Known to Evil

53

I had made it past the green desk and more than half the way across Regents Bank's broad entrance hall.

"Excuse me, sir," one of the burly business-suited guards from earlier said.

I kept walking.

"Excuse me."

Moving at a pretty good clip, I was less than fifteen feet from the revolving door when one of the men got in front of me. His partner was there at my side a moment later.

One was black, the other white, but for the most part they were interchangeable minions of the Corporation. Their suits were both dark blue, their heights indistinguishably tall.

"Yes?"

"Come with us, please," the white one said. "We have some questions."

"No thanks."

"We have to insist."

"You will swallow all your front teeth before I go anywhere with either one of you."

"What?" the black corporate cop said. He put a hand on my shoulder.

For a man in his mid-fifties I'm pretty fast. I crouched down and hooked a good left into the black man's midsection. I felt the wound inflicted by Patrick tear a bit, but it was worth it. I could tell by the guard's deep exhalation that he would need a few moments to recover. I stood up behind a right uppercut that the white guard had no defense for. He sprawled out on his back and I started walking toward the doors again.

People shouted behind me, but my point had been made effectively. No one else tried to block my egress. I exited the building feeling right with the world for the first time in many days.

"HOLD IT RIGHT THERE," a voice commanded on Forty-ninth between Fifth and Sixth.

I stopped and turned. Four uniforms were approaching.

"Yes, officers?" I asked, smiling sincerely.

"Don't move."

"Is there a problem?"

I liked the makeup of the modern NYPD even if they had no use for me. The small group consisted of a black woman, a black man, one Asian gentleman, and a strawberry-blond white rookie who somehow brought to my mind the phrase one-hit wonder.

The black man was the one addressing me. He was solidly built, not a hair over five eight.

"Where you coming from?" he asked.

"Just out for a walk, officer."

"From where?"

"I don't know. Walkin' around is all."

"Let me see your knuckles."

"Why?"

"Show me your hands."

"Give me a reason," I said. I hadn't meant for it to sound like a threat but I could see a jolt go through the assembled constabulary.

THE ARREST TOOK A long time.

When taking a suspect into custody on the streets of Midtown Manhattan the police dot all i's and cross their t's and f 's. They ask you questions and, if you're me, you give them indecipherable answers.

I wasn't worried about assault charges. The fight was on tape, no doubt. Two men had assaulted me in the bank. They didn't have badges or uniforms. I hadn't said a word in provocation-not really.

After a while the police got around to binding my hands behind my back. Maybe forty minutes later I was hustled into the back of a police cruiser driven by the Asian and attended by Blondie.

Half the way to the midtown precinct the white kid's cell phone rang.

After twenty seconds of conversation he looked at his partner and said, "They want us to bring him over to the Port Authority, Park."

"Why?"

"Didn't say."

"Who was it?"

"The sergeant."

WITH MY HANDS STILL bound behind me I was taken through a series of doors and down innumerable hallways to a Port Authority Police office somewhere in the bowels of the building.

"Hello, McGill," Bethann Bonilla said.

"Are you Lieutenant Bonilla, ma'am?" the white kid asked.

"Release him and leave us," she replied.

The young cops did as they were told. They asked no questions… this told me something.

The room was small and stale. The beat-up oak desk had stood there as long as the Port Authority itself and the floor had been battered by ten thousand feet. Many a purse snatcher and pick-pocket had been detained here before their deportation to the Tombs, or maybe straight to their arraignment. It was a sad stop-over for pimps, prostitutes, and the mentally deranged.

I felt right at home.

"To what do I owe my freedom?" I asked, taking a seat across from the cop.

"The bank sent down notice to drop charges," she said. "But I had already been notified. I decided to have them bring you here because NYPD won't be able to yank you out too quickly."

She smiled.

"Who are you worried about yanking me?"

"Kitteridge, Charbon," she said. "There's a DA named Tinely who seems to want his pound of flesh."

"And what do you want, Lieutenant?"

The wisp-thin, steel-hard lady cop placed her maroon elbows on the old-time desk. She laced her fingers, pressed the pads of her thumbs together, and considered me.

"That depends on what you have," she answered.

"You want to make a trade?"

"What do you need from me?"

"There's a pimp named Gustav on East Houston who's paying off a Lieutenant Saul Thinnes. One of the girls is a friend. I need Gustav busted-busted bad."

"And what do I get out of that?"

"Have you got a name for the dead man in Wanda Soa's apartment?"

Her eyes couldn't conceal the excitement.

I gave her Pressman's name and his alias. I told her that he was a hit man on staff with a killer known only as Patrick.

"Why would somebody want this Soa dead?" she asked.

"Maybe her drug connections. Can you drop a hammer on Gustav?"

"Oh yeah."

"You aren't worried about Thinnes?"

"If he's crooked he better be worried about me."

THERE WAS YET ANOTHER bartender at the Naked Ear when I got there at 7:06; a thirty-something white guy with slim shoulders and a little belly. I perched down at the far end of the bar and ordered my three cognacs. The bartender was named Ely. He knew everything about sports and so we had a long talk, between orders, about Henry Arm-strong, the only boxer who ever held three title belts in three different weight classes at the same time. In the space of twelve months, he successfully campaigned in nineteen defenses of those belts.

"I think he was superior to Sugar Ray Robinson," Ely said. "Pound for pound."

"Yeah," I said, "but it's not like math."

"What do you mean?"

"In weight lifting the man who lifts the heaviest weight wins. But in boxing, after a certain point, it's all heart."

"Hi," a woman said.

I turned and there was Lucy.

Ely slapped me on the forearm and moved on down the bar. "He called me," she said. "I asked all the bartenders to call me if you came in."

"What happened the other night?" I asked. "I was here."

"I wanted to see if you'd come twice."

"I'M OUT OF CONDOMS," Lucy apologized at one in the morning. "I only bought a box of three. I mean, I guess I could do something else."

I pulled the blankets off her and kissed her navel. She giggled and rolled away. She went too far and tumbled off the side of the bed. We both laughed and I pulled her back on.

We'd been in that bed for four hours. If I'd been taking an erectile-dysfunction drug I'd've had to go to the emergency room.

"I think it's all the tension in my life," I said. "That and the fact that both my wife and my girlfriend have boyfriends now."

"What's bad for the boy-goose is good for the girl-goose bartender," she said.

I kissed her.

There must have been some kind of hesitation in the kiss or my body language because she said, "Don't worry. I'm not asking for any more than I already got. I really am married. Jeff's a painter. He's at an art colony in New Hampshire. He's the kind of guy can't go three days without sex, so I know he's with someone."

"So I'm your revenge?"

"My solace," she said, and we held each other a while.

I GOT OUT OF the taxi, drunk on more than liquor. I was still high from the brief fight with the Regents security team and the passion that Lucy the bartender drew from me. I took a deep breath at the front door of my building. A man touched my left triceps. It hurt my wound. Turning toward him, I swiveled my torso at the hip when the blow came from behind.

There was only a moment of consciousness left to me, a sliver of fading light that I squandered wondering if I had been shot in the back of the head.