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“Then it’s done,” I said.

“And what can I do for you?”

“A huge favor for me,” I said. “I hope not so much for you.”

We discussed an impossible task for all of four minutes, at the end of which Roger Ferris said, “I’ve been a crook all my life, Joe. It’s nice to know I could use that talent to do something right.”

“Can I come casual to the event?” I asked. “I have a chore or two before the performance and I might not be able to make it back to Brooklyn in time to change.” While I was saying this I heard three tiny beeps in the receiver.

“Do what you can.”

After disconnecting I saw that the beeping was a text from Mel.

Set!

“I suppose this means that he’s doin’ somethin’ for you?” my onetime sharecropper grandmother said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You know if I go to this thing I got to get my hair done.”

“And I know how much you love sittin’ in Lulu’s chair.”

“Roger called over to her after he talked to you, and she’s comin’ here.”

“I guess he really wants this date.”

She harrumphed and then said, “I guess. Are you bein’ careful, Joey?”

“Better than that, Grandma…I’m doing what’s right.”

34.

It took an hour and a half to get to Pleasant Plains, Staten Island. I called on the walk over from the train station. Melquarth met me at the gate of his unholy home.

“How ya doin’?” he asked while shaking my hand.

It was a rhetorical question. My host expected a nod or maybe some noncommittal phrase, but instead I stood still, considering his words.

“What?” he asked.

“Tell me something, Mel.”

“What’s that?”

“I know why I’m here at your door. My world went crazy a dozen years ago and you are the only one crazy enough to help me through.”

“Okay.”

“You say that I was the only one ever, like that red bird you saw, to do what was right by you, but that feels like, I don’t know, a little weak.”

“For you it is, Joe.” It was the first time I could remember that he used my first name. “I mean, you weren’t raised as the demon inside a house of piety. You never had a rapist father and a mother who hated you for it. But take my word…You didn’t shoot me and then you didn’t lie; and those few years where we played chess you just sat there like the brother I never had, the friendship I could take for granted, or the father who led me by the hand.

“In my world, in my mind, that was the treasure I longed for.”

“What about that watchmaker?”

Melquarth smiled sadly and then nodded. “One day I’ll tell you about him.”