“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.”