Уолтер Мосли - Down the River unto the Sea

Five minutes later I was walking into the broom-closet-size office that the candidate had commandeered. There were larger offices, but these were for volunteers who had to spread out and work hard. All Acres needed was a chair to sit in and a phone to yak on.

He ushered me in, closing the door on the blue-bloused woman.

I sat in a simple oak chair and he went around to his seat.

“I never expected to see you again,” he said as he sat.

“I’m not here to cause any trouble,” I said.

“Okay. Then what is it?”

“I need you to call an NYPD inspector and ask him to meet me at the English Teacup off Broadway, in the nineties, around, um, let’s say, two forty-five.”

“And why?”

I took a sealed envelope from my pocket and handed it to the candidate.

“Mimi Lord told me that you got in touch.”

“Yes.”

“I want you to tell Inspector Dennis Natches that I gave you a sealed envelope to register with the Library of Congress.”

“Should I read it?”

“I wouldn’t suggest it. In your position, ignorance is better than the apple.”

“And who shall I tell Mr. Natches that he’s meeting?”

“A man named Nigel Beard. You can say that you have no idea what the letter contains but that I said to say it had to do with Detective Second Class Adamo Cortez.”

“And this won’t cause me any trouble?”

“It will not. And you have my e-mail address, Congressman. If you ever need my kind of help, just drop a line and I will be there.”

The rest of the morning I sat in a congested watchmaker’s shop on Cherry Lane in the Far West Village.

Melquarth and I worked out a security plan for me and my meeting with the high-ranking police official.

“Suppose he sends cops to take me down?” I asked at 10:58 by the Bavarian cuckoo clock on a high school.

“I don’t think heroin-dealing cops use honest Joes for business like this,” the expert in evil replied. “Anyway... if somebody tries to get at you, they will feel my wrath.”

I felt bad exposing one of my brothers to a madman like Mel, but it was pretty certain that Natches was at least aware of my kidnapping, and I doubted if my murder would have lost him any sleep.

I was at the English Teacup at 1:00. I told the waitress that my appointment was going to be late but that I would order lunch then and get a high tea when he arrived at 2:45.

Somewhere outside, Mel was in a specially designed van that had pretty good firepower. I also placed a quick-drying plaster that hardened like old chewing gum under the table where Natches would sit.

Prepared for victory or death, I took out an old copy of Steppenwolf by Hesse. Since meeting the young woman on the subway I had a yearning for the old German’s romance with the life of the mind.

I had a proper English breakfast with sausage, grilled tomatoes and mushrooms, beans, Canadian bacon, and fried toast. I ate even though I wasn’t hungry while reading through glasses that did nothing for my eyesight.

At 2:15 a hale-looking white man came in. He was about my age, wearing a light gray suit. He sat three tables away from me and ordered coffee.

At 2:45 exactly Inspector Natches walked in wearing a dark blue suit. He was both bulky and tall; though he was twenty years my senior, I was sure that he had some fight left in his sinews. He said a word to the hostess and she led him to my table.

He stood over me a moment or two, staring intently. He knew who I was. He might not have pierced the disguise, but Congressman Acres’s message was a clear proclamation.

“Have a seat,” I said.

He hesitated but sat.

“I don’t know who the fuck you think you are, but this little game of yours is not going to work.”

“Tea?”

“No, I don’t want any fucking tea,” he said, a few decibels above the proper volume.

People around turned their heads. Natches’s brows furrowed.

The waitress came with the preordered platter of sandwiches and pastries.

“What kind of tea would you like?” she asked Natches.

“Whatever,” he said, at least keeping his voice down.

“I’ll have Irish Breakfast,” I said.

“We only have English Breakfast.”

“Then that’ll have to do.”

We waited for the service, Natches fuming and me feeling like a cop again.

After the woman — who was straw-haired, forties, and quite comfortable with her body — poured our tea and retreated, Natches sat up straight.

The man in the gray suit sat up also.

The tinkling bell at the top of the front door sounded and Mel walked in. He wore black trousers and a herringbone sports jacket. He took the lay of the restaurant and asked for a table quite close to the gunsel in gray.

“Look, man,” I said to Natches. “I’ve been beaten, scarred, disgraced, imprisoned, and had my marriage torn apart by you motherfuckers without even a word of explanation or warning. People have tried to murder me, and you sit there on your ass like you’re Boss Tweed or somethin’. Understand me — you are not safe.”

“You think I’m scared of you? You think just because you can string a sentence together that I’m gonna make you a police again? I wouldn’t have a half-assed disgraced cop like you shine my shoes. I sure the fuck will not kiss your feet.”

He was angry. Maybe, like the short cuckold on Staten Island, he was always angry. But I believed this passion was anchored in fear.

“If that’s true,” I said, “then why are you here?”

It was an honest question, and how he answered would inform my next moves.

“Don’t fuck with me,” he said.

“The fact you’re sitting in front of me with a bodyguard a few tables away means I’m already fuckin’ with you, brother. What I want to know is why Paul Convert framed my ass. What I want to know is why you motherfuckers tried to murder me — twice.”

The inspector’s hazel eyes were suddenly filled with questions and revelations.

“You’re crazy,” he said in a voice that was trying desperately to take the higher ground.

“Why go through all this shit?” I asked. “I mean, okay, ten, twelve years ago I was on a case. I might have been bullheaded and tried to take down whatever you had going on the docks. You felt that you had to stop me. I could see that. But now that I know the game and the players, why don’t you just let me back in?”

Asking these questions, I realized that this was what was most important to me.

Keeping me in the dark, maybe even putting me in the grave, was what was most important to Natches.

I looked up and noticed that Mel had gotten to his feet. He walked over to Natches’s gray guardian and took the seat across from him.

“You don’t know a thing,” Dennis Natches said to me. “A little man like you could go out like a candle sitting on the windowsill. We should have taken care of you back then, when you were a cowboy.”

“Why didn’t you?”

The answer was in his eye, but it wouldn’t make it to his lips.

“I’m finished with you,” Natches said. He pushed his chair back from the table.

“You should finish your tea,” I said.

“You’re dead and don’t know it,” he said with a grin that couldn’t help but be evil.

“You mean like your friend over there does?”

Natches glanced over and saw smiling Melquarth Frost and his own man looking both serious and defeated.

“I learned a lot since I was a police detective thinking he could do it on his own,” I said. “I learned that reading is important, that law is an ever-changing variable equation, and that a man is a fool if he works alone.”

Natches settled back into his chair.

I continued, “I learned that anyone can be brought low no matter how high or powerful they are. I know that if I die you will too. You should know that, Dennis. Your man over there with my man’s gun on him should know that.