"LaVerne there?" Never knew who might be at the other end of one of LaVerne's numbers.
"Who's this?"
"This is the guy who's calling for LaVerne."
"Yeah? Sounds like just another turkey to me."
'Tou took your head out of your ass, you might hear better."
"You got a definite point there."
He backed the phone off a few inches and shouted: "Hey, CNeil! Walsh up there? Well, he's for damn sure around here somewhere. Yeah you do that." Moments passed. "Griffin's on the line, boss." A staccato exchange of words. "Who else's it gonna be, mouth like that? Hey, always a pleasure talking to you, Griffin." He handed the phone over.
"Lew."
"I got a messagefrom LaVerne to call her at this number. She okay?"
"She's fine. Took her statement myself and sent her home in a black and white almost an hour ago. I asked her to call you."
Crazy Jane stood outside the booth patiendy waiting. When I smiled, she smiled back, then ducked her head shyly like a schoolgirl.
"Verne said she was trying to help youfindthis Esmay woman, from the shooting. So she talked it up on the street-'just like setting out trot lines back home,' she said. Got her firstbite around dinnertime, second one not long after. Hell of a lot better than we ever did, or were gonna do. 'Lew says you always hang back,' she told me, 'see what the traffic looks like, give the landscape a chance to become familiar.' She had a couple of coffees at the cafe on the corner and kept her eyes open, came up here and walked into this."
This was the messy anteroom of an apartment in a cul-de-sac off Jane Street.
Built in 1890 as a private home, the building persisted as such, various families moving in and out like hermit crabs, until 1954, at which time it came onto its first abandonment. The Sixties saw its irregular stories and multiple courtyards reincarnated as luxury apartments; late in the decade, following extensive consultations with lawyers, the building's new owners gave it over to use as an orphanage. Shortly thereafter began its second long decline.
These days, though a successful temp agency occupied its bottom floor, the rest remained an urban ghost town. Periodically movies were shot in those rambling uppers: crews would sweep in with brooms, paint and props, drape and hammer and arrange it all to look how they needed it, then disappear, leaving behind new habitats for the wild cats who lived there.
Don showed up to ransom mefrom the twenty-year-old pillar-of-salt sentinel stationed street level, frontdoor. We climbed narrow, listing stairs gone to rot and splinters, ducked through a sagging walkway.
Dana Esmay lay slumped just inside the entrance to apartment 3-B. A divider wall opened at either end into living room and kitchen areas. Green flocked wallpaper had been mostly torn away; what remained looked like healthy patches of mold. A dozen or so hats and caps hung from nails pounded into the wall.
"Wefigureshe was squatting here," Don said.
"Someone was."
"Evidence of the same in a couple of other apartments on the floor below. Power came from an extension cord, one of those heavy-duty orange ones. It's plugged into an external oudet on the patio downstairs."
I lifted a hat off one of the nails, checked its size, held it close above what was left of her head.
"Look like afitto you?"
Don nodded. "I see your point."
Dana lay with arms and legs askew. Her throat looked like something from a butcher's block. An electric carving knife was on thefloor by one hand.
"We think LaVerne pushing the door open's what pulled the plug. She, the Esmay woman, was lying against the door. LaVerne remembers hearing a buzzing sound. Had no idea what it was at the time, of course."
The wound in the woman's throat gapped open, oddly intimate. Some secret small thing had squeezed through this portal from elsewhere, leaving our own world forever changed. Beside the wound, to the left, were several long cuts. I leaned down to look closer.
"Hesitation marks," Don said.
"Or signs that she was struggling, turning, trying to get away."
Blood pooled beneath one turned-down wrist. Maybe she'd had a go at that, botched it, before moving higher. Or maybe instinctively she'd thrown that arm up in self-defense.
"Here's the rest." Don turned her head. The back of it, from the crown well into the neck, was cut away. Scalloped came to mind. I couldn't remember when I'd last seen this much blood.
"ME says his best guess is she plugged the thing in, took a couple of trial swipes, then pulled it across. Both carotids are gone and she's dead at this point, but there's still ten to twelve seconds' worth of oxygen left in her brain. She's on automatic: her arm and hand keep going. Then the hand hits empty space and jerks around to the back. Two or three last whacks before she's down You okay, Lew?"
I nodded.
"It's her, right?"
"Yeah. It's her."
She turns and holds her arms out. Ducking to fitmore comfortably, I step into them, hugging her. A low-rider pumps by beside us, bass speakers pounding. Faint strains of Buster's guitar and singing, "Goin' Back to Florida, "from inside. Shadows of banana trees move huge on the wall. The moon is full. Then I sense something new. I look up, to the rooftop opposite. The bullet comes to me as I throw my arms wide.
Someday, I swear, I'm going to put together an anthology, The Nose Book. It'll have Gogol's classic story, the nose job from Pynchon's V, Damon Knight's "God's Nose" (the universe was created when God sneezed), Pinocchio, Steve Martin's tour-de-force nose jokes from Roxanne, clips from Woody Allen's Sleeper. Maybe I'll put a photo of Mel Gold on the cover.
Leaving the scene on Jane Street, Don and I had gone out for a drink. One drink became two, then four, and I'd finished up, two in the morning, back at the house alone with a half-bottle of plum brandy someone had brought to a dinner party weeks before and had sense enough to leave behind. Vaguely I remembered Verne coming home and trying to talk to me. Not long after, I staggered into the bathroom to throw up. I was lying beached on the front room couch, no idea what time it was, heart pounding, flashes going off behind closed eyes, when the doorbell rang.
I may have opened a closet or two before I found my way to the right door.
"Hi there. Good to see you. Go away," I said, and shut the door.
"Look," I said, opening it again when the bell resumed. I'd meant to say something, had something firmlyin mind, but lost it. I may have shut the door again, I'm not sure. Things blur for a while then. Next clear picture I have, we're sitting in the kitchen over toast with melted cheese and mayonnaise and he's telling me how he's just moved here with his familyfrom the Bronx. "That's in New York."
I told him yeah, I thought I'd heard something about that.
"I'm an accountant for J. Walters, an electronics company, been with the firm almost thirty years. No one came right out and said it, but the message was clear. Either I took the transfer, or I'd better start getting my resume in order. I'mfifty-three, Mr. Griffin-"
"Lew."
"I never did anything else, or lived anywhere else, and I'm fifty-three. What am I supposed to do? It wasn't just me, though. Six other families transferred down with us. We couldn't believe our luck when we found houses all together. Took a while before it sank in there might be a reason for that.
" 'Remember how the real estate agent wouldn't look any of us in the eye?' my wife said when troubles started. Says she knew then that something wasn't right. But I was so determined the move was going to work out, I ignored anything to the contrary.
"It started out slowly enough. Gates left open to let pets out, dirt thrown over walls at clothes drying on lines, newspapers undelivered, trash cans upended in our driveways. Then a couple of us had bricks tossed through windows, what looked like blood poured on our porches. Once again, the message was clear."