Bluebottle (8 page)

"Jew go home."

Gold nodded, then looked quickly to the right and stood as LaVerne entered the room, pulling a robe close about her. Her feet
were bare. She beamed a smile in his direction.

"Ma'am."

"Feeling better this morning, Lewis? And while we're on the subject, how did it get to
be
morning already? Tell me there's coffee."

"There could be."

"Soon?"

I got up and started assembling equipment. "Rough night?"

"Rough enough. Not as rough as yours, from the look of it."

I measured coffee into the basket of the percolator and put it on the stove, put a pan of milk beside it to steam. She sank
into a chair.

"Mel Gold: LaVerne. Mel's here—"

I turned back. "Why
are
you here, Mel?"

"I didn't say, did I?" Evidently he had some trouble disengaging himself from Verne's smile and that sleepy, soft, cross-eyed
look she always had when shefirst got up.

I knew exacdy how he felt.

"Not in so many words."

"I told you how it started, how it kept getting worse and worse. Well, finally it got so bad that my wife was afraid to stay
home by herself all day. At that point I went to the police. Problem is, they said, very little's actually been
done.
All of it could be written off as no more than kids' pranks. They'd arrange for squad cars to drive through the neighborhood
on a regular basis, every couple of hours say, but for now that was about the extent of it.

"I thanked the officer and asked if it would be possible to speak to his superior. I'd be happy to wait, I said—and wait I
did. Finally someone named Walsh came out looking for me. After listening to my story, asking a question or two, he repeated
pretty much what I'd already heard.

'But if you choose to pursue this on your own,' he said, 'and that's probably what it'll take, you might want to get in touch
with this man.' He slid your card across the desk. 'This isn't comingfrom me as a cop, you understand.' "

I poured for LaVerne, half coffee, half hot milk at the same time, then for our guest. What was left went into my own cup.

"Just what is it you expect of me, Mr. Gold?"

"To tell the truth, I don't have much left in the way of expectations, fromyou or anyone else. I just want to be left alone.
Lieutenant Walsh said that you might be willing to ask around—'become a presence,' as he put it. That that might be enough
in itself. He did mention that you had a wide network of friends."

Did I?

"I've set aside considerable funds over the years, Mr. Griffin. My credit line, you'llfind, is excellent."

Not much of a sense of humor, but hey. I looked across the table at LaVerne. She liked him too. That cinched it.

"Assuming I knew what a credit line was," I told him, "I still wouldn't have the least idea how to go about checking one."

"It's simple—"

"Hey. Relax, okay? I'll look into it."

"Thank you."

I made more coffee and took down details.

A
S IT HAPPENED
, Mother and Mel Gold departed together—synchronously, at any rate.

She materialized in the kitchen as we were finishing up the interview and second pot of coffee, bags by the front door and
taxicab already called, to announce that she'd be going: You don't need me here anymore, Lewis, best be getting myself back
home to where I belong.

Mel Gold fairly leapt to his feet when she appeared in the doorway. And when, moments later, the cab blew its horn, he insisted
upon carrying her bags out.

I shook his hand at curbside, told him I'd be in touch. He crossed to a mint-green-and-wliite BelAir.

"Thanks for coming, Mom."

Verne was standing on the porch; they'd said their good-byes inside. Mother glanced towards her.

"That's afine woman you got there, Lewis."

"I know."

"Don't know what she sees in you, of course."

"Neither do I."

"But you be good to her."

"I'll try."

"Yeah. Yeah, I spect you might do that You write me sometime, boy."

I opened the door for her, helped her in. She slid for wardtill she was on thefrontof the seat, small face framed in the window.

"Two of us are gonna go on loving you no matter what, you know."

I nodded. She slid back on the seat and sat very straight and still as the cab pulled away. She looked like a child sitting
there. Small, lost, alone.

That was the last time I saw her alive.

7

I
've never seen anything like that before." "Any luck at all, most people never do." Verne knew about the man I'd killed a
few years back, but we never spoke of it, not then, when I climbed into bed beside her after the long drive back with his
blood still on my hands, and not now, as we sat together, eleven in the morning, on her narrow balcony. Box seat at the Orpheum.
Beneath us opera New Orleans went into its second act.

We all know it's out there, just at the edge of our vision, past the circle of light from our campfires. Camus said only one
diing is necessary, to come to terms with death, after which all things are possible; but we go on failing to meet its eyes,
ever dissembling, dressing it up in period costume, caging it in music or drama, gelding it to murder mysteries: how clever
we are.

How I used to love that late scenefrom "Benito Cer-eno." I was fifteen, skipping breakfast before school and ignoring calls
to dinner because I'd just discovered books and what seemed to me then their far realer world. Blacks have taken over the
ship but with the approach of an official vessel set up an elaborate Trojan-horse masquerade whereby the enslaved whites pretend
to dominance.

