A year or so later, another former high school classmate of his, Enos Bidou, who worked for his father’s house painting business in Slidell, told Pace that he’d run into Ignaz in Gulfport, Mississippi, where Ignaz was repairing roofs and paving driveways with his uncle, Repozo Rigó.
“Remember him?” Enos Bidou asked. Pace did not, so Enos said, “He went to jail when we were still at St. Tim the Impostor. Got clipped for sellin’ fake Congo crocodile heads and phony Chinese panda paws.”
“When we were thirteen or fourteen, Ignaz told me he would go one day to Romania or Moldova with his father and grandfather Grapellino to take back Grapellino’s lost kingdom.”
“Well, I seen him a month ago in Gulfport,” Enos said. “He’s got a beard now.”
“So does his sister,” said Pace.
6
Pace couldn’t get Misty Tonga out of his mind. Her bold question regarding her attractiveness had made the intended effect on him and now Pace had to decide if he should make a serious move on her or let it pass. At his age, this took no small effort. He was twenty-four years older than Misty—what could she want, or expect, from him? Was she being merely casually flirtatious or did she genuinely desire Pace to pursue her? He disliked the uncertainty of it, this perilous game. She probably did not care, really, if she ever saw him again. And what was this Crusader Ralph nonsense, anyway? She was from a suburb of Los Angeles, an in-grown community of Pacific Islanders Pace had heard about when he lived in L.A. and worked in the movie business. Misty Tonga—her family was Tongan and she probably had seven or eight gigantic brothers.
The telephone rang.
“Hello?”
“Pace Ripley? This is Misty Tonga. Would you be agreeable to having a White Russian with me this afternoon?”
Pace woke up in a sweat. He had fallen asleep on the couch in the front room of the cottage. The phone call from Misty Tonga was only a dream. Pace was relieved but he felt ridiculous. He had read that dreams represented wishes and this possibility embarrassed him.
After rinsing his face, Pace stepped out his front door and took several deep breaths. The rain had stopped and the air was crisp and turning colder. What if Misty had invited him to join her for a drink? Would he have gone? Pace watched wet leaves being shoved along the ground by a sudden wind. He needed to get back to work on his book. There was no way to know how much time he had left to finish it. Misty Tonga could wait—and if she didn’t, that would be all right, too.
7
Pace was never quite the same after he was shot. He recovered well enough to live much as he always had, but he knew something was missing, an inner strength or confidence that had been a reservoir of energy to defy whatever or whoever he felt was working against him. It was not a condition easily explained, not even to himself. Pace could handle this sign of vulnerability but it was not easy for him to get used to.
On the local radio station the morning after the day Pace dreamed that Misty Tonga called him, there was a bulletin alerting listeners to be on the lookout for a missing child, a seven year-old African-American girl from Bug Town, the community just west of Bay St. Clement, named Gagool Angola. Her mother, Oswaldina Capoverde, said that the child either had been kidnapped or run away, she didn’t know which. Gagool’s father, Rangoon “Ray-Ray” Angola, from whom Oswaldina was divorced, was doing a dime in Pee Dee for aggravated assault, so he was not a suspect if indeed the girl had been stolen. Gagool had been missing for forty-eight hours. She was described as being almond-skinned with a dime-sized, diamond-shaped birthmark below her left eye. When last seen she was wearing a white cotton dress decorated with red and yellow ladybugs, and her reddish-brown hair was tied in pigtails.
Pace stuck to his writing, concentrating on the period immediately following Sailor’s death in a car wreck, when Lula felt at loose ends, uncertain what to do with the rest of her life. It had been the most difficult time for Lula, more than those earlier stretches when Sailor was incarcerated. Her man’s being gone forever was an altogether different situation; there was nobody to wait for, and Lula leaned heavily on Pace, as well as her best friend, Beany Thorn, for emotional support and sustenance.
It was late that afternoon, just past five o’clock, when Pace discovered Gagool Angola hiding in his woodshed. He had bent over to take an armload of small pieces for the stove and there she was, shivering in the white cotton dress spotted with ladybugs.
“Hey, girl,” Pace said, “you lost?”
