Down the River unto the Sea

9

One flight up from my second-floor office is the apartment where I live. It too has an eighteen-foot ceiling and two magnificent windows that look out on the gentrifying thoroughfare. I have ceiling-to-floor deep red curtains cut from a light fabric derived, somehow, from bamboo. I open them at night because the lights are on at the front of the room and no one can see in.

My entire apartment is one big room and a water closet. I have a footed, deep-basin iron bathtub, a king-size bed on a three-foot-high dais, and a mahogany desk that’s more than a hundred years old.

Leaving the rest of the room dark, I turned on the desk lamp and opened the suitcase full of records that Willa Portman brought.

Either Willa or her boss was very organized. A blue folder set atop the great pile of paper was an index that pretty much laid out the defense for A Free Man, née Leonard Compton. It contained his personal history, his political involvements, his work and military experience, and the events leading up to the night that Officers Valence and Pratt were killed.

Laid upon the table of contents page of the blue folder was a three-by-five photograph of a smiling middle-aged black woman. The smile revealed a golden upper front tooth, and the eyes told of intelligence and certainty. Etched in red along the bottom of the photograph was the name: JOHANNA MUDD. Willa Portman, I was sure, had placed that picture there because the disappearance of Ms. Mudd was the reason for the investigation.

When he was still Leonard Compton, Man served as a master sergeant in the rangers. He’d received high scores as a marksman and had won many medals, at least hinting at his bravery and nationalism. When he left the armed forces he went to City College and then became a high school teacher in Upper Manhattan, where he worked hard to keep his charges, boys and girls, out of trouble.

Leonard wrote articles for a small uptown paper called the People’s Clarion. He started out writing about his military experience, but as time passed he began to detail crimes done to young people in and around the black neighborhoods of New York City.

At some point along the way he joined, or maybe started, a group called the Blood Brothers of Broadway. This group consisted of five men and two women.

Tanya Lark had been one of Man’s success stories. She was a gangbanging killer who scared everybody she met until he showed her that anger and violence could be redirected to help the community.

Greg Lowman was a security guard for Trickster Enterprises, a toy company that had diversified (according to Braun’s sources) into various technological concerns. Lowman was a black member of the NRA and a solid believer in every American’s right to defend him- or herself.

Christopher “Kit” Carson had done six stints in jail, mostly for burglary. One of these was due to an arrest that Pratt had made.

Son Mali was an Africanist who believed that one day a revolution would tear the United States apart. His day job was that of a master plumber.

Lamont Charles was the slickest member of the Blood Brothers of Broadway. He was a suspected con man who had never been charged, a Lothario of almost mythic proportions, and a poker player so devastating that he was allowed in only certain professional games from Atlantic City to Las Vegas.

Lana Ruiz was a Dominican who had cut the throat of her pimp in his sleep but somehow managed to get a judge to call it self-defense. Her picture was that of a beautiful dark-skinned woman who seemed defiant even while smiling for the photograph.

The BBB was not a fortunate lot. Lowman, Carson, and Mali had all been murdered in the eighteen months preceding Man’s shoot-out with Pratt and Valence. Lamont Charles had been shot but he survived; a triplegic living in a nursing home on Coney Island.

Lana Ruiz had been convicted of armed assault and attempted murder, while Tanya Lark had dropped off the map completely.

That was a whole lot of mayhem even for a militant political group, even for a Saturday night in summertime in Brownsville, New York.

There was a long list of witnesses who had claimed that the dead cops were involved in criminal activities and two witnesses who at first claimed that the cops opened fire on Man (they gave nearly identical testimony), only to recant within three days of each other.

Even though Braun hadn’t mentioned it in his arguments, I couldn’t see why the former Leonard Compton would decide to take on the cops in a one-on-two shoot-out. He was a marksman and they trained professionals. Why not set himself up on some roof and take them out when they were on a job?

And why drop a case just because the client might have been guilty? It was the lawyer’s job to work with the law, not worry about right and wrong.

I must have read four hundred pages when I noticed that it was closing in on 5:00 a.m. I should have gone to bed, but all that evidence gave me a thought: If Adamo Cortez wasn’t actually the name of an NYPD cop, then maybe it was an official alias or a confidential informant.

It was at that moment I knew I was going to take both cases: my frame and A Free Man’s murder conviction.

I was born to be an investigator. For me it was like putting together a three-dimensional, naturalistic puzzle that in the end would be an exact representation of the real world.

From the deep bottom drawer of my ancient desk I took out two reams of paper, both pastel colored — one blue and the other pink. That way my outline of the two investigations could be stacked together while following two different strands. I had, in my failed career, used as many as five colors to keep my place.

