Phoebe, meanwhile, had begun a systematic search of the city, looking for some clue as to Joe's whereabouts. Assuming he had not simply evaporated upon departing the house (this she doubted; rudimentary he'd been, but still solid), his escape through the streets could not, she reasoned, have gone completely unnoticed. Even in this city, the streets of which boasted more strange forms and physiognomies with every new vessel that dropped anchor, Joe's appearance had been to say the least noteworthy. Somebody must have seen something.
She soon came to regret that she'd been so tardy warming up relations with her neighbors. Though most of them were reasonably polite to her when she came asking questions, they were all wary of her. As far as they were concerned she remained an outsider, and she feared that even if they had answers to her questions they would not be forthcoming.
Several days in a row she returned to the O'Connell house frustrated and exhausted, having traipsed from door to door (on some streets from construction site to construction site) asking for information, the parameters of her search steadily expanding, along with her sense of desperation. She lost her appetite and her sense of humor. Some days, having skipped two consecutive meals, she'd wander the streets lighthearted and close to tears, calling Joe's name like a crazy woman. Once, finding herself at the end of the day lost and too weary to discover a way home, she slept in the street. On another occasion, wandering into the middle of some territorial dispute between two families, she almost had her throat cut. But she continued to journey out every day, hoping for some clue that would eventually lead her to him.
As it turned out, the sliver of information she'd been searching for came from a source close to hand. Preparing to step into her bath one day, having walked the city for twelve hours or more, there was a knock on her bedroom door, and upon her invitation Enko entered, asking to speak to her for a few moments. He had always been the least friendly member of Jarrieffa's brood; a gangly boy, even by adolescent stan- dards, his face human but for the symmetrical patches of mottling upon his brow and neck, and the vestigial gills that ran from the middle of his cheeks down to his neck. "I've got a friend," he explained. "His name's Vip Luemu. He lives down the street two blocks. The house with the boarded up windows?"
"I know it," Phoebe said. "He told me you'd been round asking about... you know, that thing that was here."
"Yes I was."
"Well... Yip knew something about it, but his mother told him not to speak to you."
"That was neighborly," Phoebe remarked.
"It's not you," Enko replied. "Well... it is and it isn't.
It's mainly what happened here, you know, in the old days, and with the ships coming back in again, they think you're going to start up business like Miss O'Connell."
"Business?" said Phoebe.
"Yes. You know. The women."
"I'm not following this, Enko."
"the whores," the boy said, the mottling on his face darkening.
"WhoresT' said Phoebe. "Are you telling me this house... used to be a brothel?"
"The best. That's what Vip's father says. People came from all over." Phoebe pictured Maeve, sitting in regal splendor amid her pillows and her billet-doux, opining on the imbecility of love. And no wonder. The woman had been a madam. Love wasn't good for business.
"You could do me a great service," Phoebe said, "if you'd tell Vip to spread the word that I have no intention of reopening this house for business any time soon."
"I'll do that."
"Now... you said he knew something?"
Enko nodded. "He heard his father talking about a misamee that was seen down at the harbor."
"Misamee?"
"Oh, that's a word the sailors use. It means something they find out at sea that's not really made yet."
Half-dreamed, she thought. Like my Joe; my misamee Joe. "Enko, thank you."
"No trouble," the boy replied, turning to go. Hand on the door, he glanced back. "You know, Musnakaff wasn't my father."
"Yes, I had heard."
"He was my father's cousin. Anyway, he told all about how he used to go out and find women for Miss O'Connell." "I can imagine," Phoebe said.
"He explained everything. Where to go. What to say. S@'
Enko halted and stared at his shoes. "So if I ever go back into business@' Phoebe said.
The boy beamed.
"I'll bear you in mind."
She let the bathwater go cold, and began to get dressed again, putting on several layers of clothing against the wind, which had been bitter the last couple of days and was always keener close to the water. Then she went to the kitchen, filled up one of Maeve's silver liquor flasks with moumingberry juice, and headed down to the harbor, thinking as she went that if she failed to find Joe after a year or so, she'd reopen the brothel just to spite the neighbors who'd given her so little help, and like Maeve grow old and sour in luxury, profiting from lovelessness.
As Raul had promised, he was waiting at Eppley Airport, though at first Harry failed to recognize him. He'd warmed up the somewhat eerie pallor of his host body with a little pancake, and was sporting a fancy pair of tinted glasses to conceal his silvery pupils. Covering his bald pate, a baseball cap. The ensemble wasn't particularly fetching, but it allowed him to move unnoticed through the crowds.
On the way back to Grillo's house, with Raul tucked behind the wheel of the antiquated Ford convertible (which he confessed he had no license to drive), they exchanged accounts of their recent adventures. Harry told Raul about all that had happened in Wyckoff Street, and Raul reciprocated by telling of the journey he'd made back to the Misi6n de Santa Catfina, on the Baja Peninsula, where Fletcher had first discovered and synthesized the Nuncio.
"I built a shrine up there a long time ago," he said, "which I tended till Testa found me. I was sure it would have disappeared. But no. It was still there. The village women still go up to the ruins to pray and ask Fletcher to intercede if their children are sick. It's quite touching. I saw one or two women I knew, but of course they didn't know me. There was one woman though@od knows she must be ninety if she's a day-and I did go seek her out and tell her who I. She's blind now, and a little crazy, but she swore to me 'd seen him, the day before she lost her sight."
"You mean Fletcher?"
"I mean Fletcher. She said he was standing on the edge of the cliff, staring up at the sun. He used to do diat@' "And you think he's still up there?"
"Stranger things are true," Raul pointed out. "We both know that."
"The walls are getting thinner, right?" Harry said. "I'd say so." they drove on in silence for a while. "I thought I'd. maybe make another pilgrimage," Raul said after a minute or so, "while I'm here in Omaha."
"Let me guess. The Dead-letters Office."
"If it's still standing," Raul said. "It's probably a deeply uninteresting piece of architecture, but we'd neither of us be here if it hadn't been built."
"You believe that?"
"Oh, I'm sure the Art would have found somebody to use if it hadn't been Jaffe. But we might never have known anything about it. We could have been like them"-he nodded out through the window at Omaha's citizenry, going about their business@'thinking what you see's what you get."
"Do you ever wish it were?" Harry asked him.
"I was born an ape, Harry," Raul replied. "I know what it's like to evolve." He chuckled. "Let me tell you, it's wonderful."
"And that's what this is all about?" Harry said. "Evolving?"
"I think so. We're born to rise. to see more. to know more. Maybe to know everything one day." He halted the car outside a large, gloomy house. "Which brings us back to Tesia," he said, and led Harry up the overgrown driveway where Tesla's bike was parked, to the front door.