The child shook her head slowly from side to side, her eyes half-closed.
“Well, I can see you’re cold. Come inside and get warm.”
Pace gathered the wood he’d come for and motioned with his head for her to follow him, which she did, keeping back a few steps. Once they were in the cottage, Pace fed the fire in the wood stove and then draped a quilt around the girl’s shoulders.
“Set yourself on the couch there, honey. Are you hungry?”
She nodded and said, “Thirsty, too.”
“Okay, I’ll make you a grilled cheese sandwich and hot chocolate. How does that sound? In the meantime, here’s an apple.”
Pace handed the apple to her. She grabbed it and took a big bite. One of her two front teeth was only half-descended. The diamond-shaped birthmark under her left eye was blue.
As Pace prepared the hot chocolate and grilled cheese sandwich, he asked the girl, “Is your name Gagool Angola?”
She finished the apple before answering, eating the core but not the stem, which she twisted and knotted around the pinky finger of her right hand.
“Um hum. I be name after a witch in a story my daddy know. How you know me?”
“I don’t know you, but I heard on the radio that your mama is looking for you. She’s afraid you might have been stolen.”
Gagool laughed. It was not so much a laugh but a shriek, as if what Pace said was the funniest thing she’d ever heard.
“Nobody gon’ steal me. I make too much trouble for ’em. That’s why I run off. Mama say I’m too damn much trouble. I be too damn much trouble for you, too, you keep me.”
“I won’t keep you, Gagool. As soon as I finish up fixin’ you this meal, I’m going to have to let the people who are searching for you know that you’re here.”
“I be gone before they come. I got no desire be finded.”
“Come sit at the table,” said Pace.
He set down a plate with the sandwich on it and a cup of hot chocolate. The girl shrugged the quilt off her shoulders, went over and sat down and took a bite out of the grilled cheese, then sipped the hot chocolate.
“Why don’t you want to be found?”
“I’m big enough now to go see my daddy, so I’m goin’. He’s in prison.”
“Doesn’t your mama sometimes take you to visit him?”
“Uh uh. She say he bad but he ain’t, not even a little bit. Her new man, Bee Sting, be bad, and he don’t like me. He hit me when he feel like it. My daddy never did. I tol’ Bee Sting when my daddy Ray-Ray get out he gon’ bust him up good and take me away.”
“Your mama lets Bee Sting hit you?”
“She don’t mind. She say I be doomded just like my daddy.”
Pace knew he had to call the police but he stood and watched her eat. When she had finished the sandwich and drunk the hot chocolate, Pace asked Gagool if she was still hungry.
“Um hum. You got more?” she said, and smiled at him. He loved that her half front tooth stuck out the way it did.
“Comin’ right up.”
After he’d poured another cup of hot chocolate and made another sandwich, Pace went to his desk phone and dialed the police.
“I’ve got the little girl here you’ve been looking for. Gagool Angola, yes. The one from Bug Town. I found her hiding in my woodshed. She’s fine, I’ve just given her something to eat. This is Pace Ripley. I live at the old Delahou
ssaye place off Rachel Road. But listen, she says she’s been beaten by her mother’s boyfriend, a guy called Bee Sting, so she ran away to visit her father who’s serving time at Pee Dee. Okay, sure. Right.”
Pace hung up. Gagool Angola was standing by the door.
“Thank you, mister,” she said. “Now I’m goin’.”
“No, honey, you’ve got to wait here for the people to fetch you. They’ll make sure your mama’s friend doesn’t hit you again.”
Gagool dashed out before Pace could stop her. He went after her but she had already disappeared in the darkness. Pace went back into the cottage to get a battery lantern and as soon as he had stepped outside again two police cruisers, their warning lights flashing, zoomed up the driveway. The cars stopped and four patrolmen got out.
“Where’s the kid?” said one.
“She ran out of the house. I was just going to look for her.”
“Spread out,” the lead cop told the others, who split in three directions.
“Why didn’t you lock her in?” he asked Pace.
“She was starving, so I fed her, then I called you. I didn’t think she’d bolt like that.”
