All I Did Was Shoot My Man

54

Twill returned to my office after seeing Mycroft to the door.

“He’s busted up,” Twill said as he lowered into the seat Mycroft had taken before. “I don’t blame him. Must be hard to have your own blood treat you like that.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked the old soul in the young man’s body.

“I didn’t wanna say it out loud, Pops. You know it hurt me just thinkin’ about that mess.”

“Kent’s man could have made all that shit up.”

“Uh-uh.”

“Why don’t you think so?”

“I went down there and checked it out,” Twill said.

“Down where?”

“I got on the boat and found the red lacquer lamp. The signature on the bottom was made by Kent when he was a child — Winnie-ther-Pooh. Everything my boy told me was true.”

“And why would he tell you anyway?”

“He probably thought that I’d do the deed, you know. I told him that if I did do it, I’d split the money with him.”

“Did you give Kit all that?”

“Naw. I just told him the names of the dead men and said he might wanna ask about that store owner who had his store torched.”

I let that part of our conversation settle for a bit. Then I said, “You got anything you want to know?”

“No.”

“Nothing?”

“Not that I can think of.”

“Not even what Mycroft said about me covering for crimes?”

“Hey, Pops. You the boss here. I’m not supposed to be questioning you.”

A quarter hour later I was in a cab headed down to Greenwich Street in Tribeca. Twill was on my mind. I’d brought him into the business to keep him out of a life of crime. But he’d turned out so much like me I had to wonder if anyone or anything, outside of death, could save him from himself.

My phone vibrated. There was a text message there that read “In place.”

Before I could put it away the phone sounded with three chimes.

It was another unknown number, maybe the same one that called while I was waiting for the assassin in Queens.

“Hello?”

“Trot?”

I believed that I was beyond shock or surprise that deep into the case. A terrorist attack wouldn’t have kept me from my mission. A diagnosis of pancreatic cancer would not have stopped me from finding the people that had sent assassins into my home.

But that voice on the phone nearly managed to derail me.

“Dad?”

“You recognize my voice?”

I began to tremble. Anger, love, rage, and a deep, deep wound opened up in me. I closed my eyes but it made little difference; even with them open I couldn’t distinguish images — only light and dark.

“Son?”

“Where are you?”

“On a bench in Prospect Park. Can you hear the Congo line playing?”

Yes, in the background there was the sound of African drums.

“What... why are you calling?”

“Tourquois got your number from that friend Lemon. She said you seemed to want to find me, that you knew I was in New York.”

“It’s been forty-four years,” I said. “Mom died because she couldn’t live without you.”

“I wasn’t in the country the first eight,” he said. “I was in the jungle fighting for three and then in prison for three more. It took me two years to make my way back. By then you and Nicky had become men. Your mother was dead already.”

“Why didn’t you get in touch with us? Why did you hide?”

“It’s hard to explain, son. The Revolution changed me or, I should say, it changed me again. Maybe it even destroyed me. I knew where you were and what you were doing but I...”

“You what?”

“I’d like to talk to you face-to-face.”

“Nikita’s in prison,” I said.

“I know.”

“I’m married with three children.”

“We should meet, son.”

I hadn’t expected the depth of feeling. I hadn’t believed that I’d ever see my father again. Less than an hour before I’d seen the truth dismantle a rich and powerful man. This demolition made me feel superior. But now I saw that I was no better, that life conspired against all of us, eroding everything — even the ground beneath our feet.

“There’s that restaurant you like going to,” my father, Tolstoy McGill, was saying. “The steak house at Columbus Circle. We could meet there for a late dinner, maybe ten or so.”

“How, how do you know where I like to eat?”

“Meet me at the steak house at ten, Trot. I’ll be there. If you want to see me, you’ll be there too.”

“Why haven’t you tried to get together with me before now?”

“I’ll see you at ten, son.”

The call clicked off in my ear but I didn’t put the phone down, not immediately. The chance to hear my father’s voice had been the single most powerful desire in my life. I missed him terribly, hungered for his attention and his survival. I hated him too but the deep sense of loss drowned out any antipathy like a nuclear bomb detonated over an angry hornets’ nest.

“Here you go,” somebody said.

The cab had come to a stop after a forty-four-year journey. The modern façade of the building was glass and shiny steel. It rose fifteen or sixteen slender floors above its dour brick neighbors like a silver pin jabbed into a concrete fingernail.

Looking up, I wondered if this was the day I’d die. I’d always associated my father with death. Before she passed on, my mother told Nikita and me that she was going to meet my father in the place people go after breath leaves their body.

“That’ll be twelve sixty-five,” the cabbie said.

I handed him a twenty and shambled out of the taxi.

Standing on the broad sidewalk in front of the glass doors, I wondered again about mortality. I had a wife somewhere and grown children that I loved. There was my lover, whose kisses I couldn’t imagine right then. There was a life that had been lived sideways and backward, and hopes that had lost their meaning.

My mind felt empty — the Buddhist ideal. That thought brought a smile to lips. I took a deep breath and headed for the door.