The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey - By Walter Mosley Page 0,77
her head to regard him.
“You are my girl, Robyn. Everything I have is yours. Everything. Do you understand me?”
She took his hand and squeezed it.
“How do you feel when I tell you about that man?” she asked.
“That I would kill him if ever I saw his face.”
“I only ever told you about it.”
While they were eating takeout Chinese for dinner a hard knock came on the door.
“Who is it?” Robyn asked while Ptolemy came up behind her, thinking about his pistol.
“Police.”
Robyn opened the door.
Two Negro policemen stood there, wearing uniforms and stern frowns.
“Yes, Officer?” Robyn asked.
“Can we come in?” one of the policemen asked. He was shorter, maybe five ten, and lighter-skinned. A plastic rectangle on the left side of his chest said ARNOLD.
“What for?” asked Ptolemy. His throat was filled with phlegm and so he coughed twice.
When the old man spoke up, Robyn moved back, giving him the lead.
“There was a man attacked in front of your apartment building a few days ago,” Officer Arnold said. “Darryl Pride. He was seriously hurt, hospitalized, and we’re here investigating the assault.”
That was the first time since his coma receded that Ptolemy felt his mind slip. He was confused for a moment, just a moment. He didn’t understand the words, or where he was, or why people were complaining.
He tried to speak but the words were caught in his mind, and then these words, his own thoughts, were incomprehensible to him.
“Sir?” the officer named Arnold said.
Ptolemy didn’t answer, didn’t know what to say.
“Papa Grey?” Robyn said, and the wheels started turning again.
“Darryl Pride?” he asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“I don’t know the name but do he have a girlfriend name of Melinda Hogarth?”
“That’s him, sir.”
“You are a very polite young man. It’s nice when a policeman is civil.”
Officer Arnold smiled.
“You young men come on in,” Ptolemy said, once again master of his own mind.
The officers, Arnold and Thompkins, sat on the couch while Ptolemy took the folding stool and Robyn brought out a chair from the kitchen.
“Ms. Hogarth says that you were involved in Mr. Pride’s beating,” Arnold was saying.
“Did she tell ya that she been muggin’ me on the street for three years? Did she tell ya that she pushed her way in this house an’ stoled all the money outta my spendin’ can an’ slapped me to the ground an’ here I’m ninety-one year old?”
“We’re not here about that,” Officer Thompkins said. He had a baby face and dark skin that was so smooth, it could have been called perfect.
“When my great-grandniece come to stay wit’ me, she told that heifer that she bettah not be robbin’ me no mo’,” Ptolemy said. “That’s when she turned to this man Pride. Imagine that. A man named for self-respect tellin’ me I got to pay up.”
The officers looked at each other.
“He stole from you?”
“No, sir. No, he did not. He told me that I should pay, but I told him that I would call the cops.”
“He says that you were involved in his beating,” Arnold repeated.
“Look at me, Officer. Look at me. How’m I gonna beat up a man the size of a icebox? I might could shoot him if I owned a gun. I might’a would’a shot him if I did. But all I said was that I didn’t have no money and that we was gonna go to the cops if they do anything else. He’s afraid’a the cops. Him and Melinda both dope fiends. Both of ’em.”
“So you deny that you had anything to do with Pride’s beating?” Thompkins asked.
Ptolemy did not answer.
“Did you see him get beaten?” Thompkins pressed.
“No, sir.”
“Did you, ma’am?” Thompkins asked, turning to Robyn.
“I don’t even know who you talkin’ ’bout,” she said. “Papa Grey had some trouble with that bitch, but I gave her the news.”
“We ...” Arnold said. “We heard that there was another family member taking care of Mr. Grey.”
“No. Just me.”
“Ms. Hogarth said that there was a young man,” Arnold said. “She claimed that he beat her and that another man, a heavyset guy, and a young woman had beaten her.”
“Damn,” Robyn said. “She been beat by just about everybody on the block accordin’ to her.”
Officer Arnold couldn’t help but smile.
“Will you please answer the question?”
“You didn’t ask no question. You just said that somebody said somethin’.”
“Do you know of anyone else taking care of your uncle?”
“There’s Reggie Brown.”
Ptolemy’s heart lurched in his chest when Robyn uttered that name.