Trouble Is What I Do

Book 0: Leonid McGill

by Walter Mosley

Genres: African American Mystery & Detective; Private Investigators; Crime Fiction

Synopsis

From innovative bestselling novelist Walter Mosley comes the return of the beloved Leonid McGill detective series featuring a morally ambiguous P.I. who solves crimes and whose victims are society’s most downtrodden.

Leonid McGill’s spent a lifetime building up his reputation in the New York investigative scene. His seemingly infallible instinct and inside knowledge of the crime world make him the ideal man to help when Phillip Worry comes knocking.

Phillip “Catfish” Worry is a 92-year-old Mississippi bluesman who needs Leonid’s help with a simple task: deliver a letter revealing the black lineage of a wealthy heiress and her corrupt father. Unsurprisingly, the opportunity to do a simple favor while shocking the prevailing elite is too much for Leonid to resist.

But when a famed and feared assassin puts a hit on Catfish, Leonid has no choice but to confront the ghost of his own felonious past. Working to protect his client, and his own family, Leonid must reach the heiress on the eve of her wedding before her powerful father kills those who hold their family’s secret.

Joined by a team of young and tough aspiring investigators, Leonid must gain the trust of wary socialites, outsmart vengeful thugs, and, above all, serve the truth—no matter the cost.

Release date: February 25, 2020

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Print pages: 176

Sample

 

“Mr. McGill?” Mardi Bitterman said over the intercom that connects her desk at the front of our office complex to mine at the far end.

I lease a very large office space, but as of yet only Mardi and sometimes my son Twill work there with me. She’s the detective agency’s secretary-receptionist and also the human barometer that helps maintain my moral bearings in a world where sin is reflex and kindness a quick death. Mardi has firsthand experience with the evil that men visit upon children and absolutely no fear of losing her own life or witnessing the death of someone who deserves it. In my opinion she’s a saint; in hers, I and my son are saviors.

Twill is another thing altogether. Though he also understands the rising tide of depravity and violence, my son is like a futuristic fish in those waters, a sleek metallic shark evolved beyond other species. He is the youngest of the three children who call me father. My wife claims that he’s mine, but I know that only the eldest boy, Dimitri, is of my blood. Not that I mind. I love them all.

“Yes, Mardi?” I said into the speaker box.

“There are people here to see you,” she said softly. “Shall I bring them back?”

“Sure.”

We had a simplistic code system. The first sentence was plain fact, the second phrase for me to decipher. For instance: If she asked if these people had an appointment, I’d know that it was an official visitation, most likely the police. If she asked, “Should I make an appointment?” I’d know that they might be dangerous and I should look through the video monitor that watched over her desk. From there, I could assess any threat.

But the offer to walk them back meant that these potential clients were all right and I should treat them as such.

I took the snub-nosed .38 from my pencil drawer and pocketed it. Mardi’s intuition of human nature and potential was better than mine—but she wasn’t infallible.

Opening the door to my office, I looked down the triple-wide hallway that was flanked by six desks on either side. One day I’d run a real detective agency—I had the seats. But that morning, there was only Twill standing midway down the hall at his laptop podium. He wore dark navy pants and a sky-blue collarless jacket. His shirt was pink.

Long and handsome, slender and strong, my black-skinned eighteen-year-old son was studying the computer screen, looking for blowback on one of his misadventures, material for his next scam, or maybe even one of the cases I’d asked him to peruse.

Twill noticed me standing sentry and turned just in time to see pale-skinned and slight Mardi coming through the inner door that connected to her receptionist’s area. Immediately in her wake came a tall young man carrying a battered guitar case. He was a few years older than Twill. Behind the youth, a senior citizen trundled lightly. The young man had chocolate-brown skin. His elder was what they called redbone back in the day. The expression had lately come back into usage. It described a light-skinned Negro. They both wore new blue jeans, checkered blue work shirts, and hard leather shoes that had counted more miles than a Fitbit could imagine.

The older gentleman carried a rather incongruous aluminum briefcase; this, I decided, contained the reason for their impromptu visit. Maybe they were sharecroppers on holiday, decked out in their party clothes and laden with the weight of some legal entanglement that required a big-city specialist who was brown of skin and ready to rumble.

As the trio passed, Twill moved out into the aisle, no doubt to make sure that no trouble accompanied the men. Mardi placed a hand on my son-protector’s arm, whispered a word or two, and he stood back.

The older man, a few inches taller than my five foot five and five-eighths inches, had taken the lead. He stopped in front of me. I’d almost hit sixty on my last birthday. My father had twenty years on that. The man facing me was hale and healthy, but he could have been my father’s father—if he started young.

