Read Online The Man in My Basement by Walter Mosley - Free Book Online

tell you,” he interrupted, “that I have particular requests. I want to rent this cellar for sixty-five days, starting on July one. I will remain here for the whole time, and I expect no one to enter except for you. You will prepare and bring food and you will dispose of any materials that need disposing of. Everything else I need will be delivered two weeks before I am due to arrive. With that will come instructions for any construction necessary.”
    “So you want me to be your cook and butler?”
    “Not exactly, but that’s close enough to the truth.”
    “I’m sorry, Mr. Bennet, but —”
    “I will pay all expenses, plus seven hundred and fifty dollars a day.”
    The math stopped me in my tracks. Zero times, five times, seven times. “Forty-eight thousand seven hundred fifty dollars,” I said.
    Anniston Bennet smiled. Math done right seemed to please him.
    He was uncomfortable in the basement, however.
    “Let’s go back up,” he said, leading the way up the stairs.
    I didn’t understand how he could be so anxious to rent that room if he couldn’t bear five minutes there.
    Back in the breakfast room, he regained his composure.
    “I will give you eight thousand five hundred right now as a deposit and then on June fifteen you will receive what paraphernalia I will need for my recluse. You will follow any instructions I have given, and then I will arrive at midnight of June thirty. At that time, after I have inspected the work, I will give you twenty thousand dollars, plus another five for expenses. Sixty-five days later I will give you the balance. All moneys will be in cash.”
    Tiny shafts of sunlight shone on Bennet’s head and his small hands, which were folded on the table in front of him. He was unchanged by the light. I realized that the insecurity and friendliness he’d shown on our first meeting were an act.
    “Man so cold,” my uncle Brent would say of evil white men, “that he could take a bath in ice water and still take his whiskey on the rocks.”
    “Well?” Bennet asked.
    “What if…” I stalled. “What if I just take your money and then say I didn’t?”
    The smile this time was a memory of some previous event. “In my experience, Mr. Blakey, people rarely renege on their promises. It’s always easier to keep your word than to enter into lies or intrigue.”
    Looking back on it I should have been scared by his words, but instead I was confused. I wondered what point of view could see honesty as the stronger virtue in a world I knew was full of cheating and lies. Didn’t they lie in commercials on TV and ads in newspapers? Didn’t politicians lie about what they’ve done and what they’re about to do? Clarance lied all the time to his wife, and he had more girlfriends than I did.
    But then I thought about Narciss and how the truth had been so easy with her.
    “You say you’re going to lie to the government, not tell them about the money,” I said.
    “The government isn’t real,” he replied. He might have been talking about Santa Claus or God. “I don’t owe anything to anyone who in themselves are lies and liars.”
    Talking to the white man made me very nervous. There were all these thoughts in my head. Thoughts about love and lies and money. Especially money. Money and the mortgage and food and work. I had been calling around about jobs for days, but no one wanted to hire me except for a McDonald’s out on the highway and the plastics factory in Riverhead. But those jobs were part-time and minimum wage. No way I could pay my bills with that.
    “Why did you come to me, Mr. Bennet? Of all the places out here, how did you choose my house?”
    “I had an associate of mine question Teddy Odett. My friend was looking for a place that I could go. He knew my requirements and asked Odett and also Minder at the bank in town what my best options were. As you know you can’t find a job around here and your mortgage is in arrears. My offer settles your problems and gives me