“I need a few more days. I’ll be back Friday. Everything all right?”
“Yeah.”
“No problems?”
“None.”
“Turn her loose.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure. You tell her I know she had nothing to do with it. Tell her if I ever see her again, I’ll kill her. She’ll understand.”
“Understand what?”
“Just tell her.”
“Okay, I’ll tell her.”
PART THREE
And I can hear the devil whisper,
“Things are only getting worse.”
- Alan Jackson-
Walter didn’t stop in Santa Fe this time. He had no desire to walk among the Indian women sitting around the Plaza, fat women, younger than they looked in their layers of warm clothing bundled against the cold, selling their jewelry, keeping their spirits up with hot tea and little flasks filled with whiskey. No gifts today. No pendants changing shape in the wind and sun. He made it straight through, all the way to Albuquerque, took a room at an airport motel and booked an early flight to Atlanta. He didn’t sleep. How could he? He took a couple of Mylanta he carried in his travel bag. Tylenol too. Didn’t help much. He must have dozed off for a few minutes here and there because somehow the morning came. He slept on the plane.
When he landed in Atlanta, Walter rented a car and made the drive to Roswell. Sadie Fagan was not expecting him, and when she saw the pain written on his troubled face, the misery in his eyes, she knew something terrible had happened. She didn’t hear a thing he said. It only took a few minutes. She did not invite him in for a cold drink. Harry was dead. He told her, then it was plain he had to leave. All the Levines were gone now. David, Elana and Harry. Long ago Sadie became a Fagan. She cried for her father. Walter had no part in Sadie’s grief. No part except that her torment was his fault. They both knew it. When he got back in his car he was feeling no better. He hadn’t eaten since-he couldn’t recall. Perhaps something in his stomach would make a difference.
Walter was alone, in a booth at a Waffle House restaurant in Roswell, Georgia, just at the entrance to the GA 400 highway, when he collapsed. He felt the bottom fall out, the air in his lungs desert him, his strength disappear, draining from his head to his feet like water in a flushed toilet. That’s where it all was headed. Into the toilet. At the same time fatigue swamped him, the pain in his chest took a gargantuan leap from a bothersome ache to a brutal squeezing pressure, gripping his upper body in a vice-like nutcracker, pushing out from within and in from without, threatening to crack his body like the fragile shell of a walnut, while simultaneously an unseen hand pulled the pin on a grenade buried deep inside his chest. His left arm hurt so bad he couldn’t lift it. A lump the size of a softball crawled up his throat. Perspiration, warm and chilly at the same time, swept over him. He could feel his balls shrivel up, his knees weaken, his hips give way, his head spinning. Even fear could not save him. He passed out leaning forward, his last conscious act a desperate effort to get up. He fell with his face in his eggs, knocking a glass of Diet Coke to the floor.
First there were the lights, zooming swiftly by. One at a time. One after the other, straight above his head. Bright dots, headlights in the window, reflections in a darkened sky. Then there were the hills across the river. The hills that never changed. Frozen in winter, lush in summer, always the same. When he was a boy, Walter saw them for the first time. The hills across the Hudson. They never moved. They were always there just as they had been before. Today, yesterday, forever. They rolled north from Kingston, beyond the bridge, surely all the way to Albany and then to who knows where, past the known world, to other mysterious places. No matter what, he knew he could go to the river, look to the other side and find comfort. And now, his father came to see him. How could that be? Snow was everywhere. There was nothing but snow. No trees. No shoes. He had no shoes, yet his feet were not cold. How could that be? Maybe it was he who went to visit his father. Which was it? Who cared. He didn’t. But he couldn’t visit his father. His father died when he was six. For a while his mother used to go to the cemetery. For a while. Sometimes she took him with her. He remembered the long rows of gray stones, the place where she finally stopped and cried. She always said they were going to visit his father. But Walter never saw him. Was that a visit? Not like this one. How old was he the last time? Nine? Ten? Who cared? He didn’t. The pain and the warmth swam together, one overlapping the other, then separating, then joining again in wave after wave. The pain. The warmth. The pain. Where was the warmth? Where was it? Come back!
