We made it along narrow corridors smelling of chlorine and through a steel fire door without getting spotted. Walsh started the engine and sat there a moment looking ahead.
“You know, you probably saved more than one life out there tonight, Lew,” he said.
Then he slipped the Corvair into gear and headed for Jefferson Highway.
Chapter Twenty-Three
It takes a while for us to realize that our lives have no plot. At first we imagine ourselves into great struggles of darkness and light, heroes in our Levi’s or pajamas, impervious to the gravity that pulls down all others. Later on we contrive scenes in which the world’s events circle like moons about us-like moths about our porch lights. Then at last, painfully, we begin to understand that the world doesn’t even acknowledge our existence. We are the things that happen to us, the people we’ve known, nothing more.
Once reporters had dispersed, the mayor’s office lost interest in me. Walsh helped convince police and media to conceal my name and identify me only as an employee of SeCure Corps. From Corene Davis, a citizen whose own privacy was fatally compromised and who must therefore have come to cherish that of others, I received three days later a handwritten note of thanks.
SeCure wasn’t so easy.
A telegram waited for me, lodged between front door and frame. Please contact us ASAP, it said. When I went in, I found an envelope pushed under the door. Engraved letterhead inside. SeCure Corps wanted me to come to work for them as a field supervisor, overseeing all part-time and contract employees. Stock options were mentioned.
Good folks, those people down at SeCure. Stuff America’s made of. Excellent management, careful planning, fine strategies. Deserve their $1.5 million net.
Except that when I got to sleep, one of them came crawling in to drag me out.
Thuds at the door-like the drums the natives use before the great doors in King Kong. Mystery. Ritual. Wonder. Oh my.
I was dreaming of drums in Congo Square. I was a child, with no comprehension of the languages rolling about me. I pressed close to my father, afraid. So much to be afraid of. I could feel the strange words gathering like coughs in his chest. Then I was in church humming along (since I didn’t know the words) “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” looking up at stained-glass panels, parable of the prodigal son. The drums went on. At last I surfaced and slouched, not towards Bethlehem, but only the door.
“You hit that door again, I’ll take your arm off,” I said. Damn it’s bright out there.
She looked sharply at me, opened her hand, lowered her arm. Then on impulse held the hand out. Slim fingers, narrow wrist. I took it. The world ached anew with possibilities.
“We’ve been trying to contact you, Mr. Griffin.”
“We?”
“SeCure Corps. I’m Bonnie Bitler, executive vice president. Veep, as they say, to make me feel like one of the boys.”
So much for a world awaft with possibilities. Just business as usual. But she’d have a hell of a time ever passing for one of the boys.
She wore a silk skirt and matching coat, somewhere between navy and black, with a light-blue blouse, simple strand of pearls. The skirt, cut close, fell just below her knees. She was trim and tall. Only the skin at her hands tipped her age: over forty, maybe closer to fifty.
“Sounds impressive, no? But the truth of it is that my husband Ephraim started the whole thing. Kick-started it, he used to say. Before he dropped, thirty years old, face-first into a gumbo I’d made from scratch. Four hours, I’d been at it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I am too. Probably the best gumbo I ever made.” She smiled. “Don’t think I’m harsh. It’s been a long time now.”
I nodded.
“All I had to do was pick up where Ephraim left off. And before long we were big enough that all these others started coming around. Looking in the windows, sniffing at the doorsill.”
“Bonnie Bitler, would you like some coffee?”
“I would, Mr. Griffin. If it’s not too much trouble.”
“Lew.”
“Lew. Yes, please. I’d like that a lot.”
She followed me out to the kitchen.
“I have no idea why I’m telling you all this.”
Setting a pan of water over the burner, I shrugged. “People talk to me. Always have.” I dumped beans into the grinder, worked the handle.
“I was going to just come here and offer you a job. Things don’t get much simpler. But I seem to have kind of jumped track.”
“Kind of.” I crimped a paper towel into the plastic cone, dumped in pulverized beans, poured boiling water over. Set a pan of milk on the stove. “But lots of the time things look better from side roads.”
“Will you at least consider the job?”
“Let me think about it.”
“But you’re not really interested.”
“Generally I don’t do too well, working for someone else. On the other hand, at this point I have something like ten dollars to my name. Not to mention outstanding hospital bills.”
“I’m sorry: I thought you realized. Those were taken care of. We have an exemplary medical plan.”
And I had someone sitting across from me who used words like exemplary in conversation. That didn’t happen often.
I set a cup of au lait on the table before her. Went back to the stove to pour my own.
“Ephraim was no great businessman,” she said. “But he liked strong men, men with principles, with integrity, and he had a fine talent for finding them, often in the most unlikely places. I like to think I have something of the same talent.”
“Thank you.”
“No need to. But you’ll call? Let me know?”
I said I would.
She laughed, richly. “Men always say that, don’t they? They’ll call. And then never do.”
She paused at the door. “Maybe this time I’ll call, just to talk. Do you think that would be okay? Or that possibly we might meet somewhere, have a drink or coffee?”
I thought that would be just fine. Oh yes.
When she was gone, fully awake now, I mixed a drink, pain raking fingernails down the blackboard of every breath, took it outside and sat on what remained of the big house’s front steps.
In the car Walsh had said, “This guy scares me, Lewis. Not many do. I won’t feel right unless you have this.” He laid my.38 on the flat shelf behind the gearshift.
He scared me, too. I remembered Esme’s face, her hand clutching at mine. I remembered the shooter scrambling over a Dumpster and through the delivery door. Remembered the cab driver’s baseball bat swacking into me.
Felt like the bat was still swacking into me, every breath I took.
I had a drink, had another. Ought to carve notches in the neck of the bottle.
About four P.M. I got up and took one of the capsules the doctor had prescribed. Washed it down with gin and went back to bed.
Woke up hours later with Hosie Straughter crouched over me. Wet rag on my face. Dark outside.
“You all right, Lew? You in there, buddy? I need to call an ambulance?”
“Murgh.” Something like that.
“Getting pretty scary here, Lewis. You okay or not, man?”
I struggled toward the surface. Dark up there, not light. Layer of ice I couldn’t break through, but a space between water and ice, air there I could breathe.
“Goddamn it, Lewis.”
I pushed the wet rag off my face.
My heart pounded. Acrid taste far back in my throat. Stomach aflop. Urgent messages dove and turned like sharks in my intestines.
“Murgh,” I said, hand wrapped around his throat.
“Okay, okay.”
I rolled away. Ears ringing. Every nerve ending felt as though sandpaper had been taken to it.
“Tea on the floor by your right hand.”