Down the River unto the Sea

24

Sunset came before 5:00 at that time of year. The ferry moved peacefully through the dusk toward the Saint George dock. I was standing in my bulky and bulbous costume at the front of the boat, enjoying the stiff breeze and thinking that I had done a good job of putting myself off the scent for an afternoon.

I had killed a man that day, and the amoral stench of that action hung about me. There were sixty-six hundred-dollar bills in my right front pocket, proof that Stuart Braun was going to have to deal with me sooner or later — if he survived.

A short man with a broad chest came out on the mostly abandoned deck and stared at me for all of forty-five seconds; then he turned away.

Maybe I looked like someone he knew.

In Saint George I made a pay phone call, then boarded the commuter train and sat at the south end of the center car, looking back and wondering why I felt so calm. Life was coming down on me like grain filling up an empty silo, but there I was moving backward in a modern marvel of technology. Life was like the miracle of a tiger on the hunt, only no one around me seemed to appreciate this fact.

Then the door at the far end of the car slid open, and the short white guy with the broad chest who had eyed me on the ferry came through. He wore jeans and tennis shoes, a maroon wool sweater under a loose pale green sweatshirt — its hood thrown back.

He saw me and moved with purpose toward my throne of wonder.

“You the niggah they call Cueball,” he said when he was maybe three steps off.

The other people around me moved away. All except for an older gentleman directly across the aisle. He was also white, wearing a dark blue pea coat, black work boots and pants.

I noticed the brave older gentleman while feeling a little stunned by the short stranger’s language.

I tried to remember the last time someone had called me nigger. Even my black male acquaintances had mostly given up that tag.

I put my right hand in a yellow pocket and stared.

“You heard me?” my antagonist asked. He was powerful, no doubt. And he was as mad as hell about something; probably had been most of his life. The only thing left to know was if he was a fool or not. There was a gun in that pocket, and I’d already proven to myself that I was unafraid to use it.

Usually when a man reaches in his pocket to threaten a would-be attacker he’s bluffing. But I have found that if you don’t say anything the threat seems more real.

“Well?” the short man said.

I said nothing.

He took a step.

“Junior,” the older man said.

The racist turned his head and saw the older man, maybe for the first time — that day.

“Ernesto,” he said, his voice trying and failing to express both anger and respect.

“You see the man doesn’t know you,” the brave oldster explained. “You see he’s about to kill you. Leave him alone. He’s not Cueball.”

The man’s words carried weight, and after a moment of contemplation, Junior decided to retrace his steps back to some other car.

When he was gone I asked Ernesto, “What was that?”

“Boy lost his girl to a black man named Cueball,” he said. “Bald, you know? Junior thinks the guy took her from him. He don’t see that the last time he put her in the hospital was the day she stopped bein’ his friend.”

“Well,” I said, “thanks for gettin’ him off me.”

“I don’t give a fuck about you, man. Junior too stupid to understand you got a real gun in there. I could see his death in the corner of your eye.”

Pleasant Plains was seventeen stops from Saint George. Ernesto went the whole way and beyond. We didn’t talk anymore, and I was on the lookout then for others who didn’t celebrate the Underground Railroad of Staten Island.

Mel was waiting at the station. Pay phones still had some use.

We walked up to each other and shook hands.

“Almost didn’t recognize you in that getup,” he observed.

“Looks like you got a friend. Can’t be too careful these days.”

I turned and saw the angry young white man whose fists were still crying out for satisfaction.

I gave Mel an abbreviated account of what had happened.

“Wait here,” he said, and then he strolled over to Junior.

A few sentences passed between them, and Mel took out a cell phone. He entered something, said something, and then handed Junior the phone. The younger man had a brief conversation at the end of which he shook his head as if indicating to whomever he was speaking that he did not wish whatever had been suggested. Then he gave Mel back his cell, turned, and hightailed it to whatever bar he used to assuage his feelings of inferiority and loss.

We walked fourteen blocks from the train station to the church and didn’t speak until we were both seated in a kitchen set behind where the choir once praised God.

“Yeah, sometimes it’s like that” were Mel’s first words to me.

“Like what?”

“Sometimes there’s just a black cloud over your head. If there’s trouble anywhere near, it will come to you first.”

“Like your red bird.”

Mel smiled.

“What did you say to Junior?” I asked just to be talking.

“I called a guy named Genaro. He’s one of the connected guys on the island. He told Junior to climb back in his hole.”

