All I Did Was Shoot My Man Read Online Free PDF

talking to Twill, my youngest and favorite child. We might not have been related by blood, but Twilliam, at the tender age of eighteen, had committed more crimes, and more lucrative ones, than most hoodlums and thieves. I had him in tow as a detective-in-training at my offices, but it was a toss-up if I could save him from his own brilliant, if bent, ways.

    “Hey, Pops,” Twill said.

    He was wearing faded jeans and a graying but still white T-shirt, the appropriate attire for a young man helping his older brother move out of the house. Twill was always appropriately dressed for any occasion.

    “ What’s up, boy?” I asked.

    “Everybody’s up there workin’,” he said. “Bulldog and Taty, Shelly, and even Mardi dropped by. Moms ain’t too happy about it though.”

    “Her baby’s moving out,” I explained.

    “I think it’s more than that.”

    “ What do you mean?”

    “She’s drinkin’ pretty hard.”

    I sighed. That had been Katrina’s MO for some time. At first it was just when she’d sneak out with one of her boyfriends—once or twice a week. She’d come home a little tipsy, happy not sloppy. But lately she’d been drinking every day.

    “ Why’ont you go upstairs and help your brother, Twill? I’ll be there in a minute.”

    “You got it,” the young man said. He hopped out of the passenger’s seat and headed for the front door to our building.

    “That’s some kid you got there,” Hush said.

    “He’ll be a helluva man if he survives his own criminal genius.”

    “I wouldn’t want to be the one who stood in his way.”

    Twill had called Hush to come help in the move. He had the number from an emergency list I’d given him, because, despite his criminal proclivities, he was the most trustworthy member of the family.

    Hush had told Twill that he had to check his schedule and then called me to make sure it was okay. He knew that I might be uncomfortable having New York’s most successful assassin (albeit retired) carrying my son’s boxes from the eleventh floor to a moving van.

    I would have said yes anyway. Twill’s friendliness and generosity could not be suppressed.

    And I had an ulterior motive.

    “So?” I asked the killer.

    “She’s the kinda woman take your life and still you’d have a smile on your face.” He was talking about Tatyana Baranovich, the woman Dimitri was moving out to live with. She was from Belarus and would give Twill a run for his money when it came to working the system while avoiding the consequences.

    “Tell me something I don’t know,” I said.

    “Until the end of the season all aphids are born female and pregnant.”

    “Something pertinent.”

    “She cares about your boy.”

    “You think she’s into anything?” I asked.

    Hush was deft and perceptive; he had to be. An assassin deals in absolutes rendered in shades of gray. One slight error could mean his demise.

    “I don’t know if she is right now,” he said, “but she will be. No question about that.”

    “Yeah,” I said with another world-weary sigh. “I know.”

    “You want me to kill her?” It was a joke. But if I had said yes, Tatyana wouldn’t have seen another week.

    “I’ll get back to you on that,” I said.

    I patted the murderer’s shoulder and headed for the front door.

    7

    KATRINA AND I had lived in that apartment for more than twenty years. Most days I walked the ten flights to the eleventh floor. That was both my Buddhist and boxing training.

    The Buddhists tell you that you have to be mindful of every act, and acquiescence, in your life. They say that life, everything you do and don’t do, is an action that must be brought into the light of consciousness.

    For the boxer it’s simpler—all you have to do is keep in shape.

    So I rushed up the hundred and forty steps, looking around at nooks and crannies that I did and did not recognize while concentrating on the increased intensity of my only slightly fevered breathing.

    THE DOOR