Down the River unto the Sea

26

There’s a beautiful high-rise apartment building on Forty-Second Street a block or so east of Tenth Avenue. It’s constructed from plate glass and steel girders with a thirty-foot-high atrium for an entrance.

“May I help you, sir?” a caramel-colored, red-jacketed man asked. He was standing behind a four-and-a-half-foot-high green marble counter.

“Miranda Goya,” I said, happy to have at least one sentinel treat me with decorum.

He picked up a phone receiver, but before bringing it to his ear he said, “Your name?”

“Joe Oliver.”

Making all the right moves, the man said into the phone, “A Mr. Oliver for you, Miss Goya.”

He was younger than I by at least five years and had generous lips that were exactly the same tone as the rest of his skin. This unusual aspect gave the guardian a kind of specialized, almost synthetic, air.

“Twenty-eight thirteen,” he said to me.

“Thank you.”

The elevator was large and my only companion was a woman, probably in her eighties, who had mastered makeup well enough to take at least fifteen years off her appearance. She had a small black-and-white dog on a leash that was straining to get at me.

I like dogs. If some evolutionist had told me that men had descended from canines I would have believed her. All the brotherly passion, fang-baring hunt lust, and fear I feel on a daily basis I see in dogs.

I was a dog. I’d been told that my entire life — by men and women alike.

“I can’t let him greet you,” the lady said. She was wearing a fox wrap over an emerald cashmere sweater.

“He bites?”

“Pisses. He pisses on any man’s foot that gets close enough. He’s a bad boyfriend, but I love him.”

I nodded and felt real empathy.

“You in a new play?” she asked then.

“What?”

“The mustache,” she said. “And those silly sideburns.”

“How can you tell?”

“This is an actors’ co-op,” she explained. “Everyone here knows makeup, camera shots, and about hundred thousand lines of bad writing.”

“Just came from a dress rehearsal at BAM,” I said. “A play we’re debuting in Cincinnati. Right now I’m going to run some lines for another project.”

“With who?”

“I’d tell you, but I don’t think her husband would like it.”

The older lady with the dead fox around her neck smiled and bowed her head ever so slightly.

Dog lady got off at the fourteenth floor and I traveled alone to twenty-eight.

I walked halfway down the hall of doors to my left and pressed the button on the jamb of twenty-eight thirteen. There was no faraway sound of a bell or buzzer, but I didn’t want to seem impatient and so refrained from following up with a knock.

“Who is it?” came a woman’s voice.

“Joe Oliver.”

“You don’t look like him.”

I wondered if Lamont had somehow taken a cell phone picture of me or if he just told her what I looked like.

“I put on the mustache and shaved the head because I didn’t want anybody recognizing me on the case. I could call Mr. Charles at the Aramaya if you want.”

After a brief pause she pulled the door open.

Miranda Goya was one of the most beautiful women I, or the dog in me, had ever seen. She was in her late twenties but had the stance of a veteran. Her knee-length dress was composed of equal swirls of purple, red, and green. Her figure denied the garment and, I was sure, had betrayed her again and again from the age of thirteen. Her face was heart-shaped and haughty; the blended color of ethereal rose-gold and earthbound bronze informed her skin.

I crossed the threshold and she moved to the side.

She bit her lower lip as I took off the bulky coat.

“That coat makes you look fat.”

“Thank God for small blessings.”

“Go on in,” she offered.

It was a small studio with a diaphragm-high wall separating the kitchen from the living room. The wall was mounted by a flat, two-foot-wide Formica-covered plank that was both her dining room and desk. A glass double door formed her outer wall; this led to a tiny terrace that looked north toward Harlem. Next to the glass door was a huge bird-of-paradise in a ten-gallon clay pot sporting eleven of the gorgeous orange-and-blue blossoms.

“Mr. Oliver?” she said.

“Yes?”

“Is that your real name?”

“Yes, it is.”

I took out my wallet and handed her my PI’s license. She took the laminated card and compared it to the bald man standing before her.

“This looks like the man Lam told me about,” she said. “What do you want with me?”

“I’m looking into the defense of A Free Man,” I said. “And ever since then people been on me. I decided that if I look different maybe I’d get a little deeper without gettin’ shot.”

Miranda took a deep breath and pursed her lips to express her empathy.

“Have a seat, Mr. Oliver,” she said.

There were two padded wicker chairs facing each other right at the veranda door. Between them was a green-glass box that stood in as a table.

I sat and she asked, “Whiskey?”

“Scotch or bourbon?”

“Sour mash,” she said with a pleasing sneer.

“Darling, you have just become the favorite person of my day.”

The laugh didn’t make it as far as her throat, but it was real mirth from a dark place.

From the kitchen she said, “Ice?”

“No, thank you.”

When she sat down across from me I started to think about Aja. My daughter was a beautiful woman with curves and class and a smile that made you happy.

This trick worked. My heart slowed down and I emptied the generous dram of whiskey.

“You want another one?” Miranda asked.

“Yes, I do, but, no, I won’t.”

That smile etched her lips.

“Lam said that he thought you might be all right,” she shared.

“That’s unusual?”

“Every time somebody come talk to him about Manny he calls me from a pay phone and tells me what they look like and when they were there. Lam don’t talk about Manny to just anybody. Especially if that anybody is a cop.”

