Bluebottle lg-5

by James Sallis

  "Don't know as how I ever sat across the tablefroma black man before."

  No response called for-none I'd care to give, at any rate.

  Jimmie's hand fluttered up. No one seemed to be watching, but fresh coffees materialized.

  "We've known each other now what? four, five years? I try to keep track of you. What it looks like to me is, you have trouble enough keeping track of yourself."

  What could I say?

  'That's what we're here for, Griffin. To bear witness, to take notice. Ever doubt that, you just look into a child's eyes."

  "Your man, Joey the Mountain. He's been asking about me."

  "Not anymore he ain't."

  "And about the woman I was with the night I got shot."

  Jimmie sipped at his coffee.

  "You doing okay, right? From die shooting. You recovered."

  I nodded.

  "That's good." Jimmie threw back the last spoonful or so of his espresso. "Never could get where I was able to care much for this stuff, but I keep trying. What I want is a drink. You want a drink?"

  I didn't catch any signal, but the maitre d' materialized at our table.

  "Single-malt Scotch suit you?" Jimmie said.

  "Always has."

  Two doubles, Marcel."

  They were there in a blink. I picked up mine and looked through it, remembering how she'd done that very thing in the dive down on Dryades. I swirled the first taste, oily, deep, abiding, over the back of my tongue. Life was good.

  "What we hear is, Eddie Bone called you that night."

  "He did. Said I should catch him at the club later on."

  "He didn't say what he wanted."

  "No."

  "He ever call you like that before?"

  "No again."

  Jimmie wet the tip of his tongue with Scotch. He put the glass down before him on the table and sat looking at it.

  'We want the woman," he said.

  "Why?"

  "Not something you ask."

  Okay. I had another taste. "What about the shooter?"

  Marconi shrugged. "He turns up, we want to talk to him. Where you from?"

  I told him.

  "You got snapping turtles up there, right? Big fuckers that look like rocks, move just about as fast. And once they bite down-it don't matter what on, a stick, your hand-they don't let go till it thunders. I figure you're like those turtles, get your beak onto something, you don't let go. No way you're gonna hold off looking for this woman."

  The maitre d' brought new glasses of single malt. Crystal. Stricdy Sunday best: I don't think regular folks in regular clothes and regular lives got them. We sat quiedy.

  "Maybe this time I help you," Jimmie said after a while.

  "Sounds to me like any help rendered here, it would be mutual."

  "So we help one another, then."

  He slid a four-by-six photo across the table. Dana Es-may looked out at me.

  "You understand how it is. Our people walk in down there, everything stops. They start asking questions, suddenly everybody's deaf and halfway out the door. You, it's different. You know the scene, people know you. Fifty a day plus expenses sound about right?"

  "Couple of conditions. I report only to you-"

  "No problem."

  "-and I say it's over, whatever the reason, it's over. No questions asked."

  "Don't see why not."

  I polished off my Scotch. When I was a kid, Mom made pitchers of Kool-Aid, poured it into bright-colored spun-aluminum glasses, green, gold, silver, blue. Other kids gulped theirs down in an instant. My own sat for half an hour as I sipped and savored. They never understood how I could do that.

  "Anything you need, information, money, names, you only have to call. My private number's on the back of the photo."

  "Thanks. Better get to work, huh?"

  I was almost to the door when he spoke.

  "Appreciate what you did for my daughter, Griffin."

  The etiquette of these things dictated that I not mention it until he did; now I was free to ask.

  "She okay, then? Still at home?"

  "Nah. Was for a while. Says much as she loves me she can't be around me. Too much baggage's the way she puts it. Too much stuff cluttering up the shelves. Last I heard from her she's living with this older guy up in Jackson. Both of them got custom Harleys, his jet-black, hers pink, make their living, such as it is, hauling all this shit in a trailer-old army equipment, dolls, iron cookware-between flea markets. Talk about too much crap cluttering up the shelves. So how long's that gonna last? I don't see her much, or hear from her. Not direcdy. But at least I know she's alive. Thanks for coming in, Griffin."

