I went back to the desk and dialed LaVerne’s number. I didn’t really expect to catch her this time of day, but she got it on the third ring.
“Lew? Listen, man, I’ve been trying to get in touch with you all week. Your mother’s been calling me two, three times a day. I left messages all over this town.”
“Yeah, I know, honey. Sorry. I’ve been away on business.”
“But you always let me know …”
“Didn’t know myself until the last minute.” I looked wistfully at the empty bottle on the desk (good word, wistfully), wondering if the drug-store across the street would be open. I hadn’t noticed. “But I’m back now and looking to see you.”
“What is it, Lew? What’s wrong?”
“Mom didn’t say?”
“She wouldn’t even have told me who she was if she didn’t need something.”
“My father’s sick. I don’t know, a heart attack, a stroke, maybe an accident-something, anyhow. ‘Gravely ill’ was what she said.”
“Lew. You’ve gotta go up there. Next plane.”
“And what would I use for money?”
She paused. “I’ve got money.”
“Like the man says, Thanks but no thanks.”
Another pause. “Someday that pride of yours’ll kill you, Lew. The pride or the anger, I don’t know which’ll get you first. But look, it can be a loan, okay?”
“Forget it, Verne. Besides, I’m on a case.” I was beginning to wonder why I had called her in the first place. But who else was there? “I’ll call tonight, find out what’s happening. And I’ll be in touch tomorrow. Hang in there.”
“You too, Lew. You know where to find me. Bye.”
“Yeah.”
I put the receiver down and looked again at the empty bottle. Maybe Joe’s was the place for me tonight. I looked at my watch. Maybe eight, nine would be the best time to call. Maybe they’d know something by then. Maybe they knew something already.
I threw the letters from the bank in the waste-basket and headed out the door.
When I got to the street, my car was gone.
Chapter Three
After bailing the car out down by the river-$47.50; they required cash but I managed to hang some bad paper on them; they also required that I affix the new 1964 license plate I’d been carrying in the back seat before I left the lot-I drove to Joe’s.
It’s off Decatur, but you won’t find it if you don’t know where to look. The barmaids are all pros; they migrated from bar to bar all through the downtown area before they found their way to Joe’s and settled in here, like old folks retiring to Florida.
I sat down at the bar and Betty brought me a double bourbon. I sat there smoking and putting down drink after drink. The ashtray was full and the bottle Betty was pouring out of was going down fast when Joe came in. He wanted to know what the Saints’ chances were. I told him. He said ain’t it the truth.
Several working girls came in, gave me a quick eye and moved along. Betty told me about the latest problems with getting to see her kids.
“What else’s going on?” I asked her at one point.
“Tryin’ to stay out of trouble but people won’t let me,” she said.
That’s about the size of it, I thought.
At nine I walked over to the corner phone and placed a call to Baptist Hospital in Memphis, person-to-person for Mrs. Arthur Griffin, charging it to the office. I was routed through several operators and finally got a man who said, “Fifth-floor intensive care.”
“Mrs. Arthur Griffin,” the operator said.
“Just a minute. She may be with her husband; I’ll check.”
The phone was quiet for some minutes. I watched them meander past like sheep on Joe’s revolving Schlitz clock above the bar. Finally a voice came on.
“Lