The Man in My Basement by Walter Mosley Page B

and the cheap bottles of whiskey in the pantry, where I first heard Bethany’s cries of passion and where my parents murmured deep secrets that made me feel at ease.
     
     
     

• 14 •
     
     
    “L et’s just say…” Anniston Bennet was saying. I had brought my cheap whiskey and two squat glasses that had been on the shelf since before my mother could remember. I was sitting on the stairs and he had pulled out his red chair to join me. “…that I’m a criminal wishing to pay for my crimes.”
    “I don’t get it,” I said. “Why don’t you just turn yourself in to the police if you want to go to jail?”
    “I don’t recognize any organized form of law enforcement, or government for that matter, as valid,” he stated simply. He might have been a prime minister or anarchist. He could have even been some advanced form of alien life, looking down on humanity as we might look on a mob of ants. “But even if I did, there is no crime that I could be tried for in this country. Well, maybe some laws having to do with money. But I would never allow the hypocrites on our benches to stand judgment over me.”
    “I still don’t get it,” I said, downing my glass in frustration and refilling it with the gratitude of a full bottle. “What does my basement have to do with all that? What do I have to do with it?”
    “Everything about us is random,” Bennet said. “Maybe the universe has laws, but they aren’t concerned about you or me or the people we touch. We’re just mistakes who got up and walked off. The only things that are certain are death and the will to survive…”
    He was a tiny man talking as if he were a giant. But he was convincing too.
    “…We make our own victories and our own mistakes,” he said, and for a moment there was a sad little chink in his armor of certainty. “There is no justice unless the judged agree. Without understanding and repentance there can only be revenge.” He reached over to the stair next to me and refilled both our glasses.
    “What are you talking about, Mr. Bennet? What kind of crime and justice and revenge do you mean?”
    “The worst,” he said. “You think of the worst crime you can imagine and then make it worse. And then you will have a glimmer of what I have done.”
    The whiskey was having an effect on both of us. My vision was skewed and the tone in his voice tended toward humanity.
    “I don’t need to know this,” I said. “I don’t need to be a part of it.”
    “But I paid you.”
    “To rent my basement, not to start a private prison. Damn, man. I don’t know you. The police could come down here and find you all locked up. They could get me on kidnapping and who knows what else? No. No.”
    “Have you spent my money?” Bennet asked.
    “I’ll give you back what I have and then repay the rest.”
    “You need money, Charles. Why not take it when you can?”
    “What do you know about me? What do you know about what I need?”
    “Everything.” He smiled and nodded.
    “Like what?”
    “I know where you went to high school and who your friends were. Clarance and Ricky, who you also call Cat. I know that you worked at Harbor Savings and that you embezzled four hundred and thirty dollars from your drawer…”
    Whiskey softened the blow. I wondered if it was part of Bennet’s plan to get me drunk.
    “…The bank president, who liked you at first, felt betrayed, and blacklisted you among the town business community. Your mother and father are dead and no one else in your family is much interested in your well-being. You drink too much and you cried for five days after your mother’s death. You had three years at Long Island City College. But you dropped out, didn’t you? I don’t know why you left. You had passing grades.” Bennet peered at me with a Milquetoast expression on his face. “You’re broke, you don’t have a job, and there’s a thirty-thousand-dollar mortgage hanging over your head that might lose your line their