Cindy started when Molloy handed her the clip they were passing around. “I never . . . I don’t—you know—do drugs.”
Molloy laughed. “I wouldn’t insult this product by classifying it as ‘drugs.’ This is your primo weed, your quantum mechanics of marijuana, the best. Believe me, the worst it could do to you is make you sleepy.”
She was researching drugs, wasn’t she? And she wanted a gang of her own, didn’t she? They were all looking at her encouragingly. “Okay.” She sucked in and held the smoke in her mouth, wondering what to do. It had a pleasant, minty taste, with a licorice undertone.
Molloy said, “Don’t drag it down deep, just a little at a time, slow.”
Cindy did so. It was much like drawing on a cigarette. Nothing happened for a few moments, and she was about to tell them it was without effect when she began to feel as if a very fine piece of chamois or cashmere were buffing her skin. She was completely aware—hyper-aware—of everything going on around her, but smoothly. The slat-back rocking chair that had been pinching her before was now seamless wood.
“Really good stuff,” she said, as if she had some basis for comparison.
“You bet,” said Monty. “He gets it straight from the grower. None of your Mexican-cartel bullshit at all.”
Cindy, unfamiliar with sources of marijuana, especially Mexican sources, could say only “Wow.”
There was a chorus of “Wows” in response. Monty jumped up again as if his foot were on fire. “Wanna see your fish? I’ll get him.”
For the half minute Monty was gone, there was a silence like the shared toke.
The clown fish arrived like a baby bundled in water.
“It’s beautiful,” said Cindy. “Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me. Thank Molloy,” said Monty, carrying the little fish carefully before him. “He’s the one gets ’em.”
Molloy raised two fingers to an invisible hat. “We got several of them at Aquaria.”
She did not want to ask if he’d purchased this particular fish for her and would take the hundred to the store. “You must know a lot about fish,” she said.
“I would have to say yes to that. We’ve got every kind imaginable.”
Cindy turned to the one they called Bub, who’d been silent, albeit blissfully, throughout this exchange. “Bub, what do you do?”
“Barter in used-car parts.” He smiled. “I live in wreckage.”
“He works in an auto salvage yard.” Monty snuffed a laugh. “Junk.”
“You mean the kind of place where they lift cars on some hydraulic thing and then dump them in a heap?”
Bub nodded. “Or they take apart the really bad ones for the parts.”
Cindy was wide-eyed. “Sounds like a horror movie.”
Bub thought about that, taking her analogy quite seriously. “More science fiction, I’d say. More Philip K. Dick. I can imagine Philip K. Dick in a junkyard.”
“Bub reads a lot,” said Monty.
“Yeah. I can wrap up a book a day as long as it’s not Proust. You’d be surprised how conducive my junkyard is to reading and writing.”
Said Monty, “He writes a lot, too.”
The others, Graeme and Molloy, just lounged and passed a fresh toke between them and listened or didn’t.
Bub unfolded himself from the brightly striped blanket and reached for his beer. “I wrote a novel about pieces of metal, you know, fenders, grilles, trunks—that stuff all flying off—”
The ceiling flew away—
“—then coming together in a new shape. The title’s Robot Redux, but I’m thinking maybe I should change that. It’s, you know, too Updike.”
Continuing his editorializing, Monty said, “Bub got an MS from Crankton U.”
Cindy frowned. “Where’s that?”
“Online. It’s a great idea, lets you get your degree without leaving the junkyard.”
Cindy was intrigued. “What’s the MS in?”
Bub had pulled the blanket back around him. “Physics,” he said.
She blinked. “Physics?”
“Yeah. You have no idea how much quantum mechanics has to do with a junkyard. It’s where I got my idea for Robot Redux.”
“You actually wrote this book?”
“Yeah. Five hundred and twenty-three pages of it.”
“How long did it take you?”
“Long time. Over a year. I couldn’t do it full-time, seeing as how I had to take care of the junkyard.”
