Willow sat staring into the muddy depths of his cold coffee. North Austin Boulevard, Sister Rosetta’s playground, had developed into a dead end, she’d flown the coop, and he’d have to haul his head out of the sand and view this murderous matter from an entirely different angle, if he could find an entirely different angle to view it from. And what was in it for Willow? He’d been involved in this cookout for something like ten days and he’d grossed five hundred dollars. He could be making more money in the neighborhood foundry. Willow grinned wryly. For Gladys Hornsby he’d work free of charge, if it came to that. He left money on the counter and went out to his Buick to drive north on River Road to the Kennedy Expressway, then east toward the Loop and the only loose thread that came readily to mind.
32
Monday
The Saxon Hotel was located on the north side of Randolph Street, two and a half blocks west of State Street. It was a Chicago landmark and a prime candidate for the wrecking ball. There was a cemetery dampness about the ancient hostelry, a musty odor of decay oozed from its Gothic pores, and its atmosphere of depression clutched the unsuspecting newcomer by the throat with the unrelenting grip of a Dearborn Street mugger. There’d been no murders in the Saxon, and no reported rapes, but there’d been a half-dozen suicides in recent years, one of these being a twenty-three-year-old Joliet youngster who’d just hit the Illinois State Lottery for upwards of seven million dollars. Willow took very little stock in the persistent rumors that the ghost of Boss Kelly walked the threadbare carpeting of the Saxon’s midnight halls; nevertheless he was aware of a chill uneasiness settling over him the instant he set foot in the lobby. He located the Raven Room, a dark, dank, cavernlike place lodged in the basement of the Saxon, its walls painted jet black, its floor tiled blood red. In a niche at the far end of the room there was an imitation marble bust of a full-lipped, firm-jawed woman with a high-bridged nose, and this was the only decorative touch in sight. Willow took a seat at the horseshoe bar to check the Raven Room, mentally charting the most direct route of egress, because a feeling of impending catastrophe hung heavy in the air.
He took stock of the early-afternoon turnout—across the bar a pair of bus drivers drank schooners of beer and played cribbage, at a corner table a balding gentleman perused an Illinois Green Sheet and scribbled notes on its margins, to Willow’s right two gray-haired old biddies giggled confidentially over foamy pink drinks, and to his left sat a lady, possibly the party he was hoping to meet, a neatly attired woman of approximately forty years. She was a platinum blonde, slender, long limbed, with pale blue eyes that studied him unblinkingly from beneath a bulging, intelligent forehead. Her face was long and deep lined, her nose prominent and upturned, and her thin-lipped mouth was tight at the corners. She reminded Willow of a high-school English teacher, the one he’d met one Saturday night in a Wilson Avenue whorehouse, and his English grades had improved dramatically during the remainder of that semester. She was wearing a white-on-black tropical-flowered dress, and her expensive saddle-stitched black leather purse occupied the barstool between them. She was smoking a gold foil-tipped cigarette and drinking a double hooker of Canadian Club on the rocks, with the bottle parked on the bar in front of her. She’d been across the river and into the trees a few times, but she was attractive. The bartender approached Willow. He was a bouncy little guy in a red shirt with black vest and slacks. He had a vacuum-cleaner-salesman’s smile, and there was a long jagged white scar on his forehead, the kind you get when you step between two guys armed with busted beer bottles. He nodded hello and Willow said, “Is the Kennessy’s cold?”
“Freeze your balls!” He had a rumbling voice, a couple of octaves lower than April thunder.
Willow gave him an okay sign and he scurried away to the beer cooler. Willow turned slowly to meet the pale blue eyes of the woman on his left. She was smiling. “Not much to look forward to, is it?”
Willow squinted at her.
She said, “Frozen balls.”
Willow shrugged. “Better now than thirty years ago.”
She started to say something but held up when the bartender returned with a frosty bottle of Kennessy’s and a glass. He poured and Willow rested his gaze on the large, glossy black bird glued to the top of the chromed cash register behind the bar. Willow said, “Helluva good job—who’s your taxidermist?”
The bartender frowned a puzzled frown. He said, “Taxidermist?”
“Who stuffed the crow?”
“Oh, Edgar Allan? Edgar Allan ain’t no crow, he’s a raven.”
“Okay, who stuffed him?”
Edgar Allan spread ebony wings and flapped almost silently over Willow to the wall niche, where he perched on the head of the imitation marble bust of Pallas.
Willow said, “Well, you win a few, you lose a few.”
The bartender said, “They named him after Edgar Allan Poe. Poe wrote some old poem about a raven. That’s why they call this joint the Raven Room. It’ll all come together if you think about it a while.”
Willow was staring glumly at his beer glass, saying nothing.
The bartender said, “Edgar Allan talks, only he don’t say, ‘Nevermore,’ like he’s supposed to.” He tilted his head, cupped his hands around his mouth, and hollered, “Hey, Edgar Allan, say ‘Nevermore’!”
Edgar Allan rustled softly on the wall-niche bust and glared beadily at the bartender. He croaked, “Fuck you, Harry!”
The bartender spread his hands helplessly. “See what I mean?”
