Known to Evil

34

I walked westward toward the Village proper, thinking about luck. Wanda Soa was unlucky-definitely. The man who probably shot her shared the same ill fortune. Ron Sharkey and a few dozen others that I'd focused my attention on were luckless bastards who were blindsided by disasters while they planned vacations, retirement, and weekends with their grandkids.

In this way Angie and I had something in common: we were descendants of Typhoid Mary, passing over earth that would one day soon inter the bodies of our luckless victims.

My cell phone sounded, proving to me, for at least that moment, that providence favors the arbiters of evil.

"Hey, Breland," I said into the phone. "What's up?"

"They arrested Ron Sharkey. Have him in that special federal facility down south of Houston on the West Side."

"What's the charge?"

"They don't have one yet, but I was told by the agents who arrested him that they were considering terrorism."

"You're kidding."

"That's what the man said."

"Can I get in to see him?"

"I'll work on it. You in the city?"

"Call me when you got something."

TAKAHASHI'S IS A JAPANESE coffee house on the third floor of a nondescript building between University and Fifth. Twill had found the place when he was only twelve and truancy was his pastime. He liked the people who owned and ran the odd establishment, even learned a few phrases in Japanese. They served good coffee and great tea, had a small menu, free bowls of rice crackers, and various performances in the evening, from workshop poetry to Asian string music.

During the day not many people came around.

It was the perfect place for surreptitious afternoon meetings.

I arrived at 3:53. Twill was already there, seated by the window that looked down on the street.

I waved to the owners, who were at the opposite end of the long, unpopulated room. Angel and Kenji smiled and waved back.

"Hey, Pops," Twill said as I took the seat across from him. "S'happenin'?"

I gazed into my son's dark, handsome face and shook my head. I wanted to be angry with him, but that would be an uphill task. He might not have been honest, but he was a good boy-no, a good man in a boy's body.

"Been down so long," I said, "looks like up to me."

"That's a book, right?"

"Yeah. How did you know?"

"Mardi got me readin'," he said. "One day I told her that I didn't read much because there's millions of books and I never know which ones I should be studying. I mean, teachers talkin' 'bout Mark Twain and Charles Dickens and shit. But I don't understand what they got to say got to do with me. But then Mardi says that it's not what's in the book but just the fact that somebody reads that builds up the mind, like. That sounded good, 'cause then I could read whatever I want and still be ahead of the game."

One of the pitfalls presented by my son was how engaging he was in conversation. He knew how much I loved to play with ideas, especially when those ideas had to do with thinking that ran contrary to everyday beliefs. He knew how much I liked to read.

"Talk to me, Twill."

That brought a broad grin to the young man's face.

"Her name is Tatyana Baranovich," he said. "Baranovich. She comes from a place called Minsk and has won every award that CCNY has to give to an undergraduate. She's a senior, about to graduate. D been talkin' about her for almost a year now. You know how shy he is. Every now and then they got coffee together, and that'd keep him smilin' for two weeks."

"So she didn't feel the same?" I asked.

"I don't know what she felt. I tried to get Bulldog to ask her on a date. I told him we could get your car and I'd take somebody, too. But he said that he just liked talkin' to her. But you should see this girl, Pops. I mean, she got it workin' every which way. Damn."

I felt like a dirty old man cackling at Twill's leering sexual expression.

"So what happened?" I asked.

"One day he sees that Tatyana is all upset. She tells him that she can't go back to her apartment because the man who paid her rent wanted her to do something that would mean she couldn't go to graduate school."

"Gustav."

"Yeah, right." Twill was a little discomfited that I was ahead of him in the story. "Gustav's a pimp. Tatyana is in the country illegally. And she's a hot number with some of his clients out west. He tells her that she can go to graduation but after that she has to work full-time for a few years."

"Did she make good on the million?"

"Damn, Pops, you are a private detective, huh?"

"Did she make her nut?"

"She says so," Twill allowed. "And I believe it, too. She doesn't have real fancy clothes or no habit. City College don't cost that much.

"D came to me and I talked to the girl. She told me about Gustav but not how connected he was. It was only later on that I found out he had people all over the place lookin' for her. D been thinkin' that maybe they could go down to New Orleans and start over, like."

"And you were going to help him?"

Twill admitted his involvement with a slight motion of his left shoulder.

"If Gustav is so connected like you say, then you know New Orleans would probably only be a temporary fix."

"Yeah, I know. But when they were gone I knew I could tell you, and then it would only be a matter of time before it was all smoothed out again."

It was the first time I had seen the boy in Twill for at least three years. He showed an unshakable faith in my ability to save him and his brother. I was so surprised that it might have shown.

"So D and this Tatyana are together now?"

"Oh yeah. All night, every night. He thinks they're in love."

"Are they?"

"He is."

"Twill, if you suspect that this girl is playin' your brother, why help?"

"Tatyana's okay. She in trouble, and she a ho' through no fault of her own. Somebody got to break D's cherry, an' you know he will remember that girl till the day his grandchildren die."

"Hyperbole," I said.

"Poetic exaggeration," he corrected.

"What am I going to do with you, Twill?"

"Me? It's D in trouble, Pops."

"Without meeting you she would never even be with him. You're the one that convinced her something could be done."

"Oh, come on, man. Don't put that shit on me. Bulldog's my brother. He asked me to help him. I couldn't say no."

"No," I admitted, "you couldn't."

"So what do you want me to do?" Twill asked.

"Tell Dimitri that two men from Gustav were laying for him out in front of his mother's house. His mother's house. They saw me in the dark and thought it was him. They attacked me, threatened me, pulled a knife on me. You tell him that and then say I figured out what was going on. Then you tell Tatyana that I intend to do something, but she has to come meet with me first."

Twill nodded, a wry twist to his mouth.

"Convince her, Twill," I added. "I can't do this neatly without talking to her."

His assent was in his eyes, even more subtle than the shifting of a shoulder.

When we got up to leave he put a ten and a five on the table. He never ate and rarely drank at Takahashi's, but he always left a tip.

We separated on the street. Him, a boy walking off into a man's life, and me wondering, What if the Gordian knot was someone you loved?