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“Do I even need to talk to Art?”

“No, darling, it’s all taken care of.”

11

While waiting on the bus bench I got a call from Roger Ferris.

“How’s it going, Joseph?” he asked me.

“The sun is out and the game’s afoot,” I said, feeling good about finally being able to use the latter phrase.

“Can I be of any help?”

“You can put your people on looking up the probable alias Thad Longerman.”

He asked about the spelling but all I could give were phonics.

“And another thing,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“I’m going to need an interest-free short-term loan.”

Buxom Tex Bradford showed up for work at 3:48 p.m. At 4:16 I pushed open his metal-reinforced glass door. There were waist-high glass showcases before me to my right. They were pristine and empty. Tex was standing behind a counter to my left. He was posing there like some kind of actor in a play just before the curtains were to rise.

“Can I help you?” he asked. There was no friendliness to the offer.

“D’Artagnan Aramois,” I said.

“What about him?”

“He told me that you could supply me a dozen coffins and government seals for twenty-five thousand dollars.”

“We usually oversee sending our own products abroad,” the huge man muttered.

“My clients are sending their remains to Haiti.”

I’m five-eleven weighing 199 pounds. When Tex moved around the useless counter I could tell he was near six foot four and his weight, twenty-one stone at least.

“How many did you say?” he asked.

“Aramois told me that I get an even dozen coffins for twenty-five.”

“We call d’Artagnan’s boxes items,” he said, almost reluctantly. “It’s twenty-five for twelve items when we send them, but that price doubles if we leave it in the client’s hands.”

“Oh,” I said, feigning uncertainty. “Fifty thousand is an awful lot.”

“There’s no give on it either.”

“I see.”

I was making some headway with the bodybuilder. My apparent parsimony made him feel that I was a real contender rather than a ringer sent in to bring him down.

“It seems that if I did all the work it should cost me even less,” I suggested.

“You’d think so,” Tex agreed. “But in this business it’s a liability to allow the items and their seals out of our hands.”

“Huh,” I fretted. My left eye, of its own accord, started to flutter. “I’m told I can move certain materials that are forbidden by the Patriot Act when protected by your units and seals.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tex said in a flip tone. That’s what warned me.

Putting my right arm akimbo, I said, “Then maybe I should talk to your partner.”

“What partner?” Tex asked, looking from side to side.

“You know,” I said, “Curt Holiday.”

That’s when Tex swiveled his head to regard me.

Speed and accuracy, stealth and strength, and an arsenal of specialized weapons are all keys to any physical contest between most animals — although it helps to also have the indomitable will of the honey badger. With humans, however, there’s an extra added element — specific intent.

Tex was quite a bit faster than I had imagined. He grabbed me by the throat before I knew what he was doing.

There I was, three or four inches off the floor, choking. My eyes felt like they were about to pop out of my head and my thoughts were nearly useless. I believed that his intent was to incapacitate me because he needed to know why I was there before killing me.

I’d had my hand on my hip because there was a gun there, a .45 with no kind of muffler system. While my grip on consciousness was quickly fading, I held the side of the pistol next to Tex’s left ear and fired — twice.

The big man yowled and fell to his knees. With my last clear thought I slammed the side of the pistol into Tex’s temple. He toppled over and I, unwillingly, fell down next to him.

That was a serious situation. Whichever man regained his wits first would win the impromptu contest. If he won I would be tortured and probably killed. If I revived first he, Tex, might lose his business, his freedom, and possibly even his life.

Luckily the struggle for breath that I was experiencing brought me awake at a quicker pace. Within three minutes I was up on my knees. When four minutes had passed I hit Tex one more time to make sure that he’d stay down.

I secured the metal-reinforced front door and then made it to a back room, where, after a few minutes of scrounging around, I found a packet of files that was identified by the initials C.H. I would have liked to search further but the gunshot had been loud and I was quite sure the neighbors would have called the cops.

So, taking the foot-thick pack of files, I made it out a back door, crossed two blocks over, and located my car.

Driving across the line that divided the Bronx from Manhattan, I was fairly certain that I’d be out of trouble. Tex was a smuggler, a security threat, a defiler of the dead, and very likely guilty of even worse crimes. He’d tell the police a story that’d have them running in circles for weeks.

While taking the Verrazano Bridge to Staten Island I was trying to make sense of the bind that Quiller was in. I supposed that d’Artagnan Aramois, Tex, Thad Longerman, and, of course, poor deceased Curt Holiday might have been working for what Quiller called the Deep State. But the quartet of thugs and thieves, murderers and kidnappers, seemed more like simple criminals, their actions based on the motive for profit rather than false nationalism.

Once on the island that contained the fifth borough I headed for Pleasant Plains. There I went to a medium-size deconsecrated church that was surrounded by a high stone wall and protected by all kinds of advanced and old-time defenses. Recently Melquarth had added six Rottweilers to guard the grounds of the church.

I pressed the bell at the outer gate while the deeply suspicious canines paced on the other side. They knew me but I was not their master.

“Hey, Joe,” Mel said as he strode toward the gate.

The dogs wandered off when they heard their master call to me. He opened the gate and I drove in.

The nave of the deconsecrated church still had twelve rows of pews that led up to the raised altar. Rather than a podium for the minister’s sermon Mel had set up a table with a Go board built into it. The pieces were made from very high-quality jadeite gems, apple green and snow white. Before any salient conversation, we played a game that lasted around an hour and a half.

Forcing myself into the logic of strategy and the promise of theoretical victory calmed me down a bit.

When the moves began to take longer and longer, a conversation developed.

“I don’t know which is worse,” Melquarth said while considering his strategy or mine.

“The Russians or the alt-right?”

“You or me.”

“Has to be you, Mr. Frost. I’m on the side of law and order.”

“You are a Black man, are you not?” the white ultra-criminal asked.

“So?”

“Rather than enforce the law, more often than not the system jams itself down the throats of people of your ilk.”

“Sometimes,” I agreed.

Mel smiled, picked up a green jewel, and threatened a small cadre of my pieces.

“They got you outnumbered, Joe, and here you go trying to live by some rule.”