Down the River unto the Sea

by Walter Mosley

  We walked fourteen blocks from the train station to the church and didn’t speak until we were both seated in a kitchen set behind where the choir once praised God.

  “Yeah, sometimes it’s like that” were Mel’s first words to me.

  “Like what?”

  “Sometimes there’s just a black cloud over your head. If there’s trouble anywhere near, it will come to you first.”

  “Like your red bird.”

  Mel smiled.

  “What did you say to Junior?” I asked just to be talking.

  “I called a guy named Genaro. He’s one of the connected guys on the island. He told Junior to climb back in his hole.”

  “Genaro knows you’re here?”

  “On the island. I got an apartment on the water in Saint George.”

  “There was this guy on the train,” I said. “Junior called him Ernesto.”

  “Used to be an enforcer in the fifties and sixties,” Mel said, nodding.

  “Now he just rides the trains?”

  “It’s a peaceful life out here,” he said, and we both laughed.

  Mel made a tomato sauce with chicken thighs and hot peppers, which he poured over vermicelli. With that we had sweetened Chianti and a salad that any French chef would have been proud of.

  I told Mel about the kidnapping and Antrobus, also about Inspector Dennis Natches and how he might have something to do with the frame that bounced me out of my profession.

  “You’re still a detective,” he pointed out.

  “But I’m not a cop.”

  “Yeah,” Mel admitted. “When pretty high school girls grow up they’re no longer cheerleaders, but they’re still pretty girls.”

  He poured me some more wine and I considered the odd comparison.

  “But tell me something, King.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Does Braun have anything to do with Natches?”

  It was then I told him about both of the cases I was on. He listened quite closely, nodding now and again.

  “Now, let me get this right,” he said when I had finished. “You’re trying to prove a conspiracy against this Free Man?”

  “Yeah. Him and me too.”

  “They have any connection?”

  “Other than cops are mixed in with both…I don’t think so.”

  “So you’re trying to prove Man is innocent?”

  “Yeah. But I can’t expect you to go all the way with me on this. I mean, I appreciate what you’ve done, but I’m a fugitive now.”

  “Maybe not,” Mel opined. “There’s nothing on the radio about any shooting in Queens. And I don’t care anyway. I’d love nothing better than to grab a man off the gallows. Shit, that’s a life-defining moment right there. That’s Errol Flynn in Robin Hood.”

  From there he asked me about the details of my inquiries. I told him about most of the names and their involvement; about the Blood Brothers of Broadway and Johanna Mudd, Little Exeter and the heroin trade at the old Brooklyn docks. I didn’t give him Willa Portman’s name.

  At the bottom of the second pitcher of wine, he said, “Okay, okay, I get it, what you want about Man. Prove he was being stalked and that his friends were killed and framed by the cops that were on him. Okay. But what about the thing with your job?”

  “I want the union to take my case and have me reinstated.”

  “But do you want the job back?”

  “I want to be exonerated.” Saying these words reminded me of another obligation. “You got a phone I could use for a few days?”

  The burner he gave me was still in its plastic packaging.

  I set up the phone and sent a text to my daughter based on a simple code she’d devised years before. Our cypher was the transposition of numbers, where 1 = 4, 2 = 9, 3 = 1, 4 = 7, 5 = 2, 6 = 0, 7 = 3, 8 = 5, 9 = 8, and 0 = 9. I sent the number of my new phone to her stepfather, and then she would get another disposable phone and we could talk.

  “So what do you want to do next, King?” Mel asked when I stopped working with the phone.

  “I need to get Natches to admit that he was working with Convert to scuttle my career.”

  “You just gonna walk into his office and say that? I mean, you came outta that ex-cop’s building and they tried to murder you.”

  “I think I might be able to get a little leverage on the inspector. I might even get him to come and meet me.”

  “You need some help?”

  “Hell! I need the whole goddamn French Foreign Legion.”

  The devil laughed and my phone rang at the same time.

  “A.D.?” I said, answering.

  “No. It’s Monica.”

  “Oh.” I could tell by her tone that I was in for grief. “Hey.”

  “What the hell do you mean telling us that we had to leave town because of something you’d done?”

