Our girl.
He leaned forward. “Deal or not?”
“Yeah.” I rubbed my eyes. “Fine. Look, let me just think a second, here.” I looked hard at my hands and tried to focus my thinking. “Try checking out the inside elbow bend on Jersey’s body for some kind of skin or fiber evidence.”
“What?” He tilted his head.
“Like he’d had his arms around someone’s neck, for example. Would that show up, something like that?”
“Could.” Huyne looked away. “Your so-called client …”
“… stop. Okay?”
He was about to say something else when he decided on: “For now.”
I nodded.
“Anything else you might want your personal service to look for?”
“Is there any way of telling where the wrapping paper, the stiff’s packaging, is from?”
“Looking into just that.”
“Being who the dead guy is, and all — Dally thinks it might be down south. Invisible, or maybe Macon, Georgia.” Once again, I didn’t see any point in letting Huyne know that the guy had actually been in Atlanta for a while. Or that I had been to Invisible.
“Could have been wrapped there. But the paper wouldn’t have been made there.”
“No” — I smiled — “I guess it wouldn’t.”
“Are you just stalling, now?” He squinted. “Because this is all pretty much par for me …”
“… sorry.” I nodded quickly. “You’re right. I’m …”
“… you need sleep.”
“Yeah. Maybe I’ll go take a nap.”
“Just the thing. You sleep while the city burns.”
“That’d be a good thing for my business cards.” I stood. “‘I sleep while the city burns.’”
“Keep in touch.” He didn’t stand.
*
Back out on Ponce, the air seemed closer, and the traffic was like bugs swarming. Stopped in at Green’s liquor store. When in doubt, cberchez le vin. I had to see if my ’86 Cantenac-Brown gold label was in. It wasn’t. There was all manner of explaining to me just how convoluted the French are about some things, and plenty of my reminding everyone within earshot just how good my business was with Green’s — but in the end my wine still wasn’t there.
“Well this is shaping up to be quite the day,” I told the guy as I was walking out.
“And many more to you,” he shot right back.
Yeah. That’s what you need when you feel like your guts are kicked in: one more little punch. Like I even felt it.
Since I was near my favorite telephone, I thought I ought to give a ring to the kid, see what was what. I dialed. The heat was suffocating. Her phone rang longer than it had before.
“Uh-huh.” Sounded like she was asleep.
“Hey, it’s Flap …”
“… oh, God. Oh.” She woke up quick. “Jesus, did you get my message?”
“Message?”
“I just, like, left a thing on your machine maybe a half an hour ago.”
“I’ve been at the …”
“… you have got to get up to the Clairmont and check out some dude named Curtis. He’s so fishy cats follow him around.”
I had to smile. “Nice turn of the phrase. And how did you come across this Curtis?”
“He was in the club last night, and he was acting weird, and he was ducking Jersey like he owed him money.” She was really excited — like a kid playing detective.
“Okay, you got it,” I played along, “I’ll go check out the mysterious Curtis.”
“Cool. By the way, how was your sentimental journey — your trip home? Get anything?”
“Yeah,” I said, “I got a free Coke from lesbian Buddha.”
“Okay don’t tell me.”
“I’m telling you.”
Déjà vu — like we’d had that part of the conversation before, until I realized that it was something that had transpired between me and Dally. The heat was frying my hair.
“Got to run,” I told her quickly, “but we’ll talk.”
“Okay.” She lowered her voice. “Flap?”
“Yes.”
“This is so cool.”
“Yeah.” Despite the temperature, her adolescent enthusiasm painted a big old smile on my face.
So I was halfway into the front parking lot of the Clairmont to confront “Curtis” before I realized that I wasn’t going to make it all the way inside. I just wasn’t up for another slap of new information or a difficult confrontation. Not without some kind of fortification.
I turned around, got across the street — with no small risk to life and limb, Ponce being busy — and found myself, moments later, fumbling with the door at Easy.
A little of my cheap Côtes du Rhône at midafternoon, that’s what I needed. Then I’d be able to explain to any man alive just how convoluted the French could be.
28. Caution
Now, any person whose ancestors hail from just above Provence will tell you that a modest table wine for a midday pick-me-up is more in the way of sustenance, on certain occasions, than air or light. Still, caution is tossed to the wind when any person slugs back a half a bottle or so on top of three doughnuts, four hours’ sleep, and enough angst to choke a Tennessee Stud.
So I was in fine fettle, as they sometimes say, when Hal gathered up a pile of receipts and papers for his usual afternoon round of inventory and ordering.
“Flap?”
“Hal.” I spun around on the stool. “Just the person I need.” I got up, walked behind the bar, and found a glass for him. “You’re going to keep me from drinking this whole bottle by myself.”
“No I’m not.” He was registering something like amazement, as far as I could tell. “I’m going to do a little work and I’m going to worry about you.”
“But you’re not going to have a glass.”
“It’s three in the afternoon, Flap.”
“Just the time French farmers are cutting open a wheel of brie and splaying a baguette to spread it on.” I raised my glass. “Vive.”
