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When our prisoner did as he was told, Mel placed the paper folder on the tabletop and flipped it open. There was a small stack of white paper with a yellow plastic mechanical pencil hooked at the spine.

“You know you don’t go to somebody’s house and throw their furniture around,” Mel said. “Now, I want you to write a confession for the murder of Johanna Mudd, the kidnapping of Chrissie Braun, and the subsequent extortion of her father. In there I want you to name everyone you worked for and all those that worked for you. And you better include your boss and those bad cops.”

Marmot began to shiver.

“What are you waiting for?” Mel inquired.

“I can tell about the cops and my men, but I can’t say who I worked for.”

“Even if I kill you if you don’t?”

“I’ll be dead anyway.”

“Not if they put your boss away.”

“That will never happen.”

Mel couldn’t get the name Antrobus out of Marmot. The dark-side security expert gave the details and the whereabouts of the kidnapped child. And he named everyone else. Porker and his friends, Valence and Pratt. Marmot facilitated the drugs and the sex slaves distributed and afforded by the cops. He threw a wrench in Man’s appeal just to keep all that quiet. His men murdered Mudd and took the child. Marmot was willing to implicate everyone but his boss. He knew that a coerced confession would never make it to open court. But if he even breathed the name of Antrobus, that would be the end of the line for him.

After the confession was written, Mel had Marmot handcuff himself to the chair. Then he got behind the man and pulled his hair until his neck was exposed. He injected Marmot just like he’d done to the thug who worked for him.

“What was that?” Marmot said.

“Just a little cyanide to help you sleep.”

Just as the dread entered Marmot’s eyes he passed out.

“You didn’t really kill him, did you, Mel?”

“Nah. I just like seein’ how scared a man gets when he thinks he’s about to die.”

35.

I left Staten Island, headed for Carnegie Hall. Mel had promised to leave the unconscious crook in a place where the cops would find him first.

“And I’ll pin the confession to his vest,” he added. “They’ll get the girl and find that graveyard too.”

“He won’t go to prison, though,” I said.

“If everything I hear about Antrobus is true, you won’t have to worry about our boy living till spring.”

The concert was lovely. My grandmother wore a red gown that sparkled from glitter and clear plastic scales.

“I didn’t know you even owned a dress like that,” I told her.

“Roger thinks his fancy gifts will get him in my pants,” she replied with not a hint of shame.

After the event was over we went to a private gathering in an oval room that had a heavily patterned picture window for its roof. When my grandmother excused herself for the toilet, Ferris took me aside and said, “The item is on hold for you starting Monday morning. You got someone who can handle it?”

“Yeah. I have a friend who has a friend.”

Despite her protests, my grandmother was swayed by the rich white man’s attentions. But I don’t think it had anything to do with his money. Be it a red gown or a red ribbon, at some point the expressions of love are all the same.

“Hey, babe,” I said on the phone to my daughter the next morning.

“Hi, Daddy. How are you? Are you okay?”

“I think maybe I might be the best I have ever been in my life.”