by Don DeLillo
“What a thing to say.”
“Get your clothes on.”
“My sister lives in Little Rock,” she said.
Dressed, she led the way through a series of storerooms. They emerged in a larger room occupied by a woman wearing black boots, a long black military shirt and an iron cross hanging from her neck. The shirt included a red armband with a black swastika set inside a circular field of white. The woman sat smoking, her feet propped on the top rung of a small ladder.
“Passing through.”
“You’re the new one.”
“Nadine Rademacher. Hi. How’s business.”
“Sucks,” the woman said.
“Enjoy your break.”
“Who’s Johnny Lonesome?”
“Just a hanger-on,” Nadine said. “Can’t get rid of the kid.”
In the corridor they passed the same man Selvy had seen earlier, standing in a different doorway this time.
“Photograph live nudes.”
“Angelo, why don’t you go home?” Nadine said.
“Busload of Japanese coming down from the Hilton.”
At the top of the stairway Selvy asked Nadine to wait a moment. He followed the same route he’d taken after entering. Turning the corner into an empty hallway he palmed his .38 and held it flat against his thigh. Went past the window, the room full of novelties. Opened the black metal door. No one there. Stony’s racing form on the desk. He walked through into the studio. Empty. He holstered the gun and went out to find Nadine.
The street was even more crowded than it had been. Apparently there’d been action. Squad cars, an ambulance, a TV crew. People made faces for the camera. Selvy scanned the crowd, then led Nadine along the front of the building and down a cross street to the nearest restaurant. It was a dark cellar, a steak place, and the waiter wore spats. Only two other tables were occupied. An extramarital affair at one. Judge Crater at the other.
“My drama teacher talked me off L.A.,” Nadine said. “He kept saying New York. New York actors. Character actors. People with faces.”
“He seemed to think faces were important, did he?”
“He kept saying faces. People with faces. He said I wouldn’t learn anything in a place where there’s just one basic face.”
The waiter glided by.
“Kitchen’s closing if you want to order.”
The old man nearby, with long white stringy hair, sipped his complimentary cordial.
“So you’re an actress,” Selvy said.
“Aspiring.”
“That place you work at.”
“It was all a storage area. Is that what you mean? Why is it set up so everything’s so hard to get to? They kept materials there. Books, rubber and leather, film equipment, editing equipment, everything. Then somebody in the organization decided to open it up to street trade, even though it’s hidden away on the second and third floor. It’s the accountants, Stony said. A tax matter. You’re not a cop. We established that. Am I right?”
“Right.”
“Talerico,” she said, fixing him with a meaningful look.
“Familiar.”
“There’s two of them. Paul. That’s the one who’s here. One of the New York families, as you can well imagine. Pornography, trucking, vending machines. Don’t you love it? That’s the legitimate end. The other one. That’s Vincent. He’s up-state or somewhere. They’re cousins, I think.”
“I know the names,” Selvy said.
“Vincent’s in charge of acquiring, Stony said. Acquisitions. He specializes in first-run movies. When they can’t get rights by bargaining, they send Vincent. He gets the film. He just takes it. Then they make their own prints. Then they distribute.”
She hunched way down in her chair, conspiratorially, her face just inches above the table top.
“They call him Vinny the Eye. Don’t you love it? It’s so dumb, I love it. I’ve only seen Paul. He was in the other day. Everybody went around saying, ‘Paul’s here, Paul, he’s in the building.’ I was disappointed in Paul. I was not impressed. It was disillusioning for a country girl like myself. I think Vinny’s the Hollywood one. The dresser. The fancy gangster type. It’s really dumb. I wish he’d come around so I could see him.”
When the food came she didn’t waste time, obviously hungry. Watching her eat relaxed him. It occurred to Selvy he hadn’t been hungry in years. He’d experienced weakness and discomfort from lack of food. But he hadn’t desired it really, except to ease the discomfort. He tried to recall the last time he’d felt a real desire for food.