  I had to wonder when was the last time Jimmie Marconi thanked someone.

  Two guys had her back in die kitchen. They'd bent her forward over the table and kicked her legs apart and one of them, a congenital lowlife named Duke Heslep, was holding her there, hands pushed down on her shoulders, while the other one bucked in and out and whenever she made a sound pulled at the hair he'd wrapped in one fist.

  Heslep's who I was looking for. Week before, when his trial date on an assault charge rolled up, he'd failed to show. Holding Heslep's bond, Frankie DeNoux wound up forfeiting, not the sort of story's end Frankie much cared for. So he commissioned a sequel, suggesting that I locate Mr. Heslep and remind him of his duty as a citizen.

  Half a day of asking questions and making myself a general pain in the ass led me to an abandoned apartment house in the weblike tangle of streets just uptown of Lee Circle and riverside of St. Charles. The door stood open-off its hinges, in feet, and leaning against the wall. Inside there seemed to be two categories of bodies: those caught up in some contemporary version of the tarantella, and those stoned or otherwise semicomatose on couchs, stained mattresses and floor.

  Largely unnoticed, I walked through the former and stepped over and around the latter to another open doorway rear left.

  "Sweet young stuff, Duke. You gonna want some once I'm done."

  The one on the joyride had his back to me. Duke stared in fascination at the wavelike motion of the girl's buttocks when his friend drove into her. I was there beside them before they knew it.

  "Who the fuck-" Duke began.

  I grabbed his hair and slammed his face against the table, putting an end to his curiosity.

  The other guy fell out of the girl as he stepped towards me. He landed a quick, hard jab with his left as his right came around for a hook-a great punch, but it quickly lost force since I now had a death grip on his privates. I hung on and squeezed. Hoped I was tight enough for him.

  When finally it penetrated that tilings had changed, the girl, without moving any other portion of her anatomy, turned her head, face blank, pupils black buttons. Her eyes went from the hand I had clamped on the guy's privates to the one still pressing Duke's face against the table, blood from his broken nose pooling beneath. Then she looked at me.

  'What do you like?"

  Using his privates like the handle of a shotput, I threw Humper against the wall. He slid down it into a huddle, hugging himself and retching. Then I pulled Duke upright, hand still wrapped in his hair, and told him he was coming with me. Blood glopped onto his shirt when he nodded.

  I marched him out through bodies and down the stairs. His eyes darted about looking halfheartedly for help he was not going to get. Only when we were outside did I realize the girl had followed us.

  She'd come around enough to look confused by then, a definite improvement over the blankness I'd seen before. She was still pretty vague, though, and still naked, which even in New Orleans could be a problem.

  "Take your clothes off," I told Heslep.

  We must have been quite the sight walking up Felicity to where I'd left the car, this white guy in underwear shirt and Jockey shorts, black socks and shoes, bleeding all over himself, spaced-out young woman holding up downsize pants with both hands as alternately she bounced off walls and staggered off the curb into the street
, big buck nigger in black suit bringing up the rear.

  I didn't want to diink about what would happen if a police car cruised by. Mostly, unless there was a specific call, they stayed out of this part of town.

  "And that was Marconi's daughter?" Verne said. "Anyone want more?"

  I accepted the platter of ham and sweet potatoes as Mother said "No thank you, dear."

  'Yeah. I didn't know it then, or for a longtime, really. Figured she was just another messed-up kid. Lots of them around those days. I called Frankie DeNoux to meet me downtown, dropped Heslep off at his new rent-free accommodations, then asked the girl if she had someplace, a home, a friend's place, where she could go. She looked up at me with these strange, hollow eyes.

  "Sure," she said, and started away. I watched her turn the corner.

  Moments later, she was back. "I don't," she said. "Not really."

  "Wait, let me guess. You took her home."

  I nodded.

  "Lew picks up strays," Verne said to my mother. "Can't seem to help himself."

