All I Did Was Shoot My Man

2

“Do i know you?” Zella asked as I approached her. Her coarse red hair was combed back but otherwise untamed. It wanted to stand up like porcupine quills or an angry cat’s back.

There was an unmistakable ripple of violence in her body language — no doubt learned at her previous stint in the women’s maximum security prison at Bedford Hills, before her transfer to the milder setting of the Albion facility.

This is Zella Grisham, Gert Longman’s words rang in my ears from nine years before.

It was a photograph taken to fit in a wallet. I had already seen her on the front pages of the Post and the Daily News. That face had adorned the upper half of the front page of the B section of the Times too.

“No,” I said in answer to Zella’s question. “I was sent here by Breland Lewis. He asked me to meet your bus to—”

“Lewis? That’s that lawyer, right?”

“Yes. He asked me to—”

“Tall black guy,” she said.

“White,” I said, “and short. Even shorter than I am, with no bulk either.”

Zella was thirty-six and no longer pretty as she had been before her incarceration. There were three strands of gray that I could see. She took that moment to tie the mane back with a black elastic designed for that task.

“And he sent you?” It was more an accusation than a question.

“He had a court case today but wanted somebody to meet you when you got in.” It sounded like a lie, even to me.

“He didn’t say that he was going to send anybody,” she said, “or come himself, for that matter.”

I wanted to answer but there was really nothing to say. I was standing right there, obviously to meet her.

“I don’t even know why he’s helping me,” she added in a tone that undercut her words. “I mean, he was right. I didn’t belong in prison. All I did was shoot my man when I found him with his dick in my best friend, in my bed, under the quilt that my Aunt Edna made for me.

“But even so there’s a lotta women locked away when they shouldn’t be. A lotta women separated from their family... their children...”

She stopped at that point. I knew why. If we had been friends I would have put a comforting hand on her shoulder.

“Breland didn’t tell me anything but to come and meet you here,” I said — the words echoing in the chambers of my fevered mind.

“Okay,” she said. “You’ve met me. Now what?”

“Uh, well, Breland, Mr. Lewis, has, um, found you a place to stay, and a job too. He wanted me to take you to those places and make sure you got settled in.”

I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want to talk to or look at Zella Grisham but there are times when you have to do things that eat at you.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Leonid McGill.”

“And do you work for Mr. Lewis or does he work for you?”

“I... I don’t know what you mean, Miss Grisham.”

“It’s a simple question. Here you know me by my face. A nigger in a cheap blue suit at Port Authority waiting at the door like a fox at my grandmother’s henhouse.”

I resented her calling my suit cheap. It was sturdy, well crafted, a suit that had three identical blue brothers between my office and bedroom closet. It’s true that it cost less than two hundred dollars, but it was sewn by a professional tailor in Chinatown. The price tag doesn’t necessarily speak to quality — not always.

As far as the other things she said I made allowances for her being from rural Georgia and having just gotten out of prison after eight years. Socially and politically, American prisons are broken down according to race: black, white, Hispanic and the subdivisions therein — each one demanding complete identification with one group attended by antipathy toward all others.

“I’m working for Lewis,” I said. “I thought that would be obvious by me being here and knowing your name.”

“Listen, man,” she said with all the force her hundred-and-ten-pound frame could muster. “I don’t know anything about any millions of dollars. I don’t know how the money got in my storage unit. I do know that Madison Avenue lawyers don’t donate their time to white trash like me, getting them out of prison and sending apes like you to meet them. I also know that I’m not going anywhere with you.”

I was stymied there for a brief moment. Zella was understandably suspicious. I should have expected as much. After a cheating man, a duplicitous best friend, then being framed for the biggest heist ever in Wall Street’s history, sent to prison for attempted murder, but only because she refused to give up confederates she never had, and finally, when someone really wants to help her, she becomes suspicious.

For all her bad timing — I couldn’t blame her.

“Listen, lady,” I said. “I don’t know anything about all that. Lewis paid my daily nut to get down here to meet you and take you where he said to go. If you say no, that’s fine with me. I’ll just give you the information he gave me and you can make up your mind from there.”

I took one of two envelopes from my breast pocket and handed it to her. She hesitated a moment and then took the letter from me.

“There’s an address in the Garment District for a woman needs an assistant and another one for a rooming house in the east thirties. You don’t have to go to either one if you don’t want. It’s just my job to tell you about them.”

While she was looking at the information I continued: “Breland also said that he wanted you to call him and check in if you had any questions. He said that you already had his number.”

If anything, Zella was getting angrier. The fact that I could keep her attention worried her, made her feel that she was being trapped somehow.

“Would you like me to wait until you’ve spoken to your lawyer?” I asked.

“No, I wouldn’t. What I’d like is for you to leave.”

“You know I’m really not trying to trick you, Miss Grisham.”

“I don’t give a fuck what you’re trying to do or what you want,” she said. “I’d send your ass away if you were a white man with a red ribbon tied around your dick.”

Sex. It’s the bottom line of human relations. Eight years in prison and it blends in with every emotion — hate, fear, loneliness.

“There’s one more thing,” I said.

“What?” She hefted the strap of her rucksack and actually took a step away.

I took the second, thicker envelope from my pocket.

“He wanted me to give you this at the end of the day. I guess this is the end so...”

She was even more hesitant the second time. I stood there, holding the envelope toward her.

“There’s money in it,” I said. “Twenty-five hundred dollars. Just ask Breland if you think I stole any of it.”

Her fingers lanced forward and snagged the packet.

“What’s it for?” she asked without looking inside.

“Like I said, lady, I’m just the errand boy, a private detective who’s taking any work he can get during the economic downturn.”

She had nothing to say about my rendition of current events so I took a business card from my wallet and handed it to her.

“I know you’re suspicious of me, Miss Grisham, but here’s my card anyway. If you should ever find that you need assistance, and I haven’t earned my day’s wages yet, call me and I’ll do what I can.”

Zella shoved the envelopes and card into her rucksack and moved toward the escalator. I stayed where I was while she rode up toward the main floor, looking back now and then to make sure I wasn’t following.