“I loved her in Barefoot in the Park,” he says, by which time the folder’s nice and snug down my boot.
“You’re a sensitive soul, Darling. A sensitive soul. And I want to thank you for seeing me today.”
5
Walking back downtown through Times Square, keeping an eye out for fedoras on my tail, I begin noticing a little looseness around the waist of the Italian suit and get to wondering if maybe Junie got my measure wrong. Then I recall the pants are carrying around a good twelve plus dollars in quarters and realize that for the first time in a long time, I may be in the financial position to set myself up with something really stylish in the belt department. So what I do, I take me a little detour over to the East Side, the location of Bobby Le Ray’s Famous Western Store. I’m thinking ostrich skin or one of your finer large birds. Maybe even pick me out a discreet luxury buckle. Little sculptures, Bobby Le Ray’s buckles. Once found me a turquoise armadillo in the same location that stood with me as faithfully as any hound dog through more than any armadillo should be asked to bear. Ended up having to hock it to a Vietnamese pawnbroker in Lubbock whose wife took to wearing it around her neck on a chain. Gave me great pain whenever I happened to run into her in the supermarket.
Anyway, I made his honored acquaintance but once, Bobby Le Ray, over a little misunderstanding at the cash register, but two things Bobby knew were quality and women. Knew how to hire the help, Bobby did. I recall a big beautiful thing called Louella who once set me up in a pair of leather chaps I took to wearing around the home. Knew how to make you comfortable in a pair of chaps, Louella did. So I just stroll on in there and make my intentions known. Ostrich in belt form and a little something special in the buckle department, specifically a turquoise armadillo if they’ve got one. I go ahead and pull out the wallet to get them moving. Nobody’s ever heard of Louella, but then it’s been a while, and Suzanne couldn’t be nicer in her blue jeans.
She picks out a belt that will do me. “Suzanne, sweetheart,” I say, “I’m no astrophysicist so explain to me if you would how those jeans of yours work. I guess they just sew them straight onto you at the factory. Must be quite an operation.”
She giggles and looks down at her boots as she brushes this crazy curly hair back behind her ears. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to contact a few acquaintances of mine at the PBS channel and enlighten them to the potential of a half-hour documentary on you in those blue jeans.”
Suzanne does some more giggling so damn charming I find myself selecting a higher-end Manhattan skyline done up in fourteen-carat silver with a little ruby for the torch of Lady Liberty. Patriotic as hell, this buckle makes me feel. From California to the New York Islands. Gets me thinking of wide-open spaces and the rack of handmade cowboy hats they’ve got across the room next to the bolo department. I catch a glimpse of me in the mirror wearing a calfskin number they call The Kid, with this copper penny hat band that gives it that extra something. Never had any homosexual tendencies myself, to be perfectly honest, but what I see in that mirror is enough to make me reconsider. Suzanne sidles up next to me and makes it amply clear that she’s under the same impression. She suggests a pair of ostrich skin Lucchese boots to match the belt and for the hell of it, and although it’s tempting coming from Suzanne, and though my Madonna-stuffed boots have seen better days, they were made to measure by a former El Paso bootmaker acquaintance of mine, and in matters concerning boots I tend towards the sentimental. Belt and hat matters too, but that’s why I’m in Bobby Le Ray’s. Storing up a little sentiment for a rainy day, so to speak. You really can’t put a price tag on that kind of thing, which I make clear to sweet Suzanne by going ahead and handing over the wallet.
“I’m an environmentalist,” I say. “Keep the sack.”
She takes out and keeps seven-hundred fifty two dollars while she’s at it. Hands me back the wallet.
“How much was that buckle, sweetheart?” I ask real polite, though I have to admit I may be a bit less smooth here than is customary. Four hundred twenty dollar belt buckle, apparently, but then again you’re the only guy out there carrying Manhattan around at crotch level, and you have to admit that’s something.
