Free All I Did Was Shoot My Man by Walter Mosley Page B

moment before addressing us.

    “Mr. Mycroft is expecting
you
,” he said to me, “but no one else.”

    “If you wish,” I said in a bland tone, “you can walk back over there and call him again. Tell him that there are two of us down here and either we’re both coming up or nothing.”

    “ What’s his name?”

    “Fuck you.”

    The lips froze at that moment and I regretted losing my temper in front of Twill. But sometimes I just get mad at those that take out their life failures on people shorter than them.

    “I don’t have to let you in,” the doorman told me.

    “Yeah, you do. You know it and I do too. So hop to it, whatever you’re gonna do, and let us be about our business.”

    “You should have a little respect,” the doorman advised.

    “I give what I get, brother.”

    He waited a moment before going back to the deskman. They huddled a few moments, made another call, and then my temporary nemesis came back.

    “Go down the hall and take the last set of elevators on your left,” he told me. “Floor sixteen.”

    As I went by he added, “I’d like to meet you on the street one day.”

    I stopped and turned toward him. This unexpected movement fostered uncertainty; he didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands.

    “I look forward to that with great anticipation,” I told him.

    THERE WERE FERNS growing in large ceramic pots along the walls. And six huge tables down the center of the extra-wide walkway. These tables had massive jungle-like floral arrangements on them. Sunlight came into the hallway from a variety of sources, infusing the air with the quality of a natural setting.

    When Twill and I got to the mahogany elevator door he pressed the up button.

    “Sorry about the way I talked to him, Twill.”

    “That’s all right, Pop. We all know you got a bad temper.”

    “I try to keep it under control.”

    “I know you do.”

    16

    THE INTERIOR of the lift was understated, even plain. The walls were unadorned cherrywood and the lights were bare bulbs nestled in mirrored-glass fittings in the four upper corners.

    “Sixteen,” I told my son.

    He pressed the button and I clasped my hands at my back. The fever had returned, and, once again, I’d forgotten the aspirin on my desk.

    “You need this?” Twill asked, holding out a little tin of Bayer in his left hand.

    “How did you know that?”

    “I didn’t. Mardi gave it to me. She said that you kept forgetting yours.”

    I swallowed the coated pills dry before we reached the sixteenth floor.

    We exited into a lovely room with a broad green-tinted window that looked down onto the East River and out over Queens. There was only one door. Rich people, in my experience, don’t share anything—not even a hallway in a glorified tenement.

    Twill was looking for the doorbell when the oversized pale green door swung inward.

    The woman standing there wore a utilitarian black dress adorned only by a thin white collar of modest lace. She was in her forties, handsome, with similar skin color as that of Velvet Reyes. We were the same height exactly. As usual, this pleased me.

    “Mr. McGill?” she asked with only a hint of Puerto Rico emcompassing the last syllable.

    I nodded.

    “Come in,” she said with no smile. “Follow me.”

    The circular foyer was maybe eighteen feet in diameter; it went up three floors, with no stairs or ornamentation; there was a domed skylight above. The architect was saying with this simple gesture that nature trumped any attempt Man might make to consecrate the portal to a family’s domicile.

    We followed the maid into a room that had a ceiling only twenty feet high. The centerpiece dominating this chamber was a dark metal sculpture of two wrestlers, almost certainly wrought by Rodin. There were no windows in this room and the walls were charcoal gray. The only lights were yellowy spots that showed highlights of the brilliant forms exhibited by the sculpture.

    Left to my own devices I would