“Are you seriously going to Little Rock?” she said.
“Thereabouts, sure, why not.”
“Ever since I’ve been working in that place I keep thinking the whole world smells of Lysol.”
“You owe me a story, you know.”
“ ‘Naomi and Lateef.’ ”
“I might change my mind,” he said.
“All I know, I’m not doing ‘Flaming Panties.’ That story’s so sick I’ve been changing it little by little. A little every day. I don’t care who complains. It’s a story that relies on combinations. Incest is just the beginning. It starts with incest. Then near the end it just becomes reciting words. Some words I just won’t say. It piles on the phrases. It becomes red meat.”
“Your customers.”
“They laugh, mostly. Some get embarrassed. You’d be surprised.”
“Sitting there naked, laughing.”
“Sheepish nudes, I told Stony.”
“So some words you just won’t say.”
She finished chewing the last bite of baked potato.
“Who are you trying to avoid anyway?”
Selvy looked toward the old man, who sat rigidly staring into space.
“Tieu to dac cong.”
He gave her a delayed smile, self-consciously weary, and signaled for the check.
Outside a police towaway crew was about ready to haul the battered Cadillac. Tourists were interested in the pimpmobile. A man, two women and two children posed for pictures, using the car as background. When they were finished, two other women and three children moved into position along the front door and fender. A conventioneer wearing an enormous name tag crouched in the gutter, inserting a flash cube in his Instamatic.
Earl Mudger stood on the patio, facing east, barechested despite the chill, a mug of coffee in his hand. He liked being the first one up, coming down in the dark to start the coffee perking. He would roll his shoulders as he moved around the house, would swing his arms occasionally, feeling the stiffness ease away. Ever since he could remember, in whatever house or barracks he’d lived, with whatever people, family or military, he’d always been the first one up.
With pale light intensifying, aspects of sunrise visible through the trees, he went back into the kitchen. On the counter lay a manila folder and a spool of magnetic tape. He poured more coffee into his mug and sat on a stool, opening the folder and scanning the topmost page, a document headed: Department of the Treasury, District Director, Internal Revenue Service. Beneath this was a white label with a long series of numbers arrayed across the top, followed by Grace Delaney’s name and home address.
Mudger began turning pages, glancing at audit forms, photocopied documents, photocopied checks and bank statements, agent evaluations, notices of “unfavorable action.” He closed the folder and regarded the tape spool. It contained confidential information on the accounts of roughly five hundred taxpayers and had been acquired by Lomax from the same source, an IRS supervisor who had access to restricted files. Among the data was further information relating to Grace Delaney’s account.
Mudger finished his coffee and went downstairs. He rechecked the fit and worked some more on the handle section. Then he put on his magnifying glasses and studied the blade.
The knife was a modified bowie. It had a broad sweeping single-edged blade with a clipped point. Overall length was about eleven and a half inches. The blade measured seven and a quarter.
> There was a display panel, a hinged triptych, fastened to the wall above a work table. Mudger’s knives were exhibited here, some he’d made himself, others turned out by custom knifemakers.
They had sex in the front seat of Selvy’s car, which was parked in the barren dells near the West Side Highway. It was an act they knew would take place as they walked through the dark streets to the car. It helped dispel certain disquieting energies. Times Square Saturday night.
“My hotel’s right near that restaurant. Why are we doing it here?”
“I’m a little crazy tonight.”
“Try reaching that ashtray and push it closed.”
Stale cigarette butts. Smell of various plastics that made up the interior of the car. They straightened up finally. She sat on the driver’s side, back resting against the door, her feet up on the seat. Selvy looked straight ahead. A silence, followed by:
“Naomi is this buxom Israeli girl who we find bathing one day in a stream that runs through her kibbutz. She has giant white breasts, etcetera etcetera, nipples, etcetera. So then along comes Lateef, who’s an Arab army deserter. Well, to tighten the script, they meet and fall in love and just screw and screw and screw, doing it where they won’t be discovered. Forbidden love with a capital F. I’m skipping the details, understand. There’s a lot about Lateef’s Arab pecker, which you probably don’t mind if I glide over. Anyway one day we find them having a picnic on the Golan Heights. It’s very star-crossed and tender.”
