Nora Jane (35 page)

The new cleansing was supposed to take place on the three days covering the anniversary of the day the three men who killed
Adrien Searle were locked away in a prison that was worse than death.

September ?3, Holly Knight. September ?4, Freddy Harwood. September ?5, Joseph Leister. The paladins would move from Arkansas
to California, then to Wisconsin.

It would be a full moon, the brightest moon of the year, a lunar shadow, three victims, three assassins, a car wreck, a throat
slit, a fire, and they were done and the message was delivered that Fire From Heaven takes vengeance on the ones who helped
the one who broke the sacred vows that knit the souls of the faithful together for all time. Amen.

But no one could have predicted an earthquake that would not let the 747 land in San Francisco and took the protectors of
the faith to Las Vegas, Nevada, instead, into a hell of iniquity and disgust, unclean past all imagining.

They spread out to stay in three different hotels. They waited for orders but none came. Nothing could be depended upon for
several days.

“Allah is good. Blessed be his name,” Abu said. “Order things from room service. Maintain yourselves in patience. We have
to wait until he returns to his routine. It won’t be long.”

“Then we go to Wisconsin and do the third act.”

“No, it must be in sequence. The president, the vice president, the secretary-treasurer of their organization, this bookseller’s
group. His holiness wants it that way. Do not question things, Davi. Say your prayers, eat food, rest, amuse yourself. In
good time.”

Abu hung up the phone and settled himself on the bed to study his French grammar. He was no longer a young man with fire in
his blood and was glad that he was not. Every year his study and learning made him a more valuable man to the God he worshiped,
and in that knowledge lay all his happiness. He had learned four languages in ten years. French would be his fifth. He needed
no praise for his work. He was his own praise. He thought of his father in heaven thinking of him and his begetting and he
was glad.

Nora Jane dropped Little Freddy at his play school and started off for Delaney Hawk’s studio on Euclid Street. When the Presidio
became the place to be, Delaney had sold her house in Marin and moved back into town. It was a typical Delaney move. A sixty-four-year-old
woman selling her house and all her furniture and starting over in a Bauhaus world of bleached wood floors, stark white walls,
uncurtained windows, and Pensi and Mies van der Rohe copies. The piano had a room to itself. The only other furniture was
three Wassily chairs and an Axis table.

Nora Jane had not seen Delaney since the move, and it added to the strangeness of her decision to sing in New York to have
to seek out and find her teacher in a neighborhood she knew nothing about.

Delaney was waiting on the front sidewalk, watching for her. It might be a new neighborhood but it was the same old Delaney,
dressed in a long skirt, an orange linen blouse, and a gray cashmere sweater that had belonged to Nabokov when she had known
him in London. She always wore the sweater around her shoulders. She wore it summer and winter. The sight of it reminded Nora
Jane of whom she was dealing with and made her humble. Delaney Hawk had walked with gods and she did not forget.

Delaney tied the arms of the sweater into a knot and began to direct Nora Jane to a parking place in what anyone would have
thought was the front yard. When Nora Jane had turned off the motor, Delaney came around to the driver’s side and opened the
door and held it for her while she got out. Delaney was smiling her professional, no-nonsense smile. It was her main smile
at this time in her life.

“I’m glad you want to get back to work,” she said. “I need money to get a driveway poured and tear off this porch. Come on
in. See the new place.” She led the way to the fated porch and up the stairs and opened the front door and held it while Nora
Jane moved into the living room. Four Mies chairs sat in a square around a marble table holding a vase of yellow tulips.

“It makes me want to sing right now.” Nora Jane was laughing. “My God, I bet the acoustics are wonderful.”

“You bet they are. The floors are synthetic wood, they’re made of oil, they contain liquid, not that everything doesn’t although
we forget that. Well, let’s get started. What do you want to sing?”

“The
Ave Maria
by Schubert. Handel, Let the
Bright Seraphim
. And a modern piece. The girls want me to sing
O Holy Night
.”

“Oh, God. The Schubert’s tricky. If you have the slightest cold, anything can ruin it. Well, we can do it. This is some turn
you’ve taken. What are they paying you?”