Monty was popping the last can of beer and handing it around. Everybody took a swig except Cindy. She had some of her first one left. The can went around again. Monty said, “See, Bub’s really into this bullshit string theory.”
Bub took umbrage, but not overmuch. “It ain’t bullshit, man. It’s the explanation of every fucking thing in the universe. It’s what Einstein was looking for and never found.”
“If this shit is as small as you say it is, how does it have anything to do with our lives?” said Molloy, ending with a loud belch.
“Strings, he means,” said Bub to Cindy. “They’re smaller than even neutrons. They’re small as hell. They explain the theory of many other dimensions. There’s more than three, you know. We just can’t see the other ones. They vibrate. The strings, I mean. Vibrate all over the place.”
Cindy accepted the toke the next time it came around and filled up her lungs.
Molloy said, “So how would this affect me wrestling an alligator?”
Hearing the question, Cindy thought maybe she’d taken in too much smoke and was becoming delusional.
“It wouldn’t, would it? You’d just go on in your normal way.”
“That’s me. But what about the alligator?”
“Aren’t you taking this awful literal? As if strings were things you could take hold of. They’re invisible, man. The gator, he’d still be the same.”
“Then I don’t get it. If it doesn’t have any effect, and it’s invisible, why the hell bother with it as a theory?”
Cindy thought they were going around in circles, or she was. She said, “You’ve done that? Wrestled alligators?”
Molloy nodded as he sucked in some smoke. “Still do. It’s my winter job.”
“Florida.”
Cindy would have looked surprised if she’d been able to widen her eyes. They wanted to shut.
“It’s not as unusual as it sounds,” said Molloy. “One I usually work at, it’s a kind of roadside attraction. One of those mom-and-pop operations. They call it Gator Garden. It’s not far off the Tamiami Trail, near Everglades City. It’s real popular. The owners try and make it appear a kind of animal refuge and an educational experience for the youngsters.” He snickered. “You know the kind of shit. There’s a big tank of water and a gator. I get in. We pretend to wrestle. All we’re doing is having a little fun. Play-fighting.”
“How do you know play-fighting is what the alligator’s doing?”
Molloy laughed, threw his arms wide, stuck out his legs. “Still got all my limbs intact.”
“Maybe you’re a lot better alligator wrestler than you’re making out you are.”
Molloy looked pleased with himself but spoke modestly. “Nah. See, unlike this ugly couple that owns the place and their awful kids that tease them, toss things at them, I’m nice to the gators.”
“Is this operation legal?”
“Probably. Though it shouldn’t be, you ask me.”
Monty put in, “Molloy here just has a way with alligators. We go out in a kayak.”
“You, too?”
“Fight alligators? Hell, no. I just go down to visit. We go out on the river in a kayak or rowboat and row around. I’m deft with a boat.”
“Deft.” Molloy seemed to like that.
Monty went on. “Even the gators we see along the way seem to get on with Molloy.”
Cindy frowned and wondered how he could tell, but she didn’t ask.
Monty said, “I told him he’s a gator whisperer.”
&nb
sp; They all laughed beery, smoky laughs.
24
Paul Giverney knew when writing his mysteries how trumped up they were, how artificial, manipulative, and everything else Raymond Chandler said of the Golden Age of crime writing and all of the mysteries that followed from it.
Paul was adept at pulling down pieces of sky from different heavens and pressing them all together to form a new heaven. All it took was a little imagination.
In this case, a few pieces of sky had been supplied:
1) Fishing
2) Florida
3) Uncle/aunt
4) Cathedral
5) Joe Blight? Blythe?
He looked at number three. A tight-ass like L. Bass Hess would not want the uncle-aunt sex-change broadcast. But it would hardly be enough to drive him permanently from Manhattan.
Number five: Dark horse, since Paul didn’t know him. But he intuited bodily harm.
