Mig Seyer and the Bright Yellow Briefcase
By Miguel A Reyes-Mariano
Criminality in Buffalo, NY, in mid-1990s was high, and carried a grungy, violent, drug-infested atmosphere at the end of the crack epidemic (U.S. Department of Justice, 1999). Butts, J. A. (2007). Violent crime in American cities 1986–2006. https://jeffreybutts.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/violentcrime2006.pdf While national crime rates began to decline in mid-90s, Buffalo experienced a peak in homicide and property crime. The Washington Post. (1997, June 2). Violent crime rate drops 7 percent nationwide. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1997/06/02/violent-crime-rate-drops-7-percent-nationwide/76594cab-4ee8-4b9b-939f-598c95e63090/ The Buffalo crime family—known by many names including the Magaddino family and "the Arm"—partnered with Los Angeles mobsters in late 1996 to seize Herbert Blitzstein's Vegas loan-sharking operation from the Chicago area. Giancana and Burnstein (2009)
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Chapter One - The one front tooth old lady
There was a well-known lawyer in Buffalo, New York, whom everyone talked about mainly because of his “Bright Yellow Briefcase.” He has been interviewed by local news outlets and TV channels, including NBC-2, CBS-4, and ABC-7, about his attaché. There was also a column in the Buffalo News that covers his appearances in different courthouses around the metropolitan area. In his comments, he always ends by saying it's just for its cheerful touch, but its color has helped him from misplacing it, like many others. Even when he carelessly forgot it somewhere, someone always knew without question who it belonged to. In the end, this briefcase will have a significance greater than what its owner has described—something even he might never have realized, despite his sharp reasoning.
Buffalo's weather often makes news, too. So, on Thursday, September 12, 1996, downtown Buffalo, New York, looked like a shadowy scene: half-empty buildings, wet sidewalks, and an eerie silence that only exists when the city pretends nothing can happen. Mig Seyer, an employee of the local Department of Social Services, was walking toward the parking lot where he had left his car—always faraway, always free—when something stopped him in his tracks. "It wasn't a thought. It was a tug in his stomach, a sudden weight in the air—the feeling of being chosen for something. As if the universe itself had nudged him, marked him, and whispered: 'You are needed here.' Mig didn't believe in fate. But something deeper than belief moved through him now. The future didn't just brush his shoulder—it grabbed him, demanding he pay attention.
He had a premonition so vivid he could have sworn he had experienced it before, a sensation that later would seem like déjà vu. Without understanding why or how, he already knew that two men were coming up behind him. He didn’t know they were chasing a well-dressed man who looked lost. He looked down and saw a stone. To his right, leaning against a wall, was a rusty tube from a fallen road sign. He picked them up instinctively, as if following an unspoken command.
In just seconds, a desperate cry for help shattered the afternoon's quiet. The man being chased appeared, running and disoriented, dressed in an expensive suit—perhaps a lawyer, banker, or executive, or at least someone who looked like one. His face was contorted, sweaty, and filled with panic. Behind him, the two potential suspects, seemingly intending to mug him, ran to set up a dead-end ambush. When they saw Mig, they slowed down to re-evaluate the situation. Mig shouted at them in a firm voice, like a former sergeant from the US Army: “LEAVE THE MAN ALONE AND GO AWAY PEACEFULLY!” But they chose to lunge at Mig and the other man instead.
At that moment, as if by cosmic arbitration, the world aligned in a single second, as if someone had adjusted the universe's clock to coordinate the actions of the public servant Mig Seyer. He threw the stone without thinking, without calculating its trajectory, and with no time to regret it. Yet, the rock hit one of the men in the head with impossible precision. The thief fell instantly, as if the streetlights had been switched off. The other man became even angrier and lunged at Mig, enraged. He, almost instinctively, grabbed the pipe he had left at his feet. When the suspect approached, he slammed him with the rusted tube from the road sign with all his might, like swinging a baseball bat, just like he used to do in high school. The blow sounded solid. Thus, the tube wasn't completely rusted, and the part that hit the suspect's ear was strong enough to knock him down. The second suspect collapsed before he even understood what had happened.
Suddenly, silence: Mig, calm, searching for his cell phone; the executive man, still bewildered, trembling with fear; and two bodies on the ground, unconscious from head traumas. It seemed as if the city was recovering from blows to its conscience. Mig took out his very expensive cell phone (no reason for a social worker to spend all that money on one), but he kept it safe and reserved it for emergencies only. Then he called 911 before either of the two men on the ground could react.
