by James Sallis
“You bet. Thanks, Don.”
“You want me to keep the net open on this?”
“No. Good enough.”
“This guy’s in town, I take it.”
“Yeah.”
“Yet another fine example of scuz rising to the bottom. I’m sure he’ll be in to say hello sooner or later.”
“Good chance of it.”
“So I have to go feed the lions now, right?”
“Guess so. Pull a tail for me.”
“You got it.”
I could have just called Dean Treadwell then, of course. It was what he wanted to know—more than he wanted to know. My favor was done. But I didn’t want to break the old man’s heart, I told myself, not in such an impersonal fashion.
If you’re in New Orleans with time to kill and a taste for alcohol, sooner or later you run into Doo-Wop. And sooner or later you’ll probably buy him a drink and get into a conversation with him.
Every day Doo-Wop makes his steady round of bars from the Quarter up through the Irish Channel and along Oak Street. That’s what he does, that’s his job, and he pursues it with single-minded devotion. And because after all this time he’s as much part of the city landscape as palm trees or the buildings along St. Charles, he gets free drinks, a lot of them from the bartenders themselves, a lot from bar regulars, some from drop-in drinkers. Anybody who buys Doo-Wop a drink buys a conversation too.
And if you ever had one of those conversations, Doo-Wop remembers it. He can’t remember if he ever had another name or where he’s from, he doesn’t know the year or who the President is and probably can’t tell you where he stayed last night, but if you talked to him, last week, last month, or back in the summer of ‘68, Doo-Wop’s still got it all.
I found him after a couple of hours, in the twelfth or fourteenth place I tried. He was seated on a stool at the bar, drinking tequila since that’s what the guy buying was drinking, and talking about his days as a Navy SEAL. I doubt he was ever a SEAL, but he’d probably spent a few hours with one sometime in a bar much like this one. That’s what he did with all that conversation, why he collected all those stories. They were his stock in trade, the product he traded for drinks and companionship of a sort.
“Big guy,” he said as I came in, looking into a mirror so silvered that it turned the whole world into an antique photograph. “Long time.” He was wearing high-top black tennis shoes laced halfway up, a purplish gabardine suit, plaid sport shirt with thin black tie.
“Too long.” I signaled the barkeep, who shuffled over and simply stared at me till I said, “Two more tequilas for these gentlemen and whatever’s on draft for me.”
“No draft.”
“An Abita, then.”
“No Abita.”
“Dixie?”
He nodded and shuffled toward the bend in the bar, sliding his feet along stiffly as though on skis.
“Big guy, this’s …”
We both waited a moment.
“Newman,” his companion said.
“From Missoula, Montana.” Doo-Wop hurriedly threw back what remained of his old drink before the new one got there. He didn’t like things in life getting ahead of him. “Has him a little ranch up there, breeds horses.” He nodded toward Newman in the mirror. “Next time we run into each other, remind me to tell you about that Arabian stable I worked at down in Waco.”
Since he’d finished the drink Newman bought him, the subtle morality of Doo-Wop’s enterprise allowed him now to cut Newman loose in my favor, and he motioned toward a booth in one corner. We waited at the bar for our drinks, then settled in there.
“So what’s up, big guy? Who you looking for?”
“How do you know I’m looking for someone?”
“Big guy. You ever come see me just to have a quiet drink? You got your business, I got mine, right? And sometimes they kind of fetch up against one another. Way the world works. Damn glass empty again.”
I motioned for the barkeep to refill it and showed Doo-Wop the snapshot Dean Treadwell had given me.
“Twice. Once at the Cajun Bar on Tulane, the other time over on Magazine, the Greek’s place.”
It wouldn’t do any good to ask when; time didn’t exist for Doo-Wop.
“From Washington. Near Seattle, he said. Did a stretch or two up there. Not very interesting. Didn’t have any stories that amounted to anything, didn’t pay much attention to mine.”
