Legacy

“Don't send him outside,” Nia told me. “He asked for you by name.”

The man sitting beneath my daughter's fire-exit sign had both feet planted on a folder. He wore a clean, pressed shirt and a pair of shoes held together at one toe with black tape. His hair was nearly gone. The last time I had seen Leon Pryce, smoke had been coming off his jacket in the passenger seat of my car.

He raised his head. “You got older.”

“So did you.” I stayed beside the open office door. Nia had called me about a broken filing cabinet. I'd brought a screwdriver, which suddenly seemed like the stupidest object a man could hold. “Where have you been?”

“Places where your mother doesn't ask questions.”

“That's enough,” Nia cut in. She put a paper cup beside him, leaving the folder where it was. “If you need medical help, say that. If you need a lawyer, we can find you somebody. You don't get to come in here and start threatening my family.”

Leon gave her a tired, almost friendly look. “Your family found me first.”

My daughter turned to me. The folding tables behind her held boxes labeled with the names of people who had agreed to tell her project about working in our warehouses. One box had nothing on it but a woman's first name. Nia had refused to put company letterhead on the consent forms. I'd called that an unnecessary distinction and she'd stopped inviting me to the meetings.

“Let us have a minute,” I told her.

“This is my office.”

“I'm aware of that.”

“Then don't start by sending me out of it.”

Leon moved his feet, dragging the folder toward the chair. “You sure she's yours?”

“She is. Unfortunately, she also knows it.”

Nia didn't laugh. She took the screwdriver out of my hand and set it on the filing cabinet. “I'll be at that desk. You can talk at the table. I don't record people without permission, and I'm not starting now.”

I pulled out a chair far enough to leave a clear way to the door. Leon watched me do it. His left hand shook when he picked up the water, but he kept the cup from spilling.

“What do you want?”

“I want somebody to stop knocking on my door.”

“Who's knocking?”

“The man who says he works for the people who own my building. Then the man who says he doesn't work for anybody. Then somebody follows me to the grocery store.” He wet his mouth. “I thought you might know how that goes.”

“If you're being threatened, tell the police.”

“Is that what you did? When you wanted a man scared, you called the police?”

I let the question sit. Nia was opening a drawer at her desk, slower than she needed to. There wasn't a room in that small office where she couldn't hear us.

“I'm not asking you to protect what I did.”

“That's good. I'm not here for that.” Leon bent to pick up his folder. I kept my hands on the table. He noticed that too. “I came for the part you didn't pay for.”

“What part?”

He slid a creased envelope out between two sheets of paper. There was no address on it. Somebody had written his name across the front with a heavy black marker.

“Don't touch it yet,” Nia said from her desk. “Is that something you might need to show the police?”

“It's an envelope,” Leon told her.

“And I asked you a question.”

He held it by a corner. “Yes, ma'am. It might be.”

“Then leave it alone until somebody who knows what they're doing tells you how to handle it.”

I took my phone out. “I'll call Ruth.”

“Your lawyer.”

“Yes.”

“Not my lawyer.”

“No. She can help you find your own.”

He drew the envelope back. “You know how many people have offered to help me find things?”

“Leon, you came here.”

“I came to see whether you still drove your own car.”

That put me back in the dark beside Nine Oaks, keeping my right hand on the wheel while he pressed his burned sleeve against the seat. I had told him to keep his head down. Not to get out where someone could see him. I had driven past an ambulance going the other way and never lifted my foot.

“I gave my lawyer a statement about you,” I said. “About hiring you. About the car.”

He looked at Nia. “That true?”

“He gave her a statement,” she said. “I haven't read all of it.”

Leon studied me again, taking longer this time. “You tell her what your mother said?”

“My mother didn't hire you.”

“I didn't say she did.”

The office refrigerator clicked off. Outside, a truck unloaded restaurant linen at the next business, its lift rattling against the pavement. Nia's project rented the back of a former tax office. I'd wanted somewhere with a receptionist and a guarded parking garage. She'd asked whether the guard would stop people who couldn't afford a garage.

“Say who hired you,” I told him. “Say what I asked. If Mother spoke to you after, leave that out when you talk to the investigators. Keep it about me.”

