by James Sallis
The skinniest young black man I'd ever seen-he looked like an ambulatory twig-climbed onstage. Stage was definitely a euphemism for this inch-high flatof rough lumber we'd have used back home to stack feed bags. He plucked a soprano sax out from behind a chair. Held it vertical in his lap as he disengaged the reed from the mouthpiece and put it in his mouth to soak. Another musician took his seat behind the piano. He hit several chords, ran scales and arpeggios off higher intervals of them, pawed at a few jagged, Monklike phrases, then sat with hands in lap waiting.
"Stick around. These guys are unbelievable. I don't know where it all comesfrom," Bo said. "Drink?"
"When'd you last make coffee?"
"What's today?" He poured a cup and pushed it towards me on the bar. "Just kidding. Hey, you're still in New Orleans. I don't keep good coffee, they take away my license, deport me to Algiers, Chalmette. Rip the towel off my shoulder." He angled one longfinger towards the napkin. "Phone's still where it was, you get ready."
I turned around on the stool, turned back.
"Seems to be in use."
"Nah. That's just Crazy Jane. Comes in here every night, has a few drinks, spends the next hour or so having imaginary conversations with old lovers."
Grasping the receiver in a death grip at least a foot from her head and shouting into it, Crazy Jane gave way without comment when I tapped on the booth. She replaced the receiver as though setting down an eggshell. I dialed the number on the napkin. The phone rang twice.
"LaVerne there?" Never knew who might be at the other end of one of LaVerne's numbers.
"Who's this?"
"This is the guy who's calling for LaVerne."
"Yeah? Sounds like just another turkey to me."
'Tou took your head out of your ass, you might hear better."
"You got a definite point there."
He backed the phone off a few inches and shouted: "Hey, CNeil! Walsh up there? Well, he's for damn sure around here somewhere. Yeah you do that." Moments passed. "Griffin's on the line, boss." A staccato exchange of words. "Who else's it gonna be, mouth like that? Hey, always a pleasure talking to you, Griffin." He handed the phone over.
"Lew."
"I got a messagefrom LaVerne to call her at this number. She okay?"
"She's fine. Took her statement myself and sent her home in a black and white almost an hour ago. I asked her to call you."
Crazy Jane stood outside the booth patiendy waiting. When I smiled, she smiled back, then ducked her head shyly like a schoolgirl.
"Verne said she was trying to help youfindthis Esmay woman, from the shooting. So she talked it up on the street-'just like setting out trot lines back home,' she said. Got her firstbite around dinnertime, second one not long after. Hell of a lot better than we ever did, or were gonna do. 'Lew says you always hang back,' she told me, 'see what the traffic looks like, give the landscape a chance to become familiar.' She had a couple of coffees at the cafe on the corner and kept her eyes open, came up here and walked into this."
This was the messy anteroom of an apartment in a cul-de-sac off Jane Street.
Built in 1890 as a private home, the building persisted as such, various families moving in and out like hermit crabs, until 1954, at which time it came onto its first abandonment. The Sixties saw its irregular stories and multiple courtyards reincarnated as luxury apartments; late in the decade, following extensive consultations with lawyers, the building's new owners gave it over to use as an orphanage. Shortly thereafter began its second long decline.
These days, though a successful temp agency occupied its bottom floor, the rest remained an urban ghost town. Periodically movies were shot in those rambling uppers: crews would sweep in with brooms, paint and props, drape and hammer and arrange it all to look how they needed it, then disappear, leaving behind new habitats for the wild cats who lived there.
Don showed up to ransom mefrom the twenty-year-old pillar-of-salt sentinel stationed street level, frontdoor. We climbed narrow, listing stairs gone to rot and splinters, ducked through a sagging walkway.
Dana Esmay lay slumped just inside the entrance to apartment 3-B. A divider wall opened at either end into living room and kitchen areas. Green flocked wallpaper had been mostly torn away; what remained looked like healthy patches of mold. A dozen or so hats and caps hung from nails pounded into the wall.
"Wefigureshe was squatting here," Don said.
"Someone was."
"Evidence of the same in a couple of other apartments on the floor below. Power came from an extension cord, one of those heavy-duty orange ones. It's plugged into an external oudet on the patio downstairs."
