“They’re sayin’ I had something to do with a heating oil scheme,” Coleman said reluctantly.
“You mean buying heating oil at a deep discount and then selling it as diesel fuel?”
Coleman sat up straight and angrily.
“Come on, man,” I said. “Everybody knows that they’re just about the same. That what they say you been doin’?”
“I don’t know what they’re talkin’ ’bout.”
I was sure that we were being watched and recorded, so I couldn’t ask questions that might give the watchers fuel for their case.
“Who’s this Tava Burkel?” I asked.
Coleman’s eyes widened. “Look, asshole, just raise the money and get me outta here. Add an extra ten thousand and I know a lawyer I can retain.”
“I already got you a lawyer.”
“What? Who?”
“Art Tomey.”
“He’s, he’s one of the best criminal lawyers in New York.” For a moment Coleman forgot his predicament. “How’d you get to him?”
“Do you know Burkel?”
“No. Why you askin’?”
“I want to make a report to your wife and to Art. I mean, he’s already filed with the federal authorities. He’ll have all the dirt on you. I just need to know what to expect.”
“I told you,” he said, desperately trying to take control of the visit. “This shit is too much for you. Just do what Monica asked and stand back.”
I took a moment to be quiet. Tesserat was frightened, but I couldn’t blame him. There’s nothing in the world more terrifying than no way out. A prison door, a coffin lid — it was all the same.
“What?” he demanded.
A beat or three more and I said, “We don’t like each other, Coleman. That’s the way it should be. Monica asked me to come and I’m here. She wants you out and I’m tryin’ to help. But you, motherfucker, you will not order me around or tell me what to do. I don’t like you and you know if somebody calls to tell me you’re dead I won’t shed a goddamned tear.”
No way out. That’s a feeling that needs to be underscored now and then.
Coleman bit the inside of his left cheek and let his head come down about a quarter inch.
“I felt somethin’ on my chest last night,” he said. “And when I sat up a dyin’ rat fell off me. My cellmate is whiter than toothpaste but only speaks some kinda Middle East babble. He prays five times a day and he’s always watchin’ me. And, and... if I don’t testify against this guy I was workin’ with I get twenty-five years.”
“So talk,” I said as flippantly as I could.
Coleman raised his head to look me in the eye. If someone asked me the color of those orbs anytime before that moment I would have said brown. But looking at him across that table, breathing the same air, I saw that they were dark ocher, like ancient amber wrapped around secrets of the past.
I felt a tightening in my gut. Empathy for my enemies was not a good fit.
“Look, man,” I said. “I know they’re listenin’, but if you want my help you got to give me somethin’. Who is it they say you been workin’ with?”
He looked left and right before saying, “You right about what the feds blamin’ me for. They say I’m workin’ with a Russian mob buys heating oil with one corporation and then sells it as diesel fuel with another one. They say I been brokering the sales.”
“You been dealin’ with the Russian mob and livin’ in the house with Monica? Havin’ Aja come in there to eat with you when you doin’ something so serious as to have Raoul Davies outside vetting who you talk to?”
Coleman got my meaning. He knew he fucked up.
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah.”
“You know somethin’, Coleman?”
“What’s that?”
“You are a special human being.”
“What you mean?”
“Used to be a Black man had to be Malcolm X or Martin Luther King Jr. to be under investigation by the feds. Back in the day, and the day before that, they just killed niggers. Shot us down. Hung us in the deep woods. But now look at you. They got you in here with suspected terrorists and dyin’ rats.”
“I need your help,” he said, and meant it.
“You got it.”
8
It used to be that pedestrians walking across the Brooklyn Bridge had to share their lanes with bicyclers. It was an uncomfortable fit with a lot of jostling and abridged (excuse the pun) rights. But then the city pushed the bicycle lane out to share with cars. Suddenly it was an easy and comfortable stroll to the other side.
I liked it. Parents with their kids, people jogging, lovers walking side by side. It almost felt normal, like there was no such thing as prison and racists, ex-wives and gouged-out eyes.
Midway across the span I stopped to gaze over the side toward Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. The water had the look of creped pea-green fabric and the sky was a washed-out blue.
My phone chirped. The little screen told me that the caller was unknown.
“Hello.”
“Mr. Oliver?” Minta Kraft asked.
“Ms. Kraft. How are you?”
“I’m calling to tell you that I have time to meet with you this afternoon if you can get here by three.”
“We could just talk on the phone,” I suggested.
“No. I never discuss my employer’s business electronically.”
“What’s the address?”
When I got to the office, Aja was at her post amid dozens of crumpled slips of paper, a ledger, and, of course, the computer screen.
“Hi, Daddy,” she said.
“I got to go out to Long Island.”
“How come?”
“To speak to Quiller’s wife’s assistant. She won’t talk on the phone.”
“Is it safe?”
“Is anything?”
“Daddy, you need to change jobs.”
“I thought you wanted to be my partner. Now you say I should change professions?”
“Not professions. I’ve been reading up on all the jobs that private investigators do. You could work for some corporation making sure their properties are safe or keep people from stealing. The kind of work you’re doing is just too stressful.”
“I don’t feel stressed.”
“You should. I was reading more about that man Quiller. He has meetings with the Klan and Nazis and all kinds of bad people. They love him.”
“That sounds like a good learning curve.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well, they love him and I might very well be trying to save him from getting railroaded by the government. By connection they should love me.”
“I don’t think it works like that.”
“Well, anyway, I love you, shorty.”
Southampton is a long ride from Brooklyn. Lots of cars and a countryside that is flat and fertile. For some reason I wasn’t worried about Quiller and Russian mobsters there in my car listening to Keith Jarrett live at Köln. The concert was at once rousing and calming.
I was half the way through a second hearing when my GPS spokesperson told me that I was in Southampton and to turn right.
There I was driving down long blocks where most of the hedges were so high you rarely saw a house. And when a dwelling was visible you knew better than to call it a house. It would have been like calling a saber-toothed tiger a calico kitten.
I followed the grand boulevard until finally getting to a block before the ocean. There the nice GPS lady told me to turn left and that I had reached my destination: a rambling mansion the back end of which stood on stilts above quiet waters. The front of the three-story house was even with the ground and I was able to drive up to within a few feet of the front door.
Exiting my tiny car, I wondered why there wasn’t some kind of security there to assess my level of threat.