“Genaro knows you’re here?”

“On the island. I got an apartment on the water in Saint George.”

“There was this guy on the train,” I said. “Junior called him Ernesto.”

“Used to be an enforcer in the fifties and sixties,” Mel said, nodding.

“Now he just rides the trains?”

“It’s a peaceful life out here,” he said, and we both laughed.

Mel made a tomato sauce with chicken thighs and hot peppers, which he poured over vermicelli. With that we had sweetened Chianti and a salad that any French chef would have been proud of.

I told Mel about the kidnapping and Antrobus, also about Inspector Dennis Natches and how he might have something to do with the frame that bounced me out of my profession.

“You’re still a detective,” he pointed out.

“But I’m not a cop.”

“Yeah,” Mel admitted. “When pretty high school girls grow up they’re no longer cheerleaders, but they’re still pretty girls.”

He poured me some more wine and I considered the odd comparison.

“But tell me something, King.”

“What’s that?”

“Does Braun have anything to do with Natches?”

It was then I told him about both of the cases I was on. He listened quite closely, nodding now and again.

“Now, let me get this right,” he said when I had finished. “You’re trying to prove a conspiracy against this Free Man?”

“Yeah. Him and me too.”

“They have any connection?”

“Other than cops are mixed in with both... I don’t think so.”

“So you’re trying to prove Man is innocent?”

“Yeah. But I can’t expect you to go all the way with me on this. I mean, I appreciate what you’ve done, but I’m a fugitive now.”

“Maybe not,” Mel opined. “There’s nothing on the radio about any shooting in Queens. And I don’t care anyway. I’d love nothing better than to grab a man off the gallows. Shit, that’s a life-defining moment right there. That’s Errol Flynn in Robin Hood.”

From there he asked me about the details of my inquiries. I told him about most of the names and their involvement; about the Blood Brothers of Broadway and Johanna Mudd, Little Exeter and the heroin trade at the old Brooklyn docks. I didn’t give him Willa Portman’s name.

At the bottom of the second pitcher of wine, he said, “Okay, okay, I get it, what you want about Man. Prove he was being stalked and that his friends were killed and framed by the cops that were on him. Okay. But what about the thing with your job?”

“I want the union to take my case and have me reinstated.”

“But do you want the job back?”

“I want to be exonerated.” Saying these words reminded me of another obligation. “You got a phone I could use for a few days?”

The burner he gave me was still in its plastic packaging.

I set up the phone and sent a text to my daughter based on a simple code she’d devised years before. Our cypher was the transposition of numbers, where 1 = 4, 2 = 9, 3 = 1, 4 = 7, 5 = 2, 6 = 0, 7 = 3, 8 = 5, 9 = 8, and 0 = 9. I sent the number of my new phone to her stepfather, and then she would get another disposable phone and we could talk.

“So what do you want to do next, King?” Mel asked when I stopped working with the phone.

“I need to get Natches to admit that he was working with Convert to scuttle my career.”

“You just gonna walk into his office and say that? I mean, you came outta that ex-cop’s building and they tried to murder you.”

“I think I might be able to get a little leverage on the inspector. I might even get him to come and meet me.”

“You need some help?”

“Hell! I need the whole goddamn French Foreign Legion.”

The devil laughed and my phone rang at the same time.

“A.D.?” I said, answering.

“No. It’s Monica.”

“Oh.” I could tell by her tone that I was in for grief. “Hey.”

“What the hell do you mean telling us that we had to leave town because of something you’d done?”

Despite my profession, I don’t like lying to people. I don’t like making them feel bad either. A good cop is a professional who knows how to lie and inflict pain but does not enjoy these things. I was a good cop, but I needed Aja in my life and Monica was at least part of the reason I was in so much trouble. So I had worked out a tale that would protect them while keeping me from blame.

“Not something I did,” I said. “Something you did.”

“Me?”

“When you called Congressman Acres you set a game into play that got me on the radar of some extremely bad men. Government men. Acres figured out who hired me when I didn’t even know myself. He reported this to some very dangerous characters who need their business kept secret. Now they’re after me and I’m neck-deep in shit, just like when you let them cops keep me in that hole.”

After a brief pause she said, “You’re lying.”

“Did you call Acres?”

“So what?”

“You did and I got men with guns on my ass. I don’t give a fuck about you and your boy-toy, but with this trouble I need to know that Aja’s safe. You did leave, didn’t you?”

