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I took no more steps and within seconds the door above opened.

“Stay off the stairs,” a man silhouetted by light called down.

“Why am I here?”

His reply was to slam the door shut.

There was a stool and a worktable in the cramped cellar. No exit except for the steep stairway. There were no tools to be seen, no weapons or objects that could be turned into weapons. The men who accosted me were young and well trained. I certainly couldn’t hope to defeat even one of them with both hands shackled behind my back.

I walked around for maybe an hour, looking to see if there was anything I could turn to my advantage; there wasn’t.

And so I decided to sit on the stool and lean back against the edge of the worktable—awaiting my fate.

Waiting is the detective’s stock-in-trade. We wait for the right hour, a certain phone call, or something different from what has gone before. It’s not a profession that’s a natural fit for my nature, but the great thing about human beings is that they can and do adapt.

The natural boon of spending most of my time quiescent and inactive opened the trapdoor of deep thought. I fell right into it.

Sitting on that stool I decided that my captors were after me over the frame and not A Free Man. Not that it made much difference. In both cases I was the pariah and they the judgment if not actually the law.

Something slammed down and I realized that I had fallen asleep on the stool. Two men stood in front of me in the flimsy light. One of them had an automatic pointed in my general direction. The other man, I figured, had put down the tray loud enough to wake me up.

The armed man, dressed all in black, was tall and masked. His disguise was like a ski mask but it was designed expressly for the purpose of concealing his identity. The second guy wore a simple brown suit, no mask, and exhibited no weapon. He was on the short side, with skin darker than most white men.

“Stand up and turn around,” the unmasked man commanded. “I’m going to unlock the cuffs while you eat.”

I did as he said and he as he promised.

There were three fried eggs, four strips of bacon, a glass of grapefruit juice, and a cup of coffee on the brown resin tray.

My stomach was upset from the chloroform, but I ate and drank, as I had learned to do in prison. You never knew when the next meal was coming.

“You are the cause of great concern,” the man without the mask or gun said. The words were sophisticated, but the accent was deep Brooklyn. “People all over New York are asking why you don’t leave well enough alone.”

“Who are you?” I replied.

“My name is Adamo Cortez. I think you had your friend the Haitian cop ask about me.”

“Your name came up,” I said in a relaxed, informal tone, “and I decided to see what you know…Detective.”

“Where’d my name come up?”

“In a dream.”

The liar didn’t like my lie.

“Stand up and turn around,” he said, a little less friendly than before.

“I still got a piece’a bacon on my plate.”

“Lean over and eat it like a dog.”

On one hand I wanted to hit him, but on the other I didn’t want to be shot. So I stood and turned and allowed the chains to be snapped back into place.

When I was seated again, the masked man with the automatic went back up the stairs and closed the door.

When the gunsel was gone, my true captor leaned up against the table next to me.

“You’ve been talking to people,” he said. “Making noise, brandishing guns. You went to see Jocelyn Bryor and Little Exeter Barret. You’re asking questions about me. I don’t like that.”