Johnny Sherman, Walter’s father, was right there waiting for him, sitting in an old wooden chair, open on the left with a wide, desk-like area sticking out by the right armrest. It was a place big enough for a tray of sandwiches and hot chocolate or maybe beer and sausages, a newspaper or magazine, even big enough for a child to sit on. It was empty now, only his father’s arm resting there. Those chairs had a name. What was it? The chair was in the snow, encircled and surrounded by snow as if set down in the middle of a great open field. The sky was bright, white and cloudless. Johnny Sherman wore a green t-shirt, like Army green except he was never in the Army. He had on jeans, the sort that used to be called blue jeans, heavy, dark blue, coarse denim with the cuffs rolled up two or three times showing the material’s lighter underside. Walter was sure nobody had worn jeans like these for fifty years. His father had no shoes. They both had no shoes. How could that be? Snow was everywhere. His father’s legs were crossed, right over left, at the knee. Was he smiling? Was he? He said nothing. He didn’t move in any way. His eyes looked at Walter, into Walter, through Walter, but they never blinked. He made no motion with his head. He was silent. Yet Walter heard him, understood him, knew perfectly well what his father was telling him. There was no mistaking him.
“Sit,” his father said without a word, without a gesture. “Sit here, on this chair by my right arm. Sit down with me and all your pain will go away. Be with me, my son. I love you.”
The struggle between what is and what will be, between darkness and the light, between the flashing lights and the clear sky. “Sit down,” his father beckoned. “I’ve been waiting.” The struggle between life and death. Goodbye Gloria. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye. No! Walter would not sit.
Dr. William Byron, Dr. Willie to anyone who knew him and every patient who had seen him more than once, looked down into Walter’s face. Dr. Willie’s was a friendly presence made up of smiles and good cheer. The joke among the Cardiac staff at Crawford Long Hospital in Atlanta was that Dr. Willie could tell someone they had six months to live and they would be happy to hear it. From him, that is. The first time Walter saw him was when he opened his eyes.
“Must be my magic touch again,” said Dr. Willie. Two residents and a nurse, standing just behind him, politely laughed and nodded to one another. Walter failed to comprehend. “You’ve come about, Mr. Sherman. Opened your eyes to the world. And you’ve done it with me right here, standing in your room, next to your bed. My magic touch, I tell you.”
“Where… am I?”
Dr. Byron told him. Further, he told him, pay no attention at all to the nameplate on his white coat. “Call me Willie,” he said. “Everyone does.” As for Walter, Dr. Willie said he’d had a heart attack. Paramedics saved him. The emergency doctors and nurses at North Fulton Regional Hospital, up in Alpharetta, stabilized him-somewhat, that is, since he never really regained consciousness while with those folks-then transferred him by ambulance to the Coronary Intensive Care Unit at Emory University’s downtown hospital.
“What day…?”
“It’s Friday, Mr. Sherman. You had your MI on Wednesday and you’ve been out of it pretty much until now. But I think you’re gonna be fine. We did an angiogram, a cardiac cath procedure, yesterday.”
“What’s that?”
“We inserted a long, thin tube in your groin-you might feel a pressure bandage there-and slid it up into your heart. Shot a little d
ye into your coronary arteries, took some pictures and got a pretty good idea of why you had so much trouble the other day.”
“What happened?”
“You had an infarct-that’s a heart attack-because a branch of your right coronary artery closed off.”
“Big heart attack?”
“Well,” chuckled Dr. Willie, “the only minor heart attacks are those that happen to someone else, if you know what I mean.”
“I think so,” said Walter.
“You need a bypass operation, Mr. Sherman. We’ve been waiting for you to come out of this, regain consciousness, get strong enough to undergo surgery. You have widespread artery disease. You’ll have another heart attack-and the next one you might not be so lucky with-if you don’t get some plumbing work done. I’ll schedule you for tomorrow with Dr. Ortega-great surgeon, the best. It’ll be four or five days…”
“No,” Walter said. “No surgery. Not tomorrow anyway. How soon will I be well enough to leave?”
“Without a bypass operation…”
“How soon, doctor? Please.”
“Monday. We’ll keep you the weekend. It’s a big mistake, Mr. Sherman. How old was your father when he died?”
“How do you know my father is dead?”
“Forty? Maybe younger? You talked about him, the day they brought you in. You’re nearly sixty, Mr. Sherman. You’re on borrowed time and your loan could be called any day. You understand?”