Paul rocked in his swivel chair. Fatal accidents were not ruled out. Push him off the 138th Street platform? That always went rather well in movies. A hand comes out of the crowd just at the moment the Pelham 123 bears down? Paul’s mind was steeped in cinema. He had really liked the original version of The Taking of Pelham 123. He made a note. Pushing L. Bass in front of a cab might involve the driver in criminal negligence, reckless driving, something like that. Who was he kidding? As if yellow cabs ever drove any other way.
Besides, violent death would be momentarily unpleasant for Hess, but his legal team might simply carry on as before, or Hess’s wife might continue the lawsuit though probably not, as she didn’t sound like a big L. Bass supporter.
What Paul and the others wanted was restitution. L. Bass Hess had to make up for all the worry and strife he had caused, not to say all the money that Cindy had been forced to spend on lawyers. Just being ironed flat on the rails of the 138th Street station wouldn’t do it.
Number two: Fishing. Some infringement of a fish-and-game law? Hess doing jail time would be fun, but he wouldn’t get any. Probably the most he’d get would be a stiff fine and community work, or maybe confined to his house like Martha Stewart. So they wouldn’t be rid of him.
“What’re you doing?” He’d been studying number four, Cathedral, when Molly’s voice came from the doorway. She stood there in her apron, holding a wooden spoon. A patch of late-afternoon sunlight made her hair glow.
Paul shook his head, clearing it of celestial visitations. “Just making a list.”
“Oh, God, I hope not. Not after that last one.”
“One what?” He aped ignorance.
“List.”
He waved that away. “That was a list of publishers. I was trying to decide on my next one. What’s for dinner?”
“I don’t know. I’m trying to decide between coq au vin and duck à l’orange.”
Two Dean and Deluca specialties. Molly hardly ever cooked except to make salads. Her salads were superb.
Another voice chimed in. “I want crepes Susan from the pancake house,” said Hannah.
“Suzette,” said Paul.
“No,” said Molly, “they actually are crepes Susan.”
“What’s the difference?”
“They don’t dump a quart of Cointreau on them and flame them.”
“What’s Cointreau?” said Hannah.
“Strong stuff that’ll knock your ears off.”
Hannah cupped her hands over her ears.
“What do you want, then?” asked Molly.
“Duck and crepes Susan with a quart of Cointreau,” Paul said.
“Okay.” Molly removed her apron and took Hannah’s coat from a hook in the hall. “Here. You can go with me.”
Hannah paused in the doorway to comment as she buttoned her coat, “Maybe that’s what happened to Vango.”
Paul frowned. “To what?”
“That man. Vango. You said he lost his ear.”
“Ah, yes, the artist. The great painter.”
“Whatever” said Hannah’s shrug. She wasn’t interested in his art, only in his ear.
They left for Dean and Deluca, and Paul went back to number four, Cathedral.
Interesting that Hess stopped by St. Patrick’s every Wednesday. He did nothing unusual, just sat in a pew. The performance of this ritual probably sprang from the same well as did eating lunch at the Gramercy Tavern at one o’clock and going home at exactly five. Take it a step further: This guy was a slave to compulsion. Rack it up to obsessive-compulsive behavior, and a lot would be explained. People like that were much more subject to cracking than the ones who spent their lives in free fall, buffeted by any passing breeze.
Paul stuck his pencil in his mouth and got up and paced around his twelve-by-twenty study. The pencil was pretty chewed up, for he spent a lot of time pacing when he was writing.
What L. Bass Hess thought he possessed was control: control over his daily schedule, over his visits to his uncle-aunt, over his clients. What he had was no control at all, given that he wasn’t able to shift around times and people. So when one of his clients jumped ship, it might as well be the Lusitania going down. For Hess, it was complete disaster unless he could somehow undo it. He wasn’t interested in salvage. He wanted the whole creaking hulk set to rights, seaworthy once again.
The first thing he did was harpoon the cause of the disaster—in this case, Cindy Sella.
For L. Bass Hess, it was all down to her. Every misfortune he was suffering was the fault of Cindy Sella.