I held out a hand and said, “Leonid McGill.”

He reached out and drawled, “I were born Philip Worry, but they been callin’ me Catfish since 1941. This here is my great-great-grandson Lamont Richards.”

“Pleased to meet you,” the younger obliged.

The descendant and I shook hands. He was about six foot and my walking-around weight, which is 182 pounds. I’m a light heavyweight in pounds and muscle, intentions and training.

“Pleased to meet you, Lamont, Catfish. Why don’t you two come on in and take a seat.” Mardi was turning to go back to her post when I added, “You too, Mardi. I’d like you to take notes.”

The child of misery grinned, following the men into the office.

  

I had to move boxes of files off a couple of chairs to get everybody seated. I like writing down how I solve, resolve, or fail at the jobs I’ve taken on. And writing by hand I seem to remember better than when entering data on a computer screen.

As the men and Mardi claimed blue visitors’ chairs, I lowered into my swivel seat. Through the window behind me, there on the seventy-second floor of the Tesla Building, you could see all the way to Wall Street and the fading memory of the Twin Towers.

“You got a nice office here, Mr. McGill,” Catfish complimented. His left eye was dead and fogged over. Oddly, this infirmity gave off an air of inner ecstasy. There was a sleek scar under the blind eye; maybe that wound had something to do with its demise.

“You got a good grip too,” he added. “You ever work on a farm?”

“My father’s people were sharecroppers. Me—I get it from the boxing gym.”

“You box?” the great-great-grandson asked.

“Not professionally. Not anymore. But I can throw haymakers when I have to. You got a strong hand too, Lamont.”

“I string tennis rackets for white people at the country club an’ play guitar behind C-Paw when I can.”

Mardi had taken up the notebook and pencil kept next to the in-box. She jotted our first words down.

“What can I do for you men?” I asked.

“I hear you the kind’a brothah-man been on both sides’a the line,” Catfish offered.

“Who told you that?”

“Pinky Eckles.”

A chill ran from the back of my neck down through my left foot.

“Is this Pinky somehow related to a man named Ernie Eckles?”

“She birthed him.”

  

My mind ranged back over a decade earlier. Ernie Eckles was a unique individual in my experience, and I have met all kinds of men and women, from tragic billionaires to serial killers swathed in the light of innocence.

Ernie was known in certain circles as the Mississippi Assassin—and that was not the name of a professional wrestler. He was of average height and normal build, with medium-brown skin. He was as country as a bale of cotton on an unwilling child’s back. His price when I knew him was seven thousand seven hundred and forty-eight dollars to kill anyone, anywhere in North America. This price covered all of Ernie’s expenses, from the bus ticket down to the cost of three bullets.

Ernie could hide naked in a snowstorm or talk a blushing bride out of her virginity on her wedding day—at least that’s how the stories have it. He never missed, never failed—that much was fact. If he had your name scribbled on the back of his bus ticket, you were as good as dead.

Along the way, the Mississippi Assassin had been hired to kill a young Brooklynite named Patrice Sandoval. Sandoval had been fingered as the mastermind of the hijacking of six tons of marijuana that had been grown, processed, and packaged by Merle Underman, a son of Texas so far back that his ancestors lived there when that state was a sovereign nation.

Eckles had been engaged on a Monday evening, so, after consulting a Greyhound bus schedule, I put him at Port Authority by Wednesday—late afternoon. He had twenty-four hours to shoot Mr. Sandoval three times and get back on a bus home. That’s how it would have happened, except for the fact that the victim of the heist, Mr. Underman, was a boastful sort. He bragged to his lieutenant, Rexford Brothers, that Sandoval had an unscheduled meeting with the reaper called Eckles. Even that should have been fine, but Merle didn’t know that Brothers, working through a modern-day highwayman named Shorty Reeves, was the one behind the hijacking. Shorty took the truck down with a crew of two. When Shorty was told by Rexford that the blame would fall on Sandoval, the self-styled desperado told his accomplices that they were safe and could start spending their ill-gotten gains.

One of the crew, Phil Thomas, had recently made the acquaintance of a civilian named Minda Myles. Minda was a very religious young woman who wanted to save her lover’s soul. She implored him to warn Sandoval, saving the innocent man’s life and Phil’s afterlife.

Beatrice Fitz, Phil’s mom, was a bookie I knew. Phil went to her, and she called me. I owed Beatrice a favor, and so, without proper study, I agreed to take the job.

I’d never heard of Eckles, but I had friends who had. Once I knew what I was up against, I regretted saying yes to Bea, but even back then, when I was still mostly a crook, I had pride in my work and was known as a man of my word.

Beatrice gave me a general lowdown on Sandoval. I . . .