I’d been paid two hundred fifty dollars to work an eight-hour day seeing if the two investigations made sense. I had a clear pathway because nobody knew what I was up to.

For the first step I took a white sheet from the top drawer and penned across the top COMMON ELEMENTS.

The first question shared by both cases was whether or not I needed a partner in the process.

I considered Gladstone Palmer. He was my friend; there was no doubt about that. He went into Rikers and made sure that I was safe in solitary. When I was working a seventy-hour week at two security jobs he lent me the money to start the detective service, then sent me my first few clients. And Glad knew how the department worked. He was connected to every precinct, every captain, and most foot soldiers of the NYPD. His input would be invaluable and... if he was able to clear my name, he might also clear a pathway to his own advancement.

But Glad’s strengths were also deficits. He did know all the important players on, and off, the force and so might be beholden to people I’d have to hurt. Add to that the fact that I was trying to clear a cop killer of the crimes he was accused of while admitting that he pulled the trigger... that would be of no help to my friend.

Patrolman First Class Henri Tourneau was another choice. The young Haitian-born cop’s father asked me to help him prepare for getting on the force. I guided Henri through every step, including training himself in computers so that he’d have a skill that most prospective cops lacked. Once he was in I counseled him on how to deal with everything from his captain to the rank and file. I told him what rules could be bent or broken and those that were sacrosanct.

One thing he was never to do was admit that I was anything other than a friend of his father’s.

Henri allowed me to roam through the general databases, but using him as a partner in these investigations was above and beyond for the young and recently married policeman.

No other cop fit the bill, and so I let my thoughts range wider. There were half a dozen PIs I knew from work I’d done over the years. But I wasn’t close enough to any of them to feel they could be trusted with issues so serious.

The sun was beginning to peek over the bank building across the street when I thought, reluctantly, of Melquarth Frost. Melquarth, or Mel as he was better known, was a vicious criminal.

Mel had done many things wrong in his life. He’d robbed banks, murdered rivals, tortured marks, set bombs, and belonged to a few dangerous heist crews that had executed some of the most daring robberies of the twenty-first century so far.

I came across the lifelong criminal when the FBI tasked a few city cops to shore up some gaps in a net they set for the Byron gang. Ted and Francis Byron were truly architects of crime. They had planned and carried out at least eight bank burglaries where they were able to blast out an inner wall through to cash-gorged vaults.

On these jobs they always took along a man like Mel in case there was a need to fight.

The job was done at a little after three on a Wednesday morning at a midtown bank on West Fifty-Sixth. I was guarding a subway grate on Sixty-Third that the feds said might be used as an exit. It was just me because they didn’t think it likely that anyone would get that far and the brass was charging them twenty-five hundred dollars a head for boots on the ground.

I listened to the takedown over a secure line that all the participants had. The explosion had come at 3:09. Soon after that, six of the seven bank robbers were captured without a round being fired.

There was a lot of chatter over the seventh perp. I stayed at my post because that was the job and I always did my job — unless there was a woman somewhere in the way.

Thirty-two minutes after the takedown the grate to the subway lifted slightly. I watched from shadow, timing my intervention.

I could have called for backup, but by then the suspect would have escaped. I could have shot him in the leg or foot, or killed him for that matter, but that’s just not the kind of man I am. So instead I waited until one hand shot up out of the ground, snapped a cuff on it, and quickly attached the other link to the heavy metal grating. Then I put the muzzle of my service revolver to the man’s head and said, “Let me see that other paw and it better be empty.”

I received the Medal of Exceptional Merit for the arrest, bestowed upon me by the chief himself. The FBI had me go to their headquarters, where the local director shook my hand.

All that honor went away when Melquarth was put on trial. The other six bank robbers were tried together, but because Mel was captured alone and quite far from the scene, his lawyer, Eugenia Potok, was able to separate him from the rest.

Before I testified, the prosecutor “interviewed” me, suggesting that maybe I heard the accused admit to being involved with the crime. The other men refused to bear witness against one another and so had Mel.

I could not, in good conscience, say anything but what I knew on the stand. I had determined early on in my career that as a cop I would always adhere to the letter and the spirit of the law. Law for me was scripture.

Melquarth beat the charges, and I was transferred to night duty on Staten Island for the next three years.

Time passed. I was framed, incarcerated, and thrown out on my ear — so it’s easy to understand how I might have forgotten all about Melquarth. And then, only two years ago, I was sitting in my office, looking out the window, and thinking about solitary confinement.

“Mr. Oliver,” Tara Grandisle, Aja’s predecessor, said over the intercom.

“Yes, Tara.”

“A Mr. Johnson to see you.”

“Who?”

“He says he wants to discuss a case with you.”

