Ben had a round head and close-cut brunette hair. His shoulders looked sturdy and I imagined he was close to six foot.
Mark returned with our orders. Ben thanked him and the boy went off to some distant table.
“I’m prohibited from revealing clients’ names,” I said, answering the prison professional.
“But you expect me to answer you?”
“Expect is a strong word,” I said. “I expect the sun to rise in the east, the sky around it to be blue, the Democrats to believe in their impossible dreams, and the Republicans to revel in their own stink.”
Ingram laughed out loud, turning a head or two in the sparsely populated establishment.
“Okay,” he said. “All right. I’ll tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
“I was involved in the clandestine abduction of a certain gentleman named Alfred Xavier Quiller from an exurb of Belarus called Little Peach. Why, you ask? Because the man in question is an unredeemable idealist.”
I was shocked, truly. In all my years as a cop and then a PI, I had never run across a seemingly sane criminal who would confess so easily.
“What do you mean — idealist?” I asked.
The prison master hunched his shoulders and gave a wan, apologetic smile. “Although he’s a genius, Mr. Quiller doesn’t understand the rough-and-tumble of politics, of power. Ideas in themselves are wonderful things, but the force of will behind these thoughts — that’s what greatness is made of.”
He believed that this answer was coherent. Maybe he wasn’t quite sane.
“I don’t understand you.”
Again that maddening weak smile. It was like a limp-wrist handshake.
“Mr. Quiller thinks that merely saying something is enough to effect meaningful change. He thinks that most human beings are rational creatures that act solely upon logic. On top of that he believes that any and all systems of logic are open to argument, that any accepted truth might be overturned.”
“So if he were to question himself,” I postulated, “that might be disadvantageous to certain interested parties.”
I was beginning to understand. Ingram’s unexpected broad grin told me so.
“Exactly.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Longerman, but you don’t seem to be the kind of person who would be bothered by a man questioning the innate racism of his theories.”
“True.” He didn’t seem to notice me using his pseudonym. “Neither niggers, honkies, nor chinks make a difference to me. Cracker barrel or dark continent — who cares? It is, as I have said, power and politics that rule the day.”
“And Mr. Quiller’s scientific method has derailed him from your truth.”
“It’s a real pleasure talking to you, Joe. You have the ability to understand simple facts.”
“So what’s the problem?” I tried to get the tone of my voice to be that of an interested adviser.
“Not, as you have said — his innate idealism. But the half-assed nature of his approach to change.”
“The file he has on the rich and powerful,” I surmised.
“Got it in one.” Mr. Ingram smiled and nodded.
“You want the file...”
“Out of his hands.”
“Because?”
“You’ve met his wife, I hear.” It was not a question.
“But she’s his wife,” I argued. “Wouldn’t she be protective of him and his beliefs?”
“That doesn’t matter. What does matter is what appears to be true.”
“So because the Men of Action don’t like his love life you kidnap and imprison a man you agree is important?”
“No. The people I’m working for are working with a larger organization that wants to control Quiller’s database.”
Of course they do, I thought. This made me consider Roger Ferris’s reason for hiring me. My grandmother had told me not to trust him, that I was just a crumb on his table.
I needed time to work out my own situation.
“You have him already,” I said. “Why not just get him to turn it over?”
“Well before Mr. Quiller met Ms. Prim, he put conditional access to the database in the hands of a man who also had the ability to move it further along without the originator knowing where. The only thing expected of Quiller is that he has to make a public appearance once a year in certain unpredictable places, along with his wife. If this prerequisite is not met, the information goes public.”
“And there’s a reason you can’t go after the man who took control of the database?”
“So far he’s been beyond our reach.”
Ingram was staring deeply into my eyes.
“Don’t look at me,” I said defensively. “This is the first I’ve heard of the man.”
A hint of disappointment informed Ingram’s bearing. This frightened me.
“So how do you manage to place a wanted man in a public prison without the slightest ripple in the news or on social media?” I asked the question to delay an unknown inevitable.
“Business is business, Mr. Oliver. I know the agents that arrested Mr. Quiller in Paris. I’m on a first-name basis with wardens and their assistants across the nation. Quiller, as I am sure you noticed, is a guest at Rikers, not a convict.”
“That’s a hard place to be in for both you and him.”
“And you,” Ben added.
Exhalation had never given me a problem before that moment, but all of a sudden the air I breathed in seemingly sought refuge in my body. I wanted to deny Ingram’s claim concerning my jeopardy, but that tack was useless. I knew hardly anything, but just that was way too much knowledge. With no other recourse I decided to taste my soup.
It was delicious. The greens were collard and the pastrami was not only salty but flavorful. I was a rat in a man-made maze, but still I’d gotten to the cheese.
Now the only problem was getting out again.
“Me?” I said. “I don’t have anything to do with it. My job was to find out if Quiller was illegally removed from Belarus. The answer is — he was. The question of the murder of an American citizen in Togo seems moot, and so there’s nothing to say about that.”
“Except for the identity of the person or persons that hired you.”
Of course it was. And as much as I suspected my employer, I had no proof that he had me engaged in anything illegal. Roger Ferris was powerful, but even he might not be proof against the machine behind Ingram. It was my duty to protect him.
“I can’t tell you that,” I said with great reluctance.
Ben sipped his coffee.
“I like you, Joe,” he said as the latte mug touched the table. “But you got your nose way up in the ass of some very important people. They need to know who put you in their business. You can understand that, can’t you?”
“Of course I can,” I said with nary a quaver. “But what you need to know is that I was a cop before I went private. There’s something tribal about cops. We follow our creed and we never betray our brethren. I will reach out to my employer and ask if I might share his name with you. If he says yes, then I’ll tell you.”
Ingram sat back in his chair, laced his fingers, and looked at me.
“Tribes have gone the way of the nation-state, my friend. Religion, race, gender, age, even parentage no longer carry much weight in the world we inhabit. It is, as I have already said, politics and power — not in that order — that rule us. You have to tell me what I need to know right now, or I won’t be able to trust.”
I was that rat in a maze, a fly with one herky-jerky foot in a spider’s web.
Ingram was not necessarily a bad guy. He was a man who had a job working for an evil so deep that it seemed virtuous. We sat in silence for a few minutes.
The soup was still good and breathing came back to me. I considered Ben Ingram — deeply. The experience of talking with him was astonishing to me. Usually when I met with someone over a case, or in life in general, I had to decipher their meaning. I took it for granted that people lied in order to reach their goals, to maintain their relationships, to survive, and, sometimes, simply to keep in practice.