Known to Evil (Leonid McGill #2)

by Walter Mosley

I wasn’t scared, though. That was the business. Sometimes you lost. Hush would protect Katrina and the kids. He’d settle any recurring problems with Dimitri and the pimp; and if he didn’t, Twill certainly would. Katrina would honor my commitment to Gordo. There was a lot of unfinished business in my life, but that was okay, too. At times, when faced by Death or imprisonment, I was reminded of when I was a child and President Kennedy had been assassinated. There had been twenty-four-hour coverage of the tragedy on television and radio. And then one afternoon I saw the image of a very tall man standing next to the First Lady—Jacqueline Kennedy. “Who’s that man?” I asked my father. “That’s their president, son.” “No, Dad. The president’s dead.” “The minute he died this new one took his place.” “That fast?” “No one is so important that somebody else can’t take his place,” he told me. I never forgot it.