by Chris Wiltz
When she told me what she was doing, I flipped. We had a terrible argument and said some pretty nasty things to each other. At one point I told her that what she was doing could only mean that she had absolutely no self-esteem. For some reason that really got to her. She stopped screaming at me; she stopped saying anything at all to me; she wouldn’t look at me. There was some kind of deep, miserable pain all over her face, and all I could think was I had caused it. I went over to her, got down beside the chair she was sitting in, and took her hands.
“Myra,” I said, “however much money it is that Angelesi is giving you, let me give it to you instead.”
It took awhile, then she put her eyes on me, her mouth curved up on one side, and she let go with one of those laughs. “You go home and save your money,” she hissed.
I stood up and slugged her. I never in my life felt so bad about anything—never, that is, until I unlocked her door that night and found her with her throat cut.
I stared at the picture of Solarno, and all the rage and hate I’d felt five years ago rushed back with a vengeance. I was feeling nearly sick from it. I probably should have felt some gratitude, too, though, for still being alive. I went after Angelesi. I wanted to tear his throat out. And every time I tried, it was Solarno who stopped me. I remembered his big, thick hands on me, pounding on me, with revulsion. He was two of me. He could have killed me if he’d wanted to.
Solarno saved his own hide by becoming the “surprise” witness for the prosecution at Angelesi’s trial. He must have done some slick maneuvering. Then he stayed on as chief investigator for Callahan, but not for long. All it took was Solarno giving out one of his own brand of “press release,” this time that cops were getting bribe money in their paychecks, as usual unsubstantiated, and Callahan got rid of him. Callahan was either too smart or too corrupt to keep Solarno around. It was hard to tell which.
I threw the newspaper in the trash can to get that easy smile of Solarno’s out of my sight. I sat back in the chair and closed my eyes. The floodgates had been released on all of my worst feelings, most brutal the anguish of my own helplessness to stop them or ever be rid of them. There was the added horror of what the repetition of those feelings had done to my most base and savage impulses, so that the only way to make things better was to rip flesh and crush bones. I had to talk myself out of this, as I’d done a thousand times before. After all, it had been my own loudness and persistence that was responsible for bringing Angelesi to trial, but he’d been tried and convicted for bribe taking and racketeering, not for Myra’s murder.
Now Solarno was dead, but he had died without anyone knowing how much of Myra’s blood was on his hands. I suddenly realized that I had something more powerful than images of Angelesi rotting in jail or Solarno’s carved face to get some relief from this.
I had Lee. I concentrated on her, I saw her face, alive with laughter, intense with passion, soft with satisfaction. I saw her flesh moving over her straining muscles as she worked out, moving and shimmering underneath me. I heard her voice, wistful with memories, strong and logical as we discussed some real or hypothetical case, soft as it caught in her throat when we made love. I could feel her hands all over me. I wanted her right now. I wanted to go over to her office and take her without a word or an explanation, just take her, hard and fast and brutally, then long and slow and steadily, until there was nothing left in my brain but her. These were impulses I didn’t have to control. If I wanted her now, I could have her. There was no schedule of other men. Nothing stood in our way, least of all Lee’s profession.
Thinking like that made me feel better. I thought I could do a day’s work now. I thought, in fact, with some satisfaction, that I was on the way to conquering the past even if I couldn’t forget it.
And then the phone rang. It was Richard Cotton.
“Did you see the morning paper?” he asked. I put the mouthpiece under my chin, blew out a lungful of air, and told him that I had.
“You’ve got to do something for me,” he said urgently. “You’ve got to find out what Solarno had on Callahan.”
9
* * *
Fish Out of Water
You’ve got to be shitting me.”
I don’t usually say things like that to people I work for, but Richard had just told me that he’d hired Marty Solarno to dig up every piece of dirt he could find on Chance Callahan.
“Excuse me, Richard,” I went on, “but don’t you know that Solarno was untrustworthy at best, and probably nuts? He could have told you anything, but that wouldn’t mean it was true.”
“No. I told Solarno that anything he gave me, there had to be evidence. He called yesterday and said he had something I could use and the stuff to prove it.”
“What kind of stuff?”
Richard didn’t know. Solarno had called him and said he had something to show him. They had set up a meeting at Solarno’s place for this afternoon.
“Damn!” Richard cried suddenly. “I should have met him last night. Paula had us going to another damned Mardi Gras ball.”
“You’re not thinking straight, buddy. You better go home and tell Paula how grateful you are she made those plans.”
“Paula doesn’t know anything about any of this,” he said quickly.
“Just the point I was trying to make,” I said. “Why are you going after Callahan like this, Richard?”
He gave a sarcastic laugh. “You don’t honestly think I can win against him on my youth and experience, do you?”
“No, but why can’t you use what everybody already knows about, the project killings and how Callahan’s got the investigation corked on that kid who got gunned down. The blacks are angry. Why can’t you go after their votes?”
“I will, but Callahan will make that look like Jay Gatsby going after their votes.”
“What about the whites uptown who think they aren’t getting enough police protection?”