  "It was just for a few days. Once I got her settled in, she was out like a light. I didn't do much better myself, woke up fully dressed with my head on the kitchen table. I put her in touch with a friend of Don's who ran a halfway house. Went to see her a couple of times while she was there. Mosdy we'd sit and watch TV together. Then after she got out she started coming by my apartment once or twice a week. Never said much about what she was doing, where she was living."

  "And you didn't ask, of course."

  People want to tell me something, I listen. What they don't want to tell me is their business, I figurethey have reasons.

  "What she did talk about a lot then was stuff she was reading, all these thoughts clambering about in her head.

  One week she'd show up having just read Hesse, or The Seven-Storey Mountain, and that's where everything would begin and end, that was the whole world. Maybe life wasn't about possessions, about personal gain or power, she'd tell me, maybe what was important was this struggle, trying to understand yourself and others even when you knew you never could. Or she might talk about communities, what they were, how important it was to become part of one, to turn away from what she called the lure of your own reflection in the mirror."

  "I can't remember being that young anymore, Lew. I know I was, all those grand thoughts running through me, but I can't remember it, can you?"

  "Some days, a few good days, I'm still that young."

  Verne nodded. "Let me get coffee started."

  She came back with the sugar bowl and a quart carton of Schwegmann milk. "Ready in a minute."

  "Her name was Mary Catherine, but she went by Cathy. Didn't take me long to catch on to how smart she was, and I asked if she'd thought about college. ''You didn't go to college,' she said, "and you know everything.' What I knew, I told her, I'd managed to learn the hard way, assbackwards and stubborn like I did most things, reading books the way ore companies strip-mine mountains, taking what I could of the best stuff and leaving the rest in ruin, and I wasn't about to recommend that for anyone else.

  " 'It can get expensive,' I told her, 'but there are all kinds of scholarships and loans available.'

  "I remember her looking up at me and saying, 'Oh, that wouldn't be a problem.'

  "Month or so later she tells me she's been accepted up at LSU. She'll come visit on holidays, she says, and she does, the first couple, but then she stops. Not that I was surprised. Never expected anything else."

  Verne went to the kitchen, returning with coffeepot and hotpad. Cups were already set out on the table. She poured.

  "You still didn't know who she was?"

  "Not a clue. I must have changed living quarters a couple of times in the next few months, I was doing that a lot then-"

  "At least you had a place," Mother said.

  LaVerne's eyes met mine. She shook her head gendy.

  "Then one day I'm coming home, around the big house and through unruly hedges-I was supposed to cut them, as part of my rent, but never got around to it-to the little one where I live out behind, and someone's waiting by my door, looks like he might juggle tractors to stay in shape.

  " 'Do something for you?' I ask.

  " 'Nope.'

  "I have the keys in my fist, sticking out between fingers.

  " 'You Griffin?'

  "Yeah.

  " 'Jimmie Marconi says he appreciates what you did for his kid.'

  "I don't know this Marconi or his kid, I tell the guy.

  " 'Sure you do. Mary Catherine.' His eyes remind me of Cathy's back when I first saw her. Flat, blank, affectless.

  " 'She's okay, then?'

  "He shrugs. 'How okay's someone like that ever get? You askin' me if she's straight, yeah, she's straight. For now.'

  " 'Look, it's hot out here. You want a beer?'

  " 'Mr. Marconi told me I should find you and tell you this, so I did. Now you got his message. No way I'm goin' in your house, sit down with you.'

  " 'Okay,' I said after a moment.

  " 'Mr. Marconi says you ever need a favor, anything he can do for you, come see him.'

  " 'Thank him for me. But what I did had nothing to do with him.'

  " 'In Mr. Marconi's world, everything has to do with him.' And tipping one finger to his hat, he waded away into the hedges, merry mystery to all and to all a good night."

  I was sipping brandy by this time. Mother peered pointedly at my snifter each time I swirled or lifted it.

  "Sounds like you sure got to know yourself some fine folk here in the city," she said. "I know who I have to know."

  Verne touched her wrist softly. "Lew's good at what he does, Mildred." Pressure remained a moment. Then to me: "What's next?"

  "What else? I hit the streets."

