“Yes,” he said.
“Well, then you may also know that there’s a strong connection between these families and their relatives back home.”
“Not, um, specifically but I can see where that might be the case.”
We were performing a lawbreakers dance. Tentative and hopeful, maybe our gyrations would lead to a pot of gold.
“There’s a lot of poverty back home. People who don’t have and cannot afford the basic necessities.”
“It’s a shame how some people have to live,” d’Artagnan said, his head swaying from side to side.
“Their families here are burdened with providing their people with the means of survival. They send appliances, money, and other necessities. They need everything down there, from straight razors to... to coffins.”
“Don’t I know it.”
“Yes,” I said with a smile. “That’s what I’ve been told. I come here to you today because I represent a consortium of Haitian nationals that wish to purchase sturdy but affordable caskets for families that are sending their departed loved ones back home.”
“That’s why I went into this business,” Aramois said devoutly.
“I’m told that while being inexpensive, your caskets are extremely durable. So much so that they resist even X-ray examination.”
“That’s true.”
“Don’t get me wrong,” I said. “I’m not some smuggler or terrorist, but it is a custom among these people to place memorabilia with their loved ones. My clients wouldn’t want misguided authorities to disturb their dead.”
Aramois studied me then. His aspect was less human and more coyote or rat; some creature that had the natural ability and inclination to gauge threat.
“Tell me something, Mr. Wrog.”
“What’s that?”
“How do you know to come to me? I mean, this is a business that doesn’t advertise.”
“An acquaintance gave me your name.”
“What acquaintance?”
“A fellow named Thad Longerman.”
That was the gambit. I knew a few names and came to a conclusion or two about their businesses and how they were run. Being a private detective was less about pinpoint accuracy and more about gambling. In poker I always lost a few hands before coming up with my opponent’s tells.
D’Artagnan thought a moment and then nodded.
“My fee is twenty-five hundred dollars. You pay me that and I send you on to a contact I have in the Bronx. There you will be provided however many caskets you might require. Any additional items you wish to send to the grave with them can be added at the docks before they are sent on their way.”
“And how much will this final transaction cost me?” Philip Wrog asked.
“Twenty-five thousand dollars for a twelve-count, shipping is extra.”
I raised my eyebrows convincingly.
“The people I work with can almost guarantee that the coffin will pass unmolested through customs in both countries,” Aramois assured Wrog. “There will be a government seal on each unit that you will attach after your own inspection.”
“I will be the last one to examine the unit?”
“Certainly so.”
I looked closely at the little blue-checkered coffin salesman.
There are certain species of cuttlefish in the ocean that can change color as quickly and as effortlessly as a man might take steps on a path. But there was no order of beasts on Earth that could feign innocence like we could. It’s a gift, I thought.
“The people I’m working with,” I said, “have their own ways of sending their loved ones home.”
“That’s not the usual approach,” the Frenchman said. “But I’m sure you can work something out.”
“So how does it work from here?”
“I send you off to a man named Tex. You tell him what it is you want and come to some kind of payment arrangement. After that he will deliver the sarcophagi to the address you say.”
“Along with the government seals?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“And you guarantee that these sacred properties will not be molested?”
“Only God and the devil can make absolute guarantees, Mr. Wrog. All I can tell you is that we haven’t had a dissatisfied client yet.”
I froze up there for a few moments, a cuttlefish that had taken on such a complex range of hues and textures that he, I, needed a moment to reset.
“I get paid now,” d’Artagnan said, filling in the moment of silence. “After that you can work out with Tex how to pay him.”
“What if you’re trying to cheat me?”
“You know my address. And, just to be clear, I can’t promise that you will be able to finalize a deal up the line. My job is merely to make the connection.”
I hemmed and hawed a little so as not to make the little man suspicious. But he had me at the word Tex.
Personalized Services was down the block from the old Grand Concourse Plaza Hotel. I parked my little Bianchina on the street about two blocks away and then ensconced myself on a bus bench across from the closed exporter.
PerSer (as I named it in my iPad notes) was bracketed by Tomas Jewelers and a dentist’s office. The two side businesses were open when I got there, around 1:15, but Tex’s concern remained shuttered.
Waiting wasn’t a problem for me. Wearing dark blue cotton slacks, a tan T, and a many-pocketed army jacket, I perused my iPad with no feeling of urgency or expectation. Melquarth sent me a short missive about Cormody, the MoA, and other organizations mixed up with them. Mel had met many white supremacists at the various prisons he’d been sentenced to.
“It was a matter of survival, not philosophy,” he said to me the first, and last, time we discussed the subject.
His information was nonconsequential to the case, but the fact that he took the time to compile the data told me that he thought I might need his help sooner rather than later.
At 2:00 I inserted earbuds and made a call.
“Art Tomey’s line,” a woman’s voice answered.
“Hey, Amy, it’s Joe.”
“Well, hello. Art told me you might be calling.”
Amethyst “Amy” Banks was the most overqualified assistant in all of New York. She’d been a high-powered defense attorney for a couple of decades when she fell for a client, Nina Morseton. Nina had been charged with killing a man she’d partnered with to defraud a Swedish insurance company. Amy had never before realized her affinity for women.
“I really don’t think I’m a lesbian,” Amy once said to me about Nina. “I just believe that she is my soulmate.”
She, Amy, falsified a few documents and some evidence to prove her client’s innocence, honestly believing she was. When it came out that Nina was definitely guilty, she turned on Amy, trying to get a better deal. It didn’t work.
Both lawyer and client were convicted. Because of previous felony convictions Nina is doing life without possibility, and Amethyst did a very enlightening three years. Disbarred, disgraced, and displaced in her own heart, Amy went to prison, a mastermind of the law with a broken heart that no felon could challenge.
When she came out again Art Tomey hired her at 3K a week just to answer the phones and talk to him now and again about interpretation and approach.
Once a month Amethyst goes to Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women to visit Nina. You know love is true when it survives the devastation it causes.
“What can I do for you, Joe?” Amy asked.
“I was wondering how Art’s doing with the Tesserat thing.”
“I had a case like this one time,” she said dreamily. “It was a suspected terrorist all bundled up and ready to be dropped into a black site. The evidence was circumstantial at best and the government refused even to let the judge in on their investigation. They demanded the full amount for bail in that case too. I know the right people and got them to countermand the issue. Come up with the ten percent and they’ll have to let him go.”