Уолтер Мосли - Down the River unto the Sea

“What’s that you got?” I asked, gesturing at the bundle in her hand.

“The mail.”

“I’ll get to it tomorrow.”

“No, you won’t. You never go through it until the bills are all late. I don’t know why you won’t let me put your bank account online so I could just pay them all myself.”

She was right; I kept thinking that some false evidence would come in the mail and send me back to that roach-infested cell.

“I have to go out on that Acres job,” I explained.

“Take it with you and go through it while you wait. You said that ninety-nine percent of the time you’re just sitting in your car with nothing to do.”

She held out the bundle and stared into my eyes. There was no mistaking that Aja-Denise had fought with her mother because she knew I needed her.

I reached out for the package and she grinned.

“Uncle Glad called,” she said when I was sifting through the bills, junk mail, and various requests from clients, courts, and, of course, my ex-wife. There was also a small pink envelope addressed by an ornate hand and postmarked in Minnesota.

“Oh?” I said. “What did Gladstone have to say?”

“Him an’ Lehman, War Man, and Mr. Lo, are playin’ cards down the street tonight.”

“That’s Jesse Warren,” I said, “not War Man.”

“He told me to call him that.”

I didn’t like Gladstone’s friends very much, but he kept them away from the office most of the time. And I owed Glad; he had saved my ass more than once since the arrest.

Getting me put in solitary rescued me from becoming a murderer, and then later, when I couldn’t raise enough money for rent and child support, he came up with enough cash for me to start the King Detective Service. He even guided the first few clients my way.

But the best thing Gladstone Palmer ever did for me was to broker my severance with the NYPD. I lost my retirement and benefits except for medical insurance for Monica and my daughter. Magically, there was no blemish on my record either.

For the past week or so I’d been reading the nearly hundred-year-old novel All Quiet on the Western Front. There was a character in there who reminded me of Glad; Stanislaus “Kat” Katczinsky. Kat could find a banquet in a graveyard, a beautiful woman in a bombed-out building. When the rest of the German army was starving, Kat would show up to his squad with a cooked goose, ripe cheese, and a few bottles of red wine.

You couldn’t question a friend like Kat or Glad.

“I told him you were on a job,” Aja said.

“You’re my angel.”

“He said he’d try to stop by before you left.”

The letter from the heartland intrigued me, but I decided to put off reading it.

“How’s your mother?” I asked.

“Fine. She’s writing you to give money for her and Tesserat to send me to Italy for this youth physics conference they’re having in Milan.”

“That sounds nice; like an honor.”

“There’s a hundred kids and only four from the U.S., but I don’t want to go. So you could tell her you’ll help but you won’t ever have to pay.”

“Why don’t you want to go?”

“Reverend Hall is having a special school in this Bronx church where good science students teach at-risk kids how scientists do experiments.”

“You know you really have to start doing some bad things,” I said with a little too much gravitas in my tone.

“Why?” Aja asked. She was really worried.

“Because as a father I have to be able to help you at least some of the time. With great grades, a good heart, and the way you bully me over the mail I feel like I have nothing to offer.”

“But you did do something for me, Daddy.”

“What? Buy you a Happy Meal or a hot dog?”

“You taught me to love reading.”

“But you never read except for homework, and you complain about that.”

“But I remember spending those weekends with you when I was little. Sometimes you’d read to me all morning, and I just know that I’ll do that when I have a little girl.”

“There you go again,” I said, mostly covering the tears in my voice. “Being so good that it makes me feel useless. Maybe I should start punishing you every time you get something right.”

Aja knew when the conversation was over. She shook her head at me and turned. She walked from the room and I was, for a brief moment, relieved of the fall from grace foisted upon me by somebody in the NYPD.

Before I could turn to the pink envelope from the Midwest, Aja returned with a big brown envelope in her hands.

“I almost forgot,” she said. “Uncle Glad left this for you.”

She handed me the package and turned away before I could tease her more about her perfections.

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.