful journey. Ptolemy thanked Satan for the ache.

“Did you suspect?” he asked.

“Why you wanna bother me ’bout all this?” Nina cried. “Why you doin’ this to me?”

Hilly came out on the porch to see what was wrong.

“Go away, Hilliard,” Ptolemy said. “This ain’t none’a your nevermind.”

The boy snorted and went back in the house.

When Hilly was gone, Ptolemy said, “Reggie took care’a me an’ you did him dirt. I got to ask. I got to find out who killed him.”

Nina stopped crying. Ptolemy thought she finally understood that Reggie’s death didn’t give her a right to blubber and moan.

“I asked him,” she said.

“Who?”

“Al.”

“An’ what he say?”

“He slapped me. He knocked me down. He told me that he wouldn’t nevah have Reggie’s kids in his home.”

“An’ that’s the man you run to when Reggie wanna be wit’ you an’ have his family wit’ you?”

“Al was my first man evah, Mr. Grey. I was wit’ him when I was just thirteen an’ thought I was grown. I just don’t know how to say no to a man like that. I loved Reggie,” she said. “I loved him, but I just couldn’t help myself.”

The pill began to work. The fire in Ptolemy’s mind extinguished, leaving the cold he’d felt in Coydog’s treasure cave. The old man shivered and closed his eyes.

“You murdered my boy,” he said.

Nina shook her head, but it was a weak denial. It was more like she was saying,
I didn’t mean to. I couldn’t help my feelings.

“So I will make sure that Robyn makes sure that you get enough to live on, to take care’a them babies.”

“But Al won’t take ’em,” she cried.

“I ain’t talkin’ to Al.”

 

 

 

That girl you was with sure was pretty, Mr. Grey,” Hernandez was saying on the drive back to Ptolemy’s home.

They were sitting side by side in the front seat. Ptolemy wore the bright-red seat belt across his chest. He felt that the wide band made him seem small, like a child.

“She told me that her boyfriend mighta murdered my great-grandnephew.”

“Oh.”

“What’s all them tattoos on your arms, Hernandez?”

“Just memories.”

“Back when you was young and wild?”

“Just back when,” the driver said. “Things change, but they don’t get better.”

They drove for a while. When Hernandez came to a stop at a big intersection he said, “She could be lying to you, Mr. Grey.”

“Yeah.”

“You know some crazy kids who lived a few blocks away from my house said that my cousin Hector had got their little sister drunk and pulled a train on her with his boys.”

Ptolemy didn’t know what a
train
was exactly, but he could guess.

“They come and killed Hector and his main man, Pepe,” Hernandez continued. “I know that Hector didn’t do it ’cause I was wit’ those crazy kids’ sister by myself. And we were gettin’ high, but there wasn’t nobody else there.”

“Yeah,” Ptolemy said again.

The light changed and Hernandez drove on.

“Aren’t you gonna ask me what I did, Mr. Grey?” the driver asked ten blocks further on.

“Why would I?” he replied. “Either you killed them or her or you didn’t do nuthin’. Any way you go, you left with a dead brother and a lie.”

They didn’t talk again until Ptolemy climbed out of the limo in front of his house. He offered Hernandez five dollars as a tip but the Mexican waved it away.

“You all right, Mr. Grey. Watch out, now.”

 

 

 

He came home to an empty apartment. Everything was clean because Robyn cleaned every day. She swept and mopped and dusted and washed. She even ironed Ptolemy’s clothes and hers.

When Robyn did come home he told her that they would have to go see Moishe Abromovitz again.

“All the way down there, Uncle? Why?”

“’Cause I made a mistake an’ told Niecie that you was gonna take care’a my money. You know the minute I drop dead she gonna get some kinda lawyer and try to take that money from you.”

“Niecie wouldn’t do that.”

“Baby, I know that’s what you think. You think Niecie love you and care about you. But all that’s just in yo’ head.” As Ptolemy spoke he realized that Coy had been coming to life in his mind for the past weeks; that his murdered mentor was coming back to see him through this delicate negotiation at the end of his life. “Niecie love you as long as you sleep on the couch and do the things she don’t wanna do. She love you when the old men come around to look at you and you get behind her skirts. But when she find out how much money you gonna get, she won’t love you no more. She won’t ever again. She gonna say you stoled her rightful inheritance.”

“You wrong, Uncle,” Robyn said, “Aunt Niecie wouldn’t evah hate me like that.”

Ptolemy reached across the small kitchen table to take Robyn’s strong hands in his big one.

“I know how you feel and I respect you,” he said. “But do you believe in me?”

“Yes.”

“An’ do you respect me?”

“Yes.”

“So go wit’ me to see Moishe so that I can make sure that your money is yours. And if Niecie come aftah you aftah I’m gone, then I want you to light me a candle on this here table for seven days. Will you do all that for me, baby?”

“I won’t have to light no candle, because Aunt Niecie ain’t nevah gonna think I’d steal from her.”

I have three red apples, two oranges, and a sausage I bought from the market,” Nora Chin said.

They were sitting across from each other at a large conference table of the Terrence P. Laughton Mental Services Center of Santa Monica. Moishe Abromovitz, the old man in the middle-aged man’s body, and Robyn sat at the far end of the table. There was a large tape recorder sitting between Ptolemy and the psychiatrist. The spool of recording tape rolled steady and slow.

A big black fly buzzed past Nora Chin’s face, but she didn’t move or flinch.

“Today’s Robyn’s birthday, Dr. Chin,” Ptolemy said. “She’s eighteen today.”

“How many apples do I have, Mr. Grey?” she responded.

“Two,” he said. “Two apples, three oranges, and a sausage. You know pork sausage an’ applesauce would make my whole day back when I was a boy.”

Chin smiled. She was pretty, though somewhat severe looking. She looked at least twenty years younger than Moishe, but they were almost the same age.