The cop curled his upper lip and said, “I hate it when people think. You should have called us right away, before you fed her. Don’t go anywhere.”
He went to join his fellow officers in the search. Pace stood in front of his cottage. It was a moonless night. He figured the girl had headed for the woods behind Dalceda’s house. Gagool, the evil witch, was a character in a novel by H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon’s Mines. Pace had read it when he was fourteen. He wondered why anyone would name his daughter after her.
The world was a difficult place for a woman, Pace concluded. Punzy, lost and adrift, giving herself to Abstemio Cruz and worse; Bitsy, shot and killed by her humiliated husband; Misty Tonga, apparently under a spell cast electronically by a wigged-out ex-merc; poor little Gagool Angola, abused and driven from her home by some Neanderthal named Bee Sting; the list was endless, of course. He remembered John Lennon and Yoko Ono singing a song they’d written titled “Woman is the Nigger of the World.” And then there were societies that forbade women education, didn’t allow them to show their faces or exercise free will in any form, forced them to submit to cliterectomies, stoned them to death for looking at men other than their husbands. Neither were men spared victimization, or wild beasts slaughtered for food, baubles, clothing and medical research. This planet was certainly one wrong piece of work, which was no news at all.
After the police had left without finding the girl, Pace built up the fire in his wood stove and poured himself a triple shot of Glenmorangie. He took a hard swallow and thought some more about brave and hopefully not “doomded” Gagool Angola. She needed a chance to live her own life without being continually subjected to stupidity, cruelty and indifference. What could he do about it? Pace knocked back the rest of his Scotch and promised himself to find out.
8
Two days following his encounter with Gagool Angola, the police in Bay St. Clement telephoned Pace and asked him to come in and give an official account of what happened. The child had not yet been located but since Gagool had told Pace she was on her way to see her father, they expected her to show up at Pee Dee sooner or later. Pace complied with their request; it took him half an hour to recount the episode, and he made certain to suggest strongly that the authorities investigate this Bee Sting individual and not allow him to harm the girl should she be returned to the custody of her mother.
After he’d satisfied the cops, Pace noticed that it was five minutes past two, so he walked three blocks from the police station to Duguid’s and went inside. Misty Tonga was not seated at the bar. Two heavyset, forty-ish men in overalls wearing Remington Ammo caps were drinking Rolling Rocks and loudly arguing about whether or not a particular call in a recent football game had been blown by an official. The same bartender as the other day was on duty. He nodded to Pace and came over to meet him at the end of the bar opposite the contentious pair.
“If you’re lookin’ for Princess White Russian, she ain’t been in since you were here last. At least not on my shift.”
Pace said, “Thanks,” and turned to go.
“You sure you don’t want a double Russki?” asked the bartender.
Pace waved his right hand from side to side over his head without looking back. He knew he had to check out the Crusader Ralph office, so he ambled down there. The sign was gone. He didn’t bother to try the door this time. Driving home, Pace thought Whatever Happened to Misty Tonga? would be a good title for a mystery story.
He cut on the radio and was delighted to hear Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs sing: “Hey there, little Miss Riding Hood/ You sure are lookin’ good/ You’re everything a big, bad wolf could want.” Pace remembered the first time he’d heard this song, while he was shooting pool one Friday afternoon in Johnny Reb’s Roadhouse in Gonzalez, Louisiana, when he was eighteen. He and his high school buddies had gotten drunk, or close to it, that day on flat Dixie beer, and later ended up bruised and bloodied in a ditch after almost having had a bad accident on the highway in Flyboy Derondo’s yellow 1954 Buick Roadmaster. When Sam the Sham and his bunch began howling like wolves, Pace joined in. As Beany Thorn used to say, sometimes all it takes is a little shoutin’ to chase the devil off the porch.
Pace was in a good mood when he got out of his Pathfinder. The music had done its job. However, when he looked over at Dalceda’s house and saw Gagool Angola sitting on the porch swing, Pace did not feel like shouting. He walked over and sat down next to the seven year-old girl.
“My legs is too short to make it go,” she said.
Pace pushed off his heels and they swung. Gagool giggled, and just like her shriek, the sound was full of joy.