Willow said, “Your name is Harry?”
The bartender said, “Naw, it’s Steve, but Edgar Allan calls me Harry.”
“Well, Steve, Edgar Allan just crapped in my glass.”
Steve shrugged. “Yeah, old Edgar Allan will do that from time to time, but you shouldn’t take it personal.”
The lady with the pale blue eyes said, “Steve, let me buy the gentleman a fresh beer—you can serve it over here.” She moved her purse and grinned at Willow. One of her front teeth was slightly chipped but he liked her grin. She said, “‘Once upon a midnight dreary.’”
Willow scooted onto the barstool next to hers.
She said, “You don’t remember the fair and radiant lady named Lenore?”
Willow said, “Not clearly. It’s been a while.”
“She must have been one helluva lay.”
“All we have is Poe’s word. One man’s Mede is the next guy’s Persian.” He’d always been leery of people who were hooked on Poe.
She put out her hand and Willow took it. It was a nice hand, and ringless. She said, “Hi, my name’s Kathy Bucknell and I’m drunk.”
She was, too—drunker than a Welsh gravedigger. Willow had hoped for that.
33
Monday
Kathy Bucknell kept a room on the fourth floor of the Saxon Hotel. She’d said, “It’s for emergency purposes.” She’d closed the door behind them, lurching against Willow long enough for him to get a good whiff of her lavender perfume. She’d said, “Sometimes I’m just too damned drunk to drive home.”
Willow had mumbled something about drunk drivers going to jail, watching her lock the door.
She’d said, “’Course I use it a whole bunch even when I’m sober, so it isn’t a waste or anything like that, you understand.”
“Like for naps or reading or just to get away from it all?”
“Uh-huh, or when I meet a friend—like now.”
She’d tossed her purse onto the bed and Willow had draped his sports jacket over the back of a chair. He’d said, “You’re lonely.”
She hadn’t looked at him. She’d said, “So are you—maybe we’re birds of a feather.”
“Ravens, maybe?”
Her smile had been a weary thing. “That’s it, ravens—nevermore.” There was a vague hopelessness about her that Willow understood, or thought he did—something having to do with her past ramming into her stalled future and crushing her ego in the process. In third-grade singsong fashion, she’d sa
id,
That ever-damning “nevermore”
Implies that it has been before,
But what was never ever then,
Can be, but cannot be again.
Willow had said, “Who wrote it and what does it mean?”
“I did, just in my mind. I don’t know what it means—it’s probably related to my drinking.” She’d made her uncertain way to a cabinet in a corner of the room, grabbing it to steady herself before bringing out a nearly full bottle of Canadian Club. From a low, brown-enameled office-type refrigerator she’d taken ice cubes. “All the comforts of home—soda, or ginger ale, or cola or something?”
“Never with good whiskey.”
“There’s more where that came from.”
“Do you meet many, err-r-r, friends?”
She’d winked at him, blowing on her fingernails and buffing them on the front of her dress, a brief ritual from out of Willow’s teens, indicating prowess. She’d said, “That’d be telling.”
“Sure, it’d be telling.”
“And you want to know?”
“I think so.”
“Why?”
“Why did the chicken cross the road?”
“I don’t know.”
“Neither did the chicken. I don’t think we should mess with it.”
She’d sat heavily on the edge of the bed. “Look, let’s just say that I know what the damned thing’s for, and let it go at that. Okay?”
“Okay.”
She’d said, “I have a marvelous idea.”
“Good ideas work, marvelous ideas don’t.”
“I think we should have breakfast together.”
“Not too shabby, but it comes a bit late in the day.”
“You know what I mean. There’s a nice little breakfast place a block west—great omelettes, real fluffy. Like omelettes?”
“Depends. No jelly.” He’d lit a cigarette and weighed her offer. There’d been hardly any way he could have let it go by. Kathy Bucknell had been drunk and she’d been talkative.
She’d frowned. “You see, it’s best when they stay all night—for me, that is. I mean, that way they don’t go home total strangers. I’ve been in bed with too damned many total strangers.”
“I’d have to make a call.”
“There’s the phone. You’re married?”
“I’ll call later—no, not married—not for a long time now.”
“I’m married but I’m not, do you know what I mean?”
“I was married, but I never was, do you know what I mean?”
“Yes, never in your mind, right?”
“Or in hers.”
“Why don’t you call now? You’re hedging until you find out if I’m worth a full night—when you’ve learned if I do it good?”
“Do you?”
“Real good, honest to God!” She didn’t of course. When they brag, they never do. Like the character who keeps telling you that he’s an ex-prize fighter—he’ll be the first guy to get knocked flat on his keester. Willow had sagged into an overstuffed chair, feeling suddenly out of place, like tits on a boar or something. Kathy Bucknell had gotten up to pour drinks over ice, then returned to the bed, kicking off her shoes and flaring her full skirt to pop onto the bed, sitting cross-legged, peering inquisitively at him over her whiskey. He’d caught a brief flash of tight white panties with little red circles, like a clown’s suit. Fetching, Willow had thought, and the words to an old dance tune had come to mind: “Even though your heart is breaking, laugh, clown, laugh.” A single tear had welled from Kathy Bucknell’s bloodshot left eye, and she’d raised her glass to him in a silent toast. Willow had raised his; Kathy had said, “Oh, shit!” Willow had nodded, and their barricades had come tumbling down.