“How long will it take me to recover from bypass surgery?”
“Well, we can get you home-wherever that is-in four or five days, end of next week if everything goes well. Follow up and recovery, rest-four to six weeks. A man your age and weight, in the sort of physical shape you’re in, a couple of months. You may think you can’t spend a couple of months this way, but there’s a big upside to this.”
“What’s that?”
“Staying alive. You do want to stay alive? You don’t have to answer that. I know you do. I’ve been watching you. You do want to live, Mr. Sherman. You want badly to live. You need a bypass and you need it now.”
“I…”
“By the way, who is Gloria?”
“My wife.”
“Oh, well then,” said Dr. Willie, turning to look at the nurse holding Walter’s chart, “That’s good. We don’t have any contact individual for you. Nothing in your personal belongings to tell us where your family can be reached. We should call Mrs. Sherman immediately.”
“My ex-wife, doctor. No need to call.”
“As you wish.”
Saturday morning, Walter underwent quintuple bypass surgery. The following Thursday, a week after arriving at Crawford Long Hospital and eight days after his heart attack, he flew home to St. John. Dr. Willie gave him the name of a cardiologist on St. Thomas.
He didn’t call Conchita Crystal. Instead, he sent her a check returning her money, all except expenses, including the twenty thousand for the Isuzu Rodeo sitting in long-term parking at the Albuquerque airport. Although he wished he was, he wasn’t wealthy enough to forget the expenses. In addition to the car, travel alone had been more than thirty thousand dollars. He sent the check with a note explaining his refund and the embarrassing necessity for keeping the expense money. He really didn’t want any of it. She never cashed the check and she never called either.
Nothing was ever said between Billy and Walter about Tucker Poesy. Just a look, eye contact the first day Walter returned. He knew well enough if there had been any trouble Billy would have mentioned it. The trip home had taken its toll. The flight from Atlanta, the taxi to the ferry, the boat ride over to St. John, all of it was more than he counted on. Walter was tired and weak when he walked into Billy’s. Ike was shocked at Walter’s appearance, sunken eyes, thinner, older. He never expected to see his friend look like that. Billy was worried. God only knows what happened to Walter. He was a week late coming back and he looked like shit. What kind of a beating had he taken? Helen, however, could smell a hospital a mile away. She knew right off the bat. Heart attack. Had to be. He told his friends she was right and that he would be all right soon, that he was going to rest awhile at home and he would see them soon. “Maybe a few days,” he said. “Maybe longer.” They said they would check on him, if he didn’t mind. Of course he didn’t. St. John is a small island. Everyone knows everyone else. They were all family. “I’ll see you guys,” Walter said and then sat down to wait for Sonny to bring a car around, to drive him up into the hills, to take him home.
The bushwhackers thin out a little bit in March and a little bit more when April arrives. Rental prices go down-owners are more willing to take short-term guests, even for long weekends, instead of the two-week minimum at high season-and the room rates at the Westin and Caneel Bay are no longer scary. After February, Billy’s isn’t usually crowded before lunch. Walter recuperated quickly, as quickly as a man his age could. Dr. Willie knew what he was talking about. Walking was good for Walter. It was too hilly where he lived, so he drove down to the beaches and would trek across the sand from one end to the other, and back again. Sand walking was like water walking. Good for the stamina. Good for building up strength. As time went on, he took to doing it twice a day, in the morning before breakfast and again late in the afternoon. For her part, Denise showed a lot of her aunt in her. Even though she was more than thirty years his junior, she took command, asserted herself as she had not done before and assumed the mantle long worn by Clara before her. She cooked-she cared-she was there. And Walter was happy with it. He needed her. Dr. Willie had been right again. Six weeks. And all that time to think-think about what happened-think about who-think about the Cowboy.
As he saw it, there were three players-Devereaux, the Kennedys and the Georgians. Sure, he realized it wasn’t really the Kennedy family, probably none of them except Abby O’Malley, and yes, the Georgians were not really Georgians, strictly speaking. But that’s how he thought of them-Kennedys and Georgians. Devereaux was the easy one. He was out there all by himself, a guilty-looking sonofabitch.
