Fire Lake

by Jonathan Valin

  “Maybe Norvelle was Lonnie’s connection on the cocaine deal,” I offered.

  “Maybe,” Karen said absently, “although Norvelle was into getting down—not up.”

  “It’s still worth a look-see,” I said, trying to sound positive. “You’ve got to start thinking like a detective.”

  “I don’t think I like being a detective, Harry,” Karen said as she guided the car back out onto Vine Street. “It hurts too much.”

  “Tell me about it,” I said with a laugh.

  ******

  The Bijou theater was located on Fourth Street, on the first floor of a converted brownstone office building. The brownstone was right on the edge of what had become the gallery district—a block of trendy, hi-tech art emporiums. I could remember when that same block had been the wholesale clothing district. When I was a kid, my grandfather had jobbed menswear from the second floor of one of the brownstones.

  It gave me an odd feeling to be wandering near his old warehouse. In fact, I found myself staring nostalgically at the tall windows of the building that used to house his company. I’d spent a lot of hot summer afternoons in that warehouse. It was a printing outfit now.

  As we walked down Fourth, Karen seemed to be lost in thought too. I figured she was still brooding about Lonnie. It didn’t make me happy to know that. I didn’t know quite how it made me feel. Guilty, jealous. A little of both. More jealous than guilty, finally. I’d already started thinking of her as my own.

  The Bijou was still a very new place and trendy, like the arty shops around it. There was no old-fashioned marquee, running with light bulbs, above the doors—just a neon sign on the bare brick wall reading “Bijou” in fancy script. The lobby was tiled in parquet. The walls were decorated, like a gallery’s, with works of local artists; and there were several abstract-looking metal sculptures dotting the floor. One of them reminded me of the fish statue in front of the futuresque house in Jacques Tati’s Mon Oncle. In fact it would have been a funny allusion, if the rest of the theater hadn’t reminded me of the house itself. It seemed as if someone had gone a long way out of his or her way to make the Bijou look like anything but what it was. The only bows to tradition were the chrome-and-glass refreshment stand on the right and the little ticket booth built into the wall on the left. And when I took a closer look, I realized that the refreshments at the stand consisted of hot cider and espresso. No popcorn machine. No Milk Duds. No orange drink.

  In the rear of the lobby, a guy who was trying very hard not to look like an usher was standing in front of a pair of polished wooden doors leading to the theater. He was a white college kid, a DAAP student from the look of him. And the girl in the ticket booth looked just as white and collegiate. It seemed like an odd place for a black junkie to be working.

  “I guess we’re going to have to ask about Norvelle,” Karen said, glancing around the lobby, I don’t see him here.”

  I nodded and walked over to the ticket booth. The girl inside smiled at me with polished insincerity.

  “Two?” she said sweetly.

  I shook my head and her face fell. “I’m looking for one of your employees. Norvelle Thomas.”

  “I don’t think Norvelle is working today,” she said.

  “Is there someone here I could talk to about Norvelle? It’s really important that I get in touch with him.”

  The college girl gave me a skeptical look. I could hardly blame her. Norvelle Thomas didn’t seem like the kind of guy with a guest register.

  “I guess you could talk to our manager, Leanne,” the girl said. “If it’s really that important.”

  “Oh, it is,” I said, looking serious and concerned.

  “There’s a door on your right,” she said. “Just go through and tell the secretary you want Leanne Silverstein.”

  “Thanks.”

  There was a door on the right, but it took me a few seconds to find it. It had been made to look like part of the wainscoted wall.

  I opened it up and ushered Karen through.

  We walked down a little corridor to an anteroom full of sleek Italian modern furniture and framed movie posters. A secretary, another college girl, was kneeling in a backless chair in front of a lacquered desk so smooth and angleless it looked as if it had been poured from a jar. Soft rock music was being piped in from speakers concealed in the ceiling.

  “Yes?” the secretary said, looking a little alarmed at the company.

  “We’d like to speak to Leanne Silverstein,” I said.

  “I don’t know if she’s in,” the secretary said.

  “Tell her Lonnie Jackowski’s wife, Karen, wants to see her,” Karen said.

