All I Did Was Shoot My Man

41

I took a subway toward midtown and my office. The second-to-the-last car of the A train was empty enough that I could sit on the end, next to the sliding doors. I put in earbuds connected to an ultra-thin MP3 player and listened to the seventies album, Below the Salt, by Steeleye Span, the English folk band. Nasally and dark, mystical and mysterious, the tones seemed to fit my predicament, telling me that the path of my life had been traveled for centuries and who was I to feel so special?

Warren oh was at his post behind the high podium at the front of the Tesla Building.

“Warren.”

“Mr. McGill.”

“How’s the family?” I asked the Chinese-and-black Jamaican man.

“Mother’s coming to live with us.”

“She is?” I stopped.

“She’s too frail to take care of herself and my aunt died in the spring.”

Our eyes met. Understanding, sympathy, and acceptance of our fates were transmitted without words. He gave me a wan Island smile and I nodded — the perennial New York pessimist.

When the electric lock clicked I pushed open the office door expecting to see Mardi, her pale expression of devotion providing a moment of respite from the jagged threat of the streets of New York, encroaching old age, and innate negativity.

Young Ms. Bitterman was there behind her white ash desk but her expression was one of helplessness instead of welcome. Turning my head thirty degrees to the right, I saw the cause of her mild despair. Seated next to each other on my client’s bench was Aura, the woman I loved, and Antoinette, newest leader of a wild pack that had been on my trail for decades.

Aura stood up immediately, taking the two steps needed to reach me.

“Mr. McGill,” Antoinette complained.

“You’ll have to wait a moment, Ms. Lowry.” I took Aura’s hand and led her out into the hallway.

“Bad time?” were the first words she uttered when the door to my office closed behind us.

“If that was all, I wouldn’t need three days.”

“How bad?”

“Baby, I love you. You know that, right?”

When she smiled my heart trilled a high note.

When she kissed me I understood that love is always and only here and now.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll give you your three days.”

I took her hand and said, “It’s a really hard time, baby.”

“It always is,” she said to my heart.

As Aura walked away I took a moment to breathe before going back into the heavy atmosphere that surrounded my natural enemy and her mindless instinct.

I motioned to Antoinette when I returned to the reception space. She followed me down the aisle to my office. On the way we passed Twill, sitting at his desk, talking on a cell phone.

“Pops,” he said, then nodded at the private agent of industry.

I grunted at my son and plodded toward the back office.

Once Rutgers’s predator was seated I settled in.

“I was informed of the attempt on your life,” she said. She wasn’t impressed by the view or the size of my work space compared to hers.

“Bad news...” I said, feeling no compunction to finish the timeworn saying.

“Maybe now you’ll see how it is in your own best interest to cooperate with me.”

I laughed.

“Are you a fool?” Antoinette Lowry wanted to know.

“Lady, I killed two professional assassins while buck naked ten seconds after I’d woken up from a deep sleep. One I shot and the other I ended with my bare hands. Now you tell me what the fuck you could have done but get in my goddamned way?”

“Maybe if you shared information with me the attempt would have never been made.”

“Are you saying that Rutgers had something to do with those men?”

“No,” she said in a tone that revealed much more.

“But maybe somebody else?” I suggested. “Maybe Johann Brighton?”

“No.” This time she was much more certain.

“But there are some shadows up in there. You do business in places where the laws of man are different, sometimes virtually nonexistent.”

That was the beginning of our real conversation. I had shown that I was both capable and wise to the ways of her world. I could tell by the intensity in her gaze that she suddenly saw me as a worthy opponent — or ally.

“What do you know about your attackers?” she asked.

I covered the important details, as blasé as I could manage.

Antoinette listened closely, trying her best not to show how deeply the particulars of the attempt impacted her.

“Does any of what I say sound familiar?” I asked after cutting off the tale at the interrogation imposed on me at the Elizabeth Street Precinct.

“Why would it?”

“I don’t know. You’re the one investigating the robbery.”

“From the sounds of it, Mr. McGill, you have called this contract on yourself. For all I know this attempt on your life might have nothing to do with my business.”

“Com’on, girl,” I said. “Don’t be coy with me. Does this shit sound like some street-level thug or even some kinda upscale mobster? Foreign assassins don’t only take a lot of money. You got to have serious connections to make something like that happen.”

“Maybe,” she conceded.

“Anybody hire me is already on a level way below that kind of action. And you know if they’re trying to kill me, I have to be getting close to that fifty-eight million.”

“Maybe you already have it,” Antoinette offered. “Maybe you ripped off your confederates in the crime.”

“Darling,” I said, “you know my history probably better than I do. You know how many times my life has been on the line and the limits of my lifestyle. Do you think I’d be here in New York if I had all those millions? No, I’d be in some country with no extradition treaty with the U.S., buying judges beach condos and bedding the local hotties.”

This long-held fantasy seemed to go halfway to convincing my current nemesis.

“Then why?” she asked.

“Lewis and I got Zella out of prison. That has to put a strain on the real thieves’ exit plan. They want to destroy anything having to do with Zella and her possible innocence.”

“But why come after you? If you didn’t have anything to do with the heist, then you pose no threat.”

She had brainpower to spare.

“Scorched earth,” I explained. “Kill the principals when releasing Zella and the crime comes back to her. I mean, why else would she and her supporters get killed?”

“Maybe.” She still wasn’t completely convinced.

“What else could it be?”

“Maybe it’s just the fallout between former partners.”

“Do you think for one moment that if I knew who was after me that they would still be breathing?”

Antoinette had my police files. She knew that I knew Hush.

“So what do you suggest?” she asked.

“Give me a number where I can get to you when I need to. I promise that if I crack this nut, I’ll share the meat with you.”

We traded information and I walked her past Twill and then the reception desk to the front door of my suite.

After she’d gone I asked Mardi, “What does your third eye tell you about her?”

“You were better off with the fever, boss.”

It was at that moment I realized that Mardi would one day inherit my business.