Read Online Known to Evil by Walter Mosley - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Walter Mosley
Tags: Fiction, General, detective, Suspense, Mystery & Detective, Suspense fiction, Mystery, Private Investigators, Domestic Fiction, Fiction - Mystery, Mystery & Detective - General, New York, New York (State), New York (N.Y.), Mystery And Suspense Fiction, Political corruption
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been covered by cowhide-colored contacts to make his image complete.
The synthetic eyes looked me over, saw my big scarred hands and slumped, strong shoulders. He beheld in me the immovable object--though he might not have known the physics term. I saw in his fake eyes that he had been stopped before.
"I almost run you down, man," he said, allowing a constrained belligerence to express his ire.
I just looked at him. Any word I said would have led to a fight, so I left it up to him. I was ready to go to war--I almost always am. Combat was how I made it through childhood; it was what kept me alive.
The young man in leather gauged me.
Finally he said, "Fuck you," and walked around. After a few moments I went on my way, thinking that he was smarter than me.
He knew when to avoid an obstruction in the road.
15
I t was three o'clock when I reached the front door of my apartment building--3:01, to be exact.
The hyena yipped in my yellow pocket. That was Detective Kitteridge, of course. I was supposed to be at his office. I guess he expected me to answer his call. But I didn't have the sense of the city fop who knew to skirt around a threat when he saw one.
I ignored the call--creating at least a temporary antagonist by my inaction.
MY LIFE IS A series of trials testing whether or not I am capable of maintaining my perceived place in the world. One of these perennial auditions is the staircase of my apartment building. I live on the eleventh floor. There are fourteen steps between each stage--one hundred forty little ascendancies. Unless it's late at night I almost always walk up.
I take the stairs at a fair clip.
The first four floors are no problem. I'm breathing at a good pace between five and eight. It's only the last two flights that are a real strain. The only reason I walk up is for those final twenty-eight steps. If I'm not breathing hard by then I go faster the next time. When I'm no longer able to make that run I'll know it's time to quit the game.
The stairs are not my only test. There's the heavy bag at Gordo's Gym, and how frightened I get, or not, when a man pulls a gun on me. There's sitting in the same room with Hush, who, if he were to have put a notch in his gun for every man he'd killed, would have whittled off the entire handle in the first half of his career.
Life is a test, and the final grade is always an F.
THAT YEAR I HAD a black key made for the front door. Except for the color it looked like a regular key, but it also contained an electronic component. The physical device did indeed turn a mechanical lock, but the electronics flipped another switch throwing back a bolt that came up through the floor. The door itself was reinforced with a titanium plate.
In a drawer in my office I had a few key rings that had masters for almost every lock in New York City. And for those that were "unique" I had illegal masters that were able to adjust to the cylinders they encountered.
Just because I was aware of dangers that other people were ignorant of didn't make me paranoid. I didn't feel bad about having the locks on my front door changed at least once a year.
My enemies would have to work to get at me or mine.
BECAUSE THE LOCK IS always new it didn't make much noise. I was halfway down the hall to the dining room when I heard the voices.
It was a man and Katrina speaking in normal tones. There was no urgency or conflict there--no feeling.
"Dimitri?" Katrina called. "Dimitri, is that you?"
"It's me, Katrina," I said and then I entered through the open door.
My wife was sitting at her end of the rustic hickory-wood dining table and a man somewhere in his late thirties was sitting on the side, a place away from her. They both had teacups in front of them.
He was a brown man with straight dark hair and a small, Caucasian nose. His face was too boyish to be called handsome or plain. His eyes were brown also and more mature than the rest of his physiognomy.
"Leonid," my wife said.
She stood and
The synthetic eyes looked me over, saw my big scarred hands and slumped, strong shoulders. He beheld in me the immovable object--though he might not have known the physics term. I saw in his fake eyes that he had been stopped before.
"I almost run you down, man," he said, allowing a constrained belligerence to express his ire.
I just looked at him. Any word I said would have led to a fight, so I left it up to him. I was ready to go to war--I almost always am. Combat was how I made it through childhood; it was what kept me alive.
The young man in leather gauged me.
Finally he said, "Fuck you," and walked around. After a few moments I went on my way, thinking that he was smarter than me.
He knew when to avoid an obstruction in the road.
15
I t was three o'clock when I reached the front door of my apartment building--3:01, to be exact.
The hyena yipped in my yellow pocket. That was Detective Kitteridge, of course. I was supposed to be at his office. I guess he expected me to answer his call. But I didn't have the sense of the city fop who knew to skirt around a threat when he saw one.
I ignored the call--creating at least a temporary antagonist by my inaction.
MY LIFE IS A series of trials testing whether or not I am capable of maintaining my perceived place in the world. One of these perennial auditions is the staircase of my apartment building. I live on the eleventh floor. There are fourteen steps between each stage--one hundred forty little ascendancies. Unless it's late at night I almost always walk up.
I take the stairs at a fair clip.
The first four floors are no problem. I'm breathing at a good pace between five and eight. It's only the last two flights that are a real strain. The only reason I walk up is for those final twenty-eight steps. If I'm not breathing hard by then I go faster the next time. When I'm no longer able to make that run I'll know it's time to quit the game.
The stairs are not my only test. There's the heavy bag at Gordo's Gym, and how frightened I get, or not, when a man pulls a gun on me. There's sitting in the same room with Hush, who, if he were to have put a notch in his gun for every man he'd killed, would have whittled off the entire handle in the first half of his career.
Life is a test, and the final grade is always an F.
THAT YEAR I HAD a black key made for the front door. Except for the color it looked like a regular key, but it also contained an electronic component. The physical device did indeed turn a mechanical lock, but the electronics flipped another switch throwing back a bolt that came up through the floor. The door itself was reinforced with a titanium plate.
In a drawer in my office I had a few key rings that had masters for almost every lock in New York City. And for those that were "unique" I had illegal masters that were able to adjust to the cylinders they encountered.
Just because I was aware of dangers that other people were ignorant of didn't make me paranoid. I didn't feel bad about having the locks on my front door changed at least once a year.
My enemies would have to work to get at me or mine.
BECAUSE THE LOCK IS always new it didn't make much noise. I was halfway down the hall to the dining room when I heard the voices.
It was a man and Katrina speaking in normal tones. There was no urgency or conflict there--no feeling.
"Dimitri?" Katrina called. "Dimitri, is that you?"
"It's me, Katrina," I said and then I entered through the open door.
My wife was sitting at her end of the rustic hickory-wood dining table and a man somewhere in his late thirties was sitting on the side, a place away from her. They both had teacups in front of them.
He was a brown man with straight dark hair and a small, Caucasian nose. His face was too boyish to be called handsome or plain. His eyes were brown also and more mature than the rest of his physiognomy.
"Leonid," my wife said.
She stood and
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