Уолтер Мосли - Down the River unto the Sea

He stood motionless for at least three minutes staring at Simon Creighton.

At first the obese prisoner stared back. He was afraid, definitely, but also trying to put up a brave front. Thirty seconds into the stare down he began to tremble.

“What the fuck do you want, man?!”

Mel remained stock-still.

“Just tell me what you want... please.”

There came a snort in the room that didn’t seem to originate with either man.

“What the fuck do you need?” Simon pleaded. “Do I know you? Did I do somethin’ to you?”

Mel moved his head ever so slightly, and Simon tried his best to skitter away. His chains actually rattled.

I was getting scared myself.

Another minute went by. Then Mel took a step. When he moved you couldn’t see the foot motion, so in a way he seemed to be floating.

“Please don’t!” Creighton started screaming, and even though we were way under a stone building, and soundproofed to boot, I was half-certain that somebody would hear.

Mel descended on the chained man, punching, gouging, and kicking Simon with vitriol.

The beating went on for maybe ninety seconds before I said, “Mel.”

He continued and so I said, “Mel, stop it, man. I want him conscious and able to talk. I want him alive.”

Three more blows and Mel stood up from the bleeding, blubbering man. He turned to what must have been a mirrored interior, and I could see three spots of blood on the otherwise immaculate mask.

“Ask him why he was at the Liberté Café the other night.”

“What were you doing at the Liberté Café?” It was Mel’s voice but somewhat altered, and it didn’t come from him but rather speakers in the walls of both cell and anteroom.

Simon started shivering. “Me and Fido and Vince was there to catch a man with a red flower in his buttonhole, but he never came.”

“Who sent you?”

“A guy named Marmot, William James Marmot.”

“What were you going to do with the man when you got him?”

“I don’t know.”

Mel kicked Simon in his left cheekbone, slamming his head against the white stone wall behind. The impact left a pocked red imprint on the granite surface.

Simon actually shrieked.

“We was supposed to grab him and question him about who he was workin’ for,” he said. And because he didn’t want to get kicked again, he added, “Marmot’s a private security analyst who works with this guy named Antrobus, Augustine Antrobus. Marmot didn’t know, but Vince knew that him and Antrobus was a team.”

“What does this Antrobus do?”

“He has a security business too, but he’s a loner, like. He does work through private contractors. Just a couple’a women in his office. Vince once did a gig for him.”

“What were you supposed to do after you got your answers?” Mel asked.

“Do what?” Simon said with feigned innocence.

“Yeah,” Mel agreed. “Do what to the dude with the red flower in his buttonhole.”

Simon started crying, not so much like a man or a woman but more like a child bereft at both his misdemeanor and its punishment.

“That’s all I need, Mel,” I said. “Come on back out here.”

Simon Creighton sobbed while Mel and I sat in the folding chairs. He removed the mask and placed it on his lap. It sat there tilting back, looking up at me as if in judgment.

“You know the people he said?” Mel asked.

“No. But I should be able to find out easy enough.”

“I could just kill this one,” Mel remarked after a few beats of silence.

The madman created by Rikers was still there in my head. The greatest crime I’d committed so far was in the four seconds it took to consider Mel’s offer.

“Did he see you when you grabbed him?” I asked as a kind of charade.

“Nah. I put knockout gas in his car. When he opened the door it was released,” the watchmaker bragged. “He was out before he could get the key in the ignition.”

“Then he doesn’t know anything about us.”

“He knows what we asked him. He could tell somebody that.”

“Probably won’t,” I said with faux sagacity. “But even if he does, they don’t know who I am. Maybe if they know someone has identified them they’ll get rash and make some mistake.”

“Might be right,” Mel agreed. “You know, this is the second time I was primed to kill this motherfucker. I don’t like the tease.”

Taking a deep breath, he went to his all-purpose alcove and came out with a slender white leather briefcase. He got down on his knees, set the case on the chair, and opened it. He took out a hypodermic needle and syringe that had already been prepped.

Looking up at me with a smile he said, “Always be prepared.”

Again in his mask Mel approached Simon. The prisoner cried and begged, twisted and turned, kicked and even tried to bite Mel, in order to avoid that injection.

I drove one of Mel’s cars — a 1973 dark-brown GTO. He took the wheel of Simon’s car — a Cadillac from the nineties. Simon was unconscious in the back seat of the Brougham.

We crossed over into New Jersey.

I followed them across the Korean War Veterans Parkway, past New Brunswick, and down U.S. 1. Three miles toward Trenton there was a turnoff.

It was a rest stop designed for car problems and tired truckers. The rest stop was empty. By the time I got there Mel was standing next to the Caddy.

“He’ll wake up in the morning fucked outta his mind,” Mel assured me on the ride back to Brooklyn. “He’ll be thankful to be alive and wondering where the fuck he was. He’ll be so scared that it might even be worth it not killin’ him.”

“You’re crazy, aren’t you, Mel?”

“Yeah. I guess I am. I don’t wanna be. It’s not like I can get to it, you know what I mean? I love life. I’m good at shit. It’s just... I don’t know.”

I got into my apartment sometime after 3:00 a.m., lay down on the raised bed, and stared out into the darkness of the room. I could tell by the quality of my consciousness that I wouldn’t sleep that night.

I stayed there in the bed so that at least my body could be at repose. I tried not to think about the cases or the things I had done that day.

I finally settled on remembering the retired merchant marine Athwart Miller and how we’d play Go in his bar after it was closed at night. I could have picked up whatever information I needed in a few minutes, but he always had hot grog ready and the board set out at the far end of the bar.

I never even came close to winning. He was far superior to me, but I was the only person he knew who’d come to the bar and play him.

I once asked why he’d even waste his time playing someone so inferior to his skill.

He said, “I play you because you’re here and every time we sit down you’re a little better. The best you can ask for is an opponent that improves. It’s like looking into a mirror with your eyes closed.”

I woke up surprised that I had fallen asleep. Before letting the day get away with me I said a silent thanks for the gifts of the dead.

Among the thousands of pages of notes that Willa Portman provided was a file on Lamont Charles: gambler, con man, and the only survivor of the Blood Brothers of Broadway not in prison or missing.

The photographs of Charles showed a handsome man with almost copper-colored skin and straightened hair. He had a killer smile and eyes that somehow came up out of the photograph.

He was a resident of the Aramaya Rest Home on Neptune Avenue in the heart of Coney Island. It was a three-story brick building not two blocks from the ocean.

The reception area’s walls were lined with chairs and sofas on which reclined at least two dozen old men and women who had outlived their usefulness but still clung to the memories and hope of life.