Every Man a King

14

I rented a Mini Cooper from a new place called Moment to Moment. It was painted periwinkle blue, a little too bright for my taste, but that was better than my own car. Too many parties were aware of my involvement; the FBI, alt-right, Russian mob, and who knew who else had my scent.

I purchased twelve burner phones at an electronics store on Twenty-Eighth Street. The work I’d taken on called for many levels of protection, anonymous communications being the top need. After that I went to visit my storage space a block from West Fourth Street. There, sitting in a comfortable chair under electric light, I called the people who needed to know how to reach me.

“Okay, Daddy,” Aja said when I told her I was off the grid for a bit. “I guess I hope you do help out Coleman. Mom’s crying all the time.”

Melquarth only grunted when I gave him my numbers.

Roger Ferris had information about Thad Longerman.

Longerman, aka Benjamin Ingram, called himself an independent consultant working exclusively for a company called Zyron International. Zyron specialized in prison systems. They built and operated private pens around the world. Thad’s position had him acquiring land while hiring architects, builders, and security forces. He also oversaw an international group of agents to man prisons, facilitate the transfer of international detainees, and investigate and also alleviate threats to the smooth running of ZI’s interests around the globe. If Roger’s sources were right Longerman had relationships with many world capitals and a shadow network of people brokers that ensured the interests of ZI.

ZI’s headquarters were located in Atlanta, Georgia, and Longerman, as Ingram, lived there at the Bentley Hotel — room number 406.

The prison’s consultant would be the hardest nut to crack. He was obviously dangerous and had backing of the highest order. The federal government might well have given him the go-ahead to grab Quiller, and his prison systems contacts would have made the crime unassailable.

Once again I had to consider whether or not to drop the case. I mean, what could I possibly learn about a crime committed in Belarus by some huge and shadowy corporation? And even if I did figure a way in, why would I put my life on the line for someone like Quiller?

I had every reason in the world to stop the investigation. If it wasn’t for Longerman’s profession I would have probably taken a vacation. But a company that specialized in prison systems, that had the power to pull anyone they wished out of one country and deposit them in another, a business whose product was the abrogation of human rights... well, as much as I wanted to, I couldn’t turn my back on that.

My little storage space was exactly 500 square feet. In there I had everything I needed to survive, the most important of which was a bookcase containing the old hardback Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary.

I took down the heavy tome and looked up poverty. There were many terms used to define the word: penury, destitution, indigence, lacuna, privation... debt. Mostly the definitions were more or less accurate synonyms; many of these used the words extreme and absolute to underscore meaning. But for me the absoluteness of the experience of poverty was a word not used — prison. And the only words that got close to defining that special brand of nothingness were privation and wretchedness.

Solitary confinement, aka isolation, was the certainty of having no rights whatsoever. My hunger and thirst, my loneliness and need for love, my freedom to pick up and go — all of these were gone. This was true poverty. This was the experience of being slowly murdered by a state of being, by uncaring humans, by systems that did not, could not, share my suffering.

I couldn’t beat Longerman or Zyron International. But I’d be damned if I got down on my knees to them, damned if I ran from them even if there was no escape.

After that tumultuous inner-psychic examination I took out a DVD player from the wardrobe cabinet and played The Hunter starring Steve McQueen. It was his last movie, I think, and there was a kind of inescapable sadness to his performance that echoed my own feelings.

When the movie was over I called my electronic answering service. There were two messages.

The first was from Coleman.

“Okay,” he said as if we were in the middle of a conversation. “I guess you and Tomey are right. I have to stand up and do something. Call me and we can figure out what’s best.”

Then there was a very short call. Even though we’d only spoken one time, I knew the voice.

“I’d like to speak to you,” she said. “In person. Send me a text of when and where.”

I sent a rather complex text that indicated the exact location in the large building and set a time. Looking back on that moment, bunged up in that storage room, I now realize the act of making that appointment marked the last time I’d consider abandoning my responsibilities.

“Hello?” Coleman said through the radio waves of modern-day telephones.

“How’s the room?” I asked.

“You think it’s some kinda joke to put me in this flophouse?”

“It might be a little funny,” I admitted. “But you’re there partly because no one you know would ever expect it.”

Most of Brooklyn was gentrifying by then, but the SRO Art Tomey’s man put Coleman in was not part of that transformation.

“I can’t stay here, Joe. It’s worse than the MCC.”

“You can always go back there.”

“This is no joke, man. A guy was shot across the street just an hour after I got here, and the woman next door got the shit kicked out of her by her pimp.”

“That was my beat one time when I was in uniform. I walked those streets at night.”

“You had a gun.”

“Don’t go outside and you won’t have any problem.”

“I need a place that at least has a shower.”

“Then call Art and tell him to find you one.”

“That’s all I have to do?”

“Well, you also have to pay for it.”

“You know my money’s frozen.”

“Ask Monica.”

“Her money’s tied up with mine.”

“Borrow it, then.”

Silence on the other end of the line.

“Oh,” I said. “That’s right, if your Russian business partner knew where you worked, who you talk to, they might tumble to your location. If you just ask an old friend a question, that might sign your death warrant.”

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“You left a message saying you wanted to talk,” I replied. “So talk.”

