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

young Leviticus had had Jimmy’s back during some hard times and the mobster was grateful.

    Jimmy died not long after the uprising. Mr. Bowles took this as a sign to make a life that kept him away from wardens and prison yards, rancid breath and unrestrained manhood.

    Leviathan was beneath a Chinese restaurant equipment store on Bowery. The upper floors of the building were apartments. There was a locked door, with various buttons for the residents. One of these buttons had the name
L. Bowles
scrawled next to it.

    I pressed the button and few moments later a voice said, “Yes?”

    “Jimmy T,” I said clearly.

    The lock clicked open, and I walked down a narrow hallway, past the stairs that led to the upper-floor apartments, to a doorway that had an electric eye above it.

    I looked up at the lens, and the door came open. Three steps in and I found myself at the precipice of one hundred and seventy-two stairs that coiled down into darkness. This spiral was dank and ominous. You knew that you were leaving the world of city-granted licenses and state-enforced regulations.

    The vestibule at the bottom of the stairs presented a bright green door that opened immediately.

    I was assailed by Sinatra and cigarette smoke, careless laughter and bright lights.

    “Mr. McGill,” Tyrell Moss said in greeting.

    Tyrell was a tall multi-racial man. Hispanic and black, Asian and some form of Caucasian—he was powerfully built and forever young. He was maybe forty, maybe older, but his smile was that of the God of Youth on some faraway island that had yet to hear of either electricity or clinical depression.

    “Moss, man,” I said.

    Behind him was a large room with ceilings at least twenty-five feet high. There were small pale yellow tables everywhere and at least eighty patrons. At Leviathan you could smoke cigarettes or cigars, drink absinthe, and it was even rumored that there was an opium den in a back room somewhere.

    It was like stepping into an earlier day that never existed.

    “I got her set up against the back wall,” Tyrell was saying. “You
did
invite her, right?”

    “Zella?”

    “That’s her.”

    WALKING ACROSS the dazzling expanse of Leviathan, I saw many notables. There were no politicians, but their handlers came there to meet and relax; there was a pop star or two; and there were half a dozen bad men with whom I’d done business in the old days.

    Zella was wearing the same rayon suit, so I supposed she wouldn’t insult my threads again. She was drinking an amber-colored fluid out of a shot glass. That must have given her great solace after eight years of locked doors and stale water.

    “Hey,” I said as I pulled out the chair across from her at the crescent-shaped table.

    “ What’s that supposed to mean?” she replied.

    “It means that you’re out of prison, Miss Grisham, and that people don’t use codes or special greetings. It means hello.”

    “Then why don’t you say hello?”

    I stood up again.

    “The drinks are on me, lady. Be my guest. But don’t call again.” I was ready to leave. No use in wasting time on someone who didn’t know how to act on the street, or under it.

    “ Wait,” she said.

    “ What?”

    “I don’t know you, Mr. McGill, but Breland Lewis says that I should trust you. The problem is that I don’t know him either . . . but I need, I need to talk to somebody.”

    It was a start.

    I sat down again.

    “ What can I do to allay your suspicions?” I asked.

    “Do you think I had anything to do with the Rutgers heist?”

    “No.”

    “ What about Lewis?”

    “ What about him?”

    “Is he after that money?”

    “I can’t say for sure, but I imagine that someone who knew about framing you had a change of heart and paid him to set you out.”

    “ Who?”

    “I have no idea,” I mouthed.

    Zella suspected that I was lying but what could she do? She stared for a dozen seconds or so, and said, “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t