Уолтер Мосли - Down the River unto the Sea

“Can I sit?” I asked the fat man.

“Please do,” he said and gestured. “Maria!”

A woman blundered gracelessly into the room. She was young and wearing a peasant dress that might be found anywhere in Eastern Europe a century ago. It was made from strips of differing fabrics dyed in bold colors.

Her face was both beautiful and haunted.

“Yes, Papa?” she said.

“Bring our guest grappa.”

“Yes, Papa,” she said and then lurched away.

“She’s a beautiful thing,” Kierin said. “But her mind is always somewhere else.”

“Looks like she doesn’t need to pay attention,” I said.

“Why are you here, Joe?”

He was older than I, but in our business age hardly mattered. I was his inside asset for three months when he really needed it.

“Do you know a junkie named Burns?”

Maria came back carrying a delicate water glass three-quarters filled with clear hundred-and-ten-proof liquor.

She waited for me to take a sip. When I didn’t gag she smiled and left.

“First or last name?” Kierin asked.

“Nickname. They call him that because he has burn scars on his face and left arm.”

“Oh, him. Yes. A very troubled young man. Do you need to find him?”

“I can do that on my own. I just wanted to know anything you could tell me.”

“He’s a good customer when he’s got money. Must have found a new connection, though. I haven’t seen him in months. Maybe he’s dead.”

“What’s his habit?”

“Used to get two hits at a time. For a while there I was seeing him three times a day.”

“Two at a time?”

He nodded.

“Then that’s what I need you to sell me.”

Bread and Bees Homeless Shelter got its name from the beehives Arnold Fray kept on top of the building. He used the honey to feed his homeless, wino, and addict population.

“Honey,” Arnold would say, “is the food of God.”

When Arnold died, his daughter, Hester, took over management of the retreat. She was big like her father and tough like him too. She maintained the apiary and baked the bread.

I strolled up to the desk of the men’s shelter and said, “Hi, my name is Joe Oliver.”

“The cop?” Hester asked, standing up from her walnut office chair.

“Last time I saw you, you couldn’t have been more than sixteen,” I said. “And I don’t look anything like I did.”

“I got a long memory,” she said. “You need it in this calling.”

She wore a long black dress that completely hid any figure she might have had.

“What else you remember ’bout me?”

“All I need to know is that you’re a cop.”

“Not anymore. I was fired more than a decade ago.”

Her smile was unbidden.

“I came to see if I could find a guy called Burns,” I said.

“And you expect me to help you?”

Her eyes were gray and, I knew, mine were brown. We studied each other, looking for a reason to trust, but there was nothing there.

“I’ll promise you that I have no evil designs on Theodore and on top of that I’ll donate a thousand dollars to the shelter, in cash, right now. I’ll agree to meet him under your supervision too.”

After the financial transaction Hester summoned a wraithlike young black man to lead me to a shed up on the roof, near the beehives. He had gray eyes like hers.

The shanty-shack’s door was secured by a padlock. After the impossibly thin young man had used his key, I asked, “What’s your name?”

“Mikey.”

“Give me the lock, Mikey.”

He did so and I attached it to the eye of the latch so that the door would have to remain unlocked.

“I’ll take the key too.”

He almost balked but then acquiesced.

Inside he found the pull chain that flooded the one-room work shed with at least four hundred watts of yellow light from a single bulb.

“She’ll be up in a while,” he said, looking everywhere but at me.

I called Mikey a black man because that’s the term I use for people who come from our so-called race. But he was actually a shade of gray that was tending toward black, where his eyes were a similar shade headed in the opposite direction.

He turned away, leading with his shoulders, and left me to the chilly shack. I had Steppenwolf in my overcoat pocket, but before I could take it out, I spied an old textbook of first-year Latin on the cluttered worktable. All around the old russet-colored hardback were tools that had to do with bees and their honey.

Reading the editor’s introduction to the book (which had been published in 1932), I learned that there had been something called The General Report of the Classical Investigation. This university study had recommended a new way for learning the ancient language, a way that took a historical and also a cultural approach.

I skimmed through the author’s preface, then delved into the meat of the book. I had just learned that “Vergil called his countrymen gēns togāta, which meant toga-clad people,” when the unlocked door swung open and black-clad Hester walked in. She was followed by another slender man of color who wore a yellow-and-green sports jacket, stiff jeans, and no shirt at all.

“Theodore,” Hester said, “I’d like you to meet Mr. Joe King Oliver.”

The fact that she knew my middle name was truly a shock.

“Hey,” the man I would always think of as Burns said.

I closed the book, stood, and took his proffered hand. His face was a deep brown, but all along the left side there were craters and calloused, scarred skin. His left hand was also mutilated and defaced. The skin was scabrous and scaly.

While I studied the details of his disfigurement he stared at me. I was sure he couldn’t see my scar, but somehow I believed that he intuited it.

“Mr. Oliver wants to ask you some questions,” Hester said.

“Have a seat,” I said to both the young man and his chaperone.

The worktable was against an unpainted pine wall and there were five backless stools along it. We each took a stool.

Hester was staring at me, prepared at any moment to end the interview.

Burns was the epitome of what I understood to be a junkie. He was afraid of me but at the same time wondering if there might be a profit in our interaction. He was always looking for the next fix. Maybe he could smell the packets I scored from Kierin.

“It’s good to meet you, Theodore,” I said.

“You too.” He nodded.

“Miranda told me to tell you hello.”

“You know Mir?”

“I met with Lamont out on Coney Island and he sent me to her. She told me her story and said I might want to talk to you.”

“Mir didn’t know I was here,” Theodore said with suspicion. Hester swiveled her shoulders as if she were about to pronounce judgment.

“She told me you used, so I asked a friend on the force to look up your nickname along with Theodore. They knew you came here sometimes.”

“All the time,” Hester said. “He’s trying to get his head together.”

“Why you go from Lamont to Mir to me?” Burns asked.

“Because I was hired to prove that A Free Man was hunted and conspired against by members of the NYPD; specifically Officers Valence and Pratt.”

Both Burns and Hester had the same frown on their faces.

“Manny?” said Burns.

I nodded.

“What does Theodore have to do with that?” Hester asked.

“I have no idea,” I said truthfully. “I talked to Miranda and she pointed me here.”

“Like a gun,” Hester said to Burns.

But he wasn’t listening.

“You wanna help Manny?” he asked me. It seemed as if he saw something important and lasting in the intention alone, like a burning bush or a resurrection.