Power & Beauty by David Ritz, Tip "t.i." Harris Page B

her alone.
    Wasserman’s acceptance speech was short and not too sweet. He spoke with a gruff tone and never did smile. He sounded sour. His words were correct—“This is a big honor and I wanna thank everyone for putting on this great evening for me”—but he didn’t seem all that pleased to be up there.
    When the ceremonies were over, Evelyn Meadows leaned over and, with her tongue seductively brushing my ear, whispered, “Have you met the man yet?”
    “Mr. Wasserman? Not yet.”
    “Well, let me be the first to introduce you, baby. Let’s hurry before it’s too late.”
    We got up from the table and walked across the ballroom. Wasserman was surrounded by all kinds of people wishing him well and wanting to shake his hand. He put up with it, but he looked like he was in a hurry to get out. A couple of beefy guys stood next to him, surveying the room. Evelyn and I stood in the back of a long line to greet him. We waited five, ten, then fifteen minutes. I practiced what I was going to say to him—“I’m Power, Slim’s nephew, and I’m really happy to be here, sir”—but as I got closer, I wondered whether I should use my real name, Paul. Meanwhile, I saw one of his guys go off to get him a drink while the other turned around at the sound of a tray of dishes that a waiter had dropped. At that moment, Evelyn Meadows approached him. Seeing her all decked out in her cool outfit, Irv managed a small smile and opened his arms to hug her. I just happened to look down and saw that, rather than respond to his outstretched arms, she opened her little silver bejeweled purse, grabbed a small pistol that was hidden inside, aimed it at his heart, and fired. Out of instinct, I grabbed her arm and brought it down so that, instead of shooting his chest, the bullet shattered his lower leg. Eyes wide open, Wasserman fell. So did Evelyn’s pistol. As I restrained her with a tight bear hug, she screamed at the fallen man, “You fuckin’ son of a bitch! You killed my husband! You killed him because he was about to blow off the lid! You’d kill anyone who was gonna tell the truth!” By then the bodyguards, not knowing what had happened, had both me and Evelyn in headlocks. She kept screaming, I mean screaming so loud that everyone in the hotel could hear, “This man is a fuckin’ hypocrite! This man is a murderer! This man stole money from his own mother and murdered his own brother! This man is a no-good rotten filthy piece of shit!”
    This was my introduction to Irv Wasserman.
    Two days later I was seated on a bench in the hallway of a hospital. Irv had sent for me.
    Because his eyes had been wide open, Irv had seen exactly what had happened. He never lost consciousness. The police took Evelyn away. On Irv’s orders, his bodyguards released me, but not before getting my name. In no time, an ambulance rushed him to the emergency room. Next morning, his picture was plastered all over the newspapers. A photographer had actually caught me in the act of diverting Evelyn’s arm. I was simply identified as an “unknown man.”
    When I called to tell Slim the news, he had already heard.
    “Beautiful,” he said. “Couldn’t have gone better if you had sent up a motherfuckin’ prayer. God is on our side, son. God’s looking out for us on this one. Now there’s nothing to do but wait for the call. It’ll come.”
    It came at eight in the morning. A man gave me the name of a hospital, a room, and said to be there at four sharp. When I got off the elevator on the fifth floor, I was greeted by the beefy bodyguard who had turned his back just before the shooting. He wanted to know my name and see my ID. Then he walked down the hallway and pointed to a bench. “Don’t move till we call you,” he said.
    An hour passed. I hadn’t brought anything to read. I kept checking and rechecking my iPhone for e-mails. I wondered if there were other patients on this floor, because I heard no noise and saw no other visitors. It was