“Are you the only one on the line?”

“Just two burners with no names attached.”

“This stays between us.”

“I’m gonna do my job, Coleman. Information may be shared in some places, but I won’t tell the so-called authorities.”

After another silence he said, “I don’t know his real name, but the one he had me use was Alain Freeman.”

“That’s not much help, Coleman. I mean, how do you expect me to get anywhere with just an alias?”

“I don’t know, man. He was a little guy, had an accent like Eastern Europe but mild, you know?”

I understood fear. It was the bread and butter of the world I inhabited. So, finally I said, “Alain Freeman?”

“Yeah.”

“Where can I find him?”

“Look, man. It’d be worth my life if he knew I even told you this much.”

“The minute he finds out where you are he’s got to kill you regardless of what you say.”

After many seconds Coleman said, “He had an office across from Penn Station but he was gone from there after the first time the FBI came to my bank. I tried to call him but the number doesn’t even ring.”

“When was this?”

“About three weeks ago.”

“Three weeks? And when did they arrest you?”

“Maybe an hour after I made the call.”

“If Freeman’s the connect, why are the feds talking about this Tava Burkel?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t shit me, man. The name scared you when I mentioned it.”

“Only because the FBI guys kept asking me about him. I thought, I don’t know, I thought that you maybe were working for the Russians.”

“That’s good.”

“What do you mean — good? Are you?”

“Naw, man. It’s good you’re worried. Worry will keep you on your toes.”

“That’s all you got to tell me?”

“Hey, you got two names and no way to get in touch with either one. They probably aren’t even real names. No one knows where you are, but the minute I dip my toe in those waters people are gonna start to wonder — about me.”

“I get all that,” Coleman said. “I know you don’t have to do this but I’m goin’ crazy sittin’ here.”

“I know,” I said. “I been there. But the only thing you can do is sit it out. Call Tomey’s office. A woman named Amethyst Banks will answer. Tell her I said that I’d like it if she helped you out. She can do simple things for you. You know — foods, DVDs, books — stuff to help make the time pass.”

“Okay.” Lee capitulating to Grant. “All right.”

Understanding how things work is the only way that we, humanity and I, can make it in this world. And making it is never a sure thing because nearly everything changes gears every thirty-six hours or so. All one can do is weigh the possibilities and move with great caution; hear the words being spoken and wonder what they could possibly mean.

Coleman was afraid for his life. But unless he got involved with the prostitute next door he’d probably survive being isolated. Probably. And if I could follow down the almost nothing he knew, I might not die this season.

After failing to come up with anything useful about Freeman and Burkel, I spruced up a bit and headed out for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Once through security I turned right, going through a maze of various master- and minor pieces, past a series of ancient sarcophagi, and into a great sunlit room that contained very old Egyptian structures. There, sitting on a stone bench, was an elegant and lovely Black woman in a stark-white one-piece dress, appraising the huge edifices that America had somehow claimed as a gift from Africa.

The moment I laid eyes on her she turned, smiled, stood, and walked in my direction.

“Mr. King Oliver.”

“Why don’t we go back to your bench, Ms. Prim?”

“It’s kinda public,” she worried.

“Yeah, but no one will wonder what we’re talking about. They’ll know it’s either art or love or both.”

So we sauntered back to the bench and sat, both of us looking up at the Temple of Dendur with mild awe.

“I am always stunned by this exhibit,” she said. “You’d expect something like this to be nestled away on some billionaire’s estate, behind barbed wire and silent alarms.”

“Where you from, Mattie?”

She smiled at my familiarity, even showing her teeth.

“A town called Peanut,” she said.

“In Kentucky?”

“How’d you know that?”

“There’s a chemical factory there, I think.”

“You are a good detective,” she said.

“How long ago did you leave there?”

“Long time.”

“Your whole family?”

“No.” There was a dark tone to that one word.

“Something happen?”

“You could say that. There were only two legal businesses in Peanut at the time — coal mining and the syngas factory.”

“Syngas?”

“Synthetic natural gas. It comes from coal. Peanut was a big coal-mining town. Back then you either sold meth, hootch, ass, or your soul to coal.”

“Back then but not anymore?”

“No. Not anymore.”

“Do you mind if I ask you some questions about your husband?”

“No.” But she wasn’t happy about it either.

“Everything I’ve read paints him as racist and more. An enemy of Black people, of women, of any kind of thinking that didn’t originate in Europe.”

“I don’t know him like that,” she said simply.

“And exactly how is it that you know him?”

Mathilda Prim was exquisite: her face, her elocution, her gait... Her gaze told me to drop the line of inquiry, but I was stubborn.

“I got into trouble back home,” she said. “As a consequence people looked down on me and my parents. That’s why they wanted me in the gas factory. They were even happier to see me gone from town. For them it was like I never existed. Alfie has a similar life history, but his path was harder than mine. Much harder.”

“But he saw a fellow soul in you.”

“Among other things.”

My heart grabbed right then. It wasn’t love or lust or anything like that. It was a connection she’d made in her life that resonated with my own.

I took a deep breath and asked, “Was there something you wanted to tell me?”

“Have you heard the name George Laurel in your investigation?”

“No. Who is he?”

“That’s what you need to find out.”