Down the River unto the Sea

3

After Aja returned to the outer office desk, I was at sea there for a while. My life since those ninety-odd days in Rikers had been what I can only call vacant. I didn’t feel comfortable in the company of most people, and the momentary connection with my daughter, or the few friends I had, left an aftermath of isolation. Human connection only reminded me of what I could lose.

Being an investigative private detective worked out perfectly because my interactions with people were mostly through listening devices and long-distance camera lenses. The few times I had to actually talk with people I was either playing a role or asking cut-and-dried questions like “Was so-and-so here on Friday night after nine?” or “How long has Mr. Smith worked for you?”

The buzzer sounded.

Half a minute later Aja-Denise said, over the intercom, “It’s Uncle Glad, Daddy.”

“Send him in.”

The door opened and the tall, athletic, eternal sergeant walked in. He was wearing a straw-colored sports jacket and trousers so dark green that they might have passed for black. The white shirt and blue tie were his mainstay, and that smile lived equally in his eyes and on his lips.

“Mr. Oliver,” he hailed.

“Glad.”

I rose to shake his hand and then he lowered into the seat across from me.

“This office smells like a prison cell,” he said.

“I got a cleaning lady come in and lay down that scent every other week.”

“What you need is an open window and less time moldering behind that desk.”

“Aja told me about the poker game tonight. I’d like to join you, but I got a man needs following.”

Glad’s eyes were cornflower blue. Those orbs shone on me, accompanying his that’s too bad smile.

“Come on, Joe. You know you got to get outta this funk. It’s been a decade. My son is off to college. My little girl is working on a second grandchild.”

“I’m doing fine, Sergeant Palmer. Detective work suits me. That’s the way I roll.”

I had always been envious of Gladstone, even before my life hit the rocks. Just the way he sat in a chair made you think that he had a handle on a life that was both a joy and deeply meaningful.

“Maybe you could roll your way into better circumstances,” he suggested.

“Like what?”

“I know a guy who might be of some help. You remember Charles Boudin?”

“That crazy undercover cop? The one that got into his cover so much that he bit an arresting officer to get in good with the Alonzo gang?”

“And which one are you?” Glad replied. “The pot or the kettle?”

“What about Charlie?”

“I was gonna get you drunk on this new seven-hundred-dollar bottle of cognac I got,” Glad said. “You know... win all your money and get you singing. Then I was gonna tell you that C.B. is now a lieutenant in the Waikiki PD. He says he could get you in there in a wink.”

That was the first inkling of the great transition before me. Glad had been angry that I was treated with disrespect by our brothers in blue. He wanted every cop to have the best. He really was my only close friend, with maybe one exception, who wasn’t also blood.

“Hawaii? That’s five thousand miles from here. I can’t leave Aja like that.”

“After a year you’d be a resident, and the university at Manoa has an excellent physics department. A.D. could get a BS there and move on, or she could stay and get a PhD. It’s a real good school and the cost is almost nothing.”

He’d done his homework.

“Are you trying to get rid of me, Glad?”

“You need to get back up on the horse, Joe. There’s no charges pending against you and the department is legally prohibited from saying what you were suspected of. I know three captains would give you glowing references.”

“And Charlie already said he’d get me in?”

“They need experience like yours out there on the island, Joe. You were one of the best investigative cops New York ever had.”

“Aja might not want to go so far away.”

“She would if you were there. That girl idolizes you. And she’d do it just so that you stop brooding in here like some kind of lovesick walrus.”

“What if it came out?” I said. “You know... what they say I did? What if I upended my life and then the whole thing falls apart under my feet? I’d have moved Aja, with no money and no way to come home.”

Without missing a beat Glad said, “You remember that time Rebozo was shot up in East Harlem?”

“Yeah?”

“Two gunmen with semiautomatics and Officer R. on the asphalt hemorrhaging like a motherfucker. You take them on with just your sidearm, wound them both, cinch Paulo’s wounds, and make it home in time for supper.”

“And still they set me up like a goddamned tenpin.”

“Fuck them,” Glad said with barely a smile. “If you could stand up to armed gunmen, then why would you be afraid of five thousand miles?”

It was a good question.