  The secretary got out of the chair as if she were dismounting a horse. She started off down another hall, looked back nervously, and said, “Just stay there, okay?”

  Karen nodded, and the secretary walked off.

  “Christ,” Karen said with a scowl, “this is going to be awful.”

  “I’m kind of curious,” I said. “Why would a woman with this kind of job hire a black junkie?”

  “Old times, probably,” Karen said. “I think she and Norvelle used to sleep together, after she broke up with Lonnie.”

  “Is she black?” I asked.

  “Half-and-half. Her parents were a mixed couple—solidly middle-class. Her father was a GP. Her mother was a social worker. They raised Leanne like a white kid, and she was so light, she could pass. Then the sixties came along, and passing for white suddenly didn’t seem as good a deal as it once did. Leanne went through a hell of a lot of changes about that. She and her dad used to get into real screaming matches about the race thing and about Lonnie. I saw them fight, once—at Sy’s studio, actually. It was awful. I mean, I think he would have hit her if the band hadn’t been standing around. I think he hit her a lot, anyway. Her dad was a real hardworking black man, who was proud of what he’d accomplished with his life. And, man, he did not like what Leanne was doing with hers.”

  “How did she end up with Lonnie?”

  Karen smiled. “Lonnie had his good points, Harry.”

  “I remember,” I said.

  “I don’t just mean sex. He was also a very sympathetic guy. Completely nonjudgmental. He more or less took people at face value—took them for what they wanted to be. He was like a very flattering mirror, if you understand what I mean.”

  “Better than you think,” I said, remembering the way Lonnie had helped me when I’d first met him.

  “I guess Leanne just connected with him at the right time. From what Lonnie told me, she’d been an art student when the black power thing started up. Sometime in the mid-sixties, she dropped out of DAA and tied up with some local black activists. Those dudes were really into macho, and they ended up treating her like shit. When Lonnie met her at the end of ‘68, she was very confused about her race and her sex and her folks, who couldn’t understand why she wasn’t happy being the white girl they’d raised her to be. Lonnie was a good listener. He helped her out. He lived with her until he met me, in ‘69.”

  Karen glanced nervously down the hall.

  “It has been close to twenty years, Karen,” I said. “She’s probably forgotten the whole thing.”

  “You don’t understand,” Karen said, shaking her head. “Leanne tried to kill herself after Lonnie broke up with her. She took some pills. That’s not something you’re likely to forget, even if you wanted to forget it. And Leanne didn’t want to. For a year or two after that, she’d send Lonnie these pathetic letters about how her life was over and how he’d ruined her for other men. She laid a real guilt trip on him, and on me.”

  The secretary came back into the anteroom—a smile on her face. “Follow me, won’t you,” she said. “Leanne’s office is in the back.”

  Karen glanced at me nervously as we followed the secretary down the hall. “I’m not looking forward to this,” she said in a stage whisper.

  I patted her back and said, “If it gets us closer to Lonnie, it’ll be worth it
.”

  24

  WE FOLLOWED the secretary up to a door at the end of the hall.

  “Through there,” she said, smiling cordially.

  I opened the door, guiding Karen in ahead of me.

  It was a tiny, dry-walled office—not much bigger than the anteroom and furnished in the same chic, gallery style with posters and sleek Italian furniture. On the far side of the room, across from the door, a very pretty woman in a pale gray silk dress was sitting behind a white lacquered desk. The woman had a round, high-cheeked, light brown face, and curly, dark brown hair cut short and tinted with henna. She’d made herself up expertly—pale blue eye shadow that gave her black eyes an almost Egyptian look and bright red lipstick that made her large, sensuous mouth gleam like cut strawberries. There was something not quite sober about the woman’s beautiful eyes. They were slightly unfocused-looking, as if she’d been drinking. But nothing else about her suggested that she was drunk. She smiled at us as we entered the room.

  “Hello, Karen,” she said in a sweet, lilting voice. “It’s been a long time.”

  “Hello, Leanne,” Karen said with a stab at a smile. “You look prosperous.”