This time Pace decided to take the girl to Bay St. Clement himself, but only after cleaning her up a little and again feeding her a grilled cheese sandwich and hot chocolate, as she requested he do. Gagool did not resist being taken in but she made it plain that this was not her preference. She had been sleeping in a cemetery and did not know the direction to Pee Dee. A woman who lived across the street from the cemetery had seen Gagool wandering around and given her a bright red cloth coat with a rip in the back and a bag of stale doughnuts. The child told Pace that she had eluded capture by the cops after she’d run from his place by hiding at first in the woods where Pace had been shot. She asked Pace to please make the police promise to take her to visit Ray-Ray and he said he’d try.
Pace insisted on remaining at police headquarters until Gagool’s mother arrived. Oswaldina Capoverde showed up accompanied by a large, bearded man wearing a lavender jump suit and a brown short-brim hat, whom Pace assumed was Bee Sting.
“You can’t take her, Ms. Capoverde,” the police captain told her. “There’s been a complaint filed regarding the child’s treatment and living conditions, so she’ll be kept for the time being at the Child Services Center in Charlotte until a judge decides what’s best for her. You’ll be notified of the court date.”
Oswaldina Capoverde demanded to see her daughter and yelled about how she knew what was best for Gagool, but she was not even allowed to see her. The large man grabbed Oswaldina by one arm and took her out before she made the situation worse. He did not say a word during the fifteen minutes or so that he and the woman were there, but he took note of Pace’s interested presence and shot him an evil eye before leaving the station.
The matter was in the hands of Child Services now and there was nothing more Pace could do. He told the captain that Gagool wanted to see her father and the captain said that would be up to the authorities in Charlotte. They would be in contact with Pace in order to obtain a statement from him concerning the possibility of the child’s having been abused, but because he was not related to Gagool he probably would not be allowed to be present at the hearing unless he filed a petition to be hear
d.
Outside a light snow was falling, an unusual event even in January in Bay St. Clement. Pace was glad that Gagool would not be sleeping in the cemetery that night. Oswaldina and her man were gone. Pace stood for a few moments on the front steps of the police station, allowing the snow to wet his hair, then he walked to the police parking lot and found that all four tires on his Pathfinder had been slashed.
9
To be a threat to somebody, all a person has to do is wake up in the morning. Did it really matter, Pace asked himself, if it was Bee Sting who slashed his tires? If so, Pace had to give him credit for so quickly detecting the correct vehicle to target, and for figuring out that Pace was the person who had filed a complaint concerning Bee Sting’s behavior regarding Gagool. Of course, flattening—no, destroying—the tires was a warning, a dramatic message to cease interfering in a family matter. Replacing the tires had been an expensive nuisance. Pace had called Lula’s old friend Oscarito at his service station, and his son—Oscarito, Jr.—had driven over with four new tires and changed them out. Pace appreciated Oscarito, Jr.’s quick work, especially in the falling snow, and tipped him handsomely.
As soon as he got home, Pace took out the Glenmorangie and finished off the bottle. He had to decide how deeply he wanted to become involved in the life of Gagool Angola. A solution that seemed feasible to him was to find a relative—a grandmother, or aunt, perhaps—who could, if willing, take responsibility for raising the girl. Pace certainly did not want to confront Bee Sting, or even Oswaldina Capoverde, but it could prove worthwhile to explore this possibility.
Pace had driven through Bug Town any number of times, but he did not know his way around the satellite community. Snow had not accumulated on the ground, but the pothole-riddled streets were icy slick, so Pace drove cautiously the next morning, looking for a church. In a block of mostly ramshackle houses, he cruised slowly by a white wood building with the words BEYONG GOD AND THE DEVIL DISCIPLES OF LAZARUS on an unlit neon sign above the entrance. He stopped his Pathfinder, backed up, parked in front and got out. Flurries were flying now and a piercing wind caused Pace to narrow his shoulders and shiver in his thin leather coat as he walked on a broken sidewalk toward the front door. It was unlocked, so he opened it and entered.
The Up-Down Page 9
