Walter Mosley_Leonid McGill_01 Read Online Free PDF Page B

middle school property.
    “I got the idea from something you said, Dad,” he’d told me when we got home from the police station after his initial arrest.
    “From me?”
    “You were always sayin’ how people in Africa and other places didn’t have the tools they needed to compete, so I found out about the School Supply Fund and set up a fake office to sell computers to them.”
    “How much property did you move?” I asked. The boy had been arrested for stealing five computers and three microscopes.
    “A lot,” young Twill answered.
    He’d organized a group of adolescent thieves at eleven schools, kids that he’d met through his sister’s Leadership Camp the previous summer. They had cleared over fifteen thousand dollars and still gave the NGO a great deal.
    Luckily the authorities didn’t have enough of an imagination to delve into the depths of Twilliam’s crimes. But I was put on notice to keep him out of trouble.
    When I looked up, the sun was setting. Twill always gave me both worry and wonderment. He was the only person I’d known who met me halfway in life.
     
     
     
    AT ABOUT 8:30 I walked across from the Tesla to the East Side and took a subway up to Eighty-sixth Street. From Lexington I walked two blocks north, and east for three. There I came to the Crenshaw, an exclusive little hotel that catered to an upscale clientele.
    The doorman, clad in a red coat and black trousers, gave me a look like Juliet had at Berg, Lewis & Takayama. I smiled as pleasantly as I could, walked past him, and made my way to the bar. It was a dark room of red lampshades and dark-stained wood. I was half an hour early but Ambrose was already there at a small round table near the high bar. He was seated in a spindly chair with his hands clasped on his lap. I remember thinking that he was just sitting there, not reading a newspaper or a book, not searching his BlackBerry for e-mails and text messages. He wore a dark-gray suit with a bright-red vest and a checkered blue-and-white ascot. His glass frames were small and rectangular, and his blue, blue eyes didn’t miss a thing.
    “Mr. McGill,” he said through a meaningless smile. “Have a seat.”
    He gestured at a sturdier chair across from him.
    I sat, putting an elbow on my left knee and a palm on my right. I took that position to let Thurman know that I meant to get down to business.
    “Wonderful weather, isn’t it?” he said. “They talk about global warming but every year seems more moderate than the last, cooler and more habitable.”
    “Why does your client want these names?” I said.
    Ambrose swiveled his head slowly, making sure that no one was listening.
    “Why does anybody want anything?” he asked, moving his shoulders in a kind of bound-up shrug.
    “I do it for the money,” I said. “But not if it causes trouble for somebody who doesn’t deserve it.”
    Ambrose smiled.
    “I’m not joking with you, man,” I said. “I need to know what you’re going to use this information for.”
    Thurman was in his forties but looked older. He was bulbous, with a receding hairline and pudgy, pale hands. He used his little mitts to pull down the Ben Franklin spectacles, peering over the frames at me through the gloom of the posh bar.
    “I was told that you were the kind of man who did a job with no questions asked,” he said.
    “Who told you that?”
    “It doesn’t matter who it was. What matters is that I seem to have been misinformed.”
    “I used to be a heartless kind of guy, Mr. Thurman,” I said. “If a job needed me to be cold-blooded, cruel, or blind I was willing to oblige. But today I need to know what you plan to do with what I give you.”
    “Are you trying to up your remuneration?” he asked, missing the honesty in my tone.
    “Not really.”
    Thurman pushed his foppish glasses up and sat back in his chair. Considering me, he took in a deep breath through his nostrils.
    “A person, the name doesn’t matter, had a son who died tragically