Down the River unto the Sea

25

The rest of the morning I sat in a congested watchmaker’s shop on Cherry Lane in the Far West Village.

Melquarth and I worked out a security plan for me and my meeting with the high-ranking police official.

“Suppose he sends cops to take me down?” I asked at 10:58 by the Bavarian cuckoo clock on a high school.

“I don’t think heroin-dealing cops use honest Joes for business like this,” the expert in evil replied. “Anyway... if somebody tries to get at you, they will feel my wrath.”

I felt bad exposing one of my brothers to a madman like Mel, but it was pretty certain that Natches was at least aware of my kidnapping, and I doubted if my murder would have lost him any sleep.

I was at the English Teacup at 1:00. I told the waitress that my appointment was going to be late but that I would order lunch then and get a high tea when he arrived at 2:45.

Somewhere outside, Mel was in a specially designed van that had pretty good firepower. I also placed a quick-drying plaster that hardened like old chewing gum under the table where Natches would sit.

Prepared for victory or death, I took out an old copy of Steppenwolf by Hesse. Since meeting the young woman on the subway I had a yearning for the old German’s romance with the life of the mind.

I had a proper English breakfast with sausage, grilled tomatoes and mushrooms, beans, Canadian bacon, and fried toast. I ate even though I wasn’t hungry while reading through glasses that did nothing for my eyesight.

At 2:15 a hale-looking white man came in. He was about my age, wearing a light gray suit. He sat three tables away from me and ordered coffee.

At 2:45 exactly Inspector Natches walked in wearing a dark blue suit. He was both bulky and tall; though he was twenty years my senior, I was sure that he had some fight left in his sinews. He said a word to the hostess and she led him to my table.

He stood over me a moment or two, staring intently. He knew who I was. He might not have pierced the disguise, but Congressman Acres’s message was a clear proclamation.

“Have a seat,” I said.

He hesitated but sat.

“I don’t know who the fuck you think you are, but this little game of yours is not going to work.”

“Tea?”

“No, I don’t want any fucking tea,” he said, a few decibels above the proper volume.

People around turned their heads. Natches’s brows furrowed.

The waitress came with the preordered platter of sandwiches and pastries.

“What kind of tea would you like?” she asked Natches.

“Whatever,” he said, at least keeping his voice down.

“I’ll have Irish Breakfast,” I said.

“We only have English Breakfast.”

“Then that’ll have to do.”

We waited for the service, Natches fuming and me feeling like a cop again.

After the woman — who was straw-haired, forties, and quite comfortable with her body — poured our tea and retreated, Natches sat up straight.

The man in the gray suit sat up also.

The tinkling bell at the top of the front door sounded and Mel walked in. He wore black trousers and a herringbone sports jacket. He took the lay of the restaurant and asked for a table quite close to the gunsel in gray.

“Look, man,” I said to Natches. “I’ve been beaten, scarred, disgraced, imprisoned, and had my marriage torn apart by you motherfuckers without even a word of explanation or warning. People have tried to murder me, and you sit there on your ass like you’re Boss Tweed or somethin’. Understand me — you are not safe.”

“You think I’m scared of you? You think just because you can string a sentence together that I’m gonna make you a police again? I wouldn’t have a half-assed disgraced cop like you shine my shoes. I sure the fuck will not kiss your feet.”

He was angry. Maybe, like the short cuckold on Staten Island, he was always angry. But I believed this passion was anchored in fear.

“If that’s true,” I said, “then why are you here?”

It was an honest question, and how he answered would inform my next moves.

“Don’t fuck with me,” he said.

“The fact you’re sitting in front of me with a bodyguard a few tables away means I’m already fuckin’ with you, brother. What I want to know is why Paul Convert framed my ass. What I want to know is why you motherfuckers tried to murder me — twice.”

The inspector’s hazel eyes were suddenly filled with questions and revelations.

“You’re crazy,” he said in a voice that was trying desperately to take the higher ground.

“Why go through all this shit?” I asked. “I mean, okay, ten, twelve years ago I was on a case. I might have been bullheaded and tried to take down whatever you had going on the docks. You felt that you had to stop me. I could see that. But now that I know the game and the players, why don’t you just let me back in?”

Asking these questions, I realized that this was what was most important to me.

Keeping me in the dark, maybe even putting me in the grave, was what was most important to Natches.

I looked up and noticed that Mel had gotten to his feet. He walked over to Natches’s gray guardian and took the seat across from him.

“You don’t know a thing,” Dennis Natches said to me. “A little man like you could go out like a candle sitting on the windowsill. We should have taken care of you back then, when you were a cowboy.”

“Why didn’t you?”

The answer was in his eye, but it wouldn’t make it to his lips.

“I’m finished with you,” Natches said. He pushed his chair back from the table.

“You should finish your tea,” I said.

“You’re dead and don’t know it,” he said with a grin that couldn’t help but be evil.

“You mean like your friend over there does?”

Natches glanced over and saw smiling Melquarth Frost and his own man looking both serious and defeated.

“I learned a lot since I was a police detective thinking he could do it on his own,” I said. “I learned that reading is important, that law is an ever-changing variable equation, and that a man is a fool if he works alone.”

Natches settled back into his chair.

I continued, “I learned that anyone can be brought low no matter how high or powerful they are. I know that if I die you will too. You should know that, Dennis. Your man over there with my man’s gun on him should know that.

“Now get your ass outta here and remember that your heart can stop beating too.”

He took his time standing from the chair.

I looked over to see that the bodyguard was also on his feet.

They both tried to intimidate us with their stares, but we knew that two cops couldn’t open fire in a New York place of business, and they couldn’t trust that we wouldn’t. After all, there was already one dead man across the river in Queens.

When Natches and his man were gone, Mel got up and sauntered over to me. I told the straw-headed, zaftig waitress to bring the bills for Mel and the bodyguard to me.

“You think they’re laying for us out there?” I asked Mel when the waitress went away to do my bidding.

“I hope not,” he said, “for them. But it doesn’t matter anyway.”

“Why not?”

“The reason I chose this place is that it has a little-known exit to the building next door, and that building has an exit on the alley behind.

“But even if that wasn’t true, I got three guys outside with all kinds’a firepower. I sent them photos with my cell phone and they’re the kinda guys that know when an ambush is set up.”

I smiled and told him about the conversation.

“He’s already in somebody’s crosshairs,” Mel pronounced.

“But who?”

Mel’s cell phone sounded.

“Yeah?” he answered. Then: “All right. Thanks.”

He put away the phone and said to me, “Nobody’s out there. The inspector and his man left in the same car.”

I picked up a crustless cucumber sandwich and took a nibble.

“You got a place to stay, King?”

“Storage unit in the West Village.”

“Huh.”

“Look, Mel, I appreciate your help. But right now I’m gonna look into some stuff. I’ll call you later on and maybe, if you got the time, you could help me again.”

“You sure the fuck need it.”