All I Did Was Shoot My Man

36

We rode side by side in Kit’s unmarked dark green Ford sedan. I expected him to take me to the 20th Precinct near my home but instead he drove all the way down to the 5th on Elizabeth Street.

It was fairly empty at that hour. Kit led me to a subterranean office. When we got there I remembered that he was always on the lookout for an office where he could smoke.

This was more like a converted storeroom. There wasn’t even a proper desk; just a seven-foot-long folding table and six or seven walnut chairs.

He lit up a Marlboro.

“Can I have one’a those?” I asked.

“I thought you quit.”

“I did but I slipped earlier tonight, and whenever I do that I give myself twenty-four hours to quit again.”

We sat on the same side of the table facing each other, puffing away. If it wasn’t for the person or persons unknown trying to kill me, it would have been almost pleasant down there.

“Let’s have it, LT.”

“First you tell me the names of the men trying to slaughter me and my family.”

“No IDs,” he said. “No receipts, documents, passports, not even any scars. The cigarettes they were smoking are European but none of my people could even tell what language was on the packs. These guys were not only professional, they were expensive. Imported, probably from Eastern Europe, like smelly cheese.”

Damn.

“So?” he nudged.

“You realize that I don’t trust the police,” I stated.

“I’m not trying to trick you,” Kit replied.

“I know that. I know. But that’s not what I’m sayin’. There are holes in your security. Anything I say to you is safe, but the minute it goes past you lives will be on the line.”

Kit shook his pack of Marlboros at me. I took the offering.

He lit me up and tapped his left foot — slowly.

“What do you want?” he asked after a spate of silence and smoke.

“Captain Clarence is right about Zella Grisham,” I said. “She doesn’t know a thing about the Rutgers heist. I don’t know anything about the robbery either.”

“Okay.”

“Somebody thinks I do, obviously. I don’t know who it is. If I did, I’d tell you or else I wouldn’t say a word.” This last phrase meant that if I did know, I might have killed them myself.

“Okay.”

“So I will cooperate with you as far as I can, but I don’t have any raw data, no evidence, that’s not already in your possession.”

“But you think Zella getting released has caused this violence?” Kit asked.

“She’s innocent and should have been set free.”

“What aren’t you telling me, LT?”

“There’s nothing I know that could lead to an arrest,” I said. “That’s a fact.”

“Except maybe yours.”

“Come on, now, man. You know I can’t sit here and incriminate myself. I did not have anything to do with the robbery. I have no idea who sent those men to kill me.”

“Lethford wants to talk to you.”

“I’d be happy to meet with him... any time you say.”

Kit watched me for a few moments before saying, “That was some impressive killing you did. Naked too.”

“I hope I didn’t embarrass Officer Palmer.”

“She said that after all she heard about you she thought your johnson would be bigger.”

“Tell her that the air conditioner was on.”

I left the precinct with half a pack of Kit’s cigarettes at about seven a.m. Before that I filled out three forms, explaining what happened, and then Kit recorded my statement on a little digital recorder. He made copies of my gun license and my PI’s ticket. The whole deposition took about three hours. I didn’t mind. While speaking and writing I was going over every detail for my own investigation.

I arrived at the third-floor breakfast joint a little after eight. It was right at the East River and looked up at the Brooklyn Bridge.

I was met by an offbeat waiter. He had olive skin and a few years on me. He was dressed completely in white, even his shoes, and he was ugly. There’s no other way to describe his countenance. His people hailed from some part of Europe that had been conquered and raped again and again over millennia. His ears were too big and his eyes the wrong color. The index and point fingers of his right hand were huge, as if they had been cut off some giant and grafted on him. All of his teeth were edged in jagged, mangled gold.

“We don’t open until nine,” he said in a gruff tone. There was an accent but I couldn’t place it.

“I’m here to see Clarence Lethford,” I said.

Hearing this, he turned and started walking across the broad room, with its dozen or so tables. He came to a door and opened it.

I had not moved from the entryway.

When he saw this he waved impatiently.

I approached and saw that this was a small private dining room with three empty tables.

“Sit here,” the ugly man said. “Lethford will come.”

I stepped in and the waiter closed the door behind me.

The walls, floor, and ceiling were cut from the same dirty and reddish brown unfinished wood. The room could have been a hundred years old, cleaned daily by the man in white and his ugly ancestors.

I sat next to a small window that allowed a view of the bridge and river. It was pleasant in there. I considered resting my head against the splintery wall and taking a nap.

But instead I made a call.

“Sorkin Securities,” a bright young voice answered.

“LT McGill,” I said. “NY-two-six-four-four-jay.”

“Just a moment.”

The phone made some clicking noises and then a man’s voice said, “Ron Welton, security analyst. With whom am I speaking?”

“Leonid Trotter McGill.”

“Yes, Mr. McGill. What can I do for you?”

“Somebody broke through my door last night.”

“There’s no record on our files of your shell being broken.”

“They used an electromagnet and specially made crowbars.”

“That must have taken a while.”

“They were in in under ten seconds.”

Silence.

“Mr. Welton?”

“We will have a crew out to your house by noon today, Mr. McGill. They will replace and upgrade the system.”

“I thought every configuration you had was unique.”

“We will also launch an internal investigation... Are you and your family all right?”

“No thanks to you.”

Shelly was at the house when I called. Twill, she said, was having tea in the little front room with Katrina. Dimitri and Tatyana had moved into D’s room. There were cops down on the street, watching the front door.

“One of them comes up every couple of hours or so to check on us,” my earnest daughter reported.

“Put your brother on the line,” I said. I didn’t have to tell her which brother.

I told Twill about the security company. Told him that I needed any extra keys left downstairs in our mailbox.

“Something’s wrong with Mom,” Twill said.

“Of course there is. Armed men broke into our home.”

“No, Pops, it’s more than that. I don’t know how to describe it but there’s definitely something wrong.”

“I’ll sit down with her when I get home. Is there anything else?”

“One thing.”

“What’s that?”

“You said that you wanted me to work for you so I could be safe, right?”

“You wanna quit?”

“No, sir.”

Sitting there in the dowdy but private dining room, listening to traffic from the street and the clinking clanging of the restaurant workers getting ready for their clientele, I wondered about Velvet, crouching over her spent works.

Maybe I was being punished for breaking my oath and covering up yet another crime... Try as I might I could not muster up any faith in superstition. I laughed and looked up.

At just that moment big, brutal Clarence Lethford banged into the room.