I lifted a hat off one of the nails, checked its size, held it close above what was left of her head.
"Look like afitto you?"
Don nodded. "I see your point."
Dana lay with arms and legs askew. Her throat looked like something from a butcher's block. An electric carving knife was on thefloor by one hand.
"We think LaVerne pushing the door open's what pulled the plug. She, the Esmay woman, was lying against the door. LaVerne remembers hearing a buzzing sound. Had no idea what it was at the time, of course."
The wound in the woman's throat gapped open, oddly intimate. Some secret small thing had squeezed through this portal from elsewhere, leaving our own world forever changed. Beside the wound, to the left, were several long cuts. I leaned down to look closer.
"Hesitation marks," Don said.
"Or signs that she was struggling, turning, trying to get away."
Blood pooled beneath one turned-down wrist. Maybe she'd had a go at that, botched it, before moving higher. Or maybe instinctively she'd thrown that arm up in self-defense.
"Here's the rest." Don turned her head. The back of it, from the crown well into the neck, was cut away. Scalloped came to mind. I couldn't remember when I'd last seen this much blood.
"ME says his best guess is she plugged the thing in, took a couple of trial swipes, then pulled it across. Both carotids are gone and she's dead at this point, but there's still ten to twelve seconds' worth of oxygen left in her brain. She's on automatic: her arm and hand keep going. Then the hand hits empty space and jerks around to the back. Two or three last whacks before she's down You okay, Lew?"
I nodded.
"It's her, right?"
"Yeah. It's her."
She turns and holds her arms out. Ducking to fitmore comfortably, I step into them, hugging her. A low-rider pumps by beside us, bass speakers pounding. Faint strains of Buster's guitar and singing, "Goin' Back to Florida, "from inside. Shadows of banana trees move huge on the wall. The moon is full. Then I sense something new. I look up, to the rooftop opposite. The bullet comes to me as I throw my arms wide.
Someday, I swear, I'm going to put together an anthology, The Nose Book. It'll have Gogol's classic story, the nose job from Pynchon's V, Damon Knight's "God's Nose" (the universe was created when God sneezed), Pinocchio, Steve Martin's tour-de-force nose jokes from Roxanne, clips from Woody Allen's Sleeper. Maybe I'll put a photo of Mel Gold on the cover.
Leaving the scene on Jane Street, Don and I had gone out for a drink. One drink became two, then four, and I'd finished up, two in the morning, back at the house alone with a half-bottle of plum brandy someone had brought to a dinner party weeks before and had sense enough to leave behind. Vaguely I remembered Verne coming home and trying to talk to me. Not long after, I staggered into the bathroom to throw up. I was lying beached on the front room couch, no idea what time it was, heart pounding, flashes going off behind closed eyes, when the doorbell rang.
I may have opened a closet or two before I found my way to the right door.
"Hi there. Good to see you. Go away," I said, and shut the door.
"Look," I said, opening it again when the bell resumed. I'd meant to say something, had something firmlyin mind, but lost it. I may have shut the door again, I'm not sure. Things blur for a while then. Next clear picture I have, we're sitting in the k
itchen over toast with melted cheese and mayonnaise and he's telling me how he's just moved here with his familyfrom the Bronx. "That's in New York."
I told him yeah, I thought I'd heard something about that.
"I'm an accountant for J. Walters, an electronics company, been with the firm almost thirty years. No one came right out and said it, but the message was clear. Either I took the transfer, or I'd better start getting my resume in order. I'mfifty-three, Mr. Griffin-"
"Lew."
"I never did anything else, or lived anywhere else, and I'm fifty-three. What am I supposed to do? It wasn't just me, though. Six other families transferred down with us. We couldn't believe our luck when we found houses all together. Took a while before it sank in there might be a reason for that.
" 'Remember how the real estate agent wouldn't look any of us in the eye?' my wife said when troubles started. Says she knew then that something wasn't right. But I was so determined the move was going to work out, I ignored anything to the contrary.
"It started out slowly enough. Gates left open to let pets out, dirt thrown over walls at clothes drying on lines, newspapers undelivered, trash cans upended in our driveways. Then a couple of us had bricks tossed through windows, what looked like blood poured on our porches. Once again, the message was clear."
"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.
As 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 swel
l 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."
