“I will.” I must.
“Stick this out with me, Jim. I need a man who’s going to be there, all the way. Let it be you.”
Jim looked at her but said nothing.
“Meet me at the Wrecking Ball,” she said.
Chapter 31
The wrecking ball was in full swing when Jim walked into the Eight Peso Cantina at ten o’clock. The windows had been boarded up, and bogus condemnation notices were stapled to the wood. A crane stood in the alley beside the cantina, its boom extended over the roof, a huge gold foil dollar sign dangling where the ball should be.
The Newport police chopper hovered above for a long while, low and noisy, its searchlight trained on the entering guests.
Inside, a mock interior lay in ruins around the room: splintered wood, pieces of concrete with rusted rebar protruding at angles, sawhorses with blinking orange lights, piles of rubble cordoned off with bright red pylons in the hope of keeping people from tripping on them. The skylight had been removed, and a jagged border of papier-mâché glued around the perimeter of the opening, through which the cool May breeze swirled.
Weir stepped in and nodded to Dale Blodgett, who stood with the air of a bouncer just inside the door. He was dressed in a tuxedo. “Thought you might not make it,” said Blodgett. His big face labored toward a smile.
“Trying to do my part,” said Weir. “Mom back yet?”
“Back from where?” Blodgett’s smile went down an octave.
“Doesn’t matter. Did you get Duty Free back together again?”
Blodgett sipped from a martini glass with a toothpick and two olives in it. “She’s ready. We might make a shakedown run tomorrow night. Interested?”
“I’ll think about it. Will that be one of the nights you and Lou Braga fill the bait tank?”
Blodgett blushed, finished off his drink in one gulp. “You lost me, Weir. Hey, have a drink, loosen up. Maybe even try to enjoy yourself.”
Jim stepped past him to hug Ray’s parents, the host and hostess, Ernesto and Irena Cruz. Irena had on an elaborate fuchsia dress, with a matching silk scarf around her neck. Ernesto wore a tuxedo so old, the elbows shined. Weir wondered whether his own tux looked that old, too. What can you do? The thought crossed his mind that Ernesto probably had been married in it. They pointed him to a far corner, where he could make out the back of Raymond, who seemed to be pressing a diminutive woman into a corner filled with rubble. The rubble was marked by a sawhorse with a pulsing light. The woman sat in a wheelchair, her face and the chromed chassis of her chair throbbing intermittently orange.
Between Jim and the corner were a couple of hundred people, dressed in varying degrees of finery. Half of them were the neighborhood folks, the faces he’d grown up with, the faces that had loomed sympathetically before him at the funerals of Poon, Jake, and Ann. The rest were the Prop A partisans from around the county — the disgruntled adversaries of development.
Raymond, looking slender and composed in a white dinner jacket and bow tie, found Jim in the crush and handed him a glass of champagne. “Any word?”
“None yet.”
Raymond looked at Jim without expression, then nodded very slightly. “If anyone can convince Percy, it’s Becky.”
“It’s not in the bag, Ray. I’m worried.”
“What can a prosecutor say to a tape of Ann’s purse?”
“He can say it was made during the commission of a burglary. No judge in the world is going to order a search warrant. The rest depends on how much energy the prosecutor’s got — and where his boss comes down.”
Raymond cast Jim a wary glance. “Cantrell’s supported D’Alba for two elections.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
“Doesn’t seem like there’s a man in this county who can afford to have Dave Cantrell take a fall.”
“That’s what Becky’s up against right now.”
“I need another drink.”
Ray broke away for the bar and Jim watched him drain one glass of champagne, then another. Dressed as he was, alone at the bar, staring back at Jim from over his raised glass, Raymond looked small, stranded, lost.
The band reassembled onstage and launched into a Zydeco tune. The kid playing accordian looked about twelve. The stage backdrop behind them was a painted pile of rubble with graveyard crosses placed atop each big rock, bearing the name of a neighborhood business or family home that would be ground up in the redevelopment deal. A banner across the top declared PACIFICO PRESENTS... In the corner closest to the street, a booth was set up, where a dapper old gentleman sold chances for the prize, a Japanese subcompact. Weir wondered who had donated the car, until he got close enough to read the sign: CHEVERTON SEWER & SEPTIC. Tickets were a hundred bucks apiece, and business looked good.
Becky walked in an hour later. She had changed to a backless black velvet dress and gloves that came up past her elbows, and her hair was pulled back on one side with a big rhinestone comb. Her lipstick was dark red and her eyes were made up into twin brown mysteries that seemed to draw Weir straight into her. Jim wondered whether she’d changed before seeing George Percy or after, then decided he would never ask. “God, you look good,” he said instead.
“It’s all for you, Mr. Weir. Come outside. Let’s talk.”
They stood on the sidewalk, facing the bay. “George is taking it to D’Alba right now. He’s not going to make a move either way without his boss — way too hot to handle alone. My guts tell me he’s with us.”
“And D’Alba’s with Cantrell.”
Becky nodded and turned to Jim. She put a hand on each of his arms and drew him forward gently. Her eyes picked up the glow from the streetlamps, illuminating some new pain inside. She lay her head on his shoulder for a long while and held him in her strong brown arms.
“Dance with me,” she said.
He led her to the crowded wooden floor, guiding her across it into a kind of modified swing step that, like so many things from days gone by, came back to them as sure as instinct. Jim felt elevated. Becky’s skin looked rich against the black fabric, and when he raised her hands for a spin, he caught the damp smell coming from her, saw the shine of sweat beneath her arms. Coming out of the turn, he pulled her closer.
While the room whirled around them, Jim began to feel for the first time in years the pieces of his life starting to settle into place. He could almost see them: surface meeting surface, side fitting side, corners snugging into larger corners to form a complete, harmonious whole. He entertained briefly a thought that had come to him dozens of times since returning home — a snippet of future possibility too precious and delicious to contemplate in any depth. A son. A daughter. The Weirs. My family. Even the loss of Ann had the feeling, as he pressed Becky’s supple warmth against him, of something that would eventually fit, bringing with it not her absence but the years she had been alive, the hours they had shared, the moments that, as moments do, continue on inside the living.
“I didn’t know what I was missing,” he said.
“I had an idea.”
“Can a mayor fit a love life into her busy schedule?”
“I’ll adjourn for you anytime.”
“Maybe you should adjourn over to Ray. He looks kind of lost at that bar by himself.”
Becky looked at the clock, then over to Nesto Cruz behind the bar. He shook his head. No call from Percy yet.
Jim found a booth and drank more champagne. As the alcohol did its work, he sighed deeper down into his seat and looked out through the mocked-up crossbars on a condemned window. The night was damp, bringing halos to the streetlamps and dew to the glass that faced the bay. He could see yacht masts tilting slowly, and the ghost-pale forms of hulls steady on the water. Beyond the invisible horizon of the island, the PacifiCo Tower stood illuminated against a starless sky. Tower of Babel, thought Weir, tower of lies, tower of pillage, tower of death. And I’m going to bring it down, one mirrored window at a time, straight down into the dead sea of this little city. He smiled, sipped, looked to the dance floor.