And Sometimes I Wonder About You

38

He wore a brown jacket, skinny black jeans, a gray-and-blue-plaid shirt, and a bright orange bow tie. His shoes were blunt-toed and brown, and the generous thatch of brown hair was shot through with strands of gray. He still had those freckles and if I was forced to report on the color of his eyes I would have said blue-gray.

Those pale eyes opened wide when I greeted him.

“You Violet’s new man?”

“Leonid McGill,” I said, extending a hand.

We shook, him squeezing to test the strength of my grip.

“What do you want, Mr. McGill?”

“I need to have a talk with you. I was going to offer Violet nine hundred dollars to put us together. I’ll be happy to give it to you instead.”

“Talk about what?”

“Let’s go grab a coffee and make the exchange,” I said. “Cash for information.”

The skinny scam artist considered his options. He didn’t want his business messed with but I posed a threat whether we talked or not. He needed to know what I knew and also there was a shot at nine hundred dollars.

“Okay,” he said after a full minute standing in front of Violet’s cell-like door. “All right. There’s a place I like over on Lafayette. We could hoof it over there.”

Half a block from Violet’s apartment my phone sounded. I looked at the screen, saw it was another unknown caller. I figured that it was Violet, disconnected the request, and turned the ringer off.

On the way Paulie probed me.

“How you know Violet?” he asked.

“Never met her.”

“Then what were you doing waiting for me at her door?”

I told nearly the whole story, leaving out Luke’s name. By the time I got to the visit with his mother we had reached the Excellent Bean on Lafayette, just a few blocks south of Astor Place.

At the counter I ordered a triple latte for me and a large hot chocolate for Paulie. He’d taken a small table in a corner.

“What is it that I know worth all that money to you, McGill?” he asked when we were finally settled.

“I’m looking for a young woman named Celia Landis but you might know her as Coco Lombardi.”

With eyes as expressive as his, Paulie could never be a cardplayer. Those bright orbs darted from my big hands to the door. They calculated his chance of getting away but came up with odds too long for his comfort.

“I, I don’t know those names.”

“That’s too bad,” I said. “Because if I can’t get to her I’m going to have to tell the people I work for that I came to a dead end named Paulie DeGeorges. I don’t know for a fact but I’ve heard that they already killed two men who didn’t know anything.”

Paulie’s shoulders juddered and he looked down at his hands.

“This is not your regular scam, Paulie. These people have power and money. They don’t give a fuck about an ex-con like you.”

“You don’t have to give them my name,” he suggested.

“I do if I expect to get paid.”

“So if I tell you where she is you’re gonna tell them?”

“Actually no,” I said. “I think that book she stole might get me a whole lot more than they’re offering.”

“I thought you said that they were dangerous, killers.”

I sat back in my coffeehouse chair and smiled. All around the café young men and women were sitting and talking. I noted that the women smiled more than did the men. I was smiling too, challenging the odds. It was an easy grin because I was confident in my footing.

“Who do you know, Paulie?”

“What do you mean?”

“In the Life,” I said, “somebody that knows the names of the players who could tell you about Leonid McGill.”

“I got my people,” he said defensively. “Prison ain’t on the moon.”

“Call him up,” I said. “Tell him my name and see what he says.”

Paulie peered at me like a sparrow that thinks he might have seen a shadow moving through the bushes. He even turned his head to the side.

Finally he brought an old cell phone out of a green pocket and flipped it open.

While he entered the number I took up my phone and typed in the letters HU.

Hush answered on the third ring.

“LT.”

“Twill said you had some worries.”

“No worries, brother.” He had never called me brother before. I wondered what that meant. “Might be something, might not. Either way I know what to do.”

“You need me to come by?”

“Mr. McGill,” Paulie said.

I held up a finger for him to wait.

“No, LT, I’m okay. Matter’a fact I’m kinda havin’ fun.”

I didn’t like the notion of a smiling killer but there was no time to deal with that right then. I said my good-byes and turned to Paulie.

“Yeah?”

“My friend asked if I could send him a picture of you.”

“That piece’a shit phone has a camera?”

“One of the first.”

“Snap away,” I said.

He held up the phone for a moment and then turned it around to hit a few buttons. He sat there watching it as the outmoded technology organized and sent the picture, one pixel at a time.

After maybe three minutes he brought the phone to his ear and asked, “You get it?... Uh-huh... Uh-huh... Yeah, yeah, all right. Thanks, T.”

He put the phone away and looked at me like a man who had just been convicted and now waited for the sentence.

“You know,” he said after a moment or so, “I always felt like I was born in the wrong place and time. I mean the people here and everywhere don’t know shit about style or sophistication. My own wife went out and had an affair with some dude and then tells me that he made her feel like she never knew she could. He broke it off with her but she left me anyway. That don’t stop her from askin’ me for help whenever she needs it. There ain’t nuthin’ right about that. And my mother... My mother had this check-kiting scheme she used to use at banks in different cities. She’d hit town for a week and get fifteen, twenty thousand and then move on. Never saw two Mondays in the same town and never even got questioned, much less arrested. She refused to visit me in prison because she was humiliated that I got caught. Here I stole the money to pay for her goddamned nursing home and she wouldn’t even answer a letter. Shit. There I am in prison for her and she cut me off.

“You know my old man was no better. Strong motherfucker like you, only taller. Rob banks and armored cars. He said that he was ashamed to have a scrawny son like me. He run off from my mother because he said I was the issue of an affair...”

What surprised me was his proper use of the word “issue.” There was an education under that bony, sad-sack brow.

“Here I could’a made somethin’ of myself but everybody live in the modern world where nobody gives a shit about what’s right. And the worst place is prison. Motherfuckers up in there brag on all the crimes they did that no one ever tumbled to. Serial killers in jail for assault; arsonists put away for trespass. I don’t have no choice but to do what I do and to be what I am. Nobody does.”

“How did you meet Coco?” I asked to get the derailed scam artist back on my track.

“Her brother.”

“How you know him?”

“They busted him for smuggling drugs. He was my cellmate time before last. When his sister got in trouble he got in touch with me ’cause he knew I was just about to get out.”

“Why didn’t he help her?”

“Prison again,” Paulie said. “North Carolina. Here every motherfucker and his kid is hooked on pharmaceuticals and they put Timothy in for moving seventeen ounces of hashish. Seventeen! Shit. The best of us are the worst of us. We have lost our right to God.”

If I had only heard that one diatribe I would have known that Paulie was a jailbird. The odd mixture of philosophy, religion, and despair marked him as sure as a black man’s skin.

“One thing remains the same,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“You either eat or die.”

Paulie looked up at me then and a smile came unbidden to his lips. He was a scam artist who thrived on truth; no wonder he was so sad. He probably thought that his wife’s lover was better endowed than he; I was willing to wager that the one-night stand just knew how to laugh.

“What you want, McGill?”

“I want to talk to Coco. I want you to tell her that I know about the book and about the woman that wants it back. Tell her that I say that I can make it right for her and even get her a little scratch, you too.”

“How much?”

“More than twenty-five thousand for her and at least five for you if we get this business done. I’ll pay you nine hundred right now on good faith.”

“And you won’t, you won’t tell about me?”

“If you help me there’s no reason to.”

I reached in my jacket pocket and came out with a wad of hundreds.

Paulie jerked his head around and said, “Put it away, man. You can pay me outside.”

“Okay.”

“Look,” he said. “I don’t want no trouble with you. My friend T says that you’re serious business, that people have to be careful around you. So I’ma say that I’ll call Coco an’ ask her but if she says no there’s nuthin’ I could do.”

“What more can I ask for?” I asked.