“Geoffrey Beene’s designing the dress. I get to keep it. Oh, it isn’t that. It’s for my grandmother Lydia. I might sing Puccini.
We’ll see.”

“Which Puccini?”

“Vissi d’arte
.”

“I see.” Delaney went to the piano bench and sat down on it facing the piano. She played several notes of the Puccini. “Well,
why not. You can do it.”

“It was what Lydia was listening to when she died. When she sang it she wore a blue velvet dress and that is what I’m going
to ask Mr. Beene to make for me. I have never sung it out loud since she died. Only in my heart, but I know it better than
I know any music in the world.” Nora Jane was crying. Standing in the beautiful, pristine room crying without moving or making
a sound. “This is for her. She was the most important person in my life and I have to quit being in denial about what her
death did to me and celebrate what I knew.”

“Oh, God.” Delaney was crying also. She had not sung and taught grand opera all her life to back away from the heart and breath
of life.

“Then let’s begin,” Delaney said. “There’s water in the pitcher on the table. Have a sip. Come over here. Maybe I’ll go to
New York with you if you do this thing. My sister lives there, on the Upper West Side. Yes, if you do this, I’ll go with you.
I haven’t been in several years. It’s time to go.”

“Yes,” Nora Jane answered. “Yes, yes, yes.”

She went to the table and poured the water and drank a small amount and walked over to the piano and waited while Delaney
looked for the music in a Treviso bookshelf filled with scores and sheet music.

“Do scales,” Delaney ordered. “Start warming up.” She moved back to the piano and struck one note, a C, and Nora Jane picked
it up and began to move her voice up and down her incredible range. Delaney shivered, then straightened her shoulders and
went back to the bookshelf and began to take out music.

I didn’t forget how, Nora Jane would decide later. You don’t forget. It’s like skating or skiing, balance sports. No, it’s
like looking at my children, like love, because it is love and I have not forgotten. My body can still do this thing I love
so much, this clear happiness my grandmother gave to me so long ago when there was nothing else I had but this and her and
it was enough and I survived and lived to find Freddy and have Lydia and Tammili and Little Freddy and become a person who
is going to sing Puccini at the Metropolitan Opera and not be afraid.

That coming weekend, Nora Jane’s twin daughters, Lydia and Tammili, were planning on being gone for two nights to a Girl Scout
retreat that included a tour of the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park.

“Let’s take Little Freddy and go up to Willits,” Freddy suggested. “I have a huge desire to get out of town. Please say yes.
You can rest and I’ll take care of him. I want to take him. He never gets to be there alone.”

“If you’re absolutely sure the power is going to be high enough to pump water.”

“The cells are full. No one’s been in months. I’ll call and have Deesha go out and clean it up and check. Then you’ll go Friday
afternoon, as soon as the girls leave?”

“Okay. I’ll go. I love the house at Willits. I just like to think I can take a bath if I want to. Yes, yes, I’ll go.”

“You’re in a good mood lately. I would have hired Geoffrey Beene myself if I’d known that’s what you wanted.”

“It isn’t that. And it isn’t about singing either. It’s about my grandmother. I haven’t finished figuring it out yet. It’s
about who she was and being part of that. She used to polish my shoes twice a day when I stayed with her. It’s about having
had her and remembering it and being grateful.”

Little Freddy pushed open the door and came into the room. He had his hands folded across his chest as if to begin complaining
about something.

Freddy picked him up and carried him to the bed and sat him on his knee. “We’re going to see a mountain lion, son of mine.
We’re on our way to Willits to feed the lion.”

“That is not the way to get me to Willits.”

I’m teasing. I’ll let him look through the binoculars. I won’t take him where there’s any danger. You know that. I wouldn’t
take him down to the woods unless I knew it was safe for him to go.”

“He doesn’t need to see a mountain lion. He’s only three years old. He can look at pictures of wild animals or see them at
the zoo.”

* * *

Abu, Davi, and Petraea moved into a suite at the Sands on the third day of waiting. On the fourth day a message was delivered
by a room service waiter. It was in a dialect only Abu read, so he interpreted it for the others.