“I don’t suppose he wrote his address on a matchbook and gave it to you?”
“Not as I recall.”
“That was a joke, Doo-Wop.”
He thought about it a minute. “Never did quite get the hang of that joke thing.”
“What I meant was, did he happen to say anything about where he was staying.”
“Not a word. Said he had a couple of things going. Usually means a man’s right next to eating rats off the street.”
“Okay. Thanks, guy. You see him again, and remember to, you call me?” I laid a ten-dollar bill and a business card on the table.
He picked up the bill, leaving the card. “I already got one of those from last time.”
I stood to leave, Doo-Wop to move back to the bar.
“Ask the Greek,” he said. “Guy did some work for him. Heard that, anyway.”
I got a twenty out of my wallet and handed it to him. He stuck it down in his shoe with the other bill.
“You come have a drink with me sometime when it ain’t business. I’ll buy,” he said. “You know where to find me.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
THE GREEK WASN’T GREEK, BUT Puerto Rican. He was from a foreign country—New York—and wore the sort of bushy, untrimmed mustache often seen on Mediterranean males. His name was Salas, which upon his arrival in New Orleans had sounded to someone enough like the Greek surname Salus to earn the sobriquet he’d had ever since. He’d worked as maître d’ for years at restaurants from Kolb’s to Upperline before a heart attack dropped him flat into a client’s swordfish steak with béarnaise at age twenty-nine. Coming out of the hospital, he’s simplified his life: got rid of most of what he owned, bought this place, a decaying, abandoned corner grocery store on Magazine with Spartan apartment above, and turned it into a neighborhood bar, a remarkably laid-back, low-key one, even for New Orleans. He served some of the best gumbo and sandwiches in town, if you didn’t mind waiting a while.
The weekend after papers were signed, an army of uncles, brothers and cousins had appeared from nowhere and set about shoring the place up. It was as though they converged on a derelict grocery store, swarmed briefly and stepped back from a bar; and not much had changed since. The beams and supports they’d fashioned from two-by-twos, still bare wood but now gone green with mildew and mold, still propped up corners and ceiling. Cracks in the plaster troweled over with little or no effort to match the color of new plaster to old now looked like skin grafts long since rejected.
Living in a third-floor apartment across the street at the time, with nothing much to do on weekends till seven o’clock rolled over and I allowed myself to begin the night’s drinking, I’d watched the whole thing. The Greek’s was on my parade route, the place I started and more often than not ended my nights. It was also one of the few bars in the city I’d never been thrown out of. There had been a name on the window at one point, but no one ever paid any attention to it, and when the name faded away, it was never replaced.
Carlos was sitting on a footstool behind the bar, one hand gently swirling ice around the bottom of what remained of a glass of lemonade, the other holding open a paperback book. I might have been gone twenty minutes, instead of twenty years.
Carlos wanted to know about me, so I gave him a two-minute version. I asked the same in return, and he shrugged and moved his head to indicate the bar.
“Get you a drink?”
“Not today, Carlos, I’m in a hurry. Let me come back when I have more time.”
He smiled and nodded, waiting for me to say what I’d come for.
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I showed him the snapshot of Treadwell’s son. “He been around?”
“Last I heard, you’d quit doing detective work.”
“I have. This is more like a favor. You know him?”
“Teaching, I heard. Always thought that was something I’d be good at, if things had turned out a lot different.”
“The picture, Carlos.”
“He in trouble?”
“Not yet.”
“But he’s planning something.”
“I don’t know if he’s planning it or not, but he’s about to break an old man’s heart.”
“Old man?”
“His father.”
Carlos shook his head. “That’s bad. What can I tell you?”
“Where he’s staying would be a good start.”
“Couple weeks ago, he was staying with a guy named Tito, over on Baronne a block off Louisiana. I don’t know if he’s still there. Or the address, but it’s this huge blue monster, textured plaster, at the edge of an open lot. Tito’s place is upstairs on the left. There’s a separate staircase up to it.”
