Just like the entryway on Jane Street.
Verne hung up, detouring to the bathroom. When she came back out, starting to ask if I wanted breakfast, I'd taken over the phone, was waiting while they tracked Don down.
"Lew."
"What a man. Party all night, still show up for work."
"What the fuck else am I gonna do, stay home and suck aspirin, watch reruns of Hazel? How you feeling?"
"Like a garbage bag left out in the sun."
"Good. Hate to think I was the only one. What can I do for you?"
"Had a thought. Jane Street been packed up?"
"Yeah."
"There was a wad of paper on the table just inside. Discarded pages folded in half to make a scratch pad, kind of thing you might jot names and numbers on. Any chance that got kept?"
"Damned good chance, if there was writing on it."
"That's what I was hoping."
"Anything there, though, it's already been checked out."
"What I'm wondering now is what was on the back of them, where they came from."
Don thought about that a moment. "You at home?"
"Yeah."
"Let me call down to Property. Any luck, they might actually be able to find the stuff. I'll get right back to you."
While I waited, I went in and ground more coffee. Verne said she was going back to bed. I said I might join her.
"We got half lucky," Don told me. "Most of the papers got tossed-nothing there, Willis said. A few of them had numbers and the like scribbled down, though. Those, he saved."
"And?"
"Five or six of them were mimeographs, announcing a 'town meeting' a couple of months back."
"Where?"
"One of the high-school cafeterias, DeSalvo. In the Irish Channel. Principal rents it out to community groups for a nominal fee."
"Any ID on the group?"
"Nothing but these tiny letters at the bottom, kind of a crooked F with the foot extended to become the cross for a T."
"That's it? You have any idea what it is?"
"Oh, I've got something better than an idea: I've got a cop that just transferred down here from Baton Rouge. Says they started seeing it up there about a year ago, some of the rougher bars. Now they're seeing it a lot. You want, I'll have him call you."
Ten minutes later, he did, identifying himself as Officer Tom Bonner.
"Walsh tells me you're black."
"He tells me you're from Baton Rouge."
"Hey, we all got our crosses to bear, right. How much you know about prison life, Griffin?"
"Less than most black men my age."
His laugh was quick and britde. "Know what you mean. Wife's black. One of the reasons we moved down here, thought things might be better."
"Are they?"
"Call me back in a year. Anyway, prisons like Angola, you've got the strictest color lines that exist. Whites, blacks, Mexicans and Orientals, they keep to their own, each one's got its own space on the yard, its own section of tables in the mess. People get killed just for crossing the line."
That much I knew.
"Generally all that stays inside. Now it looks like it's been exported, some of these guys have dragged it out with them. Inside, they were dirty white boys, defending themselves in their solidarity against the encroaching hordes, only way they'd survive. Inside, they got religion. Now they're gonna spread the gospel. And the gospel's pretty simple: White's right."
"What's this FT business?"
"Who the fuck knows?"
"So what do they call themselves?"
"Far as I know, they don't. Philosophy seems to be, if you're looking for them, you need what diey have, you'll find them."
"They're all ex-cons?"
"That's how it started, right. Real trailer-park types, you know? But then it grew like weeds in a vacant lot. Got every sort lining up behind them these days. Lawyers, ex-servicemen, grocery clerks."
"Police."
"Be a damn fool to deny it. This is America, Griffin. We're all fucking cowboys here. Ride out of town and away, climb a mountain or tower, shoot the bad guys."
"That what they want to do?"
"One, two, or three?"
'Three."
"Yeah. Yeah, what I know, I'd have to say that might be pretty high on their agenda."
I thanked him and he said if I wanted dinner some night, give him a call, he and Josephine didn't know many people here.
My next call was to Papa, who ran an arms and mercenary service out of a bar in die Quarter.
"Baton Rouge, huh? That's Harrington's patch. Haven't talked to the man for ages. Stay where you are."
"Looks like you were right on the one count, Lewis," Papa said when he called back minutes later. "Steady low-end buys going on for well over a year now. Someone's stockpiling for sure. Not die kind of diing B A'd get involved with-domestic, which he stays awayfrom, all of us do, and stricdy penny ante, small arms mosdy-but anyone doing business on BA's patch, firstthey've gotta clear it with him."
"Who's the stockpiler?"
"No reason he's gonna know diat, Lewis, or tell you if he does. Says he can put you in touch with the supplier, though."
Papa gave me the number and I thanked him.
"You said I was right on one count. What's the other?"
"Well, it's not just Baton Rouge. That's where they buy and store, but they've spread out, B.A. says, they're all over. Heard they even had a foothold down here in New Orleans now."
I hung up and went into the kitchen. We'd finished off the botde. I got another out of the cabinet, poured a glass half full.
Mornings are a time you're supposed to get to start over, shrug off yesterday's cares, engage the world anew. But here I was. LaVerne asleep in the bedroom, the rest of die world going about new business outside, my morning still yesterday, yesterday's concerns barking at my heels. I wastired, dead tired, and not a little drunk. Half-formed thoughts simmered to the surface of my mind and sank back.
Real trailer-park types.
Baton Rouge.
I stood there a moment sipping at Verne's good whiskey, looking out the window. Then I found my coat on the back of one of the chairs where I'd left it last night and fished my notebook out of the breast pocket.
I couldn't remember what the differential was, what time it might be in New York, but Popular Publications answered on the third ring and put me through to Lee Gardner. Sure he remembered who I was, he said, I was doing the piece on "the new Village" out in the Bronx for him. Where the hell was it?
I backed up and started over. Reminding him that he'd come to see me in the hospital when he was in Louisiana looking for Ray Amano, and that we'd spoken since then.
Sure he remembered, he said. Good to hear fromme.
"I was wondering if you might be able to help me, Mr. Gardner."
"I might be able to try."
"What was Amano working on when he disappeared?"
"Well… He was supposed to be working on a new novel, one Icarus paid out a fairly heavy advance on. But like a lot of writers Ray had trouble planning his way around the next corner. Minute he committed to one thing, he'd lose interest in that andfind himself fascinated by something else entirely."
"What was the novel?"
"We didn't know a lot about it. The other books had done well, especially Bury All Towers, so we contracted for the new one on an eight-page oudine. Supposed to be a Grand Hotel kind of thing, individual stories of all these people living in a trailer park. I think Ray actually sent in thirty or forty pages at one point. Not long after that, I had a letterfrom him saying he was working on something else. Claimed 'the material' had taken him in another direction, that this book was going to shove open doors people had nailed shut. It was going to be important, big. In the face of what he'd discovered, he wrote, he couldn't just go on making things up."
"No chance you'd have a copy of those pages, I guess."
"Of course not. They'd be the property of Icarus. I'm no longer employed there."