Down the River unto the Sea

22

The drive was a bit more than an hour, I figured. We went through the Battery Tunnel and into Brooklyn — I was pretty sure about that. We drove long enough to make it somewhere out in Queens but not much farther. Whoever had grabbed me wanted to stay in the city.

That alone told me a lot.

When the car parked I was getting ready to yell as soon as the door slid open. They might kill me, but I’d leave a marker that maybe Mel or Gladstone would find.

But my captors had thought of that. Someone shoved a rag filled with sweet-smelling chloroform over my nose and mouth.

I had to breathe.

Coming to on a basement floor, I was aware of being cold; chilled to the bone, as my father used to say. The air was dank, filled with fungal spores, bringing to mind the heavy atmosphere of graveyards and dungeons. My hands were cuffed behind me, but my legs were unfettered. I made it to my feet, trying to keep down the deep-seated anxieties of a man terrified by dark containment.

There was a low-watt bulb imparting its tame glow from the low ceiling. A pretty long and steep stairway led up through a hole-like corridor to an upper door. I put one foot on the bottom stair and a deep gong sounded.

I took no more steps and within seconds the door above opened.

“Stay off the stairs,” a man silhouetted by light called down.

“Why am I here?”

His reply was to slam the door shut.

There was a stool and a worktable in the cramped cellar. No exit except for the steep stairway. There were no tools to be seen, no weapons or objects that could be turned into weapons. The men who accosted me were young and well trained. I certainly couldn’t hope to defeat even one of them with both hands shackled behind my back.

I walked around for maybe an hour, looking to see if there was anything I could turn to my advantage; there wasn’t.

And so I decided to sit on the stool and lean back against the edge of the worktable — awaiting my fate.

Waiting is the detective’s stock-in-trade. We wait for the right hour, a certain phone call, or something different from what has gone before. It’s not a profession that’s a natural fit for my nature, but the great thing about human beings is that they can and do adapt.

The natural boon of spending most of my time quiescent and inactive opened the trapdoor of deep thought. I fell right into it.

Sitting on that stool I decided that my captors were after me over the frame and not A Free Man. Not that it made much difference. In both cases I was the pariah and they the judgment if not actually the law.

Something slammed down and I realized that I had fallen asleep on the stool. Two men stood in front of me in the flimsy light. One of them had an automatic pointed in my general direction. The other man, I figured, had put down the tray loud enough to wake me up.

The armed man, dressed all in black, was tall and masked. His disguise was like a ski mask but it was designed expressly for the purpose of concealing his identity. The second guy wore a simple brown suit, no mask, and exhibited no weapon. He was on the short side, with skin darker than most white men.

“Stand up and turn around,” the unmasked man commanded. “I’m going to unlock the cuffs while you eat.”

I did as he said and he as he promised.

There were three fried eggs, four strips of bacon, a glass of grapefruit juice, and a cup of coffee on the brown resin tray.

My stomach was upset from the chloroform, but I ate and drank, as I had learned to do in prison. You never knew when the next meal was coming.

“You are the cause of great concern,” the man without the mask or gun said. The words were sophisticated, but the accent was deep Brooklyn. “People all over New York are asking why you don’t leave well enough alone.”

“Who are you?” I replied.

“My name is Adamo Cortez. I think you had your friend the Haitian cop ask about me.”

“Your name came up,” I said in a relaxed, informal tone, “and I decided to see what you know... Detective.”

“Where’d my name come up?”

“In a dream.”

The liar didn’t like my lie.

“Stand up and turn around,” he said, a little less friendly than before.

“I still got a piece’a bacon on my plate.”

“Lean over and eat it like a dog.”

On one hand I wanted to hit him, but on the other I didn’t want to be shot. So I stood and turned and allowed the chains to be snapped back into place.

When I was seated again, the masked man with the automatic went back up the stairs and closed the door.

When the gunsel was gone, my true captor leaned up against the table next to me.

“You’ve been talking to people,” he said. “Making noise, brandishing guns. You went to see Jocelyn Bryor and Little Exeter Barret. You’re asking questions about me. I don’t like that.”

“I haven’t asked a thing about you... Mr. Paul Convert.”

The fairly genteel look on my inquisitor’s face evaporated. His brows furrowed as if maybe he was the heavy in some silent film from the Golden Age. He stared at me, stood away from the table, maybe considered hitting, stabbing, or shooting me, and then went up the stairs.

I shouldn’t have used the name I’d learned. I should have asked forgiveness and buried my anger in other cases — A Free Man, for instance. But there comes a time when a man has to stand up and be heard, a time when their threats do not outweigh his freedom.

The time for waiting was over. Now that I knew the players, I also knew the play. They were going to kill me, and soon.

I’m a pretty supple guy. Once a week for six years I took yoga classes at a studio on Montague until the rent pushed out the young lesbian couple who taught there. They moved only about a mile away, but I didn’t have the time for that commute.

Still, my hips and knees were pretty limber, and with real concentration I was able to get the big toe of my left foot over the chain between my wrists. The right foot was easier, and my hands, though not free, were at least in a position to do one thing or another.

I shattered the stool, making one of the legs a good club. Then I searched around the cellar one more time, looking for either an exit or a better weapon. I found neither.

Then I examined the stairs.

Only the first three steps seemed wired for the alarm. This gave me a slight edge. I took the round seat of the stool and the leg turned club in hand and leaped up to the fourth step, teetered a bit, and then found the inner balance the yoga instructors always talked about. I climbed the rest of the way, stood as far to the side as I could, and then carefully let the seat roll down. It did as I wished, and when it hit the last three steps, the gong went off.

I pressed back against the wall, the door flung open, and a foot crossed the threshold. I hit his ankle for all I was worth. He tumbled forward, and I hit him across the nose with a swing that Babe Ruth would have been proud of. He tumbled down the stairs and I raced after.

I was able to retrieve his automatic and aim just as another mercenary appeared at the top of the stair.

I shot only twice. I didn’t know then that these were the only two men left to guard me.

I could see the sole of my second victim’s shoe from where I crouched. The man I’d battered into unconsciousness was still breathing. I searched him for more weapons but found none. After maybe thirty seconds, I began to make my way back up.

The man was dead. One shot had made a hole just above the right eye. There were a few items of value left on his clay: the key to my cuffs, a telephone number scrawled on a neatly folded sheet of paper, and a cell phone that looked like it had just been cut from its plastic wrapper.

In his wallet was an identity card for Security Managers Inc., a worldwide prison, prisoner transport, and mercenary provider. His name had been Tom Eliot.

On the third floor of the suburban Queens house I found a briefcase chock-full of fifty-dollar bills. Payment for my demise, no doubt.

I handcuffed the unconscious soldier to the worktable in the basement, then used his keys to drive one of the SUVs out of the driveway.