Now they were crossing the street to Food City. A Gran Torino, expertly streeted out and bearing a sprawl of exotic birds and equally exotic women painted in metallic blues and yellows pulled up at the light, bass pounding such that Driver and Felix could feel it coming up their legs from the pavement. The battered Toyota next to it had Rochelle, Juan, and Stephanie painted in script on the rear window, with tiny crosses beneath each.
“Still hanging in with the ride, anyway,” Felix said as they approached the Fairlane. “Even if you can’t seem to hold on to a residence for shit.”
As they walked, Felix told him what he’d come to tell him, before what he called that little mash-up in the parking lot.
“Doyle was on his best behavior, even made an appointment. Went limping in on time and took his seat politely in the waiting area. Plastic that looked like leather, he said, stuck to your skin, crackled every time you moved. Woodreau and Levin, Attorneys at Law. Out in Metairie. Lore was with him. Pretending to read a book, Doyle said, you shoulda seen it. Receptionist kept looking over at him.
“Doyle gets back there and it’s some kid, looks like he’s sixteen. An associate, he says. ‘Didn’t come all this way to talk to an associate,’ Doyle tells him. ‘I assure you,’ the kid begins, and Doyle stops him. ‘Why don’t you save us both some worry and go bring back a grown man?’
“He does, and Doyle apologizes, tells this grown man how sometime when his leg gets to hurting he just turns a little cranky, you know? Asks the man if he served and the man says yes. ‘Navy?’ Doyle says, ‘you got that look about you.’ Man nods and asks how he can be of help.”
Felix had stopped at that point and said, “Amazing what simple courtesy can accomplish.”
“Absolutely. The Marine way.”
“Took him less than thirty minutes. And with only a little insistence. Didn’t even have to call in Lore, boy stayed out there pretending to read his book and smiling back at the receptionist whenever she’d look his way.
“Lawyers were blind. You knew that. Brokers, as Mr. Levin himself put it, to which Doyle responded that broke-ing was something he got forced to do as well, upon occasion. That, he said, had Mr. L’s attention.
“It was at that point that Mr. L thought it wise to call security and Doyle disagreed to such extent that Mr. L’s hand is now in a cast. Doyle was thinking maybe he should drop by again, be the first to sign it.”
“Probably not.”
“Yeah, probably.”
Someone behind them had said excuse me and when they turned, parting, two middle-aged men in shorts and sandals stepped between them. One held aloft a whitewashed cross, the other a four-foot wooden sword.
“There goes the human race and its entire history in a nutshell,” Felix said. He and Driver turned under the overpass and walked on.
“Doyle wants you to know how tracking this guy resembled looking for one specific snake in the Atchafalaya swamp.”
“But he did it.”
“Your man’s a cipher,” Felix said. “A businessman, one of those whose footprint shows up all over the place. Owns a car dealership, a theater or two, a chain of sporting goods stores, an import company, high-end wine shops, a dozen others. No trouble with the law, half a dozen court cases in civil court, mostly settled, no hands across the sea or across a checkered tablecloth with Sinatra singing. No apparent connection to you. Gerald Dunaway.”
“And he’s the one who wants to shut me down?”
Felix nodded. “That’s where it starts. One step off Dunaway’s porch, though, and riders start showing up.”
“Hired help.”
“Maybe just that. Hitchhikers, pilot fish. Or could be shared interests, whatever they might be. Alliances, coalitions, all those gentrified, uptown words for gangs. Doyle’s still poking at the anthill.”
They were at the car now. The door hadn’t fit right or worked well since the set-to with the Chevy Caprice and Toyota out by Globe. Driver kept meaning to fix it. He’d done the essential engine and suspension resets but let the body work hang. When he pulled the door open, it made a sound like swords coming out of scabbards in bad fantasy movies.
“Nice,” Felix said. “Distinctive.” He ran his hand along the door’s edge. “Interesting thing about this Dunaway is how he came into the money, the bulk of it anyway. Doyle has a friend, a service buddy, who works in the sheriff’s office over in Jefferson Parish. Says Dunaway’s one of those who lived uptown, stuck it out through Katrina. And afterwards, right after, he made a fortune or three selling food and water to the un- and re-located. No one knows where the food and water came from for sure, but rumors have them as diverted relief and humanitarian goods. After that, he started buying up huge sections of the city for pennies-all of this paper-legal, of course.”
“Sounds like carpetbaggers.”
“What I said. Doyle claims that New Orleans grows its own, always has. No need to bus them in.”
“This Dunaway married? Family? Children?”
“Wife died in 1998, accidental death according to official reports, suicide according to some unofficial ones. No one else we can tag.”
“He’s a native?”
“In the city since 1988. Brooklyn before that. Like I said, Doyle’s still tapping at it. And he taps good.”
“It’s in our nature-in our bones, our spleen, our amygdyla, or wherever we’ve gone to locating the ineffable this year-to try to connect the dots,” Manny said. “Just as it is to go rummaging around in the dark for that one idea that explains everything. Economics. Religion. Conspiracy. String theory.”
Driver had punched in the number fitfully, a backwash of sadness finding him as he did so. It was a feeling he had experienced before, this sense of doing something for the last time. You never knew its source.
“Things happen. They don’t have to add up to more. Hang on.”
Not that one, Driver heard him say. The bottle shaped like a fencepost, with the fake knotholes.
“Got a producer here. Grand plans and a budget to match. All he needs is a script. We’re dipping into the good stuff I save for special occasions.”
“The good stuff is in a bottle with knotholes?”
“Okay, they’re aesthetically challenged. But at what they do…”
Driver heard Manny take a sip, imagining palate and mood slowly changing color, rust to peach to pink, like that. Then he was back.
“Let’s run it down. Storyboard it. First you have this guy in NoLa. Dunaway. No doubt about what he’s in it for, you say.”
“Right.”
“But you don’t know why.”
“Again.”
“Different music, different lighting, late night with rain maybe, this Beil character turns up. Has a guardian angel or two sicced on you. And tries his best to press-gang you onto his ship. To fight for the common good, common bad, whatever. Next, a couple more get dropped in, these troopers that Beil’s men were shadowing. The guy at the mall, too? No idea where they hang hats. Makes for a thick soup, my friend. Any others in the cooker?”
“We’ll see, won’t we?”
“Only if you live long enough.”
Manny took another sip. Driver could hear the producer talking there at the other end, wondered whether Manny was ignoring him or managing to carry on both conversations.
“Do the dots connect? Could be all random. Separate storms. And in the long run what does it matter? The question’s always the same: What do you do? How do you act? Hold on, I’m going out to the patio.”
Moments later, against a faint backdrop of traffic sounds, Driver heard “And are you acting?”
Driver said nothing.
“Because from here it starts to look like you’re hanging back. You remember when we first talked about this? I asked what it was you wanted.”
“Yes.”
“Same thing then. If you don’t want to carry through, you can go away again. Be missing.”