Out on the sidewalks I am a beacon of well-tailored freedom, flashing Lady Liberty’s ruby at the huddled masses. High-stepping it back downtown I cause at least one traffic accident and an unconfirmed second in less than ten blocks. Apparently Italian style combined with one of the finer hats money can buy will inflict a sudden loss of motor skills on your average driver. I’m thinking there ought to be a law.
By Union Square I’m also thinking that as proud as I am to be wearing a hat called The Kid, there’s a reason the detectives don’t wear cowboy hats in the movies. A hat like The Kid does tend to stand out, and there will be times in your investigations when that’s exactly what you don’t want to do, specifically when there’s a giant in a fedora who’s somehow managed to pick up your trail again. Miss Madonna apparently has her admirers. Either that, or I’ve walked into the wrong mystery, and if that’s the case, I’m really in a mess. It’s enough to make a fella nervous. You start imagining the particulars of what a giant like that could do to you, and the more you imagine it, the more nervous you get, until you’re better off just imagining it all the way to the bitter end. Think your way through death and out the other side again.
This is what I do in my mind: I turn around and run straight for the beast. He’s ugly and mean, I see as I close in, but when he comes for me I’m prepared and give him a taste of my matador trick. I whip out my cape and spin away, then drop my fist down on his skull like a sword. He is bullish, however, and that fist-sword of mine is about as effective as a toothpick. He’s coming in tight with his fists pumping like horns, sharp little blows that bust right through me. First there’s pain, then there’s numbness, and then you don’t really want to know. Struggling for breath, I fall to the sidewalk and see the cape there across the concrete. My cape, my last hope, but it’s too far, so I die there, my fingers stretching out before making one last twitch.
Which does return a little spring to my step. Even if he gets me in the end, he can’t do anything that hasn’t already been done. Not that he’s any less prominent in my rearview mirror. I might even consider running if it weren’t entirely contrary to my whole philosophy. And it’s the philosophy you’ve really got to hold onto. Kierkegaard, Kant, Mister Friedrich Nietzsche – they’ve stood by me in the hard times, I stand by them. Not that the philosophy can’t sometimes use a little refresher, which is just what I’ve got in mind when I fake right and duck left into a bookstore south of the square. I figure I’ll wait him out. In the meantime I head over to the philosophy section to bone up on what the great minds advise in situations like these. Also it gives me a clear view out to the entrance and anyone who might have a mind to separate me from my philosophy and a few other things besides.
I do love a bookstore, even when I’m not hiding out in one for the sake of my own person. Just walking into one gets me aquiver with anticipation of great wonders. So I get to scanning the shelves, alternating that with scanning the front door. Makes you feel near-genius just to be reading these titles, and I’m getting along into the E’s when I come upon a slim little book called The Praise of Folly by Erasmus, a Dutchman according to the back cover. I flip around in it a bit and find this: “A man who sees a gourd and takes it for his wife is called insane only because this happens to very few people.” Well if that’s not pure wisdom, somebody better tell me what wisdom is. I flip around a bit more and see how I could get to like this Erasmus. A lot of your famous detectives will have a partner, and I’m thinking you could do worse than a little Dutchman.
Once I decide the danger’s passed, I take the book over to the checkout line, where I find myself stuck behind a middle-aged couple in interesting eyeglasses. They want to discuss their purchases with the cashier. You know the type. Maybe we don’t want the dictionary of Botswanan deconstructionism after all. They’re both
a little thick around the middle, and she’s got a shade of a mustache she’s probably cultivated as a sign of her liberation from the restrictions of non-Botswanan society or whatever. I’m getting a little edgy, I have to admit, and the situation doesn’t improve when the Fedora walks right in, jingling the door bells. His face is hidden by the hat, but I don’t need to see his eyes to know where they’re looking. He spots me in line and decides to stand there by the exit and browse through the bookmarks. You know how they’ve got all manner of junk up by the cash registers these days.
I’m going to need some kind of major diversion, I’m thinking, when I overhear a bit of the endless conversation in front of me and discover that the word thee is a working part of this pair’s vocabulary.
