"And somewhere along the line, you met Edward Rinehart."
He peered at me through the thick lenses. "Star gave you that name?"
"Definally." I tried again. "Def-in-at-ly." I discovered that my glass contained only half an inch of whiskey.
“I maybe remember something." We experienced a meaningful pause. "After the funeral, suppose you work here for a week or so. Hundred bucks a day, cash."
"What's this, a trade-off?"
"An offer."
“It's still a trade-off, but all right," I said.
Toby pretended to search his memory. “I never met this Rinehart, but he got around, was my impression. From the little bit that sticks in my mind, he got into different places. A certain guy might be able to help you." He marched behind his desk, sat down, and searched through the rubble for a pen and a pad of notepaper. He leveled an index finger at me. “I didn't give you this name."
"Right," I said.
He scribbled, tore the top sheet off the pad, folded it in half, and passed it to me. "Put it in your pocket. Look at it tomorrow and decide what to do. You want to let bygones be bygones, that's okay, too."
The office swayed like the deck of a ship.
"Hasta la vista,"Toby said, shrinking again as he stood up.
• 35
• I was okay until I heard the blare of the jukebox. The more I walked, the better I got at it. Then I moved, not too unsteadily, into the noise of Whitney Houston howling about everlasting love, and the combination of alcohol and night air struck my nervous system. As I drifted across the sidewalk, a lamp post swung toward me, and I grabbed it with both arms before it could get away.
I held on until the sidewalk stopped moving and passed through the crowd outside the bar, assisted by a gentleman who seized my arm and propelled me southward. Women young and old regarded me in great solemnity from their stoops. At last I reachedMerchantsPark and stumbled to a bench. I dropped into its embrace and fell asleep.
I awakened with a pounding head and an ache in my gut. Lamplight illuminated the words carved into the slab over the entrance of the first building in the terrace across the street.thecordwainer building.I gathered my feet under me, and the pain in my belly took solid form and flew upward. I expelled a quart of watery, red-brown stew onto the asphalt.
It was11:35. I had been passed out on the bench for at least an hour and a half. Nettie and Clark were not yet so soundly asleep that I could get to my room unheard, and I was nothing like presentable enough to pass inspection. I needed to rinse my mouth and drink a lot of water. At the far end of the park stood a good-sized drinking fountain.
A granite basin flowed into a tall, octagonal pedestal. I located a brass button on the side of the basin and rinsed my mouth, gulped water, splashed my face, and gulped more water. I looked down and noticed the inscription on the base of the pedestal.
DONATED THROUGH THE GENEROSITY OF STEWART HATCH. "BY THE WATERS OFBABYLON SHALL YOU LIE DOWN AND REST." 1990.
Before me lay an hour of free time, waiting to be filled. I straightened my necktie, buttoned the jacket of my best blue suit, and walked not all that unsteadily out of the park in search of the night-blooming Edgerton.
• 36
• Two streets vivid with neon signs and theater marquees extended eastward fromChester. A fat crimson arrow flashed like a neon finger. The darker red, vertical stripe ofhote paris hung over a smoked glass door. People in groups of three and four, most of them men, meandered down the streets.
Low Street to my left, Word Street to the right. I picked Word because it was closer, and before I had taken two steps noticed a bronze plate designed to look like a curling sheet of parchment. At the top of the scroll were the wordsold town. I moved up to peer at the legend.
Site ofthe Original Town Center of Edgerton, Illinois,an Important Commercial and Recreational Destinationfor All Who Journeyed on the Mississippi River.Restorations in ProgressSupported Through the Generosity of Mr. StewartHatch.
The only signs of restoration I could see on Word Street were the lamp posts, two per block, which had the white glass globes of old Art Deco gas fixtures. The buildings, bars, movie theaters, liquor stores, transient hotels, and tenements had a hangdog look, as if they expected to be ordered off by a policeman. Splashes of neon light lay across dirty brick and flaking timbers. Men in worn-out clothes ducked in and out of the bars. Here and there, better-dressed people cruised up and down the sidewalks. A few residents sat out in lawn chairs, enjoying the night air.
A little way ahead, a couple straight from an advertisement for organically produced soap-free soap detoured around a drunk propped against the front of a bar. A familiar-looking rodent in a goatee and a black leather jacket slid past them and darted across the street.
I watched him slip out of sight into a neon-flickering passage and realized that I had entered what remained of the raffish village Uncle Clark had described. Here was the survival of the Edgerton where crews and passengers from the steamers had disembarked to gamble, visit bordellos, gape at the dancing bears and two-headed goats at the fairground, have their palms read and their purses cut. The town had remained essentially the same, at least if you stood in my great-great grandfathers' Edgerton late on a Friday night.
I moved across the street in the direction of the lane and the rodent in the leather jacket.
• 37
• Seconds after entering Dove Lane, I learned that there were two Old Towns, the one comprised of Low and Word streets, and the other, separate Old Town hidden behind them. A maze of twisting lanes sprouted smaller, darker passages as they meandered into postage-stamp squares on their journeys toward dead ends or one of the wider streets. Stewart Hatch's philanthropy had not extended to the hidden Old Town, and the lamps on byways like Dove were glassed-in bulbs on top of iron columns at least seventy years old. Every third or fourth bulb had been broken, but the district's neon signs and illuminated windows washed the narrow lanes in light.
At the next corner, Dove continued past dark storefronts and abandoned buildings. I turned right into Leather, where the brightness had lead me to expect strip clubs and massage parlors. Light spilled from a glass-fronted Laundromat, where a half dozen tired-looking women idled on benches in front of churning dryers.
From Leather I turned into Fish, then Lavender, Raspberry, Button, Treacle, and Wax. About the time I left Button, I became aware of footsteps behind me. The quiet footsteps continued to follow mine through Treacle and Wax, though I saw no one when I looked back. Wax led into Veal Yard, where light shone upon a dry fountain from the windows of the Brazen Head hotel. I circled into Turnip, walked past a bar called The Nowhere Near and again heard footsteps sounding behind me. I looked over my shoulder and glimpsed a dark, moving shape. My heart missed a beat, and the shape melted away.
I hurried over the slippery cobbles and emerged once again into the hustle ofWord Street. What I saw on its other side told me exactly where I was.