The rescued man, dressed as an executive, could hardly hold back his tears; he trembled with a mix of terror and joy, then hugged Mig as if he were a true friend, not just a stranger like someone who, by fate, had appeared on his path. “Thank you,” he repeated. “ThAnksss... T H A N K S!” Then they used the man's tie, scarf, belt, and his shoes' laces to tie the criminals' hands behind their backs and feet as best as they could. Fortunately, a police patrol arrived in less than eight minutes, and the thugs had not yet recovered from their concussions.
The very next day, Mig Seyer's name appeared at the bottom-left quarter of the front page of the Buffalo News. They called him “The Downtown Vigilante,” while the regulars would have preferred “The Good Samaritan.” In fact, Mig read the article without recognizing himself in it. His photo was dark and did not clearly show his face—perhaps as a form of premeditated protection (who knows).
After a few days, during a quiet moment before falling asleep, Mig remembered every detail... Then he heard that voice again, ancient and resonant, as if trying to tell him that he had been chosen. He then recalled, like a subliminal line: “…wherever you go, you will þrifask,” and it echoed within him. He thought he had understood the underlying message then. It was like, wherever I go, I will thrive. But what he failed to realize was that “he will thrive so that others may be saved.” The words weren't magic. They were a covenant—a binding agreement between Mig Seyer and forces older than language.
Mig woke up with his heart pounding, sweating, and his mouth dry. He got up immediately and, before heading to the bathroom to pee, went to the kitchen for a glass of water. He hurried to get water because he couldn't even swallow his saliva. It felt like he was drowning in his own secretions, unable to swallow them. At that moment, as he quickly drank the water, a connection between the events made him realize what had happened to him. It wasn't courage that drove his actions on that first heroic night some months ago. It was a legacy from an encounter with an old woman six months earlier. “Not a legacy, it was a spell… definitely!” That was his final thought about that event.
Mig Seyer easily remembered the entire spell, but he focused his attention on just one word from it. That word's first letter sounded like b or p in “þrifask,” which he took to be a Greek word. However, he wasted no time and went to his IBM ThinkPad to search for it on the Internet. He connected to the World Wide Web using his AOL account and, after a few minutes, discovered that this Scandinavian word was equivalent to “thrive” in English, meaning “to succeed in the future.” Nonetheless, he thought: “In order to succeed in a future fortuitous event, some kind of premonition would have to be de facto to give me an advantage… a þrifask.”
Mig had spent twenty-some years fading into invisibility. His Afro-Caribbean heritage had dimmed under Buffalo winters, his dark skin lightening to a milky coffee hue, and his brave mother's gestures had been replaced by New Yorkers’ quirks. He had chosen comfort over authenticity, order over passion. He was a ghost of himself—safe, predictable, unoriginal, untethered... Then an old woman with one tooth reached across that emptiness and touched him to awake him, maybe? Would she have seen something in him that he couldn't see in himself? The cosmic message was: 'You are chosen.' And in that moment, the ghost's spirit, resting inside him, began to remember what it was like to be brave.
At that time, Mig Seyer was a social worker at the local Department of Social Services in Erie County. He was also a member of the US Navy Reserve based at the Naval and Marine Corps Reserve Center in Buffalo, NY. He was about 37 years old, with light brown eyes, straight black hair, standing 5'10" (1.78m) tall, with broad shoulders, a clean-shaven face, and weighing around 175 lbs. (79.38 Kg). As a social worker, his main mission was to help children who had been abused at home through the Children's Services Unit at the local Department of Social Services. But he never saw himself as brave, despite having been on active duty with the U.S. Army before transferring to the US Navy Reserve. In fact, he tended to walk with his head down and shoulders hunched to hide the weariness in his back, as he preferred to avoid confrontation or problems. However, each visit to the homes of abused children added more potential problems to his workload – one never gets used to seeing abused or neglected children.
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Six months earlier, on the cloudy Friday afternoon of March 29, 1996, downtown Buffalo felt like an environmental freezer. The day before, the temperature had risen to 65°F (18.33°C) on a sunny day. But that day, the temperature had dropped to 12°F (-11.11°C), and 7.5 inches (19.05 cm) of snow had fallen since midnight. March in Buffalo is known for some of the most unpredictable, contradictory, and bewildering weather conditions in the entire United States. This is no exaggeration: March is the month when winter refuses to die, and spring only teases.
On that cloudy afternoon, winds were blowing between 30 and 42 mph (48-68 km/h). Then, Mig felt as if something had pushed him to shed his inner shyness on that afternoon of March 1996. He had parked nearly a quarter mile (0.40 km) away in a free lot between abandoned buildings and closed-down premises in downtown Buffalo. He was trying to save money by walking instead of paying for parking closer to the Social Services office. It’s worth noting that Mig also preferred the solitude of his own company to reflect on the cases that weighed on his conscience. So, the walk served more as a therapeutic activity.
