All I Did Was Shoot My Man

56

There was electricity coming from Antoinette’s side of our face-to-face. I could tell by the way she looked at me that I had passed some kind of unconscious test that her id gave every black man.

I’m a twenty-first-century New Yorker and therefore have little time to contemplate race. It’s not that racism doesn’t exist. Lots of people in New York, and elsewhere, hate because of color and gender, religion and national origin. It’s just that I rarely worry about those things because there’s a real world underneath all that nonsense; a world that demands my attention almost every moment of every day.

Racism is a luxury in a world where resources are scarce, where economic competition is an armed sport, in a world where even the atmosphere is plotting against you. In an arena like that racism is more a halftime entertainment, a favorite sitcom when the day is done.

That said, Antoinette was one of the racists. She hated her own people because they didn’t see her for what she was. She felt betrayed by black men and then I came along. I brought out a thrill in her heart, and maybe her nether regions. That was all good and well; she was a handsome, brave, and intelligent woman, but I was preoccupied with pain so profound that I could barely tell if it was mine alone.

“Why did you call the cops and me at the last moment?” she asked. There was a queer friendliness to the question.

“I called you right after Alton called me.”

“You didn’t believe him?”

“He didn’t strike me as the kind of man who makes snap decisions,” I said. “He’d never betray a VP like Brighton unless it was a sure thing. I thought that they must be working together or maybe that Alton was Johann’s dupe.”

“You were wrong.”

“Yeah. I was and will be again. I’ve spent nearly my whole life in the penalty box but that don’t mean I’m not in the game.”

Antoinette Lowry smiled. I don’t think she was aware of it. She’d been looking for a man like me for her entire life. She hadn’t known that either.

“I’m willing to advance your name for the reward,” she said; a queen offering her throne to a brash, conquering barbarian.

“Six hundred and fifteen thousand,” I said.

“Unless we find more.”

“You won’t. Not that you’ll be able to prove anyway.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Alton probably spent twenty years working on this plan. I bet you’ll find that Harlow will have connections planted between him and Brighton. Maybe he’ll have a numbered account somewhere. You won’t be able to tie it to Plimpton. He wanted to kick up enough dust that he could make his getaway in the sandstorm. If Zella hadn’t got out of jail and the police weren’t looking into the heist again, he might have made it. I’ll tell you what though. Let’s break up the reward between me and Zella Grisham. I’ll take seventy-five thousand and leave the rest for her.”

“Really?”

“She spent all those years in prison. Somebody should pay for it.”

“Why you?”

“Why not?”

“There has to be more to it than that.”

“Maybe.” I gazed across the short space between us, thinking that everything we see and experience is always in the past: the light from stars, a brief expression of love.

“You’re an intriguing man, Mr. McGill.”

“Most of the time I wish I had become a dull plumber. What are you gonna do, Annie?”

“What do you mean?” She didn’t balk at the pet name.

“You can’t stay at Rutgers. They need to bury this as soon as possible. You won’t be able to stomach the changes they’ll put you through.”

This was a new thought in the security officer’s mind. I put it there because the passion growing in her was too much for me to deal with right then. I needed time to go over my entire life and put it in order. I might even have to murder somebody before the night was through.

“I got to go,” I said.

“To meet your father.”

“Yeah. To meet my old man.”

“Are you close?”

“I’ll drop by your office sometime tomorrow,” I said. “We can see about this reward thing then.”

“Maybe we can have lunch.”

“Yeah. I’d like that.”

The resolution of criminal cases was often like that — anticlimactic. A little guy with big ideas crushed by the pressures cultivated in his own mind. He’d robbed his own company, had his confederate murdered, and then used the ill-gotten resources to cover his crimes.

I wondered why his wife had left him. Maybe if she had stayed he might never have gone bad.

I’d been walking for nearly an hour before I was even aware of it. I couldn’t remember green lights or anyone I’d passed.

I came to the entrance of the C train at Twenty-third Street. I even went down to the turnstiles with a MetroCard in hand. But I couldn’t go through. The world was closing in on me. Every misstep I’d ever taken had brought me to that hole in the ground. I scurried up the concrete stairs like a coal miner running from an underground collapse.

Most of the men who died at Plimpton’s behest had been condemned because of my actions. Alton Plimpton was my pawn before I ever knew his name. I was a virulent pathogen loosed on the world, wreaking carnage merely by my existence. I had evolved from my father, another deadly virus that rode invisibly and silently on the air — looking for a home in the lungs of children.

After another hour of walking I decided to take a bus up the West Side, reaching my building sometime after seven. Walking up the stairs, I wondered about the plan in Alton’s mind. He had set up Zella and wanted to keep that subterfuge going. Maybe he’d always planned to destroy Brighton. The police would never get enough evidence to try him for murder but Rutgers would make sure that he paid for his crimes.

There was music coming from down the hall of bedrooms, emanating from Dimitri’s room. He was in there with his femme fatale unafraid, and probably unaware, of the dangers she engendered.

Twill’s room and Shelly’s were empty. I was happy not to have to see either of them. Maybe they’d both be better off if I had disappeared like my father had... It was then I noticed that there was no scent in the air.

When Katrina was on her game she cooked every night. And she had gotten better. There should have been a meal in the making.

“Katrina?” I called down the hall.

Dimitri came to the door of his room.

“You seen your mother, Bulldog?” I asked him.

“She’s down in the bedroom,” he said.

“How’s it goin’?” I asked him.

Tatyana came out from behind him, wearing one of his yellow dress shirts — and nothing else. She was a gorgeous woman. I noted that fact about every third time I saw her.

“Fine,” Dimitri said, answering my question.

I walked past the young lovers.

“Katrina?” I called again.

Our bed was unmade. That was a more severe warning than the three chimes of the late-night alarm to my mind. Katrina never left an unmade bed. She tucked the blankets in at hotels and other peoples’ houses. She’d dust a waiting room if you gave her the rag.

Her skin was white to begin with but add to that the deep red of the tepid bathwater, from the blood she’d lost, and my wife looked like a dead swan in the darkening waters of her suicide.

“Dimitri!” I shouted.

I had already gotten my arms under her body. I was lifting her from the tub, staining our turquoise tiles to an approximate violet.

“Dimitri!”

I heard the first thump of his heavy foot on the wooden floor.

I felt for her pulse but my own heart was beating too fast to feel what little her vein might be giving.

“Dimitri!”

“Mom!” he yelled, coming through the bathroom door.

With the strength of despair he shouldered me aside, reaching for the comatose woman. I went with the push, going to the cabinet for bandages and maybe an anticoagulant.

“Dimitri!” Tatyana shouted. She had jumped on his back, hooking her forearm across his throat. She yoked him while saying, “Let your father take care of her. She needs him to help stop the bleeding.”

As my son fell back he went down on his knees. I used bath towels to dry the skin around the deep wounds on her wrists.

“Call nine-one-one,” I said to the Belarusian.

She darted from the room.

“Mom!” Dimitri bellowed. “Mom!”

I slathered the salve on the wounds and tied the bandages first around the cuts themselves and then as tourniquets applied just below the elbows.

“Hold these,” I said to Dimitri, indicating the bandages on her wrists. “Hold them tight.”

He lurched forward, his knees slipping on bloody water, and did what I asked.

Tatyana ran back in. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to. While Dimitri held her arms I huddled around Katrina’s alabaster body in an attempt to keep her warm.

“Did you leave the front door open?” I asked Tatyana.

She nodded, staring hard at the maybe dead woman in my arms.