Down the River unto the Sea

28

After the financial transaction Hester summoned a wraithlike young black man to lead me to a shed up on the roof, near the beehives. He had gray eyes like hers.

The shanty-shack’s door was secured by a padlock. After the impossibly thin young man had used his key, I asked, “What’s your name?”

“Mikey.”

“Give me the lock, Mikey.”

He did so and I attached it to the eye of the latch so that the door would have to remain unlocked.

“I’ll take the key too.”

He almost balked but then acquiesced.

Inside he found the pull chain that flooded the one-room work shed with at least four hundred watts of yellow light from a single bulb.

“She’ll be up in a while,” he said, looking everywhere but at me.

I called Mikey a black man because that’s the term I use for people who come from our so-called race. But he was actually a shade of gray that was tending toward black, where his eyes were a similar shade headed in the opposite direction.

He turned away, leading with his shoulders, and left me to the chilly shack. I had Steppenwolf in my overcoat pocket, but before I could take it out, I spied an old textbook of first-year Latin on the cluttered worktable. All around the old russet-colored hardback were tools that had to do with bees and their honey.

Reading the editor’s introduction to the book (which had been published in 1932), I learned that there had been something called The General Report of the Classical Investigation. This university study had recommended a new way for learning the ancient language, a way that took a historical and also a cultural approach.

I skimmed through the author’s preface, then delved into the meat of the book. I had just learned that “Vergil called his countrymen gēns togāta, which meant toga-clad people,” when the unlocked door swung open and black-clad Hester walked in. She was followed by another slender man of color who wore a yellow-and-green sports jacket, stiff jeans, and no shirt at all.

“Theodore,” Hester said, “I’d like you to meet Mr. Joe King Oliver.”

The fact that she knew my middle name was truly a shock.

“Hey,” the man I would always think of as Burns said.

I closed the book, stood, and took his proffered hand. His face was a deep brown, but all along the left side there were craters and calloused, scarred skin. His left hand was also mutilated and defaced. The skin was scabrous and scaly.

While I studied the details of his disfigurement he stared at me. I was sure he couldn’t see my scar, but somehow I believed that he intuited it.

“Mr. Oliver wants to ask you some questions,” Hester said.

“Have a seat,” I said to both the young man and his chaperone.

The worktable was against an unpainted pine wall and there were five backless stools along it. We each took a stool.

Hester was staring at me, prepared at any moment to end the interview.

Burns was the epitome of what I understood to be a junkie. He was afraid of me but at the same time wondering if there might be a profit in our interaction. He was always looking for the next fix. Maybe he could smell the packets I scored from Kierin.

“It’s good to meet you, Theodore,” I said.

“You too.” He nodded.

“Miranda told me to tell you hello.”

“You know Mir?”

“I met with Lamont out on Coney Island and he sent me to her. She told me her story and said I might want to talk to you.”

“Mir didn’t know I was here,” Theodore said with suspicion. Hester swiveled her shoulders as if she were about to pronounce judgment.

“She told me you used, so I asked a friend on the force to look up your nickname along with Theodore. They knew you came here sometimes.”

“All the time,” Hester said. “He’s trying to get his head together.”

“Why you go from Lamont to Mir to me?” Burns asked.

“Because I was hired to prove that A Free Man was hunted and conspired against by members of the NYPD; specifically Officers Valence and Pratt.”

Both Burns and Hester had the same frown on their faces.

“Manny?” said Burns.

I nodded.

“What does Theodore have to do with that?” Hester asked.

“I have no idea,” I said truthfully. “I talked to Miranda and she pointed me here.”

“Like a gun,” Hester said to Burns.

But he wasn’t listening.

“You wanna help Manny?” he asked me. It seemed as if he saw something important and lasting in the intention alone, like a burning bush or a resurrection.

“That’s what I’ve been hired to do.”

“Hired by who?” Hester asked.

The burned man’s eyes echoed the question.

“Nobody official,” I allowed. “I’m not working for the cops or the state, and the person paying me really wants Mr. Man to be released. But I can’t give you a name. That would violate client confidentiality.”

“How do we know you’re not lying?” Hester asked.

“You don’t,” I admitted. “But I’ve paid the shelter the money for this meeting and you don’t know anything about the case.”

There was an agenda to my answer. If Burns knew that I had money to pay for information he was more likely to want to deal with me.

