“Yeah,” I said. “I know that much.”
“Did you know that some of the smaller international oil cartels are up to their elbows in this trade?”
“I suspected it. But that’s as far as it goes.”
“So, Joe Oliver, what you need from me is the only thing in the world more valuable than illegal petroleum. Information.”
“Yes.”
Antrobus’s eyes might have been long-range heat-seeking missiles and I was the test target, far out at sea. Seeing this revelation in my eyes — he smiled.
“You really planning to populate the moon?” I asked.
He nodded, Sydney Greenstreet on steroids.
“What if,” I speculated, “I could maybe get the plans, at least some of them, based on Alfred Xavier Quiller’s space-exploration cannons?”
The puppet master’s brows went up so far that his whole fat face smoothed out, making him look like a baby would to a gnat.
“How would you do that?” he asked.
“I got a way to get to him.”
“If you were to provide me with that way, then I would be happy to help you with the problems your client is having.”
“Come on, Augustine. Be for real, man. What I’m asking you for might be worth a gold coin, but it ain’t all the way to the goose that laid it.”
“You can’t blame me for trying.”
“So, will you help me?”
“Yes. But you will owe me the information.”
“Okay.”
“I will also need some kind of down payment.”
Another test.
What to get for the man who has, literally, everything?
Gift giving is one of the most challenging conundrums of the modern age. Most people don’t know how to ask for what they want; most don’t even know what it is. They spend entire lifetimes looking for, finding, and then leaving behind what they’ve been told they wanted by everything from sacred texts to television. Some want children but realize, too late, that kids often don’t want them. Men and women search for love, find it, and then wake up one morning to the harsh reality that the cap was left off and the precious passion has dried up. Monks meditate on consecrated mantras, hoping for enlightenment, then realize that awareness doesn’t change a thing.
On the other hand, in ancient, and modern, tribal cultures, everything given is already known by everyone you know. Manhood, womanhood, your first trinket, your last rite. Back then, and over there, they expected happiness and therefore achieved that state.
The trick to gift giving in the modern world is either real need or surprise. If you can’t pay the rent and someone covers it with no strings, you are going to smile and feel edified. Warm socks during a subzero season, food in an empty stomach... a snifter of cognac when your heart is broken; these are real and perceived needs for us when we are most vulnerable.
But Augustine Antrobus was not the vulnerable kind. He was apex. His hungers would always be satisfied, and even if he were captured and caged, his nature would always be dominant, even supreme.
So what AA needed was wonderment, something to make him smile.
Me having access to the secrets behind Quiller’s Cannon was such a thing, but I had yet to deliver on that front.
“Do you play Go?” I asked.
And there it was. Something I couldn’t have, or at least shouldn’t have, known.
“Yes,” he ventured. “Why?”
“I just wondered if you wanted to sharpen your skills on a novice.”
When he pulled out the Go board from a bottom drawer, I knew I’d hit the right note. Made from oak, it was old and battered, with pitted stone disks that had rattled around in their lambskin sack for at least half a century.
He could see in my eyes the appreciation for a history in an object and for one of his few weaknesses.
“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “I’ll discuss your problem between moves. You have until I defeat you to get what you need.”
We played.
I lost.
“Another game?” He was having a good time.
By 11:07 p.m. I had all I needed to at least try to help Coleman.
“Another?” I asked the grizzly bear dressed up like a man.
“I think you’ve learned enough for one day.”
“You talkin’ ’bout Go or oil?”
He stood, extended a hand, and said, “I hope we remain friends, Mr. Oliver.”
The sirens of the front office were gone but Lyle was still there. He was sitting in the tall Black woman’s chair with his feet up on the blotter, staring into the void of dead men he’d left behind — at least that’s what I imagined he saw in solitude.
His eyes flicked upward the instant after I entered the room.
“Still here?” I asked.
Sitting up and then standing he said, “You should show more respect.”
“Never yielded much profit in my experience.”
22
As I walked down the street at a few minutes shy of 11:30, the world was feeling pretty good. I had a few names and quirks of some players in the international fuel bootlegging business. I had a personal reason to talk to Quiller again and a bodyguard.
I crossed over to the park side of Fifth. There I took out a phone.
“Hello, Joe,” Oliya Ruez said, answering her phone after the third ring.
“You sound like you’re outside.”
“I went out for dinner.”
“A little late for that, isn’t it?”
“I live by a European schedule. Where are you?”
“Midtown Manhattan.”
“Do you need anything?”
“No. I’ll be home in under an hour.”
“See you there.”
It was just before I disengaged the line that he grabbed me from behind and pulled me into the park. At first I thought it was Lyle making good on his warning, but my attacker was too big. Then I thought maybe the fay assassin had enlisted help. I reached out with both hands to grab the man’s neck and hair. Then I yanked hard.
“Uh,” he grunted, loosening his grip.
Pushing him off-balance, I followed up with the heel of my palm against his cheekbone.
As he fell I saw his two friends closing in from the A and C sides of the right angle we formed. I thought about running but did not. I wondered if I’d die there because I didn’t have a gun. Then I just waited.
In a street fight I prefer close quarters, especially when facing multiple opponents. They tend to trip over each other when rushing at a solitary target.
The attackers wore business suits. I noticed this just before throwing a body blow at the skinny guy to the left. He grunted but didn’t go down, and the man on the right hit me above the ear. This caused ringing but no immediate pain or dizziness. I jumped on that man, bringing him to the lawn with my weight. I felt another man’s heft on my back and twisted to avoid whatever he was trying to do while bringing my left elbow down on the man under me. In a perfect world that strike would have landed on his throat, but it felt more like shoulder.
Then, using all my adrenaline-enhanced strength, I pushed up hard enough to dislodge the man on my back and make it half the way to standing. It was a good maneuver, but two of my adversaries were already up while the guy on the concrete was almost there. I hit the latter with a comic book haymaker. He went down again and I turned using the speed of fear to attack the closest one.
That was my waterloo.
I had the man by his arms but he had me too. I tried to kick him. Missed. He managed to kick me but only got shins. In the meanwhile the third man, wearing the darkest suit, pulled out a handgun. He rushed up at us. I was sure that he intended to put a bullet in my body before I fell, when he could put another in my brain.