St. Pat’s Cathedral brought to mind an old school chum Paul hadn’t seen in years. Hadn’t he heard that Johnny got religion while he was in prison (out on good behavior in three) and completely jettisoned his old life, got up from that table of money, booze, and women, and sat down at the table of faith? A poker table, more likely, thought Paul with a laugh. Where was he now?
Paul went to his computer and brought up Facebook. He entered the name of Johnny del Santos, and there he was, looking in his little picture as crafty as ever. Now he appeared to be in charge of something called the Abbey, which looked like a monastery, done in some Southwestern-Mediterranean sort of architecture. It was near Sewickley, PA, which was outside of Pittsburgh. (Hadn’t Clive said Bass Hess was from Sewickley?) Paul was from Pittsburgh, but with his parents and his sister all dead, he rarely returned to that city. He shut his eyes for a moment, remembering his little sister, Jenny.
Pittsburgh was also Johnny’s hometown; they had attended the same high school in Shadyside. Yes, Johnny looked the same as when he was knocking over 7-Elevens and terrifying cashiers.
Paul shut down Facebook and thought about the Abbey. He looked at his list again. Cathedral. A connection? He shrugged and turned his attention to fishing, uncle/aunt, and Florida. The three obviously went together. A fishing accident, maybe? What kind of fish? Fish fish fish fish . . . a shark? Did Hess fish in shark-infested waters? A shark attack was no good, because it would be over in seconds and consequently lacked the retribution criterion.
What about a near accident? A godawful situation in which you find yourself almost drowned, harpooned, or otherwise dead? Florida. Lake Okeechobee, Big Cypress Swamp. Alligators. Snakes. Pity he didn’t know a snake charmer.
Wait a minute. Jimmy McKinney. Paul was up and thrusting his arms into his Burberry and writing a note to Molly that he’d be back in an hour or so.
When Paul Giverney walked unannounced into Jimmy McKinney’s office, the agent was talking to one of his clients, a blond woman who looked vaguely familiar.
“Paul! Good to see you! How are you?”
“Great. But I’m interrupting?”
“No,” said Jimmy.
“No, no,” said the woman.
Jimmy introduced her. “Cindy Sella.”
Paul’s jaw dropped. “You’re Cindy Sella? My Lord, haven’t I ever heard a lot about you!”
Cindy blushed and asked him what. The what got lost in his questions to Jimmy. “Listen, you’ve got this author, the guy who writes those Swamp
something books?”
“Swamp Heart. Yeah, it’s a series. His name’s Colin Whitt.”
It struck Paul that it was odd Jimmy would have someone like that as a client. “Is there some way I can get in touch with him?”
Jimmy frowned. “I’ve got his details, but the guy’s in South Africa.”
“Shit.” Paul said this under his breath.
“What do you want Colin for?”
“I need someone who knows about alligators. No, someone who can handle alligators.”
Jimmy laughed. “What? You’re working on a new book? Where’s it set?”
“Big Cypress Swamp. Somewhere in the Everglades. I haven’t got a title yet. I’ve just—”
Cindy was holding up her hand like a kid waiting for the teacher to call on her. “I know somebody.”
25
Let me get this straight,” said Paul. “You went out to Sunset Park on the N train just to buy a clown fish? You tramped its potholed pavements and engaged in repartee with four druggies you’d never seen before—”
“I wouldn’t call them—”
“—just to buy a fish?”
“A ghost clown fish. Frankie lost his when the goons shot up the fish tank.”
They had left Jimmy’s office and were now sitting in Ray’s coffee shop, he with coffee, she with a Diet Pepsi. It wasn’t far from Paul’s apartment in the East Village. She would have liked to point out they were almost neighbors, West Village and East Village, but thought that would be pushy.
“So one of these guys has experience with alligators?”
“He’s really good with them. He works with them when he goes to Florida. Those roadside attractions you mentioned—that’s where he does it. He says the place is awful. Not just cheap and tawdry but callous toward the animals.”
“What exactly does he do?”
Cindy told him about Molloy’s act.
Paul’s smile grew broader. “I’d like to meet him. You have his number?”
The Way of All Fish Page 13