“Yes. But I’m not telling you where.”

“As long as you’re outta state, I don’t care. Now, let me speak to A.D.”

“Her name is Denise!”

“Hi, Dad,” Aja said a few moments later.

“Don’t tell your mother about anything I’m doing at work, okay?”

“Did I cause this problem?”

“No. But don’t tell your mom that either.”

“Okay. Are you all right?”

“Yeah. I’m fine. You didn’t use your phone to call, right?”

“Of course not. I bought this pay-as-you-go phone at a drugstore.”

“You’re a smart cookie.”

“I love you, Daddy.”

“Me too,” I said. “Talk to you soon.”

There was an upper floor to the onetime house of worship. Little cells for the devout priests or parsons — whatever the denomination was. My feet hung over the edge of the cot, but I didn’t mind. The door wasn’t locked and through the small window a half-moon shone brightly.

I didn’t sleep. Just lay back with one knee up and moonlight on my face. My newly shaved head itched a little and my little girl was safe. I had survived a slaughter and murdered a man. All that and life was still the best it could be.

I got out of bed at around 4:30 and went down to the kitchen, where Mel was drinking coffee at the table.

“Got a car I can use?” I asked him.

“Copper Lexus in the stable.”

“Stable?”

“Behind the church. You know this is an old institution.”

“You going in to work?” I asked.

“If you don’t need me later I will.”

“You got a typewriter around here?” I asked.

“Word processor and a printer.”

“I guess that’ll have to do.”

I drove via Brooklyn to Manhattan’s Upper West Side before the traffic was a bear. There, on Eighty-Third, I found a coffee shop that made western omelets but had run out of real bacon. So along with the eggs I had strips of turkey pressed, salted, and dyed to look like and taste something like bacon.

There was a storefront across the street that had been rented out on a temporary basis. I dithered over the bad food and weak coffee until a man I recognized walked into the pop-up campaign office.

“May I help you?” a young woman asked. She was quite dark-skinned. Upon her blueberry blouse was a big square button that proclaimed, ACRES IS OUR MAN!

I liked meeting young black Republicans. It meant that some part of the younger generation was thinking. Who cared if they were wrong?

“Mr. Acres, please.”

“The congressman is not in yet.”

The campaign receptionist had a fortieth birthday party a year or two before. Hers was the kind of plain face that promised something deeper than transient beauty. The blue chemise was silk, and from the thread-like gold chain around her neck depended a yellow diamond that was at least two and a half carats.

“I didn’t think Republicans needed to lie,” I said.

“Excuse me?” she said in a tone that could have easily turned to anger.

“I was coming here from down the block when I saw Bobby walking through the front door. That would bring him right here to you. Now, I guess you could have been somewhere else, but I find it hard to believe that the first face you meet at a campaign headquarters doesn’t know when the candidate is in the house.”

“What is your business with the congressman?” she asked coldly.

“Tell him that the man he almost ran into in Jersey the other night would like a few words.”

“I’ll need a name.”

“Believe me when I tell you, sister, that’s the last thing the congressman would want.”

Five minutes later I was walking into the broom-closet-size office that the candidate had commandeered. There were larger offices, but these were for volunteers who had to spread out and work hard. All Acres needed was a chair to sit in and a phone to yak on.

He ushered me in, closing the door on the blue-bloused woman.

I sat in a simple oak chair and he went around to his seat.

“I never expected to see you again,” he said as he sat.

“I’m not here to cause any trouble,” I said.

“Okay. Then what is it?”

“I need you to call an NYPD inspector and ask him to meet me at the English Teacup off Broadway, in the nineties, around, um, let’s say, two forty-five.”

“And why?”

I took a sealed envelope from my pocket and handed it to the candidate.

“Mimi Lord told me that you got in touch.”

“Yes.”

“I want you to tell Inspector Dennis Natches that I gave you a sealed envelope to register with the Library of Congress.”

“Should I read it?”

“I wouldn’t suggest it. In your position, ignorance is better than the apple.”

“And who shall I tell Mr. Natches that he’s meeting?”

“A man named Nigel Beard. You can say that you have no idea what the letter contains but that I said to say it had to do with Detective Second Class Adamo Cortez.”

“And this won’t cause me any trouble?”

“It will not. And you have my e-mail address, Congressman. If you ever need my kind of help, just drop a line and I will be there.”