Page 125 of Honor

“I read an article in a business journal about you,” she explains. “It was written years before I started working for you. They included some quotes you must have given during an interview for the piece. I remember you saying that Moses Winston was your mentor and you learned to appreciate the value of being on time because he gave you a watch as a gift.”

“I crushed that watch with a shoe the day he was arrested.”

Looking back, it was a stupid move. I should have pushed my pride aside and donated the watch to someone who needed it, but the sentimental value I had attached to it was the driving force in my effort to destroy it and any connection I had to Moses after his arrest.

He ran an investment firm until a client realized that he was stealing from his less wealthy clients to pad his pocket and those of his equally well-off friends. The news reports surrounding his downfall included endless video clips of people despondent over the fact that they’d lost their life savings to Moses.

“Oh,” she mutters. “I didn’t know.”

“He was a con artist, Evie,” I tell her, motioning for her to slide over slightly to make room for me. She does without hesitation, even patting the bench to signal that she wants me to sit as close to her as possible. I do.

Her fingers run along the edge of the watch box. “Did you start collecting these before or after he was arrested?”

I toss my head back and take a slow breath. “My grandfather collected them for me. It took him years to do that. I didn’t know about it until I found the watches a few days after he died.”

CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT

Evie

I watchas Reid carefully places the watch box back on the shelf where it usually is. I’ve walked into this closet countless times since I started working for him. I always looked at that rectangular wooden box and thought it was an extravagant example of excess. I’m not an expert on timepieces, but I know enough about them to recognize some of the high-end brand names.

“There was a notebook next to the watch box in the bottom drawer of his dresser,” he explains. “Each watch was numbered and had a page in the book dedicated to it.”

I wait to see if he’ll retrieve it, but I don’t even know if he still has it or perhaps it’s painful for him to look at.

“Buzzy wrote a story for each watch.” He glances at me with a soft smile on his lips. “The first one he ever got was the gold Abdons watch. It belonged to the man who lived in apartment 3B. One morning, he asked my grandfather to hail him a cab, and as he did, the man complained that the watch wasn’t working. He tapped the face a few times, took it off, andstarted walking toward a trash can on the sidewalk in front of the building.”

“He was going to throw it away?” I ask, surprise tainting my tone. “Why not take it to get it fixed?”

“According to Buzzy, the man had more money than common sense.” He huffs out a laugh. “Buzzy asked if he could take it for his grandson.”

“For you?” I whisper.

“Yeah.” He nods softly. “He wrote in the notebook that he took it to his friend to see if he could fix it.”

“He fixed it, didn’t he?”

“Fixed it and polished it.” He grins. “That was the first of the collection. Months later, another tenant handed my grandfather a watch that had belonged to her father. He dropped it and cracked the face, so she bought him a new one. She knew the man who lived in 3B, and he told her that Buzzy wouldn’t mind having the broken watch.”

“He had that one repaired too?”

“It cost a little over sixty bucks to fix it right up.” He shakes his head. “A watch worth a grand needed a sixty dollar repair, and someone was willing to trash it over that.”

“Wow,” I say, stunned by that.

“Wow, is right.” He reaches for my hand to hold it between his. “I met Moses Winston one night when I was seventeen. I was in the lobby to drop off Buzzy’s dinner. It was a ham and cheese sandwich. He thanked me for making the trip from Queens to give it to him, but I didn’t board the subway for that. I did it hoping I’d spot Moses on his way in after work.”

I nod. “That panned out for you.”

“Sure did.” He lifts one hand to scrub it over his forehead. “He breezed past my grandfather on his way in without a hello. I chased him down to tell him he was my hero.”

I can tell it pains him that he called another man a hero in front of the grandfather he loved so deeply.

“All this bullshit nonsense came out of me because I was so fucking excited to get that close to him.” He stares at me. “I complimented his watch while my grandfather stood less than five feet away with a watch on his wrist that my grandmother had bought him a thrift shop. I went on and on about Winston’s watch and how I wanted a collection of watches just like that so I could wear a different one every day of the week.”

I glance at the watch box. “Your grandfather collected those to fulfill your wish.”

He sighs. “Over time, the tenants in this building knew that Buzzy was collecting watches for his grandson. They’d give him their broken watches, knowing he’d fix them up. Some of them handed him a watch when they moved out of the building as a thank you gift. He wrote in the notebook that one tenant told him she gave the doorman in her last building two thousand dollars in cash on her move out day to thank him. That would have been life-changing to my grandparents at the time, but instead of cash, she gave him a silver watch to give to me.”

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