by James Sallis
Chief of staff Dr. Morris Petrovich has announced that, at 4:56 local time, despite heroic measures on the part of physicians and staff, Dr. Lalee, a resident in their own cardiology section, expired of complications accruing from a gunshot to the chest.
Chapter Eighteen
SOMEONE ONCE SAID LIFE IS ALL conjunctions, just one damn thing after another. But so much of it’s not connected. You’re sliding along, hit a bump and come down in a life you don’t recognize. Every day you head out a dozen different directions, become a dozen different people; some of them make it back home that night, others don’t.
When I came home from Dunbar’s, just after dark, Verne was there waiting.
Walsh and I had driven by the CircleCtop on Tchoupitoulas. The block was still choked with emergency vehicles and gawkers. Walsh decided to head back downtown, dropped me off on the way.
Happy hunting, I told him.
Verne sat in the front room in her slip with the lights off. Her dress was draped over the back of an easy chair. She’d poured a couple fingers of Scotch into a glass and sipped her way down to the first finger.
“Walking like an old man there, Lewis.”
I told her why.
“Not infected, are they?” She got up and walked toward me. “You really do need to start taking better care of yourself, have I mentioned that?” She reached up and put her arms around me. “Good to see you anyhow. Old, infected, whatever.”
“You do know how to flatter a man, Miss LaVerne.”
I always felt like I’d hit one of those bumps with LaVerne. Like I’d hit a lot of those bumps.
“I put some coffee on,” she said. “Or maybe you want a drink instead. Have you eaten?”
I didn’t say anything, just held on to her.
“I miss you so much when you’re away, Lew. Or when I am.”
I nuzzled her neck, kissed one bare shoulder.
“I always tell myself: this time he won’t be back. That’s the kind of thing women think, the kind of fears we live with. But it’s never that I’m afraid you’ve found someone else, stopped caring about me, wanting to be with me. What I’m afraid of, is that you’re dead somewhere.”
“Someday I will be.”
“And how long will it be before I even know it? How will I find out? I’ll just think you’re away again. Working. Business as usual.
“Women wait. That’s what we do, what we learn, what we become. No one else ever knows how much waiting can hurt.”
She climbed out of bed to grab a couple of beers.
“You matter to me, Lew,” she said, handing over a bottle. “That’s the thing.”
“I know.”
So I held her to keep her from the foggy, foggy dew.
Porgy you is my man.
Later she lit a cigarette and lay beside me smoking. This small red beacon there in the darkness. I listened to her breath go in, hold, come back out. Felt the bed move with it, move again with her arm.
“Lew. I never told you about my folks, did I?”
“Unh-unh,” I said, near sleep.
“I will some time.”
“Ummmm.”
She took a final draw and stubbed the cigarette out.
“Welcome home, Lew,” she said. Then: “Home is the sailor, home from the sea. And the hunter, home from the hill.”
“Hmmmm?”
“Nothing. You go on to sleep, honey. I’ll lie here a while with you.”
Later still, I felt her swing her legs slowly out of bed so as not to disturb me, heard the whisper of her dress sliding over the nylon slip. The bathroom door closed. The light came on. Water ran into the sink. The light went off. Cat-soft footsteps from bathroom to front door. Door eased shut around the latch’s fall.
For the first time, it came to me that we’re damned every bit as much by the things we don’t do as by things we do.
When she was gone I snapped on the light and read The Stranger from cover to cover.
Chapter Nineteen
I FINALLY GOT TO SLEEP AT TWO in the morning and dreamed I was walking along a beach in Algiers—the real one, not the one across the river. People all around me were frozen in position, lifting carafes of water, turning pages, gesturing to those beside them, running out toward the water. Then I was in a white room with no furniture and with paintings, also white, in white frames, on the walls. Everything outside the windows was white too, and you couldn’t tell windows from paintings from walls. My patron asked if I would like to go to work in the home office. Suddenly then, I was there: in Paris. But it looked more like New Orleans, like the Quarter that grew out of the great fire of the 1850’s. I lay prone on a rooftop. A hot sun hung just above; sweat ran on the back of my neck, soaked my shirt. Below, an Arab stepped through the corner doorway of the Napoleon House. I felt my finger begin to tighten on the trigger. His face turned abruptly up to me. It was the shooter. He smiled and threw out his arms.