  “That’s what I’ve become,” Leanne Silverstein said with an abrupt laugh. “Prosperous.”

  “You’re not complaining, are you?” Karen said sarcastically.

  Leanne Silverstein shook her head. “No. It’s just that prosperity wasn’t all I expected, if you can dig where I’m coming from. How about you?” She stared at Karen with open curiosity. “How did things work out for you and Lonnie?”

  Karen sighed heavily. “Not so good,” she said with an effort. “We’re not together anymore. And neither one us is...prosperous.”

  The two women stared at each other silently for a long moment. Karen glanced at me uncomfortably. She wanted out—I could see it in her face and so could Leanne Silverstein. I felt a little embarrassed for both of them. I also felt distinctly like a third wheel.

  Leanne Silverstein leaned forward, planting her elbows on the desktop and resting her lovely face in her hands. A strand of pearls she was wearing at her throat fell forward and clicked against a gold bracelet on her right wrist. “You’re still mad at me, aren’t you, Karen?” she said, stating what was obvious.

  Karen looked nonplussed, then said, “Yes. A little. Aren’t you mad at me?”

  “A little,” Leanne admitted. “But I can handle it. The older I get, the more important friends become to me. I can’t afford to hold grudges anymore. It’s just too damn cold outside.”

  Karen half smiled at her.

  “Who is your friend?” Leanne said, glancing my way.

  “I’m Harry Stoner,” I said.

  “Sit down, Mr. Stoner. You, too, Karen.” She gestured to two handsome chairs in front of her desk. When Karen hesitated, Leanne added: “Please.”

  We sat down across from her.

  Leanne kept staring at Karen in a wistful, vaguely remorseful way.

  “Are you in town for long, Karen?” she said. “I’d like you to come out to our farm if you have the time. We call it the farm, although it’s just a house and a duck pond.”

  “We?” Karen asked.

  “I’ve got a husband now and a couple of sons. I married Jon Silverstein. Remember him?”

  Karen looked surprised. “Jon the Postman?”

  Leanne nodded her head and mugged long-sufferingly. “Jon the Postman. He doesn’t deliver mail on Calhoun Street anymore. He’s got his own real estate business. I manage this theater and a small gallery around the corner. We do all right, I guess. But it’s tame, compared to the old days.”

  Karen smiled. “Sometimes I think tame is better.”

  The two women eyed each other again, a little less tensely.

  Leanne leaned back in her chair. “I guess I owe you something like an apology,” she said, after a time. “I mean, for the way I carried on after Lonnie and I broke up.”

  Karen shook her head. “What’s the point? We were different people then.”

  “Still,” Leanne said. “I shouldn’t have put you through all those changes. I just didn’t have anyone but Lonnie to hold on to.”

  “Did you ever make it up with your folks?” Karen asked.

  Leanne nodded. “Eventually. I guess we all do, eventually. As soon as I got a job and started making some money, they took me back in the fold. And, of course, I married a honkie. And that pleased Dad.”

  Karen smiled, but Leanne didn’t look particularly happy about the dispensation.

  “Dad and I still don’t see eye to eye on most things. But he’s older now, and I’m older too. So...it doesn’t seem to matter like it used to. He and Mom stay out at the farm, now that they’re retired. In fact, the place really belongs to them. Jon and I just go out for dinner every once in a while and on the weekends. Mom’s got a garden. Dad does some hunting and fishing. They seems to like it out there, especially when the kids come out to visit, although Dad’s still kind of hard-nosed when I’m around.”

  Leanne Silverstein got a troubled look on her face, as if talking about her father had upset her.

  “Last I heard, you and Lonnie were in Hollywood,” she said, abruptly changing the subject.

  “That was a long time ago,” Karen said.

  “You know, I was out in L.A. for a while, too, back in ‘71 and ‘72. I did some graduate work at UCLA. Spent most of the time stoned out of my head. Made a lot of guys. It was my last fling before I came limping back home to Cincinnati and got reformed. I didn’t know I was going to get reformed. I just thought I was paying the folks a visit. Looking for a little TLC and some home cooking. Looking to get my head straight after L.A. But the weeks stretched into months. And the times...they do keep changing. And here I am. Still.” She looked thoughtfully at her desk. “I kept thinking maybe I’d run into you or Lonnie out in L.A. After I came home, I used to brood about that a lot. It was like a chance I’d missed—a chance to patch things up.”