They’d talked until the windows had blackened with nightfall. They’d marched through the first bottle of Canadian Club and they’d limped halfway through the second. At eight o’clock she’d phoned for cigarettes and sandwiches, ham on Rosen’s rye with the hottest horseradish Willow had ever tangled with. Kathy had become quite drunk, unable to wrap her thickening tongue around a few words, ‘particular,’ in particular, and Willow had found himself liking her very much.
Yes, she was still married, she’d told him, but her husband had made too much money and he’d drifted away from her.
Willow had noted that sometimes too much money did that to marriages. He’d added that sometimes not enough money did that to marriages, too. He’d said, “How’s that for profundity?”
She’d said that it wasn’t bad for the shape he was in and he’d laughed because he’d been drunk, not as drunk as he’d wanted to be, but damned near, and she’d mentioned that her husband was in Germany on business. She’d been silent for a few moments before saying that he’d be back soon, maybe tomorrow, but it wouldn’t make any difference because he’d go directly to his girlfriend’s condominium on Lincoln Park West.
Willow had said, “Interesting neighborhood.”
She’d shrugged. “Expensive, at any rate.” She’d told him that the girlfriend was a fashion model.
Willow had said, “Pretty?”
She’d said, “She’s beautiful—she makes me look like a bushel of ragweed.”
“I doubt that.” He’d been drunk and he’d tried to be kind, but he’d meant it, and he hadn’t known why. He’d put it down to Kathy Bucknell having something, and he hadn’t known what.
She’d told him that her husband covered the money he spent on the model by letting her pretend to manage his local branch. She’d said, “A manager—isn’t that funny?”
Willow had said, “Probably not—you aren’t laughing.”
She’d nibbled on her lower lip for a few moments, then she’d glanced up. “Say, whoever you are, would you answer a sort of personal question?”
“How personal is it?”
“Just so-so—have you ever had sex with someone else watching the act?”
“Well, yes, once, when I was seventeen, with Olga Ponowski, but not for long. Her father came home early and he kicked the shit out of both of us. Boy, there was a pissed-off Polack!”
“My husband’s girlfriend goes that route—my husband likes to see that kind of stuff. She goes to bed with his friends and he watches them give it to her. Once she took it from a big dog and that really switched him on.” She’d put a match to a gold-tipped cigarette and said, “Oh, Jesus, can you imagine it? Getting screwed by a goddamn dog?”
“Not unless I try real hard.”
“The thought just turns my stomach.”
“It might be a little better than having one grab you by the throat.”
“Damned little.”
“You husband told you these things?”
“No, I had another source of information.”
Willow had said, “Oh?” All spigots spring a leak in due time, just stick around.
Her nod had been matter-of-fact. “Uh-huh, some man who knows her. He said he’d had her in bed a lot of times.” She’d made a face. “I shouldn’t make an issue of that—what the hell, he had me, too.”
“Often?”
“No, just once. I didn’t like him—he had an orchid tattooed on his fanny.”
Willow had shrugged. He’d said, “Horses for courses.”
“He was pretty expensive but he told me everything that went on.”
“Save your money—knowing everything never changes anything.”
She’d laughed for the first time since they’d met. “Would you believe that you’ll be the first philosopher to get into my pants?”
“In the dark you may never know the difference.”
“I already know the difference.”
“Look, ride it out—it can’t get worse, it has to get better. Don’t do anything foolish.”
“I won’t, not now, but I came close. I darned near bought a gun.”
“From whom?”
“From my informant. He said that I could shoot my husband and claim temporary insanity.”<
br />
“You could shoot your husband and claim temporary virginity, but you’d still go up the river. What kind of gun?”
“A black one.”
“Oh, black’s the very best kind.”
“He said it was an automatic revolver with a silencer.”
“There are no automatic revolvers.”
“Then it was just a revolver with a silencer.”
“You can’t silence a revolver. What was the brand name—Heffernan-Reese?”
“The ‘Reese’ part is right, I remember, because my cousin almost married a man named Reese—Theodore Reese, but my cousin called him ‘Strap.’ You know an awful lot about guns.”
“Only that most of them are owned by the wrong people.”
“Anyway, I told him to take it back. Out of sight, out of mind, y’know.”
Willow hadn’t responded. He’d watched her finish her drink and stand unsteadily to approach him. She’d placed her hands on his shoulders. She’d said, “The snap’s easy, but be careful of that zipper. Sometimes it snags.” She’d turned and he’d undone the back of her dress, then her brassiere. She’d pivoted back to him, shucking her dress, her breasts spilling out. He’d dropped her black half-slip and she’d stepped clear of it. She’d said, “No pantyhose, see?”
He’d said, “I’m glad.”
She’d said, “They’re a curse.” Her pale blue eyes were glued to his. “Finish it. Make me naked.”
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