“Uh-huh.” He came closer. “You’re a mess.”
“You know what Robert Frost said?”
“‘Miles to go before I sleep’?”
“Yeah” — I smiled — “he said that too, but what I was thinking was a line something like ‘Home is the place where when you go there, they have to take you in.’”
“He said that?” Hal turned his head, eyed me.
“That’s not the exact quote,” I agreed, “but it’s the sentiment. And, anyway, if that’s true, that sentiment — then here I am. Home. Much more than Invisible, Georgia.”
“Because despite the fact that I don’t think you should be here right now doing this,” he told me, “you know I’m not going to ask you to leave, I’m not going to say anything, and I’m just going to go on about my business.”
I smiled. “You’re really too sensitive a man to be in the bar business.”
“I’m gruff on the outside,” he deadpanned, “to cover it up.”
“Does that work?”
His face softened a little. “About half the time.”
“Thanks, Hal.”
“Please.” He winced a smile and headed toward the office. “Don’t even mention it.”
So I had another moment’s peace before the door slammed open and Mug Lewis, in his ridiculous Curtis disguise, stormed in.
“What the hell’s the matter with you?” he wanted to know.
“Me?” I looked around, as if the answer might be in the air somewhere. “I give. What?”
“I saw you coming up the lot to the Clairmont.”
“And?”
“Why’d you turn around and come over here all of a sudden?” He came closer quickly. “What’s up?”
“What’s up?” I twisted on the stool, still not standing to face him. “I really couldn’t tell you that. But let’s just get this out of the way: The cops have your shoe prints and shell casings, they know someone else w
as here last night, they know that that someone is my client, and — by the way — Hal’s in the office and will be back out here in a second. So maybe you don’t want to be here right now.”
“Who’s Hal?”
“The bartender. He has a really big cricket bat, and he likes to bop troublemakers in the head with it.”
“Jesus.” He blinked, then slowly took the stool beside me. “Sorry. I jumped to conclusions.” He grabbed off his phony glasses, talking mostly to himself. “I do that when I’m nervy: Get my dander up, I lose my game. Wow. I must be flipping. If I wasn’t half-nutty I would never have barged in here like this.”
“You’ve got to stay cool,” I agreed. “But, as your employee I’m going to have to ask you a few questions now, if you insist on staying. Questions that might make you hot all over again. And by the way, what did you think was up?”
“Think?”
“When you saw me start into the Clairmont and then veer away.”
“I thought you were leading somebody to me,” he told me straight. “I thought you might have ratted me out. So I slipped out a secret way I’ve got, and made it over here to foil your plan.”
“I see.” I smiled. “Nice confidence you have in me — and I thought you said last night that you knew what kind of a guy I was. But the real facts are these: I got jack for sleep last night and all I’ve had to eat in twenty-four hours is three doughnuts. I was headed up to talk to you to tell you our deal was off, because it’s too much in the way and because you’re so bad at this incognito game that a kid who doesn’t even know you spotted you acting strange last night. But then I stopped here because I felt like a glass or three of wine. That’s all.”
“Oh.” He stared at my glass. “Is it good?”
“It’s okay. Want some?” I got up and went behind the bar again.
“In the middle of the day?” He followed me absently. “It makes me sleepy. And I’m not in a position to nap at the present time.”
“Well then let me get right to my questions …”
“… your hot questions,” he added, leaning forward on the bar.
“Would you consider my job done if I told you everything about the guy you zotzed here last night?”
“Depends on your definition of everything, I guess.” He shrugged.
“He was a guy named Jersey Jakes. You might have heard of him.” I tried to gauge his reaction out of the corner of my eye — see if he had known Jakes. He didn’t seem to have any reaction at all. “Dally had hired him to watch the place because she’d gotten some threatening letters of some sort and I think she might have suspected someone was coming — although I don’t believe she knew it would be her husband dead — I could be wrong. How’s that for instant information?”
He leaned in on the bar. “That’s quite a bit of research you’ve done … on short sleep and no food.” Then his voice hardened a little. “It’s almost like you knew some of it already.”
“We have mostly the police to thank.” Modesty, I thought, became me at that moment.
“The police? You talked to the police?” He straightened up.
“I want to move as fast as I can on this. I have a kind of an in at the station, and I used it.” I slugged back the rest of my glass, kind of to prove the point. “You just tell me if you’re satisfied and our business arrangement is done.”
He stared at my profile a good minute or two. “No,” he told me finally. “No I am not satisfied, because I am not stupid. I see that you want out so you can tell the cops about me with a clear conscience. But I can’t have that. And your job’s not finished. You don’t know squat, in fact, about this Jersey guy. You didn’t even know last night about what he was doing here, is my guess — which means that Ms. Oglethorpe didn’t tell you. Which means something is weird.”
“Rotten is the word.” What profit would there have been in my setting him completely straight at that moment?