“Wait a second.”
He was looking in the rearview mirror. Nadine turned her head, intending to lean back out the open window and check what it was he’d seen.
“Don’t do that.”
Nobody said anything for the next four or five minutes. Selvy kept his eye on the mirror. He seemed engaged in deep and melancholy thought.
“It’s getting daylight,” she said.
He got out of the car, walked around to her side and stood leaning against the door, smoking.
“We ought to get my clothes. One thing, I won’t mind leaving that hotel. More Lysol. Night clerk’s insane. Pigeons in the elevator. One more week here, I’d be ready to fall on my sword.”
He was interested in knowing precisely what instruments, devices, tools they might be carrying. It would put things in perspective, having that information. It would clarify the relationship, subject to adjusters.
“Glen with one n,” she said. “If you’re bent on avoiding someone, how come you’re standing in plain sight outside the selfsame car that you’re getting ready to drive away in?”
He reacted as though coming out of a trance, a state of detachment from his present surroundings. Yet there was an element of alertness in his features, his whole body, as though at the center of that dazed state he’d found a level clearer than any thus far accessible to him.
He was facing east, watching the tops of buildings take on color in the hazy light.
1) A gut-hook skinning knife.
2) A fillet knife with a rosewood handle.
3) An Arkansas toothpick with a buffalo-horn handle.
4) A bowie weighing fifty-one ounces, with a ten-inch blade, scalloped butt cap and brass collar.
5) A throwing knife, minus handle.
6) A hunter with a cholla cactus handle.
7) A hunter with a dropped-point blade and a stag handle.
8) A boot knife with an ivory handle.
9) A stiletto.
10) A palm dagger.
11) An English-style bowie in a strictly decorative buckskin sheath.
12) A survival model with a hollow steel handle to accommodate codeine pills and water-purifying tablets.
13) A combat knife with a mahogany handle.
14) A combat knife with a brass guard and a five-inch blade.
15) A combat knife, walnut handle, set in a leather sheath.
16) A combat knife with a double-edged point and a seven-inch blade.
17) A combat knife with a double-edged point and an eight-inch blade.
5
The coffee table was new, inset with a plexiglass terrarium full of dwarf trees and shrubs. Grace Delaney talked into the phone, girlishly twirling the cord with her free hand. Eventually she went into her swivel routine, ending up facing the window. She hadn’t yet poured skin cream on her hands, so Moll stayed put, studying the bonsai, marveling at the other woman’s ability to produce convincingly intimate laughter.
Grace turned toward her, placing the phone in its cradle.
“We were saying.”
“You miss a sense of solid footing.”
“Moll, a single unnamed source.”
“We go with that all the time. That’s why Percival handed me the story. We’re totally irresponsible. He knows it gets picked up elsewhere once we run it.”
“We ain’t running it, swee’ pea. It’s essentially a blind item, the way you’ve written the thing. It’s couched in the most excruciatingly vague terms.”
“I use names,” Moll said. “I name Mudger. I name Radial Matrix.”
“It’s convoluted and tricky and elusive beyond anyone’s ability to salvage. It’s a ten-thousand-word blind item. Clunk. It goes down like pig iron.”
“What do you want changed?”
“I told you, it’s unsalvageable. We can’t build this elaborate dream structure using a single unnamed source who’s already told you he denies everything in advance. The Senator’s intent on moving you off his collection. That’s about the only basis this story seems to have.”
“He doesn’t know I’m on to his collection.”
“Knucklehead, of course he knows.”
“Grace, goddamn.”
