Diablerie by Walter Mosley Read Free Book Online

looking into.
    The man I didn't know turned to me and asked, "Are you interested in real estate, Ben Dibbuk?"
    "What kind of real estate?" I asked, wondering why he used my full name. Why not say "Ben" or "Mr. Dibbuk"? I was stuck thinking about his use of my name when Barbara Knowland began speaking.
    "I've seen thousands of people die," she announced. "I've seen them shot and hacked, knifed and blown up, poisoned and beaten to death with steel batons. I've seen whole towns annihilated, countries decimated by famine. I've walked through infirmary halls with the smell of death so thick that if you cut it with a knife, it would bleed all over you."
    Everyone was rapt in her hypnotic hyperbole.
    What nonsense! I thought.
    But the man I didn't know leaned over and whispered, "Only the innocent can deny sin, my friend.'' Then he gave me his card. The name was written in runes but the title Cowboy was in plain type.
    I got to work five minutes early. I was about to use my card on the turnstile when someone called to me.
    "Ben."
    It was Star, standing near the coffee concession that made its business out of a nook in the east wall of the huge entrance hall.
    She was wearing dungarees and a tie-dyed T-shirt of mainly purple and yellow. Her hair was down and she wore no makeup. For a moment I thought I recognized her from another time, but that flash of insight faded.
    I stayed where I was and she approached me.
    "Ben."
    "What?"
    "You're still saying that you don't know me?"
    "Lady, I don't have the slightest idea who you are," I said. "I saw you the night before last. I read a review of your book online . . . but I don't know you."
    "We spent almost twenty-four hours living on whiskey and sex," she said. Her green eye seemed to shimmer while her brown one receded.
    "What can I say? I did that a hundred times when I was drinking and rambling around."
    "Why did you come to my talk?" she asked.
    "I told you. My wife is working for Diablerie."
    "I know. I called her office. I asked her why she brought you and she said that you usually didn't come to things like that.''
    "Did she also tell you that she made me go this time?"
    "What are you up to, Ben?" Star asked. "Are you trying to hurt me? Do you want something?"
    "NO. NO. I don't even know you."
    Once again the suspicion shone in her face. She backed away a few steps and then turned. She walked a few steps more and turned again.
    It all seemed very dramatic, histrionic.
    She left and I went up to work.
    There were a few lines of code in a tax percentage program that I had to m o w almost every year because of ever-changing tax laws. I wanted to work on the subroutine but there was too much on my mind: Mona's abandonment, Lana's openness, and now Star's paranoia. Maybe I should have asked her what happened all those years ago. Maybe I should have pretended that I remembered her, that I missed her.
    But why bother? What could she do to me?
    I couldn't imagine any danger she might present but still I was uneasy, panicky even. I tried to concentrate on the printouts but for once they gave me no solace. I couldn't hide behind the jury-rigged logics, the objective commands that were perfectly precise but often wrong.
    I was lost that day, but I told myself this feeling would pass. Over time Mona would come back home and Star Knowland didn't matter. Whatever she remembered, or thought she remembered, was more than twenty years ago and a thousand miles away.
    At noon I gave up trying to work. I called my manager, Brad Richards, got his answering machine, and said, "Hey, Brad. This is Ben Dibbuk. I have some kind of virus or something so I'm going home. I should be better by tomorrow."
    I hadn't been free on the street before five on a workday in years. I went out to lunch with Cassius every now and then, but that was always with the idea of coming back to work.
    At first I walked toward our apartment because that's what I did every day. But somewhere around Forty-ninth Street I realized that