“I dismissed class shortly thereafter. That was on a Thursday. And by Monday we were married. Twelve years ago. Twelve years. From the first I felt as though I’d packed up everything and moved to a new country. A different language, different customs, different weather-who knows, maybe even different physical laws. Everything changed.”
I waited. Good interviewers never have to say much; they turn themselves into voids, into receptacles.
“Laura is my life now, everything else revolves around her, her and the university. But I have a son by that first, youthful marriage. He’s an adult himself now, of course. We never had much to do with one another, never communicated much; he grew up on the West Coast, mostly. But a couple of months ago he moved back here, to New Orleans, and we began seeing one another. He’d call every week or so. We’d meet for lunch, a glass of wine. It’s an ambiguous relationship, at best. Would you like more coffee?”
I declined, and after a moment he said, “I’m afraid he’s in trouble. I wondered if you might be able to help him.” Then he added: “Laura’s dead against my getting involved.”
This is none of your business, Griffin echoed far back in my head. I said: “I’d have to know two things. What kind of trouble-”
“Drugs. I don’t know how deeply.”
“Then your wife may be right. The other thing I’d have to know is what you’d expect me to do. There’s probably not much you, or I, or anyone else can do. You have to know that.”
He nodded, head remaining momentarily bowed. “I suppose in a sense I’ve dedicated my life to the belief that knowledge, that learning, intellect, reason, matter.” He looked back up. “Yes, I know. I’ve dealt with this in my usual manner: I settled into the library and read everything available. But now I seem to be flying in the face of all that, don’t I?”
“If not flying, at least taking one hell of a leap of faith.”
“Too close to the son,” he said. I wouldn’t have thought he had it in him.
And because of that, as much as anything else, I told him I would do it.
I got the son’s address, a snapshot (his only one, he told me as he pulled it from his wallet) and as many details of his son’s life as he knew. There weren’t many: a workplace that might or might not be current, a bar he’d mentioned a couple of times, a few friends’ first names. His son drove an old mustard-color Volvo, loved spicy food and war movies, was not a reader and had no particular taste for music.
“I want to know how bad it is,” Dean Treadwell said, “how deeply he’s into this. That’s all I expect of you. Maybe then I can find a way to help him.”
“I’ll do what I can. I still have a few contacts out there. I’ll ask around, turn over some stones.”
Treadwell had pulled a checkbook out of his coat pocket and was uncapping a pen.
I shook my head. “This is a favor. Besides, it may well come to nothing.”
“I insist.”
“So do I.”
“Very well, then.” He clipped pen to checkbook and slipped them back into his pocket. “At least promise that you’ll come over for a meal with Laura and me, soon.”
“I’ll be in touch.”
Outside, he turned back.
“Lew. I almost forgot: my wife made me promise to ask when there’s going to be a new book. She’s read them all, and said to tell you she loves them, especially the ones set in New Orleans.”
“Tell her thanks, but I’m not sure. Lately I seem to be getting distracted by life a lot.”
Neither of us knew, of course, that the next book when it came, written in a two-week binge of twenty-hour days and published just before Mole, would be the story of his own son’s last days.
Chapter Thirty-Four
It was much worse than he said, of course. Probably even worse than he thought.
The first thing I did that afternoon, from my airless, shared office in the basement of Monroe Hall, was call Walsh. They couldn’t find him for a while, and I sat listening to a rumble of shouts and clatter, indecipherable conversations, other phones buzzing. Finally he came on with “Yeah?”
“Lew.”
“Listen, I don’t care how much you beg, I’m not buying you any more dinners.”
“Two desirable bachelors like us, both our calendars are probably filled anyway, bubba.”
“Well, I might just be able to squeeze you in-but you’d have to buy.”
“I’m not that desperate yet.”
“You will be.”
“So I’ll call you back when I am.”
“Sure you will.” Someone spoke to him, and he turned away briefly, came back. “How’s the girl?”
“Doing okay, this far.”
“Good sign. Any word from Clare?” When I said nothing, he went on. “Yeah, well, I’m sorry about that, Lew, I really am.”
“Life goes on.”
“Yeah. Such as it is. So what kind of favor you need this time? Not a big one, I hope. The city just dumped a new load of shit on us and now the mayor and his boys are down here smearing it all around.”
I told him.
“You at home?”
“School.” I gave him the number.
Twenty minutes later, he called back.
“What about the mayor and his boys?” I asked.
“Hey, urgent police business came up. It happens like that. They’re cooling their buns on the bench out in the squad room, staring at me in here. Told them I’d be right out, soon as I took care of this emergency. First time I’ve sat down today.”
“Maybe I should thank them.”
“Maybe you should shoot the whole lot of them.”
“So what’s the story?”
“Well, it looks like your boy’s cut himself a little swath down the coast from Seattle to Portland.”
“Drugs?”
“Initially. Possession, PI, sales. Then your man went to school somewhere: suddenly B amp;E, suspicion of auto theft and attempted fraud start rolling up. No convictions on any of it, so a lot of this isn’t on the record, but he became a familiar face. A couple of short falls, one for assault and battery, the other for, get this, unpaid traffic tickets. He’s been lucky. But the captain I talked to up there said he’s a body ready to drop. That help?”
“You bet. Thanks, Don.”
“You want me to keep the net open on this?”
“No. Good enough.”
“This guy’s in town, I take it.”
“Yeah.”
“Yet another fine example of scuz rising to the bottom. I’m sure he’ll be in to say hello sooner or later.”
“Good chance of it.”
“So I have to go feed the lions now, right?”
“Guess so. Pull a tail for me.”
“You got it.”
I could have just called Dean Treadwell then, of course. It was what he wanted to know-more than he wanted to know. My favor was done. But I didn’t want to break the old man’s heart, I told myself, not in such an impersonal fashion.
If you’re in New Orleans with time to kill and a taste for alcohol, sooner or later you run into Doo-Wop. And sooner or later you’ll probably buy him a drink and get into a conversation with him.
Every day Doo-Wop makes his steady round of bars from the Quarter up through the Irish Channel and along Oak Street. That’s what he does, that’s his job, and he pursues it with single-minded devotion. And because after all this time he’s as much part of the city landscape as palm trees or the buildings along St. Charles, he gets free drinks, a lot of them from the bartenders themselves, a lot from bar regulars, some from drop-in drinkers. Anybody who buys Doo-Wop a drink buys a conversation too.