“I can’t win with just the uptown vote. Be realistic, Neal. No politician wins on smiles and handshakes anymore. And don’t forget it was you who brought up the man in my fireplace. That hasn’t been cleared up and it’s not likely to get cleared up before the campaign starts, or ever, for that matter. Without a new lead, the police won’t spend any more time on it.”
“Okay. But why Solarno?”
“Who better than Solarno?”
“I hope you realize that if you persist with this you could end up like Solarno. So could I.”
“You went after Angelesi, and you’re still around.”
“Wait a minute. What I meant is Solarno was everything from a pimp to a bagman. He knew a nasty bunch of people. What are you trying to say—that Callahan killed him?”
There was a silence during which I assumed he was trying to decide how far he should commit himself. Instead he asked me a question. “If I were to say to you that by the time Callahan fired Solarno, Solarno’s name was a joke around town, so why would Callahan bother killing him, what kind of idiot would you call me?”
I almost laughed, but it wouldn’t have come out sounding like a laugh. After all, why would Angelesi bother to kill the likes of Myra? Hadn’t everyone asked me that, including my own father?
“So now what—you want me to go after Callahan?”
His voice got a little thin, his words a little drawn out. “I hired Solarno to do a job. From what he told me yesterday, he did it. I’d like to know what he had. I’m asking you to find out. To ask you to do anything else would be stupid.”
I supposed he was getting impatient with me, but I didn’t care. “What am I looking for, Richard? You told me a while back you thought Callahan was getting rich off some vice operations. Is that it?”
“Drugs and vice. I’ve suspected for a long time that Callahan has a large interest in a local drug operation. He’s gotten too rich for it to be anything other than drugs. I’ve been trying to find out anything I can, where the drugs are dropped, who is involved. Then I could go to the police. But as
it is I have nothing to go to them with except some vague suspicions.”
“How do you know Callahan has anything to do with it? Where did you get your information, from Solarno?”
“How I know has nothing to do with what we’re doing now.”
“I doubt that. I doubt that very seriously, Richard. Look, when I went after Angelesi, I had nothing to lose. I could tell anybody who would listen what I thought. We’re not in that position now. And we’ve always been up-front with each other before. This is a hell of a time to start playing it cozy.”
“I’m not trying to play it cozy, and I am trying to be up-front. What I know did not come from Solarno. It came from personal experience, when I was on Angelesi’s staff.”
“I think you better tell me about it.”
Richard was good at letting you hang on the phone. But then I’m good at waiting.
Finally, he said, “Do you remember a time in your life when you thought it was okay to be a little reckless, when you got involved in something because you thought getting involved was the only way to play the game? What you’re too stupid to know is that everything you do becomes a part of you, and that the things you do have insidious ways of coming back on you. If you know what I mean, then don’t ask me to embarrass myself by getting any more specific.”
I knew what he meant. Didn’t I say it before? Simpático. But there was another dimension to what he was talking about: Sometimes you got involved because you had no choice. I didn’t choose to meet Myra, fall in love with her, and find her murdered. The problem was that the longer I talked to Richard, the more I got the feeling that one of those things was coming back on me, too.
He was saying, “I guarantee you that the way I found out what I know about Callahan in no way affects what I’m asking you to do.” I believed him because that was such a nice, qualified statement, a limited guarantee. “I’m just asking you to do what you can. Find out what the police know. Use your contacts. Get into Solarno’s apartment. I’m asking you to do this as a personal favor to me.”
“There’s one thing you better understand,” I told him. “If I get into Solarno’s apartment, it’s not likely I’ll find anything that the police have missed, but if I should find anything that’s evidence of a crime, I’m going to the police with it.”
“Fair enough,” he said.
“Then there’s one more thing. It has to do with things coming back on you. My advice is leave it alone. Let whatever it is die with Solarno.”
Richard paused, then said quietly, “What if there’s evidence of another crime—should it die, too? It’s not too late, you know.”
He was baiting me. I fully realized how ambivalent I felt about all of this. On the one hand, I was already getting a bad taste scrambling around in the past. On the other, if there was something else to know about Myra’s death, I couldn’t say I didn’t want to know it. I also knew there wasn’t any way of digging around in Solarno’s life without hoping that there was. It was coming back on me, all right.
Solarno had been murdered in his Bourbon Street apartment. The French Quarter was part of Uncle Roddy’s district, and with a phone call I could find out if Solarno’s murder was Uncle Roddy’s case. It probably was. I already knew what I could say to get Uncle Roddy to let me into Solarno’s apartment, but I did not like the idea of saying it at all.
A small shudder went through me. I’m superstitious sometimes, and this was one of those times. So I told Richard that I was doing this as a personal favor to him. In fact, I did regard it as a favor to a friend, not as taking on a case. And then I told him about how at any moment I might call him and say I wasn’t doing it anymore.
But here it is in a nutshell: He supplied the bait and I took it.
