Shouldn't've had that joint. Got to concentrate. Relax, then concentrate. He pulled up the armrest to his right and fished out the crystal Scotch decanter. Poured an ounce into a shot glass, took a sip, then knocked it back.
He closed his eyes and fell into a familiar dream, where he was sitting on a bench in a police station, naked from the waist down, handcuffed. People came and went and took no notice of him. Some of them were people he had killed, including the latest, Ybor, and the first, his father. He woke up as the limo surged left into the parking lot beside the Athens, the ATC guiding it through a hole in traffic just inches wide enough.
He blinked at the traffic gliding by. "What the fuck?"
"We're here, boss," Solo said. "Park or cruise?"
"You keep movin'." He opened the door. "I'll be on the curb, five or ten minutes."
"I should call Mario's?" he said. "Tell him we'll be a little late?"
"Huh-uh. I mean it, five or ten minutes. We'll be there on the button." Smart-ass. It was true he was used to spending some time in Nick's, have a drink and go through the horse papers, dog papers. But he liked to hit Mario right on time.
Odd to smell garlic instead of pastry, walking into the Athens in the morning. Three tourists at a front table, eating breakfast. Big omelettes with that Greek cheese.
And look who else. " Que pasa, Professor?"
"Same old," the professor said, and went back to his book. You're in for an interesting day, old man. Willy Joe waved at Nick, busy behind the bar, and dropped a dollar for the sports page.
He sat down at the bar and took out his notebook. Checked the trifectas first, no action. But there were two long shots that came in, ten across—over a thousand each! Nothing on the dogs.
Nick set down his coffee, pastry, retsina, and five-hundred-dollar bill. Willy Joe looked up. "Hey, Nick. Let me buy you one."
"What?"
He held up the retsina. "Eye-opener. Just hit two long shots for a grand apiece."
"Oh, hey. Thanks, Willy Joe." He poured a small one and went back to unloading the dishwasher.
It didn't take long to map out the day's bets. He wrote them down in neat columns and sipped the coffee and wine, ignoring the food. The way the guy died had kind of killed his appetite. He could still smell it.
He watched the limo go by twice—make 'em sweat a little—and then called his bookie with the bets and got up.
The professor gestured at him on the way out. " Buena suerte." Yeah, good luck to you, too. You'll need it, mariposa.
Norman Bell
The little crook never came in except on the first of the month, Norman had noticed. Not an early-morning person; he always looked as if he'd been up all night. This morning he looked especially tense, even though he'd evidently come out ahead on his horses.
What could his world be like? Up all night partying? Hanging out with the other hoods in some pool hall or after-hours bar. He was so macho, maybe he was gay. There were still clubs, Norman knew, though he hadn't been into one in eight years, not since the federal law got pushed through. It was being tested for constitutionality in a dozen states—but not Florida, which had its own sodomy laws. Norman was not the crusader type, anyhow. And the clubs were for young people, alas. He'd feel like an old pervert.
They'd had a raid on one in downtown Southeast a couple of weeks ago. Norman had studied the coverage to see whether there was anyone he knew, and in fact there had been, but not among the men and boys arrested. One of the cops, Qabil Rabin. The one he'd been with when Rory found out. Though of course she hadn't been surprised.
Qabil was a strange and beautiful man, just a year or two out of the army when they'd met. He'd been an enemy POW, captured in Desert Wind. But the army found out he'd been pressed into the Iraqi force against his will, going along with it just to protect his family in Kurdistan. When they were liberated, Qabil wound up in the American army, a three-way interpreter.
He came to UF for political science, police-department scholarship, but he minored in music, and Norman met him in a cross-cultural composition workshop. One thing led to another. They'd been together for over a year, when Rory came home unexpectedly and found them—in the kitchen, of all places.
Norman had seen him now and then over the years, and they exchanged careful signals of recognition. He had a wife and at least two children now, and a uniform that probably restricted his sex life. He hoped things were going well with him. There had been something like love between them, despite the differences in age and culture.
Thinking of him brought an interesting melody back to mind, a Middle Eastern thing in a Phrygian mode. He jotted down a pattern of notes on the back page of the mystery he was reading (trying not to read who done it) and went up to pay Nick.
Nick poured a plastic bowl of soup for Rory and sealed the top. "Things quietin' down over there?"
"Not lately, anyhow. There's a news special tonight, a one-month update. All the networks, crazy."
"Yeah. Like a war ain't enough news for 'em."
"Not as long as we're not in it." Greece was, now.
Nick said something in Greek. "Grace a' God," he explained. "You say hi to the professor for me."
"Sure thing." Norman carried the soup out and secured it in his front basket, which had an adjustable holder for such things, and pedaled off.
He went a few blocks out of his way, to avoid traffic. Rory wouldn't be in the office till eight, anyhow. He passed Rabin's house without looking over at it.
Rory's car was in its spot at eight-oh-one. Norman locked his bike in the rack by three spots that had "Permanent Press" signs. He was not quite old enough for that to make him think of trousers.
There was nobody in the office. He put the soup container in the fridge with a note—"Albondigas—no avgolemonotoday"—and hurried back to his bike. He wasn't avoiding Rory, but he wanted to get home and work on this Phrygian theme. While he pedaled, he searched his memory for a source besides the Middle East folk tune. Once he'd spent almost a week on a composition, and when he played it for Rory, she pointed out that it was a jingle from a beer commercial.
Home, he splashed some cold water on his face while the coffee § reheated. Then he sat with the cello and played the theme in E f and G and then settled on D. |
He snapped on the Roland and keyboarded it, and worked out I a preliminary pattern of chords and dischords. Then he set it to t repeat, and played the cello along with it a few times. He turned '" off the machine and improvised for most of an hour, the coffee ;growing cold again while he was lost in thought.
He put the coffee back in to reheat again and with two fingers sketched out the elaborated theme, looking back and forth between the screen and the keyboard. He could midi it in straight from the cello, but knew from experience that it saved time to go through the Roland, since a note's duration was recorded more precisely, and you didn't have to clean up harmonics.
Sipping coffee, he played the twenty-four bars over and over, using a light pen to isolate four voices. He set the Roland to try different instrumentations, reluctantly admitting that the solo voice couldn't be a cello. Clarinet or even oboe. He played with the phrasing of the oboe and turned it into a parody of Rimsky-Korsakov, which he saved as "Joke 1." Then he returned to the original phrasing, dropped the solo an octave, and tried it with bassoon, and then bass clarinet. Odd but good. He saved it as "BC 1" and got up to stretch and walk around.