That tome was the ultimate dissembling. Because the slave couldn't say what he meant, he said something else. And that scene
from "Benito Cereno" seemed to me just about as something else as it got.

In African folklore there's a great tradition of the trickster, Esu-Elegbara. Hoodoo turns him into Papa Legba. In America
he becomes the signifying monkey, given to self-relexive flights of ironic, parodic language foregrounding what W.E. B. Du
Bois defined as the black's double consciousness.

We're all tricksters. We have to be, learn to be. Dissembling, signifying, masking—you only
think
you have a hold on us, tar babies all.

I got up and this time, instead of shuttling glasses in and back out, exported the botde itself from the kitchen.

"Appreciate your help, Verne. Some comfort in knowing I won't have to disturb Doo-Wop."

"Man's busy making a living."

"Aren't we all."

"But findingher there like that pretty much shuts it down for you, doesn't it? What's left? Eddie Bone's out of the picture.
Now the woman."

I drank off the last of my Scotch. Its sudden swell of warmth inside echoed precisely that of the long, slow noon and sun
beyond—or my feelings for LaVerne. Front tire flat, her bicycle leaned on its kickstand inches away from my right ear. Before
me on the railing were small pots of basil, rosemary, thyme and lemon grass.

"You're right. Precious little left to go on. Clothes imtraceable: everythingfrom Montgomery Ward and the like. No mail, of
course. Cans of Spam and generic chili, packets of hot dogs; sacks, boxes and condiments from carryout Chinese food, old White
Casde burger bags. We're not even sure who was living in the apartment."

The phone rang. Verne went in to answer and remained there conversing, some friend, maybe, or one of her regulars, as I finishedoff
the Scotch. I looked in at her and she smiled, holding out her left hand with thumb, index and little fingers extended: Love
you.

Verne leaned against the wall as she talked. The phone was set in a niche there. A table beneath held piles of junk mail and
unread magazines, a pad of paper for messages.

Just like the entryway on Jane Street.

Verne hung up, detouring to the bathroom. When she came back out, starting to ask if I wanted breakfast, I'd taken over the
phone, was waiting while they tracked Don down.

"Lew."

"What a man. Party all night, still show up for work."

"What the fuck else am I gonna do, stay home and suck aspirin, watch reruns of
Hazel?
How you feeling?"

"Like a garbage bag left out in the sun."

"Good. Hate to think I was the only one. What can I do for you?"

"Had a thought. Jane Street been packed up?"

"Yeah."

"There was a wad of paper on the table just inside. Discarded pages folded in half to make a scratch pad, kind of thing you
might jot names and numbers on. Any chance that got kept?"

"Damned
good
chance, if there was writing on it."

"That's what I was hoping."

"Anything there, though, it's already been checked out."

"What I'm wondering now is what was on the back of them, where they came from."

Don thought about that a moment. "You at home?"

"Yeah."

"Let me call down to Property. Any luck, they might actually be able to find the stuff. I'll get right back to you."

While I waited, I went in and ground more coffee. Verne said she was going back to bed. I said I might join her.

"We got half lucky," Don told me. "Most of the papers got tossed—nothing there, Willis said. A few of them had numbers and
the like scribbled down, though. Those, he saved."

"And?"

"Five or six of them were mimeographs, announcing a 'town meeting' a couple of months back."

"Where?"

"One of the high-school cafeterias, DeSalvo. In the Irish Channel. Principal rents it out to community groups for a nominal
fee."

"Any ID on the group?"

"Nothing but these tiny letters at the bottom, kind of a crooked F with the foot extended to become the cross for a T."

"That's it? You have any idea what it is?"

"Oh, I've got something better than an idea: I've got a cop that just transferred down here from Baton Rouge. Says they started
seeing it up there about a year ago, some of the rougher bars. Now they're seeing it a lot. You want, I'll have him call you."

Ten minutes later, he did, identifying himself as Officer Tom Bonner.

"Walsh tells me you're black."

"He tells me you're from Baton Rouge."

"Hey, we all got our crosses to bear, right. How much you know about prison life, Griffin?"

"Less than most black men my age."

His laugh was quick and britde. "Know what you mean. Wife's black. One of the reasons we moved down here, thought things might
be better."

"Are they?"

"Call me back in a year. Anyway, prisons like Angola, you've got the strictest color lines that exist. Whites, blacks, Mexicans
and Orientals, they keep to their own, each one's got its own space on the yard, its own section of tables in the mess. People
get killed just for crossing the line."

That much I knew.

"Generally all that stays inside. Now it looks like it's been exported, some of these guys have dragged it out with them.
Inside, they were dirty white boys, defending themselves in their solidarity against the encroaching hordes, only way they'd
survive. Inside, they got religion. Now they're gonna spread the gospel. And the gospel's pretty simple: White's right."