  “We weren’t there for very long, Leanne,” Karen said. “Things didn’t go well for Lonnie in L.A. We moved to New York at the end of ‘70. After that, we drifted around.”

  Leanne nodded. “How is Lonnie?” she said delicately. “I mean, is he all right?”

  “I don’t know,” Karen said with a frown. “That’s why I’m here. We’re trying to find him.”

  “Find him?” Leanne said, looking confused. “Is he lost?”

  “Lonnie’s still a junkie, Leanne,” Karen said flatly. “He was in Lexington for the last two years. He was released a couple of weeks ago, and apparently got himself involved in a drug deal here in Cincinnati. Something went wrong, and now he’s in trouble.”

  Leanne put her hands to her face and pulled down on either cheek, stretching her mouth into a ripe red grimace. “Lonnie’s in trouble?” she said with real pain in her voice.

  Karen nodded. “Harry and I are trying to bail him out—if it’s not too late.”

  “Jesus,” Leanne said, looking horrified. “How can I help?”

  “You’ve got a guy working for you here—Norvelle Thomas,” I said. “We’d like to talk to him.”

  “Norvelle?” she said. “Why Norvelle?”

  “Lonnie might have been in touch with him,” Karen said. “Sy Levy said that he was talking about paying Norvelle a visit, last Wednesday. Something about getting the band together again.”

  “I’m off on Wednesday,” Leanne said with an uneasy look. “And I haven’t talked to Norvelle in a couple of weeks.” She dropped her hands from her cheeks and sat up in her chair. “Do you know anything about the drug deal that Lonnie was involved in?”

  We both looked at her uncertainly.

  “I have a reason for asking,” Leanne said, when we didn’t answer her right away.

  “It was crack,” I said. “And it must have been a sizable amount, because the folks Lonnie was dealing with want it back in the worst way.”

  “Which folks?” Leanne said.
/>   “We’re not sure. But they’re young and they’re black and they’re tough.”

  Leanne nodded angrily, as if I’d confirmed what she’d been thinking. “That fucking Norvelle!”

  “You think he was involved in this?” I asked.

  “Of course he was involved.” She glared at me as if that should have been obvious. “I never should have given him a job. If it hadn’t been for old times, I wouldn’t have. God damn him.”

  “Norvelle deals crack?”

  “Norvelle does anything for a dime bag,” she said. “He’s been strung out so long, it isn’t funny. He’s one of those guys from the sixties who just never made it to the other side of the decade. I hate to say it, but he probably put Lonnie in touch with the man.”

  “It would help if we could get Norvelle’s address.”

  “He used to live on Cross Lane in East Walnut Hills. Last house on the left. But a guy like Norvelle usually goes where the action is—where the junk is. And I don’t know where that would be.”

  “Is there any way we can find out?” I said.

  Leanne started to answer me when a tall, red-haired man with a drooping mustache walked into the room. He had a pleasant, horsey face—ruddy, freckled and lit up with the sort of toothy, feckless grin you see on rookie ballplayers. Although he was dressed in tailored business clothes, the outfit didn’t suit him. He moved inside his pinstripes as if he were wearing a spacesuit, as if he could hardly wait to doff the woolens and pull on a pair of jeans.

  Leanne looked startled by the interruption. She put both hands on her desk and stared at the man coldly.

  “Don’t you ever knock?” she snapped.

  The man shrugged good-naturedly. “Can’t I pay you a lunchtime visit?” he said with his loopy smile. “After all, I own the joint.”

  “You own it. I run it. This is my office, and I expect some privacy. I thought we’d agreed on that. God knows I get little enough of it everywhere else.”

  The man’s big grin just disappeared, as if all of his teeth had fallen out on the ground in front of him. “Jesus, Leanne,” he said, looking embarrassed and bewildered. “It’s not as if I’m a stranger.”