All I Did Was Shoot My Man

11

Dean Martin was singing “Amore” and there was laughter from a table of young black gangster wannabes. Zella was halfway through her cigarette and working on a second shot of whiskey. We hadn’t gotten to anything pertinent yet but we’d cleared a few hurdles.

I wasn’t trying to be her friend. It was enough to seem like I wasn’t an enemy. Her cigarette and whiskey helped toward that end. And the fact that I was willing to walk away meant that I had hard feelings of my own. Putting that all together, Zella almost felt almost comfortable enough to speak.

“You hungry?” I asked.

“Always. You know I haven’t had a decent meal in almost ten years.”

“Leviathan has great steaks.”

“You know what I thought about every day since they sent me up to Bedford Hills?”

I shook my head, wishing that I could have a cigarette too.

“Two things,” she said. “The most important is that I regret giving up my baby. I delivered her and relinquished all my rights because I thought that I’d be in prison until she grew to be a woman and I didn’t want her to spend her whole childhood waiting for a mother who would never come. I was wrong, and now I want to see her more than anything.

“Can you find my daughter for me, Mr. McGill?”

“Why?” I asked, serious as a judge at the Inquisition.

“I just told you.”

“Wherever this child is now, she’s with the only parents she’s ever known. I can find her, but not if you want to rush in without a meeting with the people who took her in after you gave her up.”

“Yes. Yes, I understand that.”

Zella’s previous beauty was returning. There was color in her face, and the beginning of a certain poise that prison wouldn’t have allowed.

“What’s the second thing?” I asked.

“Harry.”

“Tangelo?”

She nodded, lowering her head as she did so.

“What? You sorry you didn’t kill him?”

“I don’t even remember shooting him in the first place,” she said, raising her head defiantly. “The doctors call it selective amnesia. The trauma of shooting him wiped the memory from my head. The first thing I knew, I was in the police station being questioned by a woman named Ana Craig. She told me what happened.”

“But you must’ve been mad at what he’d done.”

“He didn’t deserve being shot and scared like that. Harry’s a weak man. I can only imagine how he felt when I kept on shooting at him. I’m actually glad that Minnie hit me... stopped me from killing him.”

“That’s not what you said at the bus station this morning.”

“All I meant was that I was crazy. I didn’t know what I was doing. If somebody hadn’t framed me for that heist, the DA would have let me out on diminished capacity.”

“So what do you want to do about Harry Tangelo?”

“I want to apologize to him,” she said. “I want to look him in the eye and say I’m sorry.”

If she was just some prospective client that walked in my office, I would have turned her away. Mothers and guilty lovers, they use private detectives like paper towels in a public toilet.

But Zella wasn’t a stranger. If she was a runaway train, I was guilty of switching the tracks.

“I can probably find out who your child was adopted by,” I said, “but I can’t promise that they will agree to meet you. I can also locate Harry Tangelo, but the same holds true for him.”

Zella brought out the envelope of cash that I’d given her that morning. This she placed on the crescent table.

“I spent a little more than sixty-seven dollars of it but you can have the rest.”

“You get what you pay for,” I said, leaving the white envelope on the pale yellow tabletop.

“What does that mean?”

“You’re hiring me to see your child and old boyfriend. I’ll probably be able to find them, but the meetings, as I said, might prove to be a little more tricky. You hold on to the money until I come back with some answers.”

“You don’t want the money?”

“Not until I know that I can earn it. I wouldn’t want a hot-blooded mama like you to think I had cheated.”

That was the first time I’d seen her smile.

It was a nice smile. Very nice.

“So what now?” she asked.

“I buy you another drink, put you in a cab, and tomorrow I start the job you gave me.”

“That’s all?”

“Unless you need me to find somebody else.”

“No.”

“And you don’t plan to shoot Tangelo anymore, right?”

She smiled again. “No, Mr. McGill, and...” She paused, looking at me directly.

“What?”

“I wanted to apologize for what I said to you at the bus station this morning. I was raised better than that.”

“Hey. If you can’t lose your temper after eight years being locked up for a crime you didn’t commit and another one you weren’t responsible for, then this would be a harder world than anyone could bear.”

“That’s very kind of you, Mr. McGill. It has been hard. Maybe I’ll take you up on that drink.”

Near two in the morning I put a slightly tipsy Zella Grisham into a yellow cab, paid her fare up front, and even kissed her on the cheek. The way she leaned into that kiss I could probably have climbed in with her. But I try my best to maintain a certain decorum with my clients.

On the street I considered taking the subway uptown. I think pretty well surrounded by the rumble of the underground rails.

“Leonid,” a man called.

I was unarmed and on an empty street. That could have been the moment of my death. Could have been. Probably would be one day. But not that night. It wasn’t my assassin but Carson Kitteridge, recently promoted to captain on the NYPD. His was an at-large position that allowed him to work wherever he was needed.

Carson was even shorter than I, five-five — no more. Pale white, he had less hair than I did. His suit was light-colored and well worn.

“Kit,” I said. “I thought they reassigned you after the promotion.”

He strolled up next to me with no expression that I could read.

I’m a burly guy, in excess of one-eighty in my boxers. Kit isn’t even a lightweight, but there’s a gravity to him that makes bad guys think twice. For many years his main goal was putting me in prison. Possibly my greatest single achievement was denying this brilliant cop that aspiration.

“What you up to, LT?”

“Headed home. That is, unless you wanted to grab a drink. You on duty?”

“What you up to, LT?” he said again.

“Why don’t you tell me?”

“What do you have to do with Zella Grisham?”

“I was hired to meet her at the bus station. She liked the color of my skin and the cut of my suit and asked me out for a drink.”

“What was she talking about?”

“This and that. Nothing special.”

“The heist?”

“Claims she didn’t do it. I believe her.”

“You armed?” he asked.

That was an unexpected question, enough so to make me look around the dark street. I had a license to carry a concealed pistol. I’d been granted that when I used to have friends in high places.

“No,” I said. “Why?”

“Just wondering if you knew what you were getting into,” Carson said. “I see you don’t.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

A wan smile passed across the policeman’s lips and vanished — like a shark’s fin.

“See you later, Leonid,” he said.

With that he turned and walked away, making the most of his ominous innuendos.

I stood there a few moments more. Again I thought about taking the subway, but when a yellow cab slowed down to see if I needed a ride I jumped in, knowing that Carson Kitteridge never made idle threats.