“This meeting is over,” Hester said. But she was already too late.

“No,” Burns interjected. “No... I believe him. I know why Miranda send him here.”

Hester’s shoulders sagged then. She knew Theodore. She knew that he knew that I had what he needed.

I remembered something that my grandmother would say.

“You cain’t protect a wolf from bein’ a wolf. That’s like tryin’ to say it’s midnight when it’s really high noon.”

“We should probably talk alone,” I said to Burns.

“No,” Hester proclaimed.

“Yeah, we should, Auntie H.,” Burns said, a note of authority in his voice. “You don’t wanna know nuthin’ ’bout what got to do with Manny and them, and them cops.”

“You can’t do this,” Hester said to me.

I stood up from my stool. Burns followed suit.

“I’ll give you the money back,” Hester offered, realizing too late that her greed for the shelter was, in its own way, a betrayal.

“I’ll bring him back tonight,” I said.

“You’ll get him killed.”

“He’s no use to anyone as a witness, Miss Fray, and I won’t tell about our conversation if you don’t.”

“He’s vulnerable,” she said in a whisper.

Vulnerable. With that one word she was able to explain the pain of his prostitution and the need for self-destruction; his addiction coupled with the inability to escape any part of the suffering rained down upon him by a life not of his making.

There were hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of young people like Burns stumbling down the streets of rural, suburban, and big-city America. They each had the same affliction, but they could only be saved one at a time.

“No, I’m not, Auntie Hester,” the scarred man intoned. “Not even a captain in the Green Berets could survive one day in the life I got to live. I’m strong. I could take it.”

Hester Fray was defeated by this claim. I could see in her eyes that she was in love with her job and her people. This passion made me want to know more about her, but there was no time for that kind of recreation.

“I got to score before we do anything else,” Burns told me on the street.

“I got what you need,” I said.

“What?”

“Kierin sold me two hits,” I said. “He said two was your base buy, so I got one to cut the pain but at the same time keep you able to talk. I’ll give you it right now. After we talk I’ll give you the other and two hundred dollars.”

“Kierin from up Harlem?” Burns asked.

He delivered the question as a foregone conclusion, telling me that he was a canny junkie whom I had to be careful with.

“You and I both know he works for the Gypsy in the West Village.”

“Let’s see what he give you.”

“Is there somewhere we could go?”

Burns’s grin was missing a brown tooth or two, but there was still mirth and real satisfaction there.

We went east a couple of blocks, crossed a concrete park, and entered a street I’d never been on; I call it a street, but it was closer to being an alley.

Halfway down that block was a three-and-a-half-foot space between two nondescript buildings blocked by a padlocked Dumpster. Burns and I pushed the can aside and made our way maybe fifteen feet when we came to a door that looked to be locked too but was not.

On the other side of the door was a chamber no more than six foot square. I could see this because there was a small lightbulb dangling from a socket overhead that Burns turned on by twisting it. It wasn’t inside, but then again it was walled off and roofed away from the outside. The floor was asphalt. The only furniture was a three-legged wooden stool.

There was no trash or garbage on the ground. As a matter of fact, there was an old broom leaning in a corner that had seen quite some use.

“What is this?” I asked my informant while taking the wallet from my pocket and the heroin from there.

Burns took the little fold of cellophane and studied it carefully.

“That’s Kierin all right,” he mumbled. “He step on this shit hisself.”

It felt odd that we shared knowledge.

“What is this place?” I asked again.

“You ever hear of Juaquin de Palma?”

“Yeah.” De Palma was a socialite addict who would give wild parties for like-minded people of all classes. He was slippery and dangerous, attracting artists, musicians, and debutantes to his “cause.” He was finally murdered by a man named Tibor whose daughter had OD’d at one of de Palma’s raves.

“I used to hang with him. This was his place he’d go when he just wanted to get high and be alone. And then when he died it was mine’s alone.”

While talking, Burns put together his fix. He sat down on the stool, filled the spoon, cooked the aitch with water from a bottle in his pocket, and used the simple hypodermic attached to a red rubber bulb.

The seclusion, dim light, and ascetic nature of the “room” made his actions seem holy.

I was hoping he didn’t die.

For one very long minute after the injection Burns stared at the ground. Then he looked up at me.

“I could use another one.”

“And so you shall have,” I promised, “but first we have to talk.”

“I like coffee after my fix,” he said, reminding me of a much older man.