  Despite my profession, I don’t like lying to people. I don’t like making them feel bad either. A good cop is a professional who knows how to lie and inflict pain but does not enjoy these things. I was a good cop, but I needed Aja in my life and Monica was at least part of the reason I was in so much trouble. So I had worked out a tale that would protect them while keeping me from blame.

  “Not something I did,” I said. “Something you did.”

  “Me?”

  “When you called Congressman Acres you set a game into play that got me on the radar of some extremely bad men. Government men. Acres figured out who hired me when I didn’t even know myself. He reported this to some very dangerous characters who need their business kept secret. Now they’re after me and I’m neck-deep in shit, just like when you let them cops keep me in that hole.”

  After a brief pause she said, “You’re lying.”

  “Did you call Acres?”

  “So what?”

  “You did and I got men with guns on my ass. I don’t give a fuck about you and your boy-toy, but with this trouble I need to know that Aja’s safe. You did leave, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. But I’m not telling you where.”

  “As long as you’re outta state, I don’t care. Now, let me speak to A.D.”

  “Her name is Denise!”

  “Hi, Dad,” Aja said a few moments later.

  “Don’t tell your mother about anything I’m doing at work, okay?”

  “Did I cause this problem?”

  “No. But don’t tell your mom that either.”

  “Okay. Are you all right?”

  “Yeah. I’m fine. You didn’t use your phone to call, right?”

  “Of course not. I bought this pay-as-you-go phone at a drugstore.”

  “You’re a smart cookie.”

  “I love you, Daddy.”

  “Me too,” I said. “Talk to you soon.”

  There was an upper floor to the onetime house of worship. Little cells for the devout priests or parsons—whatever the denomination was. My feet hung over the edge of the cot, but I didn’t mind. The door wasn’t locked and through the small window a half-moon shone brightly.

  I didn’t sleep. Just lay back with one knee up and moonlight on my face. My newly shaved head itched a little and my little girl was safe. I had survived a slaughter and murdered a man. All that and life was still the best it could be.

  I got out of bed at around 4:30 and went down to the kitchen, where Mel was drinking coffee at the table.

  “Got a car I can use?” I asked him.

  “Copper Lexus in the stable.”

  “Stable?”

  “Behind the church. You know this is an old institution.”

  “You going in to work?” I asked.

  “If you don’t need me later I will.”

  “You got a typewriter around here?” I asked.

  “Word processor and a printer.”

  “I guess that’ll have to do.”

  I drove via Brooklyn to Manhattan’s Upper West Side before the traffic was a bear. There, on Eighty-Third, I found a coffee shop that made western omelets but had run out
of real bacon. So along with the eggs I had strips of turkey pressed, salted, and dyed to look like and taste something like bacon.

  There was a storefront across the street that had been rented out on a temporary basis. I dithered over the bad food and weak coffee until a man I recognized walked into the pop-up campaign office.

  “May I help you?” a young woman asked. She was quite dark-skinned. Upon her blueberry blouse was a big square button that proclaimed, ACRES IS OUR MAN!

  I liked meeting young black Republicans. It meant that some part of the younger generation was thinking. Who cared if they were wrong?

  “Mr. Acres, please.”

  “The congressman is not in yet.”

  The campaign receptionist had a fortieth birthday party a year or two before. Hers was the kind of plain face that promised something deeper than transient beauty. The blue chemise was silk, and from the thread-like gold chain around her neck depended a yellow diamond that was at least two and a half carats.

  “I didn’t think Republicans needed to lie,” I said.

  “Excuse me?” she said in a tone that could have easily turned to anger.

  “I was coming here from down the block when I saw Bobby walking through the front door. That would bring him right here to you. Now, I guess you could have been somewhere else, but I find it hard to believe that the first face you meet at a campaign headquarters doesn’t know when the candidate is in the house.”

  “What is your business with the congressman?” she asked coldly.

  “Tell him that the man he almost ran into in Jersey the other night would like a few words.”

  “I’ll need a name.”

  “Believe me when I tell you, sister, that’s the last thing the congressman would want.”

  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.”

  25.

  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.

  “Now get your ass outta here and remember that your heart can stop beating too.”