10
* * *
Memories and Delusions
After I got off the phone with Richard Cotton, I finished my paperwork to avoid thinking about what exactly it was I was going to do about this Solarno business. I updated several files and wrote out a few statements. Then I put some letters and other things that needed to be typed into the Dictaphone machine so I could take the tape and the statements around the corner to a typing service I used. It was cheaper than a secretary.
Once I had all that done, I had nothing to do but get used to thinking about Marty Solarno again. I would take it one step at a time. First, the rational part of myself told the irrational part that if the old obsession about Myra’s death so much as threatened to take over, I would immediately call Richard Cotton and bow out. Second, I would indulge in no idle speculation over who had murdered Solarno; I would go after what I had been asked to go after, and nothing else. Third, I put a call in to Uncle Roddy, but discovered he was out of the office on the Solarno case.
It would probably be bad timing to try to see Uncle Roddy during the height of an investigation, anyway. Not only that, but before I approached Uncle Roddy, it would be helpful to know some specifics about the kind of life Solarno had been leading. I knew exactly who I could go see, but I didn’t like at all where I had to go to find him
I had to go to Dumaine Street, and I was feeling superstitious again—Tom Rivers’ lounge, The Ace, was a block away from Lee’s office.
I wasn’t sure I wanted Lee to know anything about Myra. Very few people had understood my obsession with Myra and her murder. I was afraid to tell Lee about it. It had caused me nothing but trouble and, anyway, why should the woman I was currently involved with be very understanding about a woman I was once in love with who was a prostitute? I could think that, and at the same time I knew if I ever did tell Lee and she didn’t understand, it would make me angry. I felt so strongly that I didn’t want what had happened with Myra to touch my relationship with Lee. I felt so strongly that I didn’t even like the idea of The Ace being on the same street as Lee’s office.
Myra and I had spent a lot of time in The Ace. It was our favorite bar. It was near enough to her place on Esplanade that we could walk to it, and Tom Rivers would stay open all night if he, had a customer. There was a lot of action, too. One of the local TV stations was right around the corner, and after the late news most of the reporters and crew would go to The Ace. Myra used to feel sorry for the weatherman because everyone who walked into The Ace asked him how the weather was, and as the night wore on he would hang lower and lower over his drink.
With the media making the scene at The Ace, Tom Rivers had another regular—Marty Solarno. One night he brought Angelesi with him. I told Myra if she so much as looked at him, I was leaving.
Anyway, there was always an interesting crowd. And even though the place was comfortable and nice, the real reason they all came to The Ace was Tom Rivers himself. He was a quiet man, observant. He was on the small side, and the only thing left on his head was a sparse fringe of blondish hair and a few freckles. In spite of his middle age and baldness, there was something boyish about Tom Rivers. He had never developed that hardness that some bar owners get after years of running a drinking establishment, but retained a vulnerability and sensitivity that I, at any rate, associate with youth. He remembered everyone’s name and listened well, as any good bartender should, and was a man of few words. He never, as far as I could remember, talked about himself, his family or friends, nor could I remember ever seeing him alone with anyone. Maybe it was this quality of mystery that made Tom Rivers so attractive and so easy to confide in. It was as if he and The Ace were one and the same, and whatever you told him would never go beyond the four-sided bar that dominated the room. The nightly ritual was that whenever Rivers finished his work, he would make his way around the bar once, carrying his drink with him and studying it while he listened to one outpouring or another. Then he would disappear and let his bartenders close up.
As I walked over to Dumaine Street, I was hoping, for once, that things hadn’t changed, that the rituals at The Ace were still being observed, that Tom Rivers still arrived around three o’clock to get ready for his five o’clock crowd, and that Marty Solarn
o, up until he died, had still been bending Tom Rivers’ ear. But it had been well over three years since I’d been to The Ace or seen Tom Rivers, and the way bars come and go in this otherwise museum of a city, it was possible he wasn’t there anymore.
I pushed open the door, and as much as I’d been hoping he’d be right where he was, bent down behind the bar checking his supplies, I felt that ambivalence creeping over me, intruding on my genuine pleasure of seeing the familiar face of someone I considered a friend. It wasn’t seeing Tom Rivers, though, it was the place itself. Nothing at all seemed to have changed. The memories were all there, ghostlike visions that at once beckoned me in and pushed me away.
The bar was nearly empty—only two people sitting at a far corner. Rivers stood up to see who was coming in, and when he saw it was me, he smiled, maybe a little wider than usual, but a small smile, never a grin.
“Neal, how you doin’?” It was his same quiet greeting, never boisterous, as if I’d just been in yesterday, except it was a little slowed down, drawn out by surprise, maybe. Or it could have been that Rivers was a few years older and that much slower. He put his palms on the bar and leaned on them. We didn’t shake hands because Rivers never shook hands with anybody. “Been a long time,” he said.
I sat on a stool in front of him.
“Too long. I’m glad to see you, Rivers. I thought you might be gone.”
He let his eyes wander around the room. “No. I’m still here, but if you’d waited too much longer to come in, I might not have been. You know that beach house everyone always liked to talk about? Well, it exists now. I’m thinking about selling out and retiring.”
“What?” I demanded in mock disbelief. “There was no beach house, no poker game?”