I awoke to avoid the bullet’s impact as it hurtled toward me. Tried for a moment to make some sense of tatters of the dream spinning away, dissolving. Impossible to guess what time it was. And the clock had long since run down. Wallowing on my stomach like an alligator to bed’s edge and over, I turned on the radio.
A play, set on Lepers’ Island. Young Marcel, having inadvertently killed the woman he loves, has come here to reassert his humanity, to redeem himself in voluntary service. All is in chaos. No fellowship, no society, remains here. It’s every man for himself. And though he has first to learn the language even to get by, slowly Marcel contrives to bring inhabitants together. He helps them reestablish basic social structures and services, leads them to acknowledge once again their need for individual and collective responsibility—to the point, in fact, that he realizes his work here is done. Only when the next supply ship puts into port, the one he believed would bear him back to his old world, does Marcel learn that he has become a leper himself.
“I saw it in the eyes of the crewmen,” he says at the end, music welling up beneath, “the fear, the aversion: what I had become. How could I not have known? Except, of course, that I had sunk so completely into this community, reinventing myself within it, that I was no longer able to perceive myself outside its standards.”
Dramatic music spilled up and over, sponsors and production members were thanked. Then a station I.D. Finally, the time: 5:40. I’d been asleep just a little over three hours.
I rolled left, right, onto my back, onto my stomach, almost onto the floor—and gave up. By then it was 6:21. Evidently the swan of sleep wasn’t coming back for me, however eagerly I awaited it. And outside, the city was stirring in its bed, stretching, throwing off covers, clearing its vast throat.
I filled a saucepan with water. When it was boiling I tossed in a handful of coffee. Let it steep and settle a few minutes, dumped it into a mug half full of milk. Perfect.
I crawled back in bed and picked up The Stranger again. Got up twice and made coffee. Got up about page 150 and poured a glass of Scotch.
Got up halfway through the Scotch to answer the door.
Those PI’s in the novels have it all wrong. You don’t have to go out and track people down. You just wait around the house and sooner or later the people come and find you. It had worked with Leo and Clifford. Now it was working again. Maybe I was on to something.
“You’re Griffin.” He looked as though he wouldn’t be surprised if I felt a need to apologize for it.
I didn’t, so I just stood there looking at him.
He stood there looking back at me.
Fine way to pass the morning. We were two damn tough brothers, better believe it. Seasons could change around us, leaves falling from the trees, baby ducks swimming in the pond, we’d still be standing there.
What the hell. Even the Buckingham guards change shift and go home.
“Why don’t we glare at one another inside? That okay with you?”
I turned and walked out to the kitchen. He came along, four paces behind.
“Beer’d be nice, if you have one. Or whatever you happen to be drinking.”
I’d brought my glass with me when I answered the door.
“Scotch okay? Johnny Walker?”
“Doesn’t get any more okay than that.”
I found another glass for him, poured in some amber, freshened my own.
I sat at the kitchen table. Maybe since he drank he’d want to use my chairs too.
Yep.
So we sat there a bit, sipping at one another now instead of glaring.
“Usually, people come by to have a drink with me,” I said, “they want to talk a little while they’re here.”
He took another taste, ran it around his tongue.
“Of course, it’s not required …”
He swallowed. “Saw you at that Himes thing the other night. You ever read his stuff?”
I shook my head.
“Me either. But I’ve sure heard a lot about it.”
Some silent bell rang then, and we went to our separate corners. No one said anything. I leaned the chair back, reached and got the bottle off the counter and set it on the table between us. He waited for me to offer and pour. Then he moved as though to hunch down over the glass with both hands wrapped around it—just for a second before he cut it off, but I caught the glimpse.