“This Tito a salesman?”
“So they say.”
“And a relative of yours, by any chance?”
“A cousin, as it happens. Tito’s never there in the afternoon. That would be a good time for you to drop by.”
“Then that’s what I’ll do.”
I thanked him and said I’d see him soon, looking at the clock over the bar as I left. Almost five. My seminar students had walked long since. But it was still afternoon, at least.
I caught a cab at Jackson Avenue, had the driver take me up St. Charles to Louisiana and got out there. Walked two blocks to Baronne. I saw the building as soon as I turned.
It was a shade of blue not found in the natural world. The texturing on its plaster sides reminded me of Maori masks. Two cars and a pickup truck were stacked up in the driveway alongside like planes waiting for takeoff clearance, but they’d been waiting a long time.
The railing at the top of the stairs was hung with towels and a washcloth, an orange cotton rug, a shirt on a hanger. I knocked at the screen door, waited a moment, then opened it and knocked on the glass of the door inside. When there was still no response, either from within or from curious neighbors, I pulled out an old plastic ID card I keep for this very purpose and slipped the lock.
The door opened directly into the kitchen. A quarter inch of leftover coffee baked to black tar on the bottom of its carafe. Grease half filled the gutters around the stove’s burners. The whole apartment smelled of cat, equal parts musk and pee, with the heady, sweet reek of marijuana beneath. Furnishings were minimal, cast-off clothes in abundance.
I found some Baggies of grass and crack stashed among provisions—mostly unopened jars of spices, sacks of flour, sugar and baking soda, and canned goods like corned-beef hash and stew—and put them back. I found a .38 under the cushion of one of the chairs in the living room and put that back too.
Off to one side was a windowless, odd-shaped little room of the sort often seen in these huge old places that have been chopped into apartments again and again. A mattress had been crammed into it. One corner was bent back like a dog-eared page where the room took a sudden turn; an edge lapped over the baseboard. A nylon athletic bag lying on the mattress had been used as a pillow. I opened it and found in a manila envelope stuffed with scraps and folds of paper an expired Washington driver’s license issued to Marcus Treadwell. Most of the rest was people’s names and addresses, with notations in a tiny, precise script, in what I presumed to be a code.
I stepped back into the living room and discovered that the .38 was no longer under the cushion. It was now in someone’s hand, and pointed at me.
“You must be Tito.”
He nodded.
“I’m a friend of Carlos.”
“Carlos don’t live here, man.”
“I know. I was just down at the bar talking to him. He thought you might be able to help me.”
“What you need help with?”
“I’m looking for something.”
“Just something for yourself? You don’t look like a user, man. And I don’t do wholesale, know what I mean?”
I shook my head. “Not drugs.”
“I’m willing to believe that.”
“The guy who’s been sleeping here.”
“What you want with that pile of shit?”
“Just to talk.”
“Yeah? Well, you find him, I want to talk to him too, but I won’t be talking long.”
“Guess you guys didn’t hit it off.”
“Hey, I thought he was okay, you know? Till I come home yesterday morning and find him with the back of the crapper off, going after my stash. I’d already moved it, but that don’t matter. But I guess he heard me coming, ‘cause he was out the window and gone in about half a second. Wouldn’t have thought the boy could move that fast.”
“You saw him?”
He shrugged. “Who else would it be?”
“Listen, are you going to shoot me or not? Cause if you’re not, I’m going to reach into my pocket for a picture.”
“Nah, man, I ain’t gonna shoot no one.” He stuck the gun in a back pocket.
“This the guy?”
“Yeah.”
“And you haven’t seen him since yesterday morning?”
“No.”
“What time?”
“Nine, ten, something like that. He try to rip you off too?”
I shook my head.
“You got a message for him, that right?” Tito said.
“More or less.” I handed him a card. “If you do see him again, think about giving me a call.”