Ruth had already told me federal investigators were examining the freight fire. I wanted Leon to withhold what he knew about my mother, whether it was true or not.

Leon lowered the cup. “There he is.”

“Don't play with me.”

“Dad.” Nia came to the table, bringing her phone. “We're calling a lawyer. Not having whatever this is.”

I opened Ruth's number. She answered with somebody else talking in the background.

“I have Leon Pryce in front of me.”

The voice behind her stopped. “Where?”

“Nia's office.”

“Is anyone hurt?”

“No.”

“Is anyone armed?”

I looked at Leon. He lifted the bottom of his shirt without being asked, then seemed embarrassed by the gesture. “Not that I know.”

“Do not interview him. Do not offer him money. Do not ask him to change anything. Does he have counsel?”

“Not yet.”

“Put him on, if he agrees. You step away.”

Leon took the phone. I got up before Ruth had to say it again. Nia followed me to the filing cabinet, where I stood with my empty hands and looked at the drawer I was supposed to fix.

“You know him,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Was he in what you gave Ruth?”

“Yes.”

“Then why did you tell him not to talk about Grandma?”

“I told him not to invent things.”

“That wasn't what you said.”

I pulled the top drawer. It came out a little and stuck. Nia put her hand over mine.

“Leave the damn drawer.”

I let go. Across the room, Leon was telling Ruth he didn't want a lawyer who played golf with anybody. Ruth said something that made him laugh once, without amusement, and he wrote a name on the back of an old grocery receipt.

“I don't know what he has,” I told Nia. “I'm not going to let him use you to sell it.”

“He asked to speak to you. I didn't buy anything.” She glanced toward the front window. “Do you know that man?”

A man in a tan work jacket stood by a dark sedan across the lot. He wasn't looking at us. He was looking at the numbers over the next business, as though he might have come to the wrong address. Then he took out his phone and aimed it at Nia's door.

“No. Move back.”

She stayed where she was. “Leon?”

He saw the man through the glass and dropped my phone. It hit the table hard enough to make his water jump.

“That's him.”

“Stay inside,” I warned.

“Don't go out there,” Nia told me. She was already dialing. “Don't make me have to tell them which one of you is my father.”

I locked the door. The man saw my hand on the bolt and started toward us, keeping the phone against his ear. There was nothing hurried about him. He stopped outside the glass and knocked with one knuckle.

“Mr. Pryce? We need to finish our conversation.”

Leon backed into the table. I took the phone from him and heard Ruth still on the line.

“Someone's at the door. Leon says it's the man who threatened him. Nia's calling police.”

“Keep the door locked. Tell the dispatcher precisely what's happening. No confrontation.”

The man cupped his hands against the glass. “Kojo? I'm not here for you.”

“Then leave,” I said through the door.

“There's a misunderstanding about some property. I'm trying to keep it simple.”

“Leave your name.”

He pointed at the lock. “Open that and I'll give you a card.”

Nia gave the dispatcher the address without taking her eyes off him. She described his jacket, the car and the fact that he had followed a visitor who said he was being threatened. The man could hear enough to know what she was doing. He held up his empty hands, then put one against the door and pushed.

I didn't move the bolt. “Get your hand off my daughter's door.”

He stopped smiling. “You don't have to make her part of this.”

“You came to her office.”

He looked past me at Leon. For a moment nobody moved. Then he took his hand away and walked backward toward the sedan, still watching us. Nia read the plate aloud. He got in and left without turning on his lights until he reached the street.

Leon sat heavily in the chair. The envelope lay on the table beside the spilled water. He picked it up before the water reached it, and Nia put a paper towel down without asking to see what was inside.

“Ruth,” I said into the phone. “He knows my name.”

“Kojo, plenty of people know your name. Stay where you are. I am sending you the name of the lawyer who can speak to Mr. Pryce, and I want to speak to you alone after the officers leave.”

Nia came back from the window. “They're coming.”

Leon pressed the envelope flat with the heel of his hand. “Your mother told me you'd keep me out of it.”

I moved the chair I'd pulled out, leaving the doorway clear. Leon watched me, the envelope pinned beneath his hand.

“You'll have your own lawyer,” I told him. “And you're not leaving through the back.”