“You’ve done time,” I said.
He sipped, swallowed. Pulled his lips back tight against his teeth. “What makes you say that?”
“You mean aside from the fact you’re black and well into your twenties? Given that, and the city, what are the odds you haven’t? But what I pick up on is this special kind of courtesy you show—a respect. You didn’t even look at the bottle when I put it down: it was mine, I’d have to make the move. Then when I poured you a drink, for just a minute you started to hunch down over it. Like you used to hunch over food in the cafeteria. Or hootch back in the cell. It gets to be instinctive.”
“You been there too, else you wouldn’t know that.”
“I didn’t do any serious time. Enough to see what it was like.”
He nodded. “Yeah, you’re right. I did two pulls. Been a while now. Ten-to-fifteen on grand theft auto, another nickel on armed robbery. That’s where I first started hearing about Himes. He was big on the yard. Almost like he was right there with us sometimes. He wasn’t, of course. He was off in Paris living in some rich man’s house drinking wine with every meal. Brothers never wanted to hear that. And that’s a whole other thing. But what he wrote, what he said: he got it right.”
I poured some more into our glasses.
“You get much sleep?” I asked.
“What you want to know that for?”
“Just wondering. Kind of an informal poll. I don’t seem to be able to snag much of it lately. Sleep, I mean. Makes me wonder whether someone else isn’t getting my share.”
He looked at me. “Damn, Griffin. You may just be as strange as people say you are. Doo-Wop said when I found you you’d likely as not be spouting something you found in some book nobody else’d ever read.”
Doo-Wop was telling people I was strange? First chance that came along, I’d have to sit down and think about that.
“Doo-Wop sent you?”
“Well, yeah. Kind of.”
“And he told you where to come? Knew where I lived?”
He nodded.
Of course Doo-Wop knew. He didn’t know what day or year it was, but he knew where I lived. Everyone knew. Pretty soon lost kids were going to start showing up at the door. Tourists from New Jersey out to see the real New Orleans.
Time to find new quarters, Lewis.
“I, uh …” my guest went on. “This is just between the two of us, right?”
Right.
“I have a regular job, you understand. French-bread bakery out on Airline. Been there five, six years. Take care of my family. But time to time I still play a chorus or two off the old song, you know? Friend from those days comes to you, bills gobble up the paycheck by the fifteenth, baby needs new shoes. You know?”
I knew.
“Figured you did.”
I hit us again with the Scotch. He nodded, acknowledgment and thanks. Took the obligatory ceremonial sip.
“Things go well, after a job the players want to step out, unwind some, have a drink or two. Long about the third drink sometimes they’ll get to talking. Just like at the bakery on breaks. Same thing.”
“Yeah.”
“One of those nights this guy Julio and I had hit it off good, and after the others went on home, we stayed there, place called El Gore-e-adore or something, drinking. Develops that Julio’s a real pro, this is all he does. Pulls a spot as wheelman one day, does a little strong-arm turn the next, maybe goes in as backup on a heavy job.
“By this time it’s, I don’t know, two, three in the morning, and Julio tells me this story that’s about all I remember the next day when I wake up.
“Couple days after that, I’m lifting a few with the Doo Man. You know how that man likes a good story. So pretty soon I get to feeling good, way one does, and I tell him the whole thing, what Julio told me. When I’m through he just nods. Then after a while he says, Good story. After a little more, he tells me: Needs footnotes, though. I just look at him. Have to identify your sources, he says. And I think: This man’s been hanging around those uptown college campuses too much.
“Anyhow, he says I’ve got to come see you.”
“And he tells you where I live.”
“Even buys me a drink. Paying for the story—you know?”
Oh yes. “And?”
“Well, it’s not much. Only worth one drink to the Doo Man, mind you.”
“This a commercial transaction?”