“Ex-cop,” I corrected.

“Once a cop, always a cop.”

I laughed and felt the whiskey spreading mildly over my brow.

“Okay, Mr. Ex-cop,” Miranda said. “What did you want me to talk about?”

“A Free Man.”

“What do you want to know?”

“I have heard that there was a conspiracy against him and all the Blood Brothers and there are still people working to make sure his story is silenced.”

The beautiful woman looked toward the window.

She turned back to me and said, “Your mustache is comin’ loose. Up on the left side. Not that much right now, but people will be able to tell after a while.”

I touched the side she mentioned and felt the looseness.

“You want me to touch it up?” she asked.

“Say what?”

“That’s what I do. I’m a makeup artist. After Manny freed me, the Blood Brothers asked me what I wanted to do an’ sent me to school.”

Without further discussion she went to a closet near the front door, pulling out what looked like a fisherman’s box and a collapsible stool. She set up in front and to the right of me, putting the box on the green-glass coffee table.

“Move your head back.”

I did and she studied the false hairs.

“Somebody did a pretty good job of this. Your girlfriend?”

I explained the class I took and the reason I took it.

“That’s really smart for a straight man,” Miranda said. “You know most men only know about tits and ass. They couldn’t even tell you the color of somebody’s eyes.”

“Detectives do it for a living.”

“What you wanna know about Manny?” she asked as she went to work on the semidetached lip hair.

“Lamont says that Mr. Man pulled you out of a bad situation.”

“Not only me.”

“I’m talking to you, though.”

“Yeah.” She dabbed a strong-smelling ointment across the top of the mustache. “I was deep in it and one day Manny walked in a room and took me out. That was it.”

I was slowly becoming a reluctant fan of Leonard Compton / Free Man.

“And it wasn’t just me,” she repeated. “There was a hundred children at any one time doin’ all kinds’a shit for them.”

“Who?”

She had to take a breath before saying, “Valence and Pratt.”

“Were there others? I mean others working with them.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t know their names.”

“Policemen?”

“I’ont really know.” She concentrated on the hairs a little more and said, “They had this piece’a paper with a price list for sixty-seven things we had to do if they paid for it. Nasty things. Anything.”

“So they were full-out pimps and Mr. Man took you away from that,” I said.

“Not only pimps. They killed people too. Murdered ’em.”

“You mean the Blood Brothers.”

“Them... kids tried to run and family wanted to free ’em and anybody got in their way.”

“These murders are on record?”

Miranda pressed against my whole upper lip with at least six fingers, then she sat back in her chair. She took in a deep breath and watched me with eyes that, like her skin, were not quite brown.

After maybe three minutes she said, “You know I love Lamont. He treated me like a real woman and never even once tried to take advantage. You know a girl like me make men wanna take advantage and we hardly even know it.

“I love Lamont and I can’t even tell you how much I feel about Manny. I was in the back room of a massage parlor on Thirty-Ninth with this white man got his fist up my ass felt like all the way to his forearm and A Free Man come in with a gun. Shit! That white man messed himself and ran like some kinda dog. And nobody has done nuthin’ to me I ain’t said yes to since that night.

“Now Manny’s up on death row and I cain’t do a damn thing to help him. He won’t even let me come visit ’cause he don’t want me to get in trouble.

“All that and I’m still scared shit to talk to you.”

My temporary phone beeped and I took it out. Mel had texted me a name and an address.

“Thanks for the cosmetic work,” I said. “How much I owe you?”

“You don’t owe me nuthin’. I offered.”

I stood up and said, “Thanks for your help, Miss Goya. I’m sorry to bring up such painful memories.”

“That’s it?” she said.

“Yeah. I’m going to try and prove the things you said, but I can’t promise that someone might not figure out if you told me things that nobody else knows. I never met Mr. Man, but I don’t think he’d appreciate me trading your life for his.”

Her eyes opened wide as if she’d remembered something.

“Burns,” she said.

“Huh?”

“He was with me that day Manny busted in. Manny took him outta there too.”

“His name is Burns?”

“They call him that but his real name is Theodore.”

“Why they call him Burns?”

“He had a client liked to burn him after every time they fucked. And he fucked Theodore once a week. He got all these scars on his face and left arm.”

I’m pretty sure that that was the turning point for me. It might have been what Miranda had experienced in the massage parlor. Maybe if I had not heard what happened to her there I could have overlooked Theodore’s experience. I don’t know. But from that moment on I wasn’t merely solving one case or another... I was as serious as a slave who said no more to his chains.

“What about Theodore?”

“Before Manny got us, he used to work with Valence and Pratt pretty close. I mean, they had him fuckin’ people too, but sometimes he helped them with the heavy lifting.”

“Can you tell me anything else about him?” I asked. “A last name?”

“He only goes by Burns.”

“Anything else I should know?”

“He’s on heroin,” the beauty said with an ugly sneer. “He don’t wanna give it up. He says the only way he stays alive is to be high.”

“You try to get him some help?” I asked. I don’t know why.

“No,” she said, flat and low.

“Why not?”

“ ’Cause he right,” she said, her tone a dialect sliding all the way back to that massage parlor. “Gettin’ straight would kill him for sure.”