Trouble Is What I Do

I was watching at just the moment when Charles Sternman’s spirit broke. His healthy skin turned ashen. His superior expression became that of a man pleading with the reality in his mind.

Justine would probably rue her words and actions one day. But that afternoon, she was an exultant Valkyrie.

Charles backed away from the table, knocking his chair to the floor. Then he stumbled toward the exit. His henchmen followed.

Before going out, Shefly turned and pointed at Twill. The gesture seemed to say I’ll be seeing you.

That was a mistake.

“He’s always been a monster,” Justine said over bowls of pork fried rice, black-pepper beef, and sautéed bok choy. Mama So’s food is excellent fare. “He abuses everyone, but they put up with it because he’s so rich.”

Ernie and Hush left a few minutes after Charles and his men.

“Why he hate black peoples so much?” Catfish wanted to know.

“I never understood it,” Justine replied. “I always thought that he was so full of spite that he was happy to have anything to hate, from bad weather to the electric bill. He once slapped a boy who kissed me in the summer garden. Hit him so hard that Felix fell to the floor.”

“He’s my son,” Catfish rued. “I should have brung him with me. Ernestine would’a understood.”

“I hate him.”

They talked like that, back and forth, not really addressing each other. It was as if they were piling dead wood on different sides of a bonfire.

Twill and I ate heartily. At the end, Harry brought out four bowls of bitter melon parfait for desert.

“This is delicious,” Justine said of the just slightly sweet pudding.

“What now?” I asked Catfish.

He was looking right through me, calculating the mathematics of loss.

“I guess I done all I could,” he said at last. “I got me a new granddaughter an’ at least my son knows who he is. Lamont says that he wanna come back to New York an’ study at this jazz school you got. Maybe if he study that music, he won’t come up with the same answers I did.”

“You’re going home to Mississippi?” Justine asked.

“That’s where my Ernestine is buried.”

“Can I come with?”

“What about your fiancé?”

“I’m pretty sure he had his heart set on a white girl.”

I told Twill to lie low for a few days.

“That’s okay, Pops. I got some business to see after in San Diego anyway.”

I didn’t ask about his business; that’s the wisdom of age.

Lamont, Catfish, and Justine left for Biloxi the next day. The men had come by bus, but they returned on a private jet.

For the next few days, I tried to locate Bernard Shefly. I’d taken to sleeping in the office and avoiding Katrina’s calls.

On the fourth day, I received a small envelope through the mail. My name and office address were rendered by an ancient typewriter. Inside was a small white card folded in half. The only printing was the word Condolences in the lower right-hand corner on the front of the card. Within the fold was a recent article from the Boston Globe. A naked corpse with no hands or head had been found near Silver Lake in Newton, Massachusetts. The dead man had been shot in the left shoulder a week or so before his demise.

The card was from either Hush or Ernie; I have my suspicions which one, but it doesn’t matter.

The next morning it was announced that Charles Sternman had committed suicide in the night. A week later, there was a photograph in the New York Times showing Justine Sternman and an unidentified elderly African American man standing at the graveside. There was speculation about the identity of the man, and his relation to Justine and Charles. One Post reporter noted that only the man, whom I knew as Philip “Catfish” Worry, seemed to be near tears.