As far as I knew, this Mr. Johnson was just another prospective client. I had no idea that he was the man who earned me three years on a Staten Island boat.

“Send him in,” I said, pocketing my snub-nosed .32 just for insurance.

When Melquarth Frost walked through the door I nearly pulled my weapon.

My visitor smiled and held his arms out, revealing open palms.

I hit the intercom and said, “We need some pumpernickel for the pastrami.”

“Okay,” Tara said. That was our code for her to clear out.

“Mr. Oliver,” Mel said.

“Melquarth Frost.”

“You can call me Mel; all my friends do.”

“I’m not your friend.”

“That might be,” he said. “But I’m yours. Can I sit down?”

I thought about the request a beat longer than was civil and then said, “Sure.”

He was wearing a medium gray suit that was loose enough for freedom of movement but tailored in such a way to look businesslike.

“What can I do for you?”

“Just did three on a nickel in Joliet,” he said, as if this was somehow an answer to my question. “My second conviction and my last.”

The man was the opposite of his suit. He was lean and dangerous-looking, with olive skin, short brown hair, and dark eyes that women must have adored. His hands were heavily muscled.

“You bought a suicide pill or something?” I asked.

“Guy shot me in the back when we were through with a bank job,” Mel said. “Shot me right there in the bank for sixteen percent divided by five.” He shook his head in disgust.

“And he’s out here somewhere?”

“No.” Melquarth Frost just twisted his lips and I felt a twinge of fear. “He hooked up with a girlfriend’a mine after the job.”

“So maybe it wasn’t just the one-fifth of sixteen percent.”

Mel smiled and then grinned. “He was supposed to meet her at the Carving Table in North Chicago one night and someone shot him in the eye.”

“All that public knowledge?”

Instead of answering me he went on. “Cops saved my life and then did this pissant job of framing me. They shoved money from the bank in my pocket, but my lawyer proved it wasn’t me put it there.

“I had an illegal firearm on me. If they had let it alone I’d’a gotten twelve years. But they had to deal it down if the cops didn’t want to be caught doin’ what they do.”

Another thing I noticed about my visitor was the way he sat. His legs were spread wide. He pulled over an empty chair and laid his left wrist on top of the backrest. His right hand lay on his knee. It was as if he was at home, enjoying life more than a billionaire.

He gazed at the space above my head, thinking about a hard life with a sense of élan and maybe even a little whimsy.

“So?” I said before he tried to move in.

“I got five years, and from the first day they had me in solitary confinement.”

I must have winced, because a smile flitted across the career criminal’s lips. He nodded slightly.

“It almost broke me,” he continued. “Almost did. I remember shouting for days. Then I cried. And finally one morning — I guess it was morning because that’s when I woke up. On that morning I found the peace to think about my life. I went over the whole thing from grade school to solitary, and you know what I figured?”

“Not in the least.”

“That in all that time you were the only one treated me fair.”

“What the fuck? I arrested you for bank robbery.”

“You coulda shot me. You coulda hit me in the head with a lead pipe. You sure as shit coulda testified that I had somehow mentioned the bank job. I know your bosses were mad when you didn’t lie.”

Mel leaned forward, now with both hands on his thighs.

“So you came here from Illinois to thank me?” I asked.

“I already told you,” he said. “I’m not goin’ back to prison. I came out here to ply my old trade and to tell you that if you ever need a good turn I owe you a few.”

That was a very important nexus for me. It was rare for anyone to see in me what I saw in the mirror. Melquarth might have been a villain, but he was a villain with my number in his pocket.

I wasn’t about to share that intelligence with him.

“What kind of trade?” I asked.

“Watchmaker.”

“Really?”

“When I was fourteen they wanted to put me in juvie for assault and battery. The judge gave me a choice of enrolling in an after-school program or being locked up. I chose watchmaking with a little Jew named Harry Slatkin who did watch repair on Cherry Lane. He taught me a lot. Later on I applied that knowledge to bomb making, but in my spare time I studied watches.”

“You know,” I said, “that even though I’m no longer a cop I’m still on the other side of the line from you.”

He laid a small white business card on the desk and said, “I hear you play chess.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Chessboard is a neutral place. I go to Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village most Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays. I play there. Number’s on the card. If you ever wanna match wits across that line, just gimme some warning and I’ll have the board set up.”

He rose from his chair with ease. He nodded instead of holding out a hand. I nodded back and he left.

I looked up the name Melquarth on the Internet soon after he left. He’d been a patron god to Hannibal before the general attacked Europe. He was also associated with Ba’al, considered by Western religion to be a manifestation of Satan.

Over the next two years since then, we’ve played about a dozen games. After the third, which he won, we got a drink together. After the fifth, which he also won, we had a meal.