“Let me finish.” He held up his hand. “I will give you an extra grand for one more day. One. In that day I would like for you to find out why the guy was here, why you didn’t know, and get some bearing on whoever delivered Ms. Oglethorpe’s dead husband …”
“… I’m going to do that anyway — I’d do it for nothing,” I told him quietly.
“Which you don’t have to do now,” he brushed on.
“Why in the world would you want me to …”
“… because if Jersey was watching and I didn’t know, then what’s to say that this other pug, this delivery boy, didn’t see me? I can’t have that. It’s worth it to me to pay you the grand. Too many people have already have seen me. Including this whoever-it-was who saw me last night that you just mentioned …”
As luck would have it, just at that exact moment Hal came barreling out of the office, if only to prove Mug’s point about how many people had seen him.
“Okay, Flap,” he was saying, staring at some order forms or other, “just take a look at —”
He stopped when he looked up and saw me and Mug standing by his cash register. “Flap,” he shook his head, “we can’t have people behind the bar like that.”
“I’m not people,” Mug started, giving out with a deep hick accent, putting his glasses back on, smiling to show the fake gold tooth. “I’m Curtis.”
He held out his hand.
“Curtis,” Hal said, nodding once — not taking the offered hand.
“Curtis was just leaving, anyway,” I said. “As was I.” I stuffed the cork back into the bottle, took it back around to my stash spot under the register, grabbed my glass, and put it in the bus window. It was a smooth dance, one I’d done many times. Hal and “Curtis” were watching silently.
“I feel better.” I stood behind the bar, feeling the wine build up my blood. “Send in the lions.”
They thought I was drunk. But I wasn’t. I was thinking of Daniel.
29. Lion’s Den
The hour nearing four in the afternoon, past which time I was to call Daniel Frank, I made a quick walk of it back up Ponce to my place.
I swung open the door and looked around. I’m usually an orderly sort of a guy, but the joint, I had to confess at that moment, was a dump. I just thanked God for air-conditioning.
The phone was ringing, which seemed to add to the disorder of the room.
I waded through the discarded clothes and wads of newspaper to the bedside and the telephone.
“Okay,” I breathed into the phone.
“Flap?” It was Daniel. “You okay?”
“Fine. A little winded from my walk, but I’m fine. You’re calling me.”
“I am,” he confirmed. “I have news.”
“Should I sit down?”
“Sounds like it to me,” he told me. “Did you know that Dally had received other letters like the one in the stiff’s pocket last night?”
“Yes.” I nodded.
“Okay,” he went on, “so they’re all this ‘You owe me so much’ and ‘You know what I can do to you’ and stuff.”
“Okay.” I sat. “Go on.” I knew he had more.
“You’re in a fast mood. Not usual for you.”
“I am today. Fast.”
He rattled some papers. “She turned them all over to the cops, these notes. Of course she never said a word about you — but I guess you know that this Huyne guy is all over you, for some reason.”
“Remind me to tell you the reason someday,” I rushed, “but right now I have to know about the letters.”
“I have Xerox copies here.” That’s what he was rattling.
“How the hell did you get those?”
“Oh” — his voice was matter-of-fact — “I have friends.”
“All right. Are you coming here or am I …”
“… don’t you think the cops might be watching your place, maybe?”
I sighed. If I hadn’t been so sleepy, I probably would have figured on that myself.
“And I have no secret passageway out of the building,”
I told Danny.
“So you’ve got to lose them, if they come behind you.”
“Well” — I smiled — “I can do that.”
“I have some other information, but, you know, are you also paranoid?”
I started to ask him what he was talking about — it only took me one more second to realize that he was thinking the phone might be tapped.
“Naw, Dan.” I tried to sound casual. “I’m just tired. I think maybe I’ll grab a nap for before I leave to meet you — and lose the police. Should we meet at our usual place?”
I was hoping that would be the giveaway for Dan — I was polishing one off for anybody else who might be listening, as Danny and I had no usual place.
“Yes,” he told me, trying not to sound stilted, “our usual place. Perfect. Around 3:20, 3:30? You know they’re tearing things down over there. There’s more land than ever … at our usual place, so watch out, okay?”
His voice didn’t betray amusement, but I was certain he was smiling. There were huge open vacant lots around the three hundred block (320, 330) of Moreland Avenue — just up Ponce, past the Majestic Diner.
“I don’t need to watch out, Dan,” I told him plainly. “I’ve got friends who watch out for me.”
“That’s a good feeling. Have a nice nap.”
“Can do.” I hung up.
I didn’t even take a breath before I slipped out my front door. There were only four apartments in my building, mine was one of the two upstairs. If the front and back doors were being watched, there was no way to sneak out that way, or out the windows down on the street side of the place. But if a person could be quiet and careful, that person might just slip out of the downstairs apartment that was right beside the next building over — in the shadows — and he might make his way through the bushes that would hide him from anyone watching at the outside doors.
So downstairs, I tapped quietly on Kane and Paula’s door. Kane answered.
“Flap.” She was in her usual cheery mood. “What’s up. Were we making too much noise again?”
I put my fingers to my lips. “Can I come in?”
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