All I Did Was Shoot My Man by Walter Mosley

mahogany, the receptionist had prepared a badge with my name and picture on it. She was young, possibly Korean, and smiling.

    “Go down this hall, Mr. McGill,” she said, gesturing in case I was deaf or didn’t speak English, “and take the second elevator on your right.”

    The orange passageway was also spacious and bulged out in places where there were elevator doors. When I got to my destination I realized that there was no button to push.

    All that security and they were still ripped off for fifty-eight million dollars.

    I wondered if some member of the security force noted my smile.

    THERE WERE more hurdles to pass before I got to the modern antechamber with a solitary, rather aged receptionist and a tan couch. Needless to say I passed every barrier: like a flightless bug making his way into the interior of an insect-eating plant.

    There were no magazines or other distractions there, in what seemed like my own private waiting room; no clock or monitors, wall calendars or framed photographs of the gray-headed sentinel’s family. She, the hard-eyed receptionist, was white and wrinkled. She wore glasses and had not smiled in years. Behind her desk was a tan door, off center in a bare white wall.

    I sat for maybe three minutes before taking out my cell phone.

    This action caught my guard’s attention.

    I had no new messages.

    For a few moments I considered calling Aura and finally decided that this wasn’t the right environment to talk about lost love. But I had the phone in my hand and so I decided to call my daughter—why not?

    I began entering numbers.

    “No cell phone usage in the building,” the nameless picket said.

    I smiled, nodded, and brought the phone to my ear.

    “Hi, Dad,” she said after the third ring. She sounded a little out of breath.

    “Hey, doll.”

    “How are you?”

    “I was worried when you didn’t come home last night.”

    “I stayed at Gillian’s house. We had like a slumber party, five of us girls.”

    “ Was it fun?”

    “Yeah. Was there anything you needed to talk to me about?”

    “I’m sorry about your mother. She’s having a tough time.”

    “I know.”

    Somebody cleared his throat just then.

    I looked up to see a little guy in a light gray suit and a burgundy tie, not silk. He was wisp thin and had a mustache that was once black but had frosted over a bit. The invasion of white hairs was a subtle warning to the thatch on his head.

    “Mr. McGill,” he said.

    I held up a finger and said, “But you don’t have to worry about her, baby. I’ll make sure that she’s okay.”

    “I know you will, Dad.”

    “Talk to you later?”

    “Okay. Bye.”

    I folded the phone and pocketed it, stood up and realized that the little guy was still taller than I.

    “No cell phone use in the building,” he said.

    Had the receptionist called him? I didn’t hear her. Was there a special button under her desk expressly for cell phone emergencies?

    “Sorry,” I said.

    “I’ll have to ask you for your phone,” he said, holding out his left hand.

    “More than that,” I said. “You’ll have to take it.”

    The little white guy had bushy eyebrows that furrowed. There was no gray in them yet.

    “You’re here to see Miss Lowry?”

    So he hadn’t come for the phone.

    “Yes.”

    “My name is Alton Plimpton,” the man said. “I’m a general manager for Rutgers.”

    “ What’s that exactly?”

    “All senior receptionists answer to my office,” he said proudly.

    I could tell that he expected me to be very impressed.

    “And Miss Lowry?” I asked.

    “She’s not here and her supervisor is indisposed, so I came over to see if I could help.”

    “Miss Lowry doesn’t report to you?”

    “No.”

    “Does she work for your boss?”

    “Um . . . no.”

    “Then you can’t help.”

    “But she isn’t here.”

    I sat down.

    “I can’t think of any place I’d rather wait. What else could you do in a room like