“It’s what they call a derivation of the shigella bacteria,” Mel explained. “Targets the appendix but has a short life span, just long enough for our purposes.”
“Not that I’m complaining,” I said. “But how does a self-educated heist man turned watchmaker get his hands on something like that?”
“Whenever I get put away I try for the sentence to be carried out in a prison where there’s a lotta Russians. They always have the most organized gangs and they’re connected to people from the old country and Eastern Europe in general; those people often have ties to intelligence. This little poison comes straight from the defunct laboratories of the KGB.”
“Damn.” I was impressed. “I’ll give you the plans to the clinic. Their security is not so strong seeing that they rely on the cops and the fact that nobody knows they’re there. Because there’s so many cops I need to stay away as long as I can.”
“I got that covered.”
We finished our wines and then poured two more.
36.
I spent Sunday morning wondering how I kept my lawless side down for so long. That train of thought brought me to the realization that I no longer missed being a policeman. I’d been a good cop in my own estimation, but that shit nearly got me killed.
I wasn’t a criminal, not exactly. But those flexible rules of law could not bend as far as I was willing to go; as I needed to go.
The Internet news told of how William James Marmot had a crazy story of being kidnapped, shot, tortured, and then made to write the confession pinned to his chest. Under the threat of death he merely wrote what his masked captor dictated. He was a victim and not a criminal mastermind. Marmot was put in a hospital, but sometime after midnight, he evaded his police guard and effectively disappeared.
I went to a reinvented old-time boxing gym in Dumbo at noon. There I lifted some weights and did a dance with the heavy bag for an hour or so.
When I got back to the office there was a message on my office line.
“Mr. Oliver, this is Reggie Teegs. I’m an unofficial representative of the parties that you’ve been negotiating with. We would all like to keep this matter outside the legal system, and so if you call me we can meet and I will offer you a settlement on behalf of my clients.”
He left a phone number that I was sure could not be traced.
I considered calling Mel but decided that I shouldn’t rely too heavily on him. I thought that maybe it would have been prudent to wait a week or so before responding, but that didn’t feel right either. Something about Teegs’s request sounded like an immediate threat.
“Mr. Oliver,” he said upon answering.
I had walked all the way to Park Slope to call him from a phone booth in a small restaurant I frequented. It could have been a call from anybody, but he knew that the only ring that line would be getting had to be from me.
“So?” I said. “What is it?”
“We have to meet.”
“I haven’t been very lucky with clandestine meetings in this century,” I said.
“You choose the place.”
“Columbus Circle mall, fourth-floor wine bar,” I said, “in thirty minutes.”
“Done. You’ll know me because I will be the only man there wearing a herringbone jacket with an orange bow tie.”
I reached the fourth-floor, inside, open-air wine bar in twenty-eight minutes. He was drinking cognac from a snifter and looking about him like some kind of humanoid alien examining the rituals of an alien species in a forsaken corner of his cosmic domain. Preternaturally thin, he was what passed as a white man, but his coloring was olive and his black eyes were startling, even from a distance.
I told the hostess that I saw my friend. She smiled and moved aside. As I walked toward him he took no special notice. This told me that he wasn’t armed with a photograph.
“Mr. Teegs?”
Due to his slender build and finicky attire, I expected the professional middleman to be shorter than I. But as he unfolded himself from the chair he rose and rose until I was looking up into his void-colored eyes.
He took inventory of me: my Crayola-blue suit and black canvas shoes (worn in case I had to run). I had to concentrate to keep my hands from writhing nervously. This strange man unnerved me.
His smile revealed very bright but tiny teeth.
“Mr. Oliver,” he greeted, holding out a hand. “So glad you decided to come.”
I shook the hand and took the chair across the small circular table from him.
The wine bar—it had no name I knew of—wasn’t very crowded. We sat next to the outer wall, looking down the atrium to the entrance hall three floors below. I chose that particular place because no matter the economic state of the nation, or the world, that mall was always crowded because it catered to the upper classes, who, it seemed, were never at a loss for disposable income.
We were sitting in an isolated corner, so my host spoke clearly and at a decent volume.
“There was a regrettable decision to end your life,” he said as if talking about a small dog that had taken a shit on my rosebushes. “We apologize for that lapse in judgment.”
This answered my first question: Teegs worked for whoever it was who used Gladstone to frame me back in the days when I was cop.
“Whatever happened with that?”
“The agent, who took the unconsidered decision upon himself, has been dealt with. You don’t have to worry about him anymore.”
“What about his accomplices?”
“One has moved on and the other has simply gone away.”
I liked the way Teegs talked. His references could be either vague or rock solid.
“Why would you apologize if it was Convert who took it upon himself to do what was done?” I wasn’t as accomplished a conversationalist as Reggie Teegs.
“If a man represents another man, then the man in charge has to take responsibility. That rule is what Western civilization is based upon.”
“And are you the man in charge?”
Showing his small-toothed grin again, he said, “Heavens no. I am merely a fulcrum, the man who attempts to achieve parity among the parties involved.”
“I could have used somebody like you a long time ago.”
“As I have said, there have been mistakes made.”
“You talk about this shit like you stepped on my toe or brought me a black coffee instead of one with cream.”
“Come on now, Joe,” the Fulcrum said reasonably. “Men have died in this arena. I’m here to offer you recompense.”
“What kind of recompense?”
Teegs reached under the table, pulling out a dull buff-colored leather satchel.
He said, “Four hundred and fifty thousand dollars in untraceable bills.”
If I was still a cop I would have walked away right then. Even if I had just considered myself loyal to the clan that abandoned me I would have said no. As merely a responsible citizen the negation was on the tip of my tongue.
Teegs saw this and said, “Before you make a rash decision, Mr. Oliver, let me say that the people on the other side would feel quite nervous if you were to refuse their offer.”
I could send Aja-Denise to college with money like that. And there were the costs that the next day’s jobs would incur. The most I could hope for was some kind of payoff, be it from a judgment or from the conniving of some lawyer like Stuart Braun.
“Your pain is undeniable,” Teegs said, trying to drive the point home, “but, despite our lapses, you are still alive.”
“If I take that satchel the people you represent will back off?”
“Like the darkness at the break of day.”
“And if I don’t take it?”
“I have no words for that consequence.”
I returned, that evening, to my office, with the pigskin satchel and more money than I’d ever had. I put on a duet by Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. They played those horns like maniacs finally released from the asylum of humanity.
I listened to the piece over and over, thinking about the victims whom I’d uncovered and to some degree whom I had avenged. I thought about the truth that undergirded the lies circulated by the institutions of governments, large and small. That was, I knew, my excuse for taking the payoff.
37.