Night traffic back to Manhattan was moderately heavy. I elected not to play music because the melodies might have colored my thoughts about the steps I was either to take or to vacate.
Years ago, when they sent me to Rikers, I felt as if I’d never leave. The problem with receiving a life sentence, even if that judgment is reversed a mere three months later, is that you have been bereft of hope and freed from the fear of consequence. When there’s no more need to cower, a certain kind of personality begins to take needless chances.
If you’ve already paid the ultimate price in your mind, then resistance against superior forces is — almost — all you have left.
But even lifers have extenuating circumstances: lovers, mothers, children, and, now and again, for some, God.
The Supreme Being wasn’t in my arsenal but Aja-Denise was.
“Yeah,” I said aloud to no one in particular, answering a question no one had asked.
At that moment my phone sounded.
“Hello.”
“I was getting ready to go out on a hunting expedition for moa snakes.”
“Hey, Mel. Thanks for the endorsement.”
“How you get mixed up with Cormody and his fools?” asked the man named for Satan’s uncle.
After a few minutes of shorthand explanation I said, “I think I got it covered, though. You scared the shit outta their boss.”
“The Far Right and the Russian mob and you got it covered?”
“Maybe I might need your help up the line, but for right now I’m okay.”
“I’ll keep the phone open for you, Joe.”
Advice is best given in interrogative form. That way the work is done by the student rather than the teacher, who should already know the answers. Mel’s inquiries about my predicaments caused me to make a call.
“Daddy?” she said over a din of music, laughter, muffled conversations, and shouts.
“Where are you?”
“Pluto’s.”
“How can you stand all that noise?”
“What do you want, Daddy?” my daughter asked with loving exasperation.
“I think you were right about this case.”
“Hold on a second, I’ll go outside.”
She moved down a corridor of lessening sound until there was silence.
Then she asked, quite seriously, “What’s wrong?”
“I need you to call your grandma B and tell her that I want you and your mother to stay behind the Great Wall for a few days.”
“Why?”
“Because when you kick a hornets’ nest you’re likely to get stung.”
“Are you safe?”
“I can take care of myself in situations like this, but I got people coming at me from Roger’s case and also from the thing I’m doin’ for your mother and Coleman.”
“What thing you doin’ for Mom?”
“Coleman got in Dutch with the feds and Monica is all worried.”
“You don’t have to do anything for that fool,” Aja said indignantly.
“I’m not asking for you to take Coleman there. As a matter of fact you should tell your great-grandmother that he is definitely not invited. But your safety comes first and part of that is protecting your mom.”
“Okay. I’ll call. But do I have to go right now? Milla’s gonna have a surprise birthday cake in a couple of hours. I’d like to be here for that.”
“I can’t tell you what to do, honey. But this is really LAD.”
LAD is our family’s private acronym standing for life and death.
“Okay,” Aja said. “I’ll go now. You be careful too.”
I was home around midnight. My apartment is on the third floor of the office building. You could climb a rope ladder up through the ceiling of my office, but that night I used the stairs to get there. By 12:30 I was sitting cross-legged on the bed thinking about the cases I should drop.
Quiller was the rock and Coleman the hard place. And there I was, not nearly as frightened as I should have been.
The sun was on my face in the morning. I didn’t remember lying down, much less falling asleep.
“Hi, Daddy,” Aja said when I called. “We’re here and we’re safe.”
“Tell your mother I’ll be in touch as soon as I know something.”
“Where are you?”
“At the office.”
“You gonna get Mr. Frost or Uncle Rags there with you?”
“When and if I need them.”
Thad Longerman. I couldn’t find him anywhere. Not on the net, on the dark web, or in the phone book. He wasn’t registered on the part of the NYPD database that I could access, and the program I had to read past articles from fifty-two American newspapers had no inkling of him.
The most likely Curt Holiday ran a company called Personalized Services. His partner in that business was a buxom redhead named Tex Bradford. A weight lifter, Tex had a seventy-five-inch chest with hands the size of medium shovels. The company he and Curt ran was small but laid claim to elegance. Headquartered in Culver City, California, they did no work in that state, nor on the West Coast at all. They had a presence on the dark web as well as the WWW. Among their dozens of digital testimonials, one individual named was d’Artagnan Aramois — a self-defined free-wheeling capitalist. D’Artagnan ran a small export business out of Manhattan called Safe Haven. His product was a brand of casket built from a cheap synthetic material that promised to keep its passenger whole for centuries. Personalized Services worked with d’Artagnan doing a hands-on service. A few testimonials talked about working with Curt or Tex soon after making a deal with Safe Haven. Taking that information and a few other tidbits, I set out to do some honest-to-God investigating.
D’Artagnan Aramois’s Safe Haven was housed on the seventy-third floor of the Empire State Building. There was a light on behind the frosted window that took up the upper half of the door.
When I knocked a man’s voice called out, “Come on in.”
The office was small and notably without character. The LED lights from the desk lamp and ceiling fixture shone but didn’t really illuminate. The window gazed upon New Jersey but it was a misty day, making the Garden State look like a half-formed idea. The only serious furniture was a big oak desk that sat rather high and unevenly, reminding me of a bull intent on a tuft of tasty grass and at the same time wondering if it should gore someone.
D’Artagnan Aramois stood between the front door and the desk. He was short and sturdily built, wearing a blue-and-white-checkered suit that was probably made from cotton. Shod in brown leather shoes, he was white, clean-shaven, and wary.
“Can I help you?”
I smiled broadly and held out a hand.
“Philip Wrog,” I said, “from East Saint Louis.”
We shook with abandon.
“How do you spell that last name?”
“Double-u, are, oh, gee,” I articulated. “It comes from the Polish. Means something not so good, I think.”
“You think?” The man named after the fourth Musketeer had an engaging sneer.
“I’m originally from Pittsburgh. My parents died before I knew ’em and I was fostered by a Polish family for a while there. They were named Wrog. I like it that the name’s unusual.”
“Have a seat, Mr. Wrog,” Mr. Aramois offered.
There were two chairs set out for visitors. They probably came from one of the big, cheap stores but I doubted if Aramois bought them. The office gave the impression that everything, except for the big brooding desk, had been leased.
The little man gave me a wary sneer and asked, “How can I help you, Mr. Wrog?”
“I’m sure you’ve read about the political unrest in Haiti,” I said.
D’Artagnan nodded slowly.
“You’re aware that there’s a large community of Haitians in Brooklyn and down in Miami.”