  "Carrying as cargo your photo of the mystery lady, hoping some sailor, in some port somewhere, may have seen and remember her."

  "Doesn't sound like much to go on, does it, once you strip it down like that."

  "Maybe you could lay off some of the bet, Lew. You know someone who's all over this city every day, uptown, downtown, sideways and in between. Finding out what the regulars are up to, finding out who's new in town, where they came from, why they're here."

  "Doo-Wop."

  Verne nodded. "More coffee, Mildred?"

  "No thank you, dear. Dinner wasfine as always, but I think I'll be off to bed now. You-all here in the city eat considerable later than I'm accustomed to. And try as I might, I can't make much sense out of this getting to bed at one or two in the morning some days, sleeping your whole way through others."

  "Rest well, Mildred."

  Verne freshened my brandy and poured one for herself. We sat for a while in silence. She got up and kicked offher shoes, put on CosiFan Tutti, reached under her shirt to pull off her bra (which she hung on a doorknob) and stretched out beside me on the couch. We listened to the sounds of traffic, to the call-and-response of people walking by outside. Mozart's music broke over us like water in a brook.

  "I can help too, Lew. I'm out there every night. Lot of us are. Your woman's still in town, chances are good that sooner or later one of us, one way or another, could come across her."

  "I ever tell you how wonderful you are?"

  "I'm not sure. I'll check my notes tomorrow. Right now I don't want to move."

  "Not working tonight, then?"

  "I called a while back. Victoria says she'll cover for me.

  "Your regulars won't mind?"

  "They all like Vick. Everybody does."

  "Want another brandy? Coffee?"

  She shook her head. Moments went by. Body warm and still beside me. Music washing over us.

  "I like this, Verne. I like what my life's become with you in it. I like what I've become."

  She raised herself on elbows so that we were face-to-face. "You should, Mr. Griffin," she said. 'Tou most definitely should."

  6

  My thoughts kept circling back to a couple of things thos
e days. Vietnam was scarcely over, all that ungodly mess in Central and South America just ID beginning to surface. the firstwas a passagefrom (I think) Man's Fate, describing how someone has withdrawn fromthe world; how still, as he reaches for his book, for his pipe and tobacco tin, his arm enters-moves through-that world around him.

  Second was something Bob Dylan said about peace, that periodically everybody had to stop to reload and while they were reloading, those few moments, that was peace.

  Ten o'clock the next evening as I walked into Soft Machine deep in the Quarter, those notions were stomping through my mind in heavy boots again. Soft Machine was the only bar in town back then devoted to new jazz. A dozen patrons comprised a rush and two or three was the usual run, while up the street, at Preservation Hall, people stood in line for hours to sit on folding chairs as at a graveside and hear the millionth wooden reprise of "When the Saints Go Marchin' In." I'm all for tradition, God knows, but tradition doesn't just stop at some arbitrary signpost; it's not some fossil, a scorpion in amber; it's ongoing. That's the whole point.

  "There he is, ladies and gendemen," Bo said. "How's it going, Lew? Been a while."

  His first year in high school, Bo'd been principal trombonist, won afistful of blue ribbons playing stuff like "Flight of the Bumblebee" and "Carnival of Venice."Then his band director, a Canadian named Robert Cinq-Mars who played mean clarinet and wrote his own music, introduced him to jazz. Next thing you know, Bo's looking up old players, hanging out with them whenever he can at jazz funerals, house parties, recording sessions, bars. He'd had a band himself awhile, a damned good one. Then he heard Dolphy and Parker and his life changed again. He knew he couldn't play like that, no way, and he put his trombone down for good, but he couldn't leave the music alone.

  "What can I say, Bo? Don't get out much anymore."

  "I had someone like LaVerne at home, I wouldn't get out at all. Speaking of which." He shoved a napkin across the bar, number scrawled on it. "She says call her."

  "How long ago?"

  "I don't know. Hour maybe."

  "You seen Doo-Wop?"

  "Not for a day or so. Couple of conventions downtown, Ifigure he's staying busy."