He started with the Kennedys. Was he wrong about Amsterdam? Had the Kennedys simply made a mistake by sending the Irishman? Must they have been the ones who killed Sir Anthony and the American Ambassador in order to have killed Harry? Or, could they have killed Harry and not the others? Who wanted Lacey’s confession more than they did? Their motives were the most obvious, their need already demonstrated by Sean Dooley and by Abby O’Malley’s visit. If it was them, if the Kennedys killed Harry and took the document, how did they know about Leonard Martin? Whoever it was who intimidated Isobel already knew Harry had been taken to Leonard’s hiding place. And, they should have known, all along, that Harry had the document. If that was so, why did they have to kill Sir Anthony and Ambassador Brown? If they didn’t learn about Harry until later, how did they find out? Walter was confident he had been right in Amsterdam. Sean Dooley was no killer. Why send him if you had someone else, someone who had already shown he could kill a helpless old man and two naked homosexuals. Dooley didn’t do that, so why send him to Amsterdam? More to the point, how did Abby O’Malley discover them in Amsterdam in the first place? Tucker Poesy knew. Devereaux obviously told her and she was waiting. But, Abby O’Malley-who told her? The questions did overwhelm him. As he had been doing for decades, Walter lined them up, pieces in the puzzle waiting to be fitted properly.
Walter could not forget, it was him they found, not Harry Levine. He couldn’t bring himself to forgive his own stupidity. He led them to Harry, in Holland and in New Mexico as well. Christ! If Harry had just stayed on his own, who knows, maybe he’d still be out there hiding somewhere, still alive. Walter covered himself with a blanket of doubt. If he had not fallen for Conchita Crystal’s act-it was an act, wasn’t it? If he had just said no to her. If he never found Harry.. . Shit! What an asshole. Aat was right. He was an old fool. Devereaux made him in Atlanta. The girl had him down in Holland. Was it all gone, into the crapper? Did he have anything at all left? Ike was righ
t. The old man had it cold. He should have stayed retired.
Leonard Martin had changed everything. Lost more than a hundred pounds. Cut his hair short. Grew a beard. Stopped wearing suits and ties and switched to jeans and down jackets, boots and a floppy, wide-brimmed hat. Yes, Walter thought, he made himself a better man, a different man. He became the Cowboy. Somehow Walter felt a need to do the same. He’d already hardened his body some and was in even better shape now, after his heart attack, after his bypass surgery. Sixty? Shit, he was feeling more like forty. He didn’t have a new heart, but he had the closest thing to it. Revascularization, they called it. Revitalization, as far as Walter was concerned. In much the same way as Leonard Martin, he thought of himself as a better man. Like Billy said, Walter was every bit as better as Tommy John. Transformed. Could he be the Cowboy? Why not?
Harry Levine wasn’t family, blood, kin. He didn’t really know Harry that well, although you can get quite close to another person traveling around the world with killers on your trail. No, he was not family. But Harry Levine was his responsibility, his charge. He had been hired to keep him safe, not get him killed. Things had turned out bad before. Not every client was satisfied, not every conclusion the right one. Still, he’d never had anyone killed-murdered-while in his care. And he’d never been played the fool at the cost of another’s life. He had a duty, an obligation. Walter took it upon himself to find whoever killed Harry Levine, and then… he would know, wouldn’t he. Could he be the Cowboy?
“You look great,” said Ike. “A couple of months here, do that for anyone.” St. John is what he meant and they both knew it. From his barstool to Ike’s table, Walter sent his friend a nod of thanks. Territory had been firmly established years ago. Ike already had his table when Walter arrived. Billy’s former management-Frogman’s, it was called back then-either didn’t notice or didn’t care. The owner, a man named Jorge Castillo, lived on St. Thomas where he’d come from Kansas City or Milwaukee or some place like that. The Virgin Islands were filled with people, Americans who came from somewhere, none of them-for reasons nobody ever talked about-too eager to go back. When Billy bought the place, he did not change the way it looked, the placement of tables or any of the fixtures, including the barstools. He did allow for a more or less official recognition of Walter’s and Ike’s already settled presence. The hostess and wait staff knew to keep customers away from their spots without certain knowledge that either of them would not show up. Billy never minded. In fact, Billy liked it that way from the beginning. Ike was thinking about that, watching his friend at the end of the bar, near the kitchen, getting healthier and healthier every day.
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