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Authors: Walter Mosley
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asked.
“Like that red capsule,” Mardi said, “undefined. The father’s name is Nathan. He lives in a retirement community, also downtown. He was a welder in the Merchant Marines for forty-six years. There’s no record of a divorce or separation.”
Mardi stopped reading the screen and looked up, allowing me to see in the deep well of her eyes that my sorrow was falling away.
“Shawna is a mystery,” she said.
“Go on.”
“At the age of sixteen she married Private First Class Richard Campbell. Three months later they divorced, citing irreconcilable differences. In the last seven years I could find records about three children she had but there might have been more.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Her sister wrote her a recommendation to an infant daycare center six months ago. None of the three children would have been that young, and it wasn’t an employment rec.”
“Got it.”
“Shawna’s last known address was a women’s shelter on Eighteenth Street. The last place she worked was Beatrice Hair Design on Flatbush in Brooklyn. But that was four years ago.
“Both sisters dropped out of high school. Tally too.”
I leaned forward, lacing my fingers and resting my elbows on Mardi’s desk.
Listening to the thumbnail sketches, I was aware of Aura slipping out of my consciousness like a small boat left untethered at the shore.
A man is defined by the work he does, my father told me over and over again. If he works for the corporation, then he is the corporation. If he works for the people, then he is the people.
Mardi was saying something about a small school in Rhode Island that Chrystal had attended. She’d gotten her GED and made it to college.
And don’t you go thinking that you’re unique, my father went on to say, time after time. That you have defined yourself. It’s the city that has made you. The streets and streetcars, the police and the bankers. You aren’t anything more than an ant to them, and they are the kings and queens, tunnels and mounds that keep you from what you could be. They have made you into a hive dweller.
“Mr. McGill?” Mardi was asking.
“Yeah, babe?”
She always smiled when I said those two words.
“You drifted off.”
“What about Twill?” I asked.
“Huh? What about him?”
“If I asked you to give me a brief interpretation of him, what would you tell me?”
The wan girl frowned and pulled her head back a quarter inch.
“I’m not asking you for secrets,” I said. “I don’t want to get into his business, at least not through you. I want to know how you would describe him if somebody were to ask.”
“Why?” She put the word up like a storm trooper’s see-through shield.
“You know what the most important thing is that a PI has to know?” I asked.
“What?”
“That everybody knows things he doesn’t. Everybody sees things that he’s missed. Everybody. If he only relies on his own mind and memory and point of view he will never get a leg up.”
“But what if they lie to you?” Mardi asked. “Like Shawna did?”
“The only complete lie is that which goes unsaid and unseen,” I said. “Shawna spoke a lie, but what she showed me—her face and style—that was a truth I had to decipher. That’s why not everybody can do what I do.”
Mardi eyed me with a feeling akin to suspicion. I was telling her the truth, but there was something that she was missing. She knew this but nothing more.
Under that scrutinizing gaze I remembered that this girl was actually a woman who had decided to murder the man she thought was her father in order to save her sister from his predation.
“It’s like Achilles,” she said suddenly, the words leaping from her mouth.
“What is?”
“Twill,” she said. “He’s like an old-time hero. Beowulf and Achilles and Gilgamesh were just men, but they were so perfect that no one believed it. And Twill is even better.”
“How’s that?” I asked.
“Because he doesn’t think that he’s
“Like that red capsule,” Mardi said, “undefined. The father’s name is Nathan. He lives in a retirement community, also downtown. He was a welder in the Merchant Marines for forty-six years. There’s no record of a divorce or separation.”
Mardi stopped reading the screen and looked up, allowing me to see in the deep well of her eyes that my sorrow was falling away.
“Shawna is a mystery,” she said.
“Go on.”
“At the age of sixteen she married Private First Class Richard Campbell. Three months later they divorced, citing irreconcilable differences. In the last seven years I could find records about three children she had but there might have been more.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Her sister wrote her a recommendation to an infant daycare center six months ago. None of the three children would have been that young, and it wasn’t an employment rec.”
“Got it.”
“Shawna’s last known address was a women’s shelter on Eighteenth Street. The last place she worked was Beatrice Hair Design on Flatbush in Brooklyn. But that was four years ago.
“Both sisters dropped out of high school. Tally too.”
I leaned forward, lacing my fingers and resting my elbows on Mardi’s desk.
Listening to the thumbnail sketches, I was aware of Aura slipping out of my consciousness like a small boat left untethered at the shore.
A man is defined by the work he does, my father told me over and over again. If he works for the corporation, then he is the corporation. If he works for the people, then he is the people.
Mardi was saying something about a small school in Rhode Island that Chrystal had attended. She’d gotten her GED and made it to college.
And don’t you go thinking that you’re unique, my father went on to say, time after time. That you have defined yourself. It’s the city that has made you. The streets and streetcars, the police and the bankers. You aren’t anything more than an ant to them, and they are the kings and queens, tunnels and mounds that keep you from what you could be. They have made you into a hive dweller.
“Mr. McGill?” Mardi was asking.
“Yeah, babe?”
She always smiled when I said those two words.
“You drifted off.”
“What about Twill?” I asked.
“Huh? What about him?”
“If I asked you to give me a brief interpretation of him, what would you tell me?”
The wan girl frowned and pulled her head back a quarter inch.
“I’m not asking you for secrets,” I said. “I don’t want to get into his business, at least not through you. I want to know how you would describe him if somebody were to ask.”
“Why?” She put the word up like a storm trooper’s see-through shield.
“You know what the most important thing is that a PI has to know?” I asked.
“What?”
“That everybody knows things he doesn’t. Everybody sees things that he’s missed. Everybody. If he only relies on his own mind and memory and point of view he will never get a leg up.”
“But what if they lie to you?” Mardi asked. “Like Shawna did?”
“The only complete lie is that which goes unsaid and unseen,” I said. “Shawna spoke a lie, but what she showed me—her face and style—that was a truth I had to decipher. That’s why not everybody can do what I do.”
Mardi eyed me with a feeling akin to suspicion. I was telling her the truth, but there was something that she was missing. She knew this but nothing more.
Under that scrutinizing gaze I remembered that this girl was actually a woman who had decided to murder the man she thought was her father in order to save her sister from his predation.
“It’s like Achilles,” she said suddenly, the words leaping from her mouth.
“What is?”
“Twill,” she said. “He’s like an old-time hero. Beowulf and Achilles and Gilgamesh were just men, but they were so perfect that no one believed it. And Twill is even better.”
“How’s that?” I asked.
“Because he doesn’t think that he’s
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