“Want some coffee?”
“No.”
Delaney opened a desk drawer and gestured questioningly.
“Okay,” Moll said. “What is it?”
“Vodka.”
“Okay.”
She took the silver flask and drank.
“He knows, Moll. Of course he knows. He’s got resources. He’s got people all over the place. He’s a fucking senator, isn’t he?”
“I don’t like these plants.”
“Don’t be stupid. They’re beautiful.”
“Too carefully sculptured. They don’t look real.”
“Go do your sex piece,” Delaney said. “That was the original idea, wasn’t it?”
“It’s what led me precisely to the thing I ended up doing.”
“Time’s awastin’, Moll.”
“We’ve gone with riskier things.”
Delaney reached for the hand lotion. Her secretary came in, a middle-aged woman named Bess Harris. Moll gave her the flask as she went by, and she put it on the desk. Grace picked it up and drank.
“Want to hear my theory?” she said. “This is my world view. What the whole thing’s about, ultimately. Lloyd Percival and Earl Mudger and you and me and Bess and all of us. The bottom line.”
“Go ahead,” Moll said.
“All men are criminals. All women are Mafia wives.”
“Stupid. Very stupid.”
“I was married to the same man for eleven years. I did his bidding. Not fully realizing. His silent bidding. Somehow, mysteriously, unspokenly. It’s built into the air between us. It’s carried on radio waves from galaxy to galaxy.”
Bess Harris drank from the flask.
“Not for a minute,” Moll said. “I don’t believe word one.”
“I’m a Mafia wife.”
“Grace, shut up.”
Delaney took the flask from her secretary and drank.
“The ultimate genius of men. Do you care to know what it is? Men want. Women just hang around. Women think they’re steaming along on a tremendous career, toot toot. Nothing. Nowhere, I’m telling you. Men want. Bam, crash, pow. The impact, good Christ. Men want so badly. It makes us feel a little spacey, a little dizzy. What are we next to this great want, this universal bloodsucking need of theirs? Bess, get the hell out of here. What are
you doing here?”
“It doesn’t reach me,” Moll said.
“I have been backed into so many bloody corners, it’s reached the point where I just react automatically. I am so tired. I am so up against it. Bam. I am so old. You wouldn’t believe.”
“You’re not reaching me.”
“They’re crazy. That’s their secondary genius. They’re totally, rampagingly insane. Examine it. Really think. They’re nuts.”
“Who are you talking to?” Moll said.
“And we’re their wives. We live with them.”
“Because you’re not talking to me.”
“Examine it. Your own life. Dig really deep. It’s there. One way or another, it’s their game you play. Just so you know that. Just so you don’t believe otherwise. Because forget it, you’re not your daddy’s little girl anymore.”
“I know, Grace. The radio waves. The galaxies.”
“Think it out. Dig down.”
“Give me the flask, Grace.”
“I am so old and tired.”
“You won’t go with the piece,” Moll said. “Tell me so I can get out of here.”
“I was against your idea about Percival’s collection for the reasons I pointed out to you. Whatever they were. Lack of design, of political implications. This is a different issue, granted, this piece here, because there is design, there are implications, there is a web of sorts, a series of interconnections. But I can’t and won’t run it.”
“Because you’re old and tired,” Moll said.
“Because it’s too shaky. Too iffy. Not enough footing. I do miss that. A sense of solid footing.”
“Thank you.”
“Are we still friends?” Grace said.
Moll took a cab to the magazine’s West Side office, where her own cubicle was located. She went to work reediting a piece written by a professor of Eastern European studies. He asserted that Russian parapsychologists, at the prodding of the KGB, were close to perfecting a system of assassination by mental telepathy. Moll, actually, didn’t doubt it. She started playing with titles as the phone rang.
“Your old lemonade-drinking buddy.”
“Who?”
“Earl Mudger.”
“What do you want?”
“I’m heading your way.”