“But I thought we’d get it for thee, Ligiea.”
“Thee are too sweet, Didier, but isn’t it a bit expensive?”
“I’d like to do it for thee,” he says.
“Ha Ha Ha,” she goes. Sounds less like laughter than singing rehearsal.
“How about thee stepping aside until thee make up thee mind,” I say real polite. Maybe not the best tack to take here, considering how they turn round nice and slow, delaying the proceedings even further, but I’ve been tapping my foot like it’s a square dance and they’ve paid me no mind. Now they give me this long up and down designed to get me considering the rightness of my own existence. I take the opinion that it’s my duty to convince them of it, Fedora be damned.
“I’m not really what you would call a television-watching man,” I say as they stand there blinking at me, “but it has come to my attention while watching various of these so-called infomercials in the late evening that there are certain new revolutionary products designed to remove pesky facial hair. Can’t say I’ve ever tried it, though it might be worth thy consideration.”
Didier’s quick, and I’m honestly a bit taken aback by the force he manages to put behind a punch. Taken aback to about the floor, at which point the Fedora decides to make his move. He comes rushing in as Ligiea gets me in three places with her sensible shoes. Then Didier’s giving it to the Fedora so effectively that I have no choice but to readjust my opinion of the academic profession. Behind every Einstein there lurks a Mohamed Ali. Compensation, I believe it’s called, and the Fedora’s getting compensated pretty bad. Didier catches him with an uppercut, the hat flies off, and then I really get a shock. He’s Albanian, my secret admirer, and his name is none other than Kafka.
“What the hell are you doing?” I cry out, as Ligiea starts work on my shins.
Kafka doesn’t manage a response, because the security guard’s now run over from the coat check and is making it three against two. I mean Kafka and me versus the infidels, but when security punches Kafka with something professional, it’s me and the eyeglasses standing there awestruck as Kafka drops to the floor, taking the bargain book bin with him. The whole place goes quiet. His nose starts trickling blood out onto a copy of the Lonely Planet Uruguay, 1994, which is about how he’s looking. He’s squirming around on the floor, arm outstretched, fingers struggling to reach the hat. Must have a whole collection, I’m thinking. Hats from every nation. I kneel down to check the vital signs.
“What the hell’s going on, kid?” I say. He whispers something I can’t make out. “Why the secret agent routine?”
“Give,” he whispers. I reach over and give him the fedora.
He shakes his head and tries again. “Give. Back. Madonna.”
6
With another hour or so to kill before I want make an appearance at Fernanda’s, I’ve settled into a high-class bar in the Village that they’re calling a brasserie. The evening has stayed warm, and out the open windows on the sidewalks, people are flirting with what may be the first night of spring. Evenings like these, you don’t want to rush home too quick. It’s one of those feelings I spend a lot of time missing. There’s just something in the air. Maybe if you linger a bit, you think, possibilities might present themselves. And one thing you always want to make time for, in my experience, are the possibilities. For better or worse, it’s how I lived my life. Possibilities kept so open they’re not even possibilities anymore, they’re just what comes next.
The brasserie’s filling up for cocktails, and I’ve got the Madonna folder out on the table, pondering the mysteries of artistic genius. The folder tells the history of the Madonna’s owners, which starts with dukes back in the sixteenth century and goes right on through to the Americans. Shore bought it off an oil baron thirty years ago, apparently. He would have been in his thirties, so he must have started out with money. And I mean big money, since the price at the time was $350,000. Not a bad investment, considering what it’s worth now.
I look at the photographs again. Name your color, they’re still the kind of eyes you could get lost in and never wish to be found. Harry Shore must have been losing himself in them for most of his adult life. Imagine waking up one morning, rolling over in bed and discovering that the color of your girl’s eyes has changed. I bet you’d notice it. And maybe you’d pick up the phone and call Willie Lee. And I like to think that wouldn’t be a mistake.
