Bluebottle lg-5 Page 11

  "You missed it all, Lew. I got up and came in looking for you and there was Hosie on the couch making these horrible gasping sounds. That was bad enough, but then they stopped. I couldn't tell whether he was breathing or not I didn't think he was."

  She drank off the last of her coffee. I'd made my way down the first third of a botde of Dewar's I'd got at the K amp;B up the street.

  "The paramedics said he aspirated-vomited while he was out cold, breathed it into his lungs. There was blood and vomit all over the couch and floor, that really scared me, but they said the blood was probably from his stomach too, that happens with serious drinkers. They hooked him up to monitors, put a tube in his throat, started IVs, and packed him up. The ambulance sat there for half an hour. All these faces all up and down the street peeking out from behind doors and windows, trying to get a look, find out what was going on."

  She got up and walked to the window above the sink, stood there looking out, not saying any more. A banana tree swayed outside, dipping one broad leaf into the air like an oar.

  Tm sorry, V."

  She nodded. "I'll make more coffee. Be a long night." When she opened the refrigerator door, light leapt into the room. She took out a can of French Market topped with aluminum foil. Light caught in the foil as she unwrapped it, bounced about the walls, semaphore from signal mirrors far away.

  "You weren't here again, Lew. You're never here. All those cases you keep taking on, the Clayson girl, Billy Deacon, that man's new young wife over in Slidell… You're the missing person, Lew."

  She turned to look at my glass. "Can I get you more ice?"

  I shook my head.

  "I keep trying to tell myself it's going to change, for a long time now. I don't know how much longer I can go on doing that."

  She sat at the table to wait. We watched one another. Neither of us said anything. After a while she got up and poured coffee. A passing car lit the part of her face I could see, threw her shadow hugely on the wall.

  "Get you anything while I'm up?"

  Again I shook my head.

  "I wish I could. I wish there was something I could do for you."

  "You do a lot for me, Verne."

  "No. I don't. Nothing that matters. You won't let me, can't admit there are things you need. From me or anyone else."

  A moth flew once against the window, went away and came back. Nudged at it again and again, wanting in from the light maybe. In from the cold. Father, the dark moths crouch at the sills of the earth, waiting.

  I remembered a story Mom told me, how when she and Dad were first married, living in one of the two-room shacks thrown up twenty or thirty to the block on hardscrabble acreage at the edge of town, this bird, a dove, got in the habit of coming by every morning. First day, it flew into the window and when Mom went out she found it lying stunned in the dirt under the window. She got some cornmeal from inside and piled it up by the bird. Next day about the same time, she looked up and there the dove was, sitting in the window looking in at her. So every morning after that, she'd put cornmeal out on the sill for it. Even after the dove stopped coming, for a week or so she went on putting out cornmeal.

  "I've met someone, Lew. An older man, and his life's different from anything I've ever known. Every time I see him it's like visiting another country. But I think he cares about me. I don't know if anyone else ever will, not that much. Or that way."

  I nodded. She sat at the table again.

  "I have to try this, give it a chance. Give myself a chance. See what might come of it."

  "Okay."

  "I'm sorry, Lew."

  "No reason to be."

  "Yes. There is. Good reason."

  She stood and dumped the rest of her coffee in the sink, rinsed the cup, set it on the drainboard.

  Years later, at an AA meeting, a member told us that just before swallowing an even hundred pills and opening her wrists in the bathtub with an X-Acto knife, his wife had spent the evening-he was out drinking as usual-ironing his shirts. They were in a stack on the kitchen table, neady folded, when he got home.

  "Rent's paid up through next month. You want, I'm sure Mrs. Vandercook would let you take over the apartment after that."

  Okay.

  "I'll be by to pick up my things later this week if that's all right"

  Yes.

  'Take care, Lew."

  "You too."

  When the front door closed half an hour later, I got up and went into the front room. I looked through the records till I found one with Duke Ellington's "In My Solitude." I played it sixteen times while I finished the Dewar's.

  "Jesus I'm sorry, Lew."

