I gave the socialite a pass because I was pretty sure that she thought everyone — white, Black, or brown — was beneath her. And, to be clear, Lillian Lawler would have never been found guilty of her husband’s murder. She had a whole raft of lawyers to protect her and it just wasn’t possible for her to inflict Constantine’s wounds on her own.
The problem was open court. If Ms. Alvarez could bring Lillian to trial she could produce the unpublished memoir as damning evidence. That would have caused great embarrassment for Lillian and her kin. My job was to prove that there were others in the world that might have wanted the can man gone.
So, I compiled a sixty-eight-page document showing that Constantine had cheated and stolen from so many people, including some affiliated with organized crime, that the prosecutor’s office was forced to quell the case against his wife.
“I didn’t prove that she was innocent,” I said to my ex. “All I did was show that the police and the prosecutor hadn’t done a good enough job looking for other suspects.”
“Well, at least you stood up for a woman in a legal system dominated by men.”
When she said that I knew that she was going to ask for a favor — a big one. I knew this because she saw me not only as her enemy but also as the nemesis of all womankind.
I sighed.
“What?” she asked.
“Yes,” I agreed, “what?”
“I don’t understand.”
“You called me King, you complimented my work, and you haven’t even blamed me for not siding with you over Aja’s refusal to accept Harvard’s offer of that physics scholarship.”
“A degree from Harvard would make her career,” Monica said, trying hard to hold back her anger at our daughter’s choices and my part in them.
“We’ll see.”
“Yes, we will.”
“Okay. You’ve been civil and even-tempered. Now... what do you want?”
After a long pause Monica said, “Coleman’s been arrested.”
Coleman Tesserat. Just the mention of his name has been known to cause me to rattle off a whole dissertation of spite and bad wishes. The banker and my ex-wife lived in a bougie neighborhood and ate exclusively at the fanciest restaurants. When he deigned to suffer the company of other Black people Coleman only associated with the talented tenth and Jacks and Jills of the American Black social order. Coleman still used the word Negro and was having an extramarital affair with at least one woman.
“Arrested? What for?” I asked, trying not to let my grin bend the shape of the words.
“It’s not funny.”
“I’m not laughing,” I lied.
“He was arrested on some kind of made-up charges, something about heating oil.”
“Okay. Have you seen him?”
“No.”
“Why not? Somebody show you a picture of him naked in some other woman’s house?”
“Be civil or I’ll hang up.”
“It’s your nickel, Mon. I don’t care if you never call me again.”
I wasn’t kind because Monica had nearly gotten me killed not bailing me out of Rikers and, I learned later, Coleman had advised her to let me languish in there for three months.
“The government,” Monica said and stalled. “They aren’t letting anyone see him.”
“Not even his lawyer?”
“He doesn’t have one.”
“Why not?” It was the day for me to care about people I’d rather see dead.
“We’re broke.”
“Broke? I thought he had millions.”
“The government has frozen all our assets. Everything.”
“The federal government?”
“Yes.”
“They gotta offer him bail. You could put up your house.”
“It’s mostly mortgage debt.” You could hear in her voice the humiliation she felt.
“He’s sequestered and you’re broke. That’s some bad acid there.”
“I don’t know what to do, Joe. I called the bank. They wouldn’t even put me through to his boss.”
“Damn.”
Monica might have thought that I was making a comment on the severity of the problems she was having. But that was not the case. What disturbed me was that I was actually concerned. I cared about my ex-wife’s distress over a man who helped her nearly kill me.
What was wrong with me?
“And why are you calling me?” I asked.
“We need help.”
“How much is his bail?”
“One point five million.”
“One... point... five.”
“Yes.”
For nearly fifteen years I’d been a cop. I made a decent living, bought a house, and paid the bills. Monica never worked much and it felt good taking care of her and Aja. I was proud of my salary, but just hearing “one point five million” made me the quarterback target of the whole defensive line.
“Joe?”
“Yeah?”
“We need help.”
“I could recommend a lawyer. I know a congressman or two.”
“I have to get him out of jail. He’ll go crazy in there.”
“I don’t have anywhere near a hundred and fifty thousand.”
“They told me that he has to come up with the full amount.”
“Why?”
“He’s a flight risk, that’s what they said. Isn’t there some way you could borrow it?”
“From who? J.P. Morgan?”
“That man your grandmother’s been seeing.”
That was the first inkling I had of just how much Monica loved her dog of a husband.
“Damn,” I said again.
“Stop saying that.”
“Monica, are you really asking me to put myself into a lifetime of debt over Coleman?”
“I’m not asking for him. I’m asking for me.”
“When I tried to call you from Rikers you wouldn’t answer.”
“I was wrong.”
Three words. I was wrong. She was wrong and so I should tie myself up in knots and jump off the nearest skyscraper.
“Yes, you were,” I said.
“I need this, Joe.”
“You’re not calling me King anymore,” I pointed out. She knew what I meant.
“I can do that.”
I wasn’t trying to get together with her. Her humiliation and broken heart made me almost feel bad. I asked her about my middle name to make sure I was right about the extent of her bald conviction.
“You know that if Coleman ran he’d never pay me back. I’d spend the rest of my life paying his debt.”
Her silence told me that if Coleman got out and asked her to run — she would have done it.
“This is crazy, Monica. Insane. Look, I’ll try to see what’s going on with your man. If I can help him, I will. But I’m not going to borrow a dime.”
“Okay,” she said in a voice so mild she might have been a child.
“Where are they holding him?”
“Somewhere in Manhattan. A place they call the Metropolitan Correctional Center. Something like that.”
“Okay. I’ll call back when I’ve done a little research on my own.”
After we got off the phone I sat at my desk suffering psychological symptoms that could best be described as a fugue state. There were thoughts in my head but I couldn’t grab on to them. The ideas were... fugitive in my mind, furtively trying to keep away from close scrutiny. I didn’t love my ex-wife anymore but... but something.
The intercom buzzed and I hit the answer button.
“Yeah, Aje?”
“What did she want?”
“Are you ever gonna get married, honey?” was my reply.
“What?”
“Your mother said that Harvard would have made your career.”
“What career?”
“Exactly.”