“On Saturday we go to Berkeley and wait until he closes the store. He is having a book signing for a famous person from New
Orleans. He must be there. He parks his car a block from the store beside a shoe store called Intelligent Feet. We can follow
him home or we can take him on the street. We will have to use a sedating shot because of the public place. Everything cannot
be perfect now. We will leave him in the alleyway between the shoe shop and a ladies’ clothing store. Then we go to the airport,
give the car to a messenger who will meet us, board airplanes, and go to Wisconsin by three different routes. All luggage
will be checked. Anything we need for the work will be supplied when we get there. Leave only clothes in the suitcases. Nothing
else of any kind. The messenger will try to return your things later.”

“It has been a long wait,” Davi said. ’Allah be praised.”

“Amen,” Petraea added.

It was Thursday afternoon when Freddy remembered that the Neville Brothers were going to sign their book in the shop on Saturday
night. “There’s nothing I can do about it now,” he told his secretary, Francis. “Tell them I got sick. No, just say I’m sorry.
They don’t know me. They aren’t going to get their feelings hurt.”

“Okay. Okay. We can handle it. I just wish you wouldn’t schedule these things if you aren’t going to be here to help. We could
have two thousand people, for God’s sake. I’ll be awake for nights thinking about it. They’ll tear up the store.”

“We can straighten the store. We sell books for a living, Francis. We can’t afford to sell only ones we wish people will read.
Don’t be a snob.”

“I like their music, some of it.”

“Well, there you are. I’m taking Little Freddy to Willits, Francis. He never gets to go without the girls so he never gets
to be there in peace and quiet.”

“He’s three years old. Three-year-olds don’t want peace and quiet.”

“He might if he ever knew what it was like.”

In New York City Carlton Rivers was arguing with Lynn Fadiman. They were in a bar on Third Avenue drinking martinis. It was
past two o’clock in the afternoon and they had been arguing for two hours. “Don’t drink any more of that,” Lynn said. “We’ve
got to be sober when we talk to the police.”

“We’re going to drag the condominium into this before it’s over. I know we will. It will get out, Lynn. It will be in the
papers.”

“What about me? I’ve been snooping through someone’s apartment. But I’m taking my chances. This is duty, plain and simple.
That’s it. Let’s eat something and go on over there and tell them what we know.”

Carlton got up from the bar stool and left his third martini untouched on the bar. They walked off to a table a waiter had
ready for them. Carlton went back to the bar and retrieved the martini just before the waiter wasted it. “I’m drinking this,”
he told Lynn. “Goddammit, Lynn, I’m not a lush. You’re right, civic duty is the price we pay and I was raised to honor that.
We’re going. Order something fast. Let’s get a steak. Let’s have some ballast. They could keep us there all afternoon.”

An hour and a half later they were in the office of an assistant district attorney for upper Manhattan talking to a man who
was listening very carefully. He was not acting like they were crazy. He was not interested in why they took prints or anything
else. As soon as he saw Freddy Harwood’s name on the list he began to fit the pieces into place. He had been part of the team
that tracked down the writer Adrien Searle’s killers. They had killed her by mistake while trying to get to Salman Rushdie’s
American publisher. The district attorney even recognized the date of Holly Knight’s accident in Arkansas as the date when
the murderers were finally locked away in a maximum-security prison.

“I’m sending a team over to dust this apartment seventeen,” he told Carlton. “I don’t want any fuss. The quieter the better.
Can you trust the doormen? The supervisor? How long have you known them? We’ll have to do background checks on them, but until
we do I don’t want them to know anything. Can you get my men in without anyone knowing they’re there?”

“Sure,” Carlton said. “When do you want to leave?”

“We have to hope they’ll come back. You understand that. That’s why the secrecy.”

“What about the owners? Can you find out who they are?” While Carlton was speaking, a secretary came in and handed the assistant
district attorney a note.

“They don’t exist,” he said to Carlton. “You guys were had. They aren’t there. Just the money, being paid from Swiss accounts.
By next month it will be gone, like smoke, no more condo fees, I’m afraid.”

“Mr. Rivers’s sister is married to an Arab,” Lynn put in. “You’ll come across that. She married a wealthy Saudi and they raise
Thoroughbred horses in Virginia, when they’re in the United States. We discussed it coming over here and decided we’d better
tell you about that.”