Уолтер Мосли - Down the River unto the Sea

“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.

It wasn’t yet 7:00 a.m. when I climbed the concrete stairs to the raised pedestrian walkway across the Brooklyn Bridge.

There was a chill in the morning air, but I had my windbreaker on, a sweater beneath that. Pedestrian traffic was still pretty light at that time of day and the breezes can get a little stiff. The combination of solitude and cold somehow imparted the feeling of freedom; so much so that I was on the brink of laughter. I knew these emotions indicated an instability of mind, but I didn’t care. A man can live his whole life following the rules set down by happenstance and the cash-coated bait of security-cosseted morality; an entire lifetime and in the end he wouldn’t have done one thing to be proud of.

It was a forty-nine-minute walk from Montague Street to Manhattan. Once in the rich man’s borough I went past city hall all the way to the West Side, where I turned left on Hudson.

Three blocks down, there was a diner called Dinah’s across the street from Stonemason’s Rest Home.

“Mr. Oliver,” Dinah Hawkins said in greeting when I sat down at the counter. “I haven’t seen you in three months.”

“I usually go straight over, D. But today I wanted to stretch my legs and think.”

“You didn’t walk here all the way from Brooklyn, did you?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“It’s not good for your health to overdo, Mr. Oliver.”

Dinah was a good-size woman who worked twelve hours a day, seven days a week. Well past sixty, she had biceps bigger than mine, and I was sure that she could work alongside most longshoremen with no great strain.

“It’s the only exercise I get,” I lied.

“You’re looking good enough without it.” Her Irish-green eyes sparkled, and I knew that she was what her father would have called a hellion when she was younger.

“Got any interesting cases?” she asked, putting a mug of black coffee at my station.

I discussed my job with certain people who had nothing to do with law enforcement. But when it came to my new cases I couldn’t be quiet enough.

“I had this public figure liked to do threesomes with T-girls,” I said.

“What’s that mean? Tiger girl?”

“I think the street term is chicks with dicks. ”

The bell to the door behind me sounded. In the mirror I saw a young man wearing a suit designed for an older, and probably more successful, banker. The young man — he was somewhere in his mid-twenties — looked at us for a few moments, then walked over to stand at the cash register.

“Oh!” Dinah had rosy cheeks and a mouth that could become a perfect circle. “There was one of those lived in the apartment across the hall from me and Dan. Miss Figueroa we used to call her. She was the cleanest creature I ever knew. Dan was the one had to tell me she was a he. I swear I couldn’t tell at all.”

“How is Dan?” I asked.

Dinah beamed at me. “Thank you for askin’, Mr. Oliver. Him and me take a walk every evening along the Hudson. He tells me the same stories over and over and I love him more every time he does.”

“Excuse me,” the young/old white banker-boy said.

“He always remembers you,” Dinah continued, ignoring the young man. “He says, ‘How’s that nice colored boy helped Arnold?’ I know he shouldn’t say it that way, but he can’t remember to learn.”

“Excuse me,” said the banker.

“What do you want?” Dinah snapped.

“Two coffees with milk and sugar to go.”

“For the takeaway window you make a left out the door and then left again.” She looked at me, raising her eyebrows.

“But I’m late,” he said. “Just do this now and I’ll use the window after.”

“You’ll use the window now. There’s a big sign and I don’t like doin’ the takeaway.”

“That’s not a very people-oriented business practice,” he judged.

“Neither is knockin’ you upside the head, but I will do just that if you don’t move yer privileged ass.”

A flash of anger passed over the young man’s face. He glanced at me and I shook my head — ever so slightly. I’m pretty big and almost as strong as Dinah, so he took the hint and left, muttering wordless complaints.

“You didn’t have to bother yourself, Mr. Oliver,” Dinah said when he was gone. “I can take care of myself.”

“I wasn’t worried about you, girl. I just didn’t want to have to be a witness after you broke his nose and he called the police.” This was true.

Dinah laughed and we took a breath to find the thread of our conversation again.

“Have you seen my grandmother lately, D.?”

“She comes over for a smoke most afternoons unless it’s rainin’ or too cold. We go out back while Moira serves the late crowd.”

“How does she seem?”

“Wise as a prophet and crafty as a fox. She wishes that your uncle would come by.”

“He’s always working,” I said.

Uncle Rudolph was in Attica, imprisoned there for an insurance scam so complex that the prosecutors were never able to pin down the exact amount he’d embezzled.

“Oh well,” Dinah opined. “At least Brenda has you.”

“May I help you?” a good-figured blonde asked. She was standing behind the reception counter of the upscale retirement residence. I was liking her style.

In her forties and proud, she wore a green-and-pink-speckled silk blouse to accent a tight black skirt.

Some women just don’t get old.

“Joe Oliver,” I said. “I’m here to see my grandmother.”

“Does she work for one of the patients?” Blondie asked, as easy as if she were talking about the weather.

“No.” I was losing the edge of my attraction.

“Um...” She was really confused. “Does she work for the facility?”

“She’s a resident,” I said. “Brenda Naples. Room twenty-seven oh nine.”

For a moment the receptionist, whose name tag read THALIA, doubted me. But then she worked a little magic on the iPad registry.

“She is here,” Thalia said.

“Has been since before you,” I said, “and will be long after you have moved back to New Jersey.”

“I’m very sorry, Mr. Oliver.”

“Me too,” I concurred. “But maybe not for the same reason.”

“Baby,” my grandmother said. I had knocked on the open door and then entered her room.

She stood up from a chair that was set at a height halfway between a regular seat and a barstool. Her dress was bright yellow and her skin the blackness of a night sky.

I kissed her lips because that’s what we’d always done.

“Sit on the bed, darlin’,” she said, waving toward the single-mattress cot that was the main purpose for her room.

She fell back into her carpeted wood chair, then momentarily raised her shoulders to prove how happy she was to see me.