“There money in it?”
“You never know. For now, let’s just say it will be much appreciated.”
He looked at the card, then up at me. “Lew Griffin. I heard of you. People say you used to be bad.”
“I used to be a lot of things.”
“Yeah. Know what you mean.”
“I might drop by again tomorrow or the next day, just to check, if that’s okay.”
“Sure. You do that, Lew Griffin. Just don’t forget to lock up again when you leave.”
He grinned, gold bicuspid flashing. I suddenly remembered that my father had one just like it.
Chapter Thirty-Six
WALSH AND RICHARD GARCES WERE coming for dinner that night. I’d done most of it ahead, a cassoulet and flan, and Alouette was in charge of the rest. When I stepped through the door at seven-twenty I found them all sitting together in the living room. Richard had a glass of wine, Walsh a tumbler of bourbon, Alouette one of those prepackaged wine cooler things. No one got up, but three faces swiveled toward me.
“There goes the party,” Garces said.
“And the neighborhood.” Alouette.
“Buck seems to be stopping here.” Walsh.
“What would you like, Lewis?” Alouette again. I followed her out to the kitchen, pulled an Abita out of the fridge. The kitchen was warm and full of wonderful smells.
“Everything set?”
“Cassoulet’s heating, bread’s in the oven with it, salad’s made except for the dressing.”
“You’ve been watching reruns of Donna Reed.”
“Who?”
“Never mind. Anything I can do?”
“Go sit down, drink your beer and talk to the guys. I’ll throw this stuff together.”
“You sure?”
“Shoo.”
It had felt good being in the kitchen again last night, preparing for this, and it felt good now sitting with friends, talking about nothing in particular, anticipating more of the same. I laid my head back, felt tensions go out of my body. My mind rippled with stray thoughts, then became still water.
“Had a call from a friend of yours today,” Walsh said. “Sergeant Travis up in Mississippi. Asked how things were going down here. And wanted me to tell you things are a lot duller there now that you’re g
one.”
“I hope you don’t mind,” Garces said, “but I’ve asked Alouette to see Torch Song Trilogy with me this weekend; they’re doing it at the Marigny. It’s sold out—which means about twenty tickets—but I have friends in unimportant places. It’s Saturday night. That’s all right?”
“Sure. Do her good to get out. She’s become kind of monomaniacal about this whole thing.”
“She has to, for a while.”
“I know.”
“She seems to be doing well. I have a good feeling about it.”
Moments later, Alouette called us to table. We all went out to the kitchen to help her bring things in, forming a culinary chorus line on our way back through the open double door, me with cassoulet, Richard with salad and a huge basket of bread, Don with a tray of condiments and a pitcher of iced tea, Alouette with serving spoons, trivet and a pot of coffee.
The usual dinnertime conversation—politics, jokes, anecdotes, compliments—mixed with grunts of satisfaction and the clatter of silverware. The coffee disappeared fast, and before long I went out to the kitchen to make another pot. When I came back, Alouette was saying: “I can’t plan too much ahead. I mean, I want to, but I know I just can’t do that, that it doesn’t make sense.”
“You’re right,” Richard said. “That’s part of what addiction’s all about. The personality type, anyway. You start setting up a scene in your head for how things should be, and before long you’ll look at what’s there and how far it is from what you envisioned, from your expectations—and fall into the gap.”
“‘I fear those big words that make us so unhappy,’” I said.
Everyone looked at me.
“James Joyce.”
“We … fear … change,” Alouette said.
“Wayne’s World.” Garces. We were an allusive, cultured bunch.
Walsh asked about Treadwell then, and I filled him in.
“Your dean’s going to have his face rubbed in shit, any way you look at it, Lew. He ready for that?”
“Hard to say. At some level or another, he probably already knows. I think he wants me to be able to tell him everything’s all right. But I also think he knows that’s not going to happen.”
