The Way of All Fish: A Novel (28 page)

Standing in the doorway, Paul leafed through the binder. He looked out at the pyramids of metal and rubber and plastic. He shook his head.

Bub said, “See, Gio says he believes in writing things down as they happen, you know, instead of bringing some artificial order to bear on them.”

“Sounds like a writer.”

T
ell me again,” said Bass Hess, shifting down as they followed an articulated van out of the Holland Tunnel, “why we have to do this at night?”

Paul had thought Hess would be more grateful that someone had found his precious ’64 partial panel (which Bub hadn’t). “Because Bub’s there from nine
P.M.
until early morning, and he’s the only one who knows where this part is.”

Bass changed lanes. He was such a terrible driver, they could have changed lives and no one the wiser. The Mustang was the perfect color for Bass Hess, a sort of anti-color called (according to Hess) Chantilly Beige. Hess had insisted upon driving the Mustang to make sure the panel fit. Nothing else in the car fit, thought Paul, so what difference did it make?

The car drove smoothly enough around fifty, but get it up to sixty and it rattled. Since no one in New York was going to hang around at anything less than seventy, nor allow any rogue driver to slow them down, the Mustang drilled on the macadam at sixty, lest they be shunted off the road. Paul thought speeding in a cement mixer would be more comfortable, certainly safer. Hess’s sudden stops had Paul pressing his foot against the place where a brake would be if the passenger’s side had one. The ride was not helped by the fact that it was a convertible and Hess insisted they drive with the top down, “to enjoy the full experience.” Paul would have preferred no experience at all, not with Hess driving.

“And then Ford’s research person wanted the name Mustang,” Bass droned on. He’d been thrilling Paul with a history of the Mustang’s advent. “He decided Mustang was a far better name than what Ford wanted.”

Another slowdown, another car racing past, another finger poking the air.

“It’s not much farther,” Paul said, relaxing his foot as if it had been his on the accelerator. “Turn off at exit forty-one.”

He could not imagine Bunny Fogg driving out here on her own, but it hadn’t bothered her one jot. She had a GPS, she said, then told him for five thousand dollars, she’d drive the highway to hell.

Bub was to watch for headlights and open the gate for them, which he did. Paul liked the creepy effect of the unattended gate slowly moving back, the ghostly invitation.

Bass shifted and drove slowly through the opening into almost total darkness. Bunny had already instructed Bub to leave the lights around the yard off and only the light in the shack burning. The huge stacks of ruined cars and their ruined parts rose upward like Egyptian burial mounds. A few appeared in the dark to form a nearly perfect pyramid.

“This is godawful,” said Bass, the car grinding away along the rutted road. “There should be some lights. It’s like a cave.”

“Oh, your eyes adjust in a minute or two.” Paul checked his watch: It would happen any second now, and he wanted to be talking about something boring, like the contract, so he said, “Bobby Mackenzie thinks he can do whatever the hell he—”

Bass yelled, “
What was that?   
”

Paul was thrilled by the lightning appearance and disappearance of the white figure flying across the road beyond the shack. It was such a shocking whiteness that it was hard for Paul not to react.

“What’s what?”

“You didn’t see it? The thing that just crossed the road?”

Paul rose in his seat a little and craned his neck. Then he shook his head. “There’s nothing there.”

“Not now, there isn’t. There isn’t now. You must have seen it running!”

“What did it look like?”

“A blaze of white.”

“Junkyard dog, maybe.”

“Don’t be a fool. Did you ever see a white junkyard dog running
upright?” Bass was getting out his handkerchief and holding it to his sweaty brow, then, seemingly disturbed by its snowy whiteness, shoving it back in his pocket.

Paul said, “Sorry. I guess I was so wrapped up in wanting to ram a hood ornament up Mackenzie’s ass, I wasn’t paying—”

“There it is again!
Look!   
” Bass was half out of his seat, bent, holding on to the top of the windshield and looking a little like the skipper of a yawl tacking in the face of a gargantuan wind.