“No no. Not what I mean at all. I don’t want you to think this is some big thing. It’s just warm air, a breeze, cotton. I’m only here—wasting time I could put to better use—because Doo-Wop says you’re all right. Friend of a friend kind of thing, you know?”
“Meanwhile having a few friend of a friend kind of drinks.”
He nodded. “A few.”
“Maybe a few more?”
“Whatever the market will bear.”
I poured. He nodded. We sipped.
“There’s this hardass Julio worked with a couple times. Guess they went out unwinding after some turns too. Man’s day job is with a security service. SeCure Corps. Black-owned and-operated. I’ve seen their advertisements. They’re all standing on the steps of some building in tight suits and bowties. Look like a bunch of CPAs.
“And they’re all avowed nonviolents. So from time to time on this or that job—just to protect themselves—they bring in backup.”
“Bodyguards.”
“More like contract soldiers. World’s changing, you know? Whatever your beliefs, you either change with it or you go under. Disappear like the dinosaurs.
“Anyway. One of the people they use most often, a marksman, calls himself The Sentry. That’s how they get in touch with him—run a personal ad for ‘The Sentry’ in The Griot. No one ever sees him. He responds with a similar ad of his own. Day before, he calls in from a pay phone for details. D-day, he signals his presence and position with a mirror flash.”
“A sniper.”
“You got it.”
“He ever had to shoot?”
“Not yet.”
“Good luck.”
He nodded.
“How does he get paid, once it’s over?”
“Post office box. Yeah: it changes every time. And the one time SeCure Corps staked it out, some kid on a bicycle came pedaling up to collect. They didn’t hear from The Sentry for a while after that. When they did, he wondered if SeCure Corps truly valued and required his services.”
“And?”
“They backed off.”
“So this is a long-term association.”
“It’s got history, yeah.”
“P
ay well?”
“Expect so. From all I hear, these guys are going flat out, full throttle.”
“You have to wonder just where the support’s coming from.”
“Few others wondering about that right along with you.”
Chapter Twenty
“YES, SIR, HOW MAY I HELP YOU?”
“Personnel, please.”
“May I ask in regard to what?”
“I’m calling to inquire about employment with your firm.”
“Then it’s Mr. Bergeron you’d be needing. Please hold. I’ll see if Mr. Bergeron’s in his office.”
He was, but it took us both a while to find out.
I was calling from a pay phone facing a Frostop on St. Charles. Icy mugs of root beer and some of the best hamburgers in town inside. One of your more fascinating processions outside.
A white guy minced past in denim miniskirt and pink tights through which you could see whorls of leg hair. Baby-blue sleeveless blouse above, breasts like those castanet-size finger cymbals Indian dancers use. His Adam’s apple stuck out a lot further. He kept brushing at the blond wig and catching himself just before he fell off three-inch heels. Arms suddenly out at his sides like a tightrope walker’s.
A young woman in high-collared white blouse, oversize spectacles, and a dress that swept fastfood wrappers from the sidewalk as she passed. Walking beside a pure Marlon Brando type in T-shirt, jeans, and scowl, a foot shorter than she was.
Unshaven older guy in a baseball cap with belly arranged just so over the Texas-shaped buckle of his belt, belly and torso encased like sausage in a black T-shirt reading Love a Trucker—Or Do Without.
“Hello? Are you still there? Please hold, I’m trying to track down Mr. Bergeron.”
At least she didn’t switch me over to Hawaiian music or an arrangement of “Mack the Knife” for strings. Just a dead line with ghost voices far back, unintelligible, within it.
A thirtyish woman with bleach-blonde hair, bright red lipstick, tight cashmere sweater and full skirt came by. The Marilyn Monroe look, I suppose.
When he came on, he was breathing hard. Maybe he spent every lunch hour working out. Maybe when the receptionist tracked him down he took a shot at her. Or maybe he was just fat off other people’s work. The world was what you made it. Sure it was.