  Coffee lurched over the side of my cup onto the table. I held on to the cup with both hands and leaned into the table. I'd just told Don about LaVerne leaving.

  He'd come by to let me know that Hosie was going to be all right and found me out back on the patio lying up against the fence with glittery tracks from slugs on my clothes. God knows how long I'd been out there or what I had thought I was doing.

  I told him what I'd found at Amano's trailer, about my visit with Jimmie Marconi. Then about LaVerne.

  "She'll be back, Lew. You guys have split up before, but you're meant for one another. Anything I can do?"

  "Yeah." I held up my empty cup.

  "Only if you promise to drink it this time instead of splashing it on the table." He poured, then sat. "This other thing, though… Have to tell you. You're in over your head on that"

  "Marconi, you mean."

  Don nodded. "Maybe this other shit too. But Marconi for sure."

  "He came to me, dealt himself in."

  "So you get up and walk away fromthe table. You're done playing. Where's the problem?"

  "I can't"

  "Yeah. Yeah, I know that."

  Don tipped his chair back, head against the wall, gently rocking. There were spots rubbed smooth on the wall where others had done that before.

  "So Bone hauls ash for Marconi's group and winds up with a bankroll he's not supposed to have. Somehow Marconi's sidemen are so busy they forget to ask him about this. By the time they do, the Esmay woman's in the picture. Maybe she's Bone's love interest, maybe she's running a scam. Maybe both. Then the money disappears. Someone climbs up on a roof and shoots at you and the woman. Bone gets wiped. The woman either kills herself or meets up with an unusually imaginative dispatcher. Meanwhile these self-styled Aryan types are buying up serious weaponry-with mob money?"

  "You tell me."

  "And Marconi's dogs are looking to pull them down, make some kind of example of them. One thing."

  "Where's the money?" I said. Just what I'd been wondering.

  Don nodded.

  "This guy Joey the Mountain pulled off of you, this Ellis: you don't think he walked down the back stairs, huh."

  "Not with his feet touching."

  "So what'd they get from this litde episode? They already knew the white boys were in it This Ellis didn't talk, and you say he didn't, what do they have they didn't before?"

  "Nothing."

  "So no way they're gonna quit. Not the kind of people that write off their losses and move on. These guys grab on to something, they don't let go."

  "But they still have me."

  "Exactly. Lonely no more. How well does Marconi know you?"

  "Well enough."

  "Then he knows you're not gonna lay this down by the goddamnriverside. Figure on havingfriends wherever you go for a while."

  "That's just it. I don't have any better idea than they do where to go. Closed doors and empty bottles everywhere."

  "So try rethinking it. They knew about your Nazis-you remember how Tarzan used to call them Nasties?"

  I didn't. The only movie house back home was for whites.

  "And they knew about the connection with the woman."

  "Right"

  "What they didn't know about, as for as we can tell, is Amano. Maybe that's the door you have to get your foot in. Maybe there's something el
se back at this Amano's trailer."

  "Whatever's there's likely to be on the abstract side." Like the occupant himself, I thought.

  "You able to get any real feel for what that was all about? With Amano?"

  "Yeah. I think he went in. Climbed aboard."

  "Joined them, you mean. The white boys."

  "Right. He was desperate, couldn't find his way into a new book however hard he beat his head against it. Maybe he thought this was the thing that would take him where he needed to be."

  "You're saying he went in undercover, like doing research. Look around, find what goes down, get the hell out of there and write about it."

  I nodded.

  "That's one side of the story," Don said. "Other is, maybe instead he goes in, likes what he sees, and sticks around. Winds up buying the whole shitload."

  "Possible. He was desperate in other ways too, not just about the book. Kind of person you don't have a lot of trouble thinking he might fall in the odd hole."

  "Amano's missing, the money's missing. Chances are good they're together somewhere."

  "Makes sense. But I keep thinking about die bodhi-sattva."

  "The what?"

  "It came up in one of the versions of the manuscript The bodhisattva. Someone who postpones his own salvation in order to help others achieve theirs."

