EIGHTEEN
There was a moon tonight, or a slice of it, anyway, but it was up under some clouds that were rolling by like dark smoke. Despite the darkness, I could see the Norman house plainly. The grounds directly surrounding it were free of trees and brush and sloped gently, very gently up around the house, which was outlined stark against the sky, sitting back from the edge of a hill that fell sharply to the Mississippi. The river’s waters reflected what light there was back up against the smooth, unpainted cement walls of the Norman house.
It looked like a Moorish fortress or castle, as cut to scale and modified by a would-be Frank Lloyd Wright; something like some of the things put up in the thirties in California towns, only more so, and minus the stucco. The top floor sat on the bottom like a smaller box on a slightly larger one, with a one-story wing on either side; the roof was tower-cut, with fat, stubby turrets on every corner. In its original conception it had been a combination penthouse above and radio station below-the back wall still had the shadow where a giant radio antenna once climbed. The front wall, the face of the house standing watch over the river, had three irregular windows along the bottom floor, like odd teeth, and, on the upper floor, running near the house’s width, a long horizontal window looking out on the river like the viewscreen on a welder’s mask.
We had found the gate open, Rita and I, and had followed the narrow drive up to the house. The drive was bordered by thick dead brush and the occasional outstretching arms of a skeletal tree, all part of a thicket that served to isolate the Norman house and its sloping grounds, making it an island in the midst of a heavily populated section. That island was a part of the uneasy transition between downtown Port City and East Hill, with supermarket, filling station, hardware store and lumberyard just across the way, and on either side of the protective thicket were clusters of middle-class housing. The way to the gate of the Norman drive was via an alley bordered on either side by frame houses.
I got out of the car just before we cleared the thicket and turned the wheel over to Rita, let her drive up toward the house alone. I stayed back in the brush and watched her pull my Rambler into the open graveled area and park by the back door. There were no other cars in the parking area; opposite the house, across the graveled space, was an unpainted cement garage, built years ago for three cars, big enough now for two, at a slant.
About the time Rita would have been taking her keys out of the ignition, the back door to the house opened, and in the light it let out I saw a big black man come out and rush over to help her out of the car. He was wearing a well-tailored, well-cut houndstooth suit, with a white shirt, open at the collar, and he wore a black eyepatch where a left eye had been.
Harold Washington.
We’d met before.
He and Rita embraced, and with an arm around each other’s waist, they went inside.
I approached the house carefully, staying within the confines of the thicket, and moved slowly around until I reached the point where the brush met the slope of the hill that dropped to the river. I crouched and stared at the building for something like five minutes, then crawled up by a slant-roofed wing, edged around it and went in through the same door as Rita and her brother.
I’d managed to get the layout of the house from Rita, so I wasn’t worried about finding my way around. The door to her brother’s living quarters was to my right and tight-shut, though soft sounds of conversation were seeping out. The game plan I’d outlined to Rita was that she would talk to Harold for half an hour, brother-sister small talk, and then break it to him she’d brought somebody along to see him. I had something else in mind, though, which necessitated a mild double cross.
The lobby I was in was boxlike, and its ceiling went the building’s full two stories. The walls were smooth plaster, cream-colored, bare. A coatrack by the door was the only furniture, a tiny throw rug the only carpeting. The floors were well-varnished wood that yellowly reflected an overhead light. In the middle of the facing wall was an archway that cut through an otherwise enclosed hall.
I went over and stood within the hall. Its ceiling was as high as the lobby’s. I checked my bearings: beyond the archway was the living room-big, sparsely furnished, much like an extension of the lobby, with various large, oddly shaped, undraped windows. To my right was a steep incline of stairs, no rail, crowded by claustrophobically tight walls.
I climbed the stairway, palms scraping against the confining walls, and at the top of the stairs found a landing. On the left was a door. I turned the knob and found the door unlocked and pushed it gently open and stepped in.
The room encompassed the whole top floor. There was no carpeting, again only bare, but well-varnished wood. The walls, too, were bare, except in the middle on the left where an artificial fireplace with elaborate woodworking stood dark and absurdly out of place in this cream-walled context. An oil painting of a pontifically smiling, handsome man in a purple suit and tie hung over the mantel, and on the mantel in front of the Rockwell-style portrait was a single silver-framed photograph. Along the end wall, with its long window looking over the Mississippi, the floor was raised half a foot, like a stage, and center-stage was a battered desk, coming up to the sill. The back wall was relatively crowded: a door in either corner-one I’d just come in, the other to a bathroom, I presumed-and a bed. Its head was to the wall, with a cluttered nightstand on one side and a dresser on the other, a wheelchair in front of the dresser, and a portable television on a movable stand in front of that. The bed had a man in it.
The man said, “Well. Hello. I don’t believe we’ve met.”
He was old. The bedcovers were tucked up under his arms, which lay straight and limp in front of him like the limbs of a ventriloquist’s dummy. He was so old he was shrinking; the gray silk pajama top was sizes too big, a parachute he was lost in. The flesh of his hands was like parchment, and you could’ve stored things in the hollows of his cheeks. His hair was white and long, longer than mine, as though he didn’t bother having it cut anymore. Though the handsome cast of his features hadn’t been completely dimmed by time, the gray-blue eyes, once hypnotic and piercing, were milky and confused now.
“Hello, Mr. Norman,” I said.
“Do… should I know you, young man?” The voice was resonant and not as old as the rest of him. “That is, I don’t remember meeting you, but as you might guess, my mind is not all it once was.”
There was a chair by the nightstand. I pulled it around by the bed and sat down. “We haven’t met, sir,” I said. “Excuse me for barging in, but I needed to see you.”
He smiled, and in it you could imagine the masterful con man’s smile it had been; unlike his nephew Stefan’s, Simon Norman’s teeth were his own.
“I haven’t received many guests in the past few years,” he said. “But now, this particular moment, even an uninvited guest is welcome. It’s Thanksgiving evening, you know, and the kind of time best not spent alone. If one can’t share such times with relatives or friends, then a stranger will do. What was your name?”
“Mallory,” I said, and offered my hand.
He took it. His grip was firm, but the flesh around it seemed ready to jump ship. The eyes got a little brighter and he said, “You aren’t here to do me in, are you, Mallory? I didn’t swindle your mother, did I? Or would that be grandmother? Did I swindle your grandmother out of her hard-earned dollars and are you here for retribution for that misconduct?”
“No,” I said, “nothing like that.”
“I must confess, if you were on, well, a mission of vengeance, you’d’ve picked a good night for it. You’d have a willing victim, as I’ve been rather melancholy this evening.”