That afternoon, at 5:37 p.m., the asphalt, wet with salty melting snow, reflected the broken lights of the lampposts. The wind was blowing abnormally, and a misty rain was covering the spaces around the empty buildings in the shadows. The gusts of wind were blowing old papers around as if they were memories no one claimed. Yet, despite these conditions, Mig Seyer was able to hear some struggles in the distance. Three men surrounded a tiny, almost transparent old lady. Her hair was white as poorly swept ash, and she was wearing an oversized coat, probably inherited from someone no longer present.
She screamed just a little, as if she knew the city had stopped listening to such sounds. Mig, in his mind, was immediately assessing the situation. He thought that she was not carrying much money with her. From experience, he knew that social benefits had never really been enough to cover the full load of the client’s monthly expenses. However, her food stamp card (and maybe a bus pass) were essential for helping her at least have decent meals and transportation. Her voice seemed to fade into the distance; even so, Mig could still hear it, and he decided to investigate. The fear almost made him keep walking and leave that stranger's problem behind. He thought about avoiding trouble and, above all, about his tomorrow. But something happened inside him, something nameless. A sharp noise, like an old door opening without permission, as if an invisible hand was pushing and forcing him to run into the unknown.
Then he (not the woman) began screaming at the top of his lungs. He cursed the suspected perpetrators, didn't call for help, and seemed to be conjuring spirits to bring personal misfortune upon them (sons of bitches). He didn't really know where all that ranting and screaming came from. His clumsy actions, however, were frightening indeed. Mig made such a racket that it echoed between the empty buildings. He raised his arms, hurled insults, and banged the fallen rusty road sign against the walls. He didn't stop until the men were startled. One pulled out a knife, and the other backed away. Mig grabbed his thick leather trouser belt, holding it by the end to swing it in the air with the buckle at the other end. He moved while still screaming to full lunges and advanced slowly but with determination… with fury in his eyes for the abuse. None of them expected resistance (probably), let alone those terrifying noises and curses.
As Mig kept shouting and advancing steadily, the group leader called for abdication, so they decided to leave and run. Mig was clearly out of breath and exhausted, yet he wore the smile of a job well done. The three men fled, disappearing into shadows that already knew them. The old woman fell to her knees at Mig's feet, and he moved to help her. “Are you doing OK?" That was the first thing that came to his mind.
Mig approached her, still trembling. She lifted her face. She had only one tooth, large and yellowish, like an old moon. Her eyes could barely see, but when she looked at him, she looked at him from head to toe and immediately said, “Thank you!” in a voice that did not match her appearance. Mig reached out his hand to help her up.
When she took his hands, he felt dizzy, with a pressure in his chest and a ringing in his ears. The old woman squeezed firmly and murmured words that did not seem to belong to any language. However, it felt as if the world had turned upside down. It wasn't violence—it was like a silent transaction. Centuries poured through her fingertips into his bloodstream like molten silver. Languages he'd never learned bloomed in his synapses. She was passing something ancient to him, something that had been waiting for a vessel worthy enough to hold it. Her one yellow tooth gleamed like a gateway; through it, he heard not words but purpose. It was more like a spell: “By time's flow, I decree, wherever you go, you will þrifask.” Then, not from his mouth but like a murmur he also heard: “Your premonition will protect you. Your courage will save others. This is your burden. This is your grace.”
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Do Not Miss Next in Chapter 2
An old woman whispers a spell to Mig Seyer during his rescue, then dies, leaving him an ancient gift of premonition. He uses this ability as a Social Servant to save abused children. In 1996, he met Ram Pattel, a fellow veteran with similar goals. Through Ram's wife's agency, they pursue private investigation licenses, which they obtain by 1999. During the process, they meet lawyer Angel Mariano, whose cases they'll later support. Mig transforms from social worker to justice-seeker, carrying the old woman's final gift.
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REFERENCES
Butts, J. A. (2007). Violent crime in American cities 1986–2006. https://jeffreybutts.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/violentcrime2006.pdf
Federal Bureau of Investigation. (1996). Crime in the United States, 1996: Section II - Crime Index offenses reported. U.S. Department of Justice. https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/1996/96sec2.pdf
Giancana, S., & Burnstein, S. M. (2009). Family affair: Greed, treachery, and betrayal in the Chicago Mafia. Chicago Review Press.
The Washington Post. (1997, June 2). Violent crime rate drops 7 percent nationwide. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1997/06/02/violent-crime-rate-drops-7-percent-nationwide/76594cab-4ee8-4b9b-939f-598c95e63090/