  That's not all I was thinking. I was thinking there was something at the trailer. Two somethings. And I was remembering an old saying. If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.

  The first something was no problem. After five or six consecutive naps during the course of which I became vaguely aware of evening setding in again outside my window, borders of one nap blurring into the next, no checkpoints or crossing guards, I called Sam Brown, formerly of SeCure Corps, now consultant and freelancer.

  "Mr. Brown, I was wondering if you could explain to me exacdy what this Consulting' is."

  "Well I tell you, it's complicated. But breaking it down to the part a layman like yourself might understand, it has a lot to do with what we professionals call 'billing.' That help?"

  "Yessir, I believe that clears it up."

  "How you doin', Lew?"

  "Few months dumber and poorer than the last time I saw you."

  "Ain't it the truth? What can I do for you?"

  I described the uniform that Wardell, the security guard out at the trailer, had been wearing.

  "Stripe up the side of the leg, right? Like on old-time band uniforms."

  "Darker blue, yeah."

  "Has to be Checkmate, with that shoulder patch and those fruity pants. Owner's a chess nut."

  I thought for a moment he said chestnut, and wondered what new slang had started up. "You know someone there?"

  "Lew, I know someone everywhere. I'm assuming you need to find this guy."

  "As soon as possible."

  "Give me his description again… Wavy black hair, shiny. Like Indian hair? Right. Skin grayish white Got it I'll call you back."

  He did, within minutes.

  "Boy's name is Wardell Lee Sims. Been with Checkmate a litde over a year, in town a little longer. Used an Alabama driver's license for ID when he applied. With a couple of other agencies before that."

  "Why the change?"

  "Knew you were gonna ask, crack detective like yourself. You put in about thirty more years, maybe you'll get to be a consultant."

  "I live for the day."

  "Man needs goals. As for that other, let's just say, it comes to security services, Checkmate ain't exacdy prime rib. More likefrozen hamburger patties, come sixty to the package."

  "He was firedfrom the earlier positions?"

  "Officially, no. You call up as a prospective employer and ask 'Is he eligible for rehire?' you get a yes, in compliance with the laws of the land. Perfect attendance. Grooming and general appearance, maintenance of uniform, knowledge of job, performance: all check marks. Everything by the book, right down the line."

  "Good soldier."

  " 'Cept for this one small area. Here, the silent buzzer goes off. Got some kind of authority hangup."

  "Doesn't like it"

  "Or maybe he likes it-needs it-a little too much. Lot of times it comes down to the same thing. Maybe he keeps on putting his spoon in the pot and just doesn't like the taste of what he finds. Just a minute, Lew."

  Sam turned away to speak to someone. I made out That takes care of your crisis, right? just before he came back on.

  "First job, Sims threw it over, lasted just under three weeks. Second one, his supervisor put him on suspension, supposed to have to be vetted by his supervisor before it became street legal, all academic since Sims never showed up again. Didn't even come in to pick up his check."

  "And with Checkmate?"

  "Man still needs to learn his ABCs. Starts off on days, within the month he's into it with another guard, he gets switched to deep nights and that's where he stays. In addition he gets hung so far out on the line he may's well be keeping a lighthouse, never see another human being."

  "And where's this?"

  "Damn you're good. Always got the right question. An old factory out on Washington, by the canals. Made canned snacks, whatever those are, and some kind of drink mix, Ovaltine kind of thing, that was big for 'bout a week in the early Sixties. Bellied up a year ago. Only reason they keep a guard is the insurance company tells them they have to, and that's only at night"

  He gave me an address and directions.

  "I had my friend check the log sheets. Sims be on his third cup of coffee 'long about now. Give the two of you a fine chance to sit down, talk over old times without anyone bothering you."

  "Thanks, Sam."

  "Any time, my man. Most fun I'm likely to have all day."