"What's this FT business?"

"Who the fuck knows?"

"So what do they call themselves?"

"Far as I know, they don't. Philosophy seems to be, if you're looking for them, you need what diey have, you'll find them."

"They're all ex-cons?"

"That's how it started, right. Real trailer-park types, you know? But then it grew like weeds in a vacant lot. Got every sort
lining up behind them these days. Lawyers, ex-servicemen, grocery clerks."

"Police."

"Be a damn fool to deny it. This is America, Griffin. We're all fucking cowboys here. Ride out of town and away, climb a mountain
or tower, shoot the bad guys."

"That what they want to do?"

"One, two, or three?"

'Three."

"Yeah. Yeah, what I know, I'd have to say that might be pretty high on their agenda."

I thanked him and he said if I wanted dinner some night, give him a call, he and Josephine didn't know many people here.

My next call was to Papa, who ran an arms and mercenary service out of a bar in die Quarter.

"Baton Rouge, huh? That's Harrington's patch. Haven't talked to the man for ages. Stay where you are."

"Looks like you were right on the one count, Lewis," Papa said when he called back minutes later. "Steady low-end buys going
on for well over a year now. Someone's stockpiling for sure. Not die kind of diing B A'd get involved with—domestic, which
he stays awayfrom, all of us do, and stricdy penny ante, small arms mosdy—but anyone doing business on BA's patch, firstthey've
gotta clear it with him."

"Who's the stockpiler?"

"No reason he's gonna know diat, Lewis, or tell you if he does. Says he can put you in touch with the supplier, though."

Papa gave me the number and I thanked him.

"You said I was right on one count. What's the other?"

"Well, it's not just Baton Rouge. That's where they buy and store, but they've spread out, B.A. says, they're all over. Heard
they even had a foothold down here in New Orleans now."

I hung up and went into the kitchen. We'd finished off the botde. I got another out of the cabinet, poured a glass half full.

Mornings are a time you're supposed to get to start over, shrug off yesterday's cares, engage the world anew. But here I was.
LaVerne asleep in the bedroom, the rest of die world going about new business outside,
my
morning still yesterday, yesterday's concerns barking at my heels. I wastired, dead tired, and not a little drunk. Half-formed
thoughts simmered to the surface of my mind and sank back.

Real trailer-park types.

Baton Rouge.

I stood there a moment sipping at Verne's good whiskey, looking out the window. Then I found my coat on the back of one of
the chairs where I'd left it last night and fished my notebook out of the breast pocket.

I couldn't remember what the differential was, what time it might be in New York, but Popular Publications answered on the
third ring and put me through to Lee Gardner. Sure he remembered who I was, he said, I was doing the piece on "the new Village"
out in the Bronx for him. Where the hell was it?

I backed up and started over. Reminding him that he'd come to see me in the hospital when he was in Louisiana looking for
Ray Amano, and that we'd spoken since then.

Sure he remembered, he said. Good to hear fromme.

"I was wondering if you might be able to help me, Mr. Gardner."

"I might be able to try."

"What was Amano working on when he disappeared?"

"Well. . . . He was
supposed
to be working on a new novel, one Icarus paid out a fairly heavy advance on. But like a lot of writers Ray had trouble planning
his way around the next corner. Minute he committed to one thing, he'd lose interest in that andfind himself fascinated by
something else entirely."

"What was the novel?"

"We didn't know a lot about it. The other books had done well, especially
Bury All Towers,
so we contracted for the new one on an eight-page oudine. Supposed to be a Grand Hotel kind of thing, individual stories of
all these people living in a trailer park. I think Ray actually sent in thirty or forty pages at one point. Not long after
that, I had a letterfrom him saying he was working on something else. Claimed 'the material' had taken him in another direction,
that this book was going to shove open doors people had nailed shut. It was going to be important,
big.
In the face of what he'd discovered, he wrote, he couldn't just go on making things up."

"No chance you'd have a copy of those pages, I guess."

"Of course not. They'd be the property of Icarus. I'm no longer employed there."

"I understand."

"You could speak with young Gilden, of course. The new editor."

"I'll do that. Thank you."

"I don't believe I have your address, Mr. Griffin. Per haps you'd like to give it to me. Just in case I come up with something
else, you understand."

Next afternoon, a messenger walked up the sidewalk, rang the bell, and handed over an envelope I had to sign for. Inside was
a note scrawled across the back of a Popular Publications rejection slip.

Had bad feelings about this from the outset. Ray's as irresponsible as they come, but once he bites down on something this hard, it's not like him to let go. He'd be at it 24 hours a day every day till he dropped—then he'd get up and start again, till it was done.