It’s turning out to be a case with not a few intricacies, a case with some dimensions. From where I’m sitting, nursing my shins, it appears it may involve the whole of Manhattan and at least parts of Albania. With such international implications, I figure it’s probably time to send in a little update to Saint Chief via prayer, so I take a fortifying sip of beer and shut my eyes.
“Dear Lord,” I mumble. “It’s me, Willie. Please forward this message to Saint Chief Mahoney if you would. I’m on the trail of this wayward Fernanda Shore and seem to find myself in New York City. I realize that’s a little further afield than we originally anticipated for this case, but I assure you I am hot on her trail and will soon bring her back into the fold. So please don’t send down one of those Northeastern angels to, ah, interfere. We know where that got us the last time. I just need another day or so to get to the bottom of this, and in your infinite wisdom I’m sure you’ll understand.”
I could go through the details of all I’ve learned. I could tell him about how I’m figuring they got me from the moment I walked into Fernanda’s gallery, which must mean Havisham’s tied into this somehow. About how she alerted Kafka and Twiggy, who led me to the Hotel Blue and have been following me ever since – at least up until about an hour ago, assuming there was only Kafka on my tail. Then all about the insurance angle we need to consider. I have to assume Fernanda saw the first photograph, the one with the faded eyes, which also means that I’m holding the only evidence of those midnight blues other than the original itself. But ordinary mortals can’t paint a fake Madonna from memory, Lord, I could say, and even if we could, Fernanda’s no painter as far as I know. One painter I do know, I left back on the floor of a bookstore south of Union Square. Left him in a bit of a hurry, to tell you the truth, Lord. Forgive me, but I wasn’t going to wait around to try and convince New York’s finest that what happened in there was a necessary part of my investigations. Also, last I checked, shoplifting was a misdemeanor, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to leave Erasmus behind to take the heat alone. For that I especially ask your forgiveness, Lord, I could say, but even in his infinite wisdom, I know for certain that he’d have absolutely no idea what I was talking about.
If the tech department would get off their clouds for once and finally figure out how to make prayer two-way, at least the Lord could ask a few questions. But no, you’re just sending words up there into the ether and hoping you’ve got a connection. If you’re lucky, maybe down the road he sends you a sign, but don’t imagine for a second that a sign simplifies anything. You’re walking down the street and hear a woman singing the most beautiful version of Amazing Grace from an open window. I always figure something like that’s bound to be a sign, so of course I investigate, but sometimes maybe she’s just a woman with a beautiful voice whose acquaintance you’re pleased to make. How are you suppos
ed to know? You can close your eyes and pray for the answer, but where does that get you? Down here they just give us one-way radios.
What I’ve also never been quite clear about is whether God hears every little thought that flits through my mind when I close my eyes to pray, or whether it’s only the words I speak that make the trip. Hell, maybe he’s just been treated to a mental whirlwind of two-way radios, uncertain signs, and a little Dutchman named Erasmus. I really have no idea. “I miss you all up there, Lord,” I murmur, “and I look forward to getting home soon. Again, please do pass this message along to Saint Chief and ask if he wants me to bring back anything for him. Ha. That was just a joke. Okay, then. Ciao for now. Amen.”
As I open my eyes, I’m also wondering if when God hears a prayer he knows if you’re lying, and then I wonder if he just heard that little thought about lying, and then…. Hell, I guess I’ll just wait for a sign, and I’m perfectly willing to believe that the waitress who has approached with a menu qualifies. I ask her to bring me a bowl of Manhattan clam chowder. Sentimental choice, the chowder. I don’t know why, with all of America’s vast coastline, but the only place I’ve ever had a decent cup of clam chowder is in New York City. Used to practically live off the stuff in my leaner days, lining up for takeout at the Oyster Bar in Grand Central Station.
After chowder I have another beer and get to humming along to the music they’ve got going, at which point a fella two tables over looks up with a sociable grin and says, “Willie Nelson, To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before. Duet with Julio Iglesias.”
“Right you are, sir,” I say. “Right you are. Julio gave it that little extra something, didn’t he?”
Planet Willie Page 5