  I snagged a cab on St Charles and had it drop me at a Piggly Wiggly within walking distance of the factory. Not much else in the area. Two diminutive humpback bridges Huey Long might have left behind. Some caved-in barbecue joints and the like, one or two corner stores still doing business behind thick plywood instead of windows, a service station halfheartedly resurrected as a God's Truth church.

  The factory front was an expanse of glass, hundreds of small panes opaque as cataracted eyes set in slabs of aluminum painted off-white. Over years the thick paint had bubbled up and become pocked, looking encrusted and vaguely nautical. Through one of many panes broken out, I peered inside. Far off towards the rear, beside a worktable, chair and low cliff of shelving heavily cobwebbed like something out of Great Expectations, a single light burned. Miss Havisham's dreams, industrial strength.

  Around back, all but hidden in banks of electric meters, service panels and zone valves for gas and water, I found a narrow door propped open with a car battery.

  Inside, sitting in an ancient desk chair with brass rollers, watching a TV on whose screen faces looked like smudged thumbprints, I found Wardell Sims. His head came around as I entered. His eyes skittered over mine.

  "Guess I been waiting for you," he said. "Sure I have. Figured they must of took you when they took Ellis. Either that, or you were one of them. And that whatever it was happened to Ellis, if you weren't one of them, it happened to you too. Figured if it didn't, and you weren't, then you'd come looking for me." Heticked it off as though reciting a syllogism. As though he'd been sitting here working it out in his mind, running it over and over. "I ain't so dumb as I let on to be."

  Should I tell him that just that pretense was probably the reason he was still alive-the reason Marconi's boys hadn't come to fetch him?

  Onscreen, bank robbers fled down busy city streets with police, both uniformed and plainclothes, in pursuit. Guns fired, citizens exploded from their path. Then, inexplicably, like cats and mice in old cartoons, the robbers turned around, pulled guns, and began pursuing the police.

  "What the hell are you watching?"

  "Cop show."

  "You seen it before?"

  "Don't think so."

  'Tou make much sense of it?"


  "Not really."

  Sims looked up at me with a vulnerable expression. Maybe nothingever made much sense to him. But he wasn't one of the lucky ones: he still couldn't leave things alone, coiddn't quit trying. Even if he knew he was never going to get that rock up the hill.

  Holding on to the edge of die counter, Sims rocked back and forth, an inch or so, on die brass rollers. His eyes were squeezed shut. Then he opened them.

  "I need to come with you, or you gonna do it here?"

  He thought I was going to kill him.

  I shook my head, and surprise showed in his eyes. Something else he hadn't got the sense of.

  He looked past me with eyes unfocused, deep in thought or remembering. A smile's ghost walked across his mouth.

  "What do you want, then?" he said after a moment.

  I took out a photo of Amano. "You know him?"

  "Yeah, sure I know him. Ray Adams."

  "His real name's Ray Amano. That was his trailer your friend Ellis posted you outside of."

  "That I didn't know."

  "He's a writer."

  "Yeah. Ellis said. Did some work for us."

  "And he's missing. You know anything about that?"

  "I know he ain't been around awhile. Used to be, he was there most times we got together, never saying much, just looking around. Always squinted, like someone who ought to be wearing glasses. Whenever he moved, even if it was a small move like reaching for a cup of coffee, he'd kind of bolt, like a badger coming out of his hole."

  "Ellis never said anything about why Adams was gone?"

  "Not as I can recall. There was a lot going on at the time. Community meetings. Seminars for new people-modeled them on Sunday School."

  "What did you model stockpiling weapons on?"

  "You think we don't have the right to defend ourselves? Got ourselves an obligation to do so. Constitution guarantees it. Not that anyone much looks at the Constitution anymore these days. They pick 'em out two or three phrases, ride those right into the ground, ignore the rest."

  "Where'd the money come from for those guns, Wardell?"

  "Ellis never said. Had a way about him, you'd know when questions wouldn't be welcome."

  "You have any idea it was money he'd grabbed off the mob?"

  "Well… One or two little things I overheard, I had to wonder. You pay attention, things come to you. You get to trying to put them together, make a piece."