“You’re a boxer,” Corman said as he stepped up to the counter. The name came to him. “Bowman, right? Archie Bowman?”
Bowman looked at him suspiciously, as if Corman were a bill collector who’d just stumbled on a mark. “Was a fighter,” he said in a thin, edgy voice. “Retired in ’78.”
“I used to see you at this little ring they have in Bensonhurst,” Corman told him. “With my brother.”
One eyebrow arched upward. “Your brother a fighter?”
Corman shook his head. “No. A gambler.”
Bowman’s mouth opened slightly. All his teeth were gone, but from the bluish look of his gums, Corman thought neglect had done more damage than the ring. As for his body, it was marvelously preserved, and Corman realized that in a photograph the shiny ebony skin would contrast nicely with the occasional scar, capture the perfect contradiction of vulnerable invincibility. “My brother always bet on you,” he said.
Bowman didn’t seem to believe him. “I couldn’t take the punishment,” he said. “You got to be able to take the punishment. Just being in the ring, it ain’t enough.”
“I guess.”
Bowman shrugged indifferently. “I got some posters, though,” he said. “I got ’em on my wall. Guys I fought, I got posters of them, too.” He shook his head disdainfully. “They never come to nothing. It’s like I tell people, you fight some guys, you can say you done it. But these palookas I come up against, they was a dime a dozen.” He tapped the side of his head with his index finger. “No mentality, you know. You can’t just fight with your hands.”
“Some of them didn’t look so bad,” Corman told him.
Bowman shrugged, unwilling to argue. “You a gambler, too?” he asked.
“No.”
“Some people say they ruined the game,” Bowman said. “Maybe they did, and maybe they didn’t. ’Cause in a way, betting is doing something. It ain’t just looking. Your brother fix ’em?”
“I don’t know,” Corman admitted. “He might have.”
“But you was never in on that?”
“No.”
“What do you do then?” Bowman asked quickly, firing questions now like short jabs.
“I take pictures.”
“Who for?”
“Nobody in particular,” Corman told him. “Newspapers sometimes.”
Bowman stared at him expressionlessly. “Pictures,” he repeated. “How come you doing that around here?”
“Somebody told me I should look up a guy who used to run this store,” Corman said. “He’s supposed to be Haitian. Got a French name.”
“Well, you’re looking for old Peletoux,” Bowman said. “But he ain’t here no more.”
“He moved?”
“God took him home,” Bowman answered crisply, without mourning. “Me and his wife… we was—you know—sort of close. She asked me to fill in for him, so I been here the last few weeks. You know, till she gets things settled. Then we’re leaving town.”
“I see.”
“How come you want pictures of old Peletoux?” Bowman asked with a short laugh. “He ain’t much to look at.”
“I heard he knew a lot about the neighborhood,” Corman said. “The people in it.”
“That’s what you want to take pictures of?” Bowman asked unbelievingly. “The people ’round here?”
“One person,” Corman said. “That woman who jumped out of her window last Thursday night.” He opened his camera bag, pulled out one of the photographs of the woman and handed it to him. “Early in the morning. About a block from here.”
Bowman’s eyes lingered on the picture. “Yeah, that got things stirring.”
“Did you know her?” Corman asked.
“I seen her. She come in a few times, bought some things.”
“Did you talk to her?”
“She didn’t do no talking,” Bowman said. “She come in, pick up what she wants. She put up the money. Sometimes it come up short. I say, no. So she put something back. Sometimes, it works the other way. She come up with too much money. I always give change, but I never seen her count it.”
“Did you ever see her with anyone?”
“No. She was always alone ’cept for that doll she carried around with her. She acted like it was real. Always holding it real close, like she was afraid somebody was going to snatch it from her. She even bought food for it.”
“Similac?” Corman asked. “She bought that here?”
“Yeah.”
Corman glanced down the center aisle. At the end of it he could see a few cans of Similac nestled among a smattering of other baby products, diapers, baby food, a small box of rubber pacifiers. For an instant he got the same feeling he’d once had in the bar near Gramercy Park where 0. Henry had written “The Gift of the Magi” during one long snowy afternoon, the fibrous touch of the Great Man’s presence, the soft scratch of his pencil, the sense of what he’d been though. “Would you mind if I took some pictures?” he asked.
Bowman shrugged. “Don’t matter to me. I ain’t here for long no way.”
Corman drew out his camera and headed down the aisle, taking pictures as he walked, one picture at each step, until a single can of Similac filled the neat rectangular window of the viewfinder.
When he’d taken the last shot, he returned to the front of the store. Bowman was watching him steadily as he came up the aisle. “Was she somebody, that woman?” he asked.
“I don’t know who she was,” Corman said. “That’s what I’m trying to find out.” He took a slip of paper from his jacket pocket and wrote down his name and telephone number. “If you hear anything about her or find anybody in the neighborhood who knew anything about her, I’d appreciate it if you’d give me a call.”
Bowman took the paper and dropped it into the drawer beneath the counter. “These people around here, they don’t do much talking. They don’t none of them have the right papers, you know? They don’t want to be seen. And ‘cause of that, they got to be blind, too.”
“Still, if …”
Bowman grinned widely. “These here pictures, you going to get some money for them?”
“I hope so,” Corman said, then heard Pike’s voice out of the blue, tossing him another line if Julian’s turned to dust, warning him to grab it before it got away, sink his fangs into Groton’s death. In the end, every shooter wants to come in from the rain.
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
CORMAN HAD WALKED through half the bars in his neighborhood before he finally spotted Harry Groton in the Irish Eyes. For a moment he lingered just inside the door, feeling somewhat like a steely-eyed vulture as he watched Groton from behind a pane of frosted glass. Then he headed toward him, his eyes watching Groton closely as he neared the small booth where he sat.
Groton was alone, his large hands wrapped around a glass of beer. He had a round face with slightly popped eyes. A thin red netting of broken veins lay across his nose, and his lips were raw and cracked, as if he’d just swept in from the desert wastes. His eyes were blue and heavy-lidded so that he often looked drowsy. He wiped his mouth quickly as Corman slid into the seat across from him.
“How you doing?” Corman asked casually.
“Okay,” Groton replied. One of his large furry eyebrows trembled slightly, then collapsed. “What’s new?”
“Nothing much.”
“You drinking anything?”
“Maybe a short one,” Corman said. He walked back to the bar, ordered a beer of his own, then returned to the booth. “Here’s to you,” he said, then took a quick sip from the beer and returned the glass to the table. “You hang around this part of town a lot?”