Paul opened his door and got out and moved to the front of the car. It was such a wonderful effect: The figure had stopped dead in a circle of misty light thrown by one of the streetlights that Bub had just switched on, good for nothing else but to create a spectral fog. The figure, cloaked in white, raised an arm and pointed directly at the car. Then the light went out and the figure disappeared.

Scratching his head, Paul turned to Bass, said, “I don’t see a goddamn thing, Bass. What is it? Where?”

“Don’t tell me you didn’t see that light!”

Paul climbed back into the car and said it again: “Didn’t see a damned thing.”

Hess had crumpled into his seat, taken out the handkerchief, mopped his face.

“Listen, Bass, it’s just this is a spooky place, I’ll grant you that; first time I was here, I thought shadows had substance.” (Paul rather liked that and filed it away to use, then decided it was window dressing and yanked it out of the file.) “Christ, the place would make anyone see things that weren’t there.”

The hand that wasn’t holding the handkerchief was frozen on the steering wheel. “Don’t you understand? This is the third time. The third instance. You implied ‘hallucination.’ Is my mind going?”

“That alligator was no hallucination. It was weird, but it was palpable. Look, let’s just get out of the damned car and go inside the shack and talk to Bub.”

Bub was standing in the doorway with a hatchet—well, it wasn’t a hatchet; it was the quarter panel for the Mustang. Or some other car, made no difference.

Paul introduced them and realized he didn’t know Bub’s last name. In the shape he was in, Hess wouldn’t have noticed if the man’s name had been Redux.

“Somethin’ wrong, man?” Bub was pretending to address both of them, not singling out Hess as the crazy in the crowd.

“No, we’re okay,” said Paul. “Bass here just had a bit of a fright. Thought he saw something run across the road out there.”

“Probably something did.” Bub kicked the chair from the table. “Sit down, Bass. Listen, we get all manner of crap running around this yard. We get dogs, wolves, cats, rabbits—” Bub was rattling this off as he got out the jelly glasses and whiskey. (Paul had instructed Bunny to bring a fifth of good stuff.) “A bear once, coyotes, jackals—”

“This wasn’t an animal.” Bass’s voice was tight and whispery, as if his vocal cords were shutting down shop. “And it was white! Really white!”

Bub received this addition to his list of invasive species with equanimity. Brushing his longish hair across his forehead, he suggested, “Something dragging a sheet, most likely.” He held out a bag. “Chips?”

“A sheet? A sheet?” Bass said in his new high, thin voice. He sounded like a tenor reaching for an impossible note. “Who would come to a junkyard with a sheet?” He added, “And it was a figure, a human figure. I’m almost certain, at least I think it was . . . yes, it was a woman.”

“Oh, why didn’t you say?”

“I did. I thought I did.” His hands came up to shield his face. “A woman. A woman in white.”

Paul savored the sound of Bass Hess saying it and raised his mason jar in a toast to Wilkie Collins and Bunny Fogg.

“Takes all kinds. Now, here’s your part for the Mustang.”

L
isten, Bass, forget about the contract for a while.”

With a martyred air, Bass held up his hand, less in a gesture of “no, no,” than in one conferring a blessing.

As if L. Bass Hess were sacrificing himself on the altar of Paul’s future, when his only interest was in a commission of $450,000. That was the altar Hess dipped his knee to.

They were sitting in the Hess Literary Agency, going over the same shaky ground they had gone over the night before in Libby’s all-night diner, where they had sat with cups of cooling coffee for two hours, discussing Bass’s incipient madness.

“Don’t be absurd,” Paul had said the night before. Then added, as if he’d really been thinking about it, “Listen, you’re a Roman Catholic, aren’t you? I thought so. Do you think Saint Paul was mad? Saint Bernadette? Saint, ah, anyway.” He couldn’t think offhand of anyone else who’d had visions.

Bass Hess had merely shaken his head wearily.

After the spell in Libby’s, they drove back to Manhattan, Bass craning his neck as they crossed the Brooklyn Bridge, as if he’d like to test his implied sainthood by jumping.

They had gone to their separate homes to lie awake staring at the ceiling (Bass Hess) and to sleep the sleep of the just (Paul Giverney).

And then here they were, back in the offices of the Hess Agency, Bass having regained some of his arrogance, still going over the events of last night (and the night before that, and the night in the Everglades). He was telling Paul he didn’t need a psychiatrist.

“I never said you did.”

Bass rose from his leather chair, his fresh shirt as crisply white as Bunny’s dress on the previous night, his three-piece suit making him look like a man who’d never seen a junkyard. He said, “Did you know that Oliver Sacks had a good deal of trouble with his eyes?”

Oliver Sacks? What turned him up?

“I have an appointment with my ophthalmologist this afternoon.”

Wanting to distance them from Oliver Sacks, Paul said in an offhand tone, “Maybe it’s a spiritual crisis.”

This gave Bass pause. “Hmm. Hmm.”

As Paul knew it would. Anyone as arrogant as L. Bass Hess would think a spiritual crisis fit him like the pin-striped vest he was presently giving a tug to, just as he thought himself far too good for a mental breakdown.

“Hmm.” Hess sat down and steepled his fingers (the image not lost on Paul, who had planted his feet on the coffee table) and repeated the “hmm” several more times before chuckling and saying, “It does occur to me that the burning bush suggested the Damascene.”

Paul rolled his eyes. Who but Hess would use the word “Damascene” about personally seeing a burning bush in Central Park? Paul feigned a slight indifference to Saint Paul with a shrug. “I’d say so, yes.” He gave a gruff little laugh. “So you’re not putting all of this down to a need for new glasses?”

“No, no indeed.” Hess picked up the rather worn-out, coffee-smudged, and much-handled contract. “Now, would you agree to the first letter of each chapter printed in the Vijadera font?”

Paul studied the ceiling and wondered how L. Bass would make out in the Hunted Gardens with the Dragonnier.

A
ll they’d been able to turn up by way of uniforms were two fluorescent orange vests with horizontal white stripes and
BE INC
. stamped on the back. They also found a couple of canvas caps with B on the front. That was in a crowded used clothing store on Seventh Avenue.

Not much by way of disguise, but Candy and Arthur didn’t want to overdo it. The caps, together with the Ray-Bans, would hide their faces. Arthur was to do the talking in case someone recognized Candy’s voice. They would be carrying ropes, electrical cords, and toolboxes.

Only, Candy’s toolbox was fitted out for the wet life, lined with a couple of layers of plastic.

They tossed around several words to go with BE on the vests, finally deciding on
BIOSPHERE ELECTRONICS.
It just sounded more specialized, or high-tech, or something, than the others they’d thought of, like Boone or Buddy’s Electric.

The next morning they dressed in black jeans and black turtlenecks. With their orange vests and dark gray caps and Ray-Bans on, they decided they looked official.

With the care of a surgeon proceeding with a heart transplant, Candy dunked a big measuring cup into his fish tank and dipped Oscar out. He then transferred fish and water to a large plastic bag, triple-zipped. He tucked that bag into the plastic-lined toolbox. He was debating punching a couple of airholes into the metal box when Arthur asked him was he nuts? Fish didn’t need air. “That’s what the water’s for, Jacques Cousteau.”

“You’re nuts. They gotta have oxygen.”

“Not air the way we need air. It’s completely different.”

“Yeah. Like you know.” Candy hated closing the toolbox. “Pretty dark in there.”

Arthur was adjusting his orange vest. “Candy, what do you suppose the bottom of the sea is like? Do they maybe have strip lighting down there?”

After a little more quarreling, they were ready to go.

They arrived at the Spurling Building at one
P.M.
Arthur had called ahead and asked to speak with Wally Hale or Rod Reeves and was told they were at lunch. Arthur put on an Academy Award performance of desperation, said he was calling from Hong Kong, and could they tell Arthur at what restaurant the lawyers were lunching so he could call them there? Michael’s, said the receptionist, and even gave him the number. Arthur thanked her. “Sweet Jesus, no wonder these guys are having trouble with security.”