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“It’s what they call a derivation of the shigella bacteria,” Mel explained. “Targets the appendix but has a short life span, just long enough for our purposes.”

“Not that I’m complaining,” I said. “But how does a self-educated heist man turned watchmaker get his hands on something like that?”

“Whenever I get put away I try for the sentence to be carried out in a prison where there’s a lotta Russians. They always have the most organized gangs and they’re connected to people from the old country and Eastern Europe in general; those people often have ties to intelligence. This little poison comes straight from the defunct laboratories of the KGB.”

“Damn.” I was impressed. “I’ll give you the plans to the clinic. Their security is not so strong seeing that they rely on the cops and the fact that nobody knows they’re there. Because there’s so many cops I need to stay away as long as I can.”

“I got that covered.”

We finished our wines and then poured two more.

36.

I spent Sunday morning wondering how I kept my lawless side down for so long. That train of thought brought me to the realization that I no longer missed being a policeman. I’d been a good cop in my own estimation, but that shit nearly got me killed.

I wasn’t a criminal, not exactly. But those flexible rules of law could not bend as far as I was willing to go; as I needed to go.

The Internet news told of how William James Marmot had a crazy story of being kidnapped, shot, tortured, and then made to write the confession pinned to his chest. Under the threat of death he merely wrote what his masked captor dictated. He was a victim and not a criminal mastermind. Marmot was put in a hospital, but sometime after midnight, he evaded his police guard and effectively disappeared.

I went to a reinvented old-time boxing gym in Dumbo at noon. There I lifted some weights and did a dance with the heavy bag for an hour or so.

When I got back to the office there was a message on my office line.

“Mr. Oliver, this is Reggie Teegs. I’m an unofficial representative of the parties that you’ve been negotiating with. We would all like to keep this matter outside the legal system, and so if you call me we can meet and I will offer you a settlement on behalf of my clients.”

He left a phone number that I was sure could not be traced.

I considered calling Mel but decided that I shouldn’t rely too heavily on him. I thought that maybe it would have been prudent to wait a week or so before responding, but that didn’t feel right either. Something about Teegs’s request sounded like an immediate threat.

“Mr. Oliver,” he said upon answering.

I had walked all the way to Park Slope to call him from a phone booth in a small restaurant I frequented. It could have been a call from anybody, but he knew that the only ring that line would be getting had to be from me.

“So?” I said. “What is it?”

“We have to meet.”

“I haven’t been very lucky with clandestine meetings in this century,” I said.

“You choose the place.”

“Columbus Circle mall, fourth-floor wine bar,” I said, “in thirty minutes.”

“Done. You’ll know me because I will be the only man there wearing a herringbone jacket with an orange bow tie.”

I reached the fourth-floor, inside, open-air wine bar in twenty-eight minutes. He was drinking cognac from a snifter and looking about him like some kind of humanoid alien examining the rituals of an alien species in a forsaken corner of his cosmic domain. Preternaturally thin, he was what passed as a white man, but his coloring was olive and his black eyes were startling, even from a distance.

I told the hostess that I saw my friend. She smiled and moved aside. As I walked toward him he took no special notice. This told me that he wasn’t armed with a photograph.

“Mr. Teegs?”

Due to his slender build and finicky attire, I expected the professional middleman to be shorter than I. But as he unfolded himself from the chair he rose and rose until I was looking up into his void-colored eyes.

He took inventory of me: my Crayola-blue suit and black canvas shoes (worn in case I had to run). I had to concentrate to keep my hands from writhing nervously. This strange man unnerved me.

His smile revealed very bright but tiny teeth.

“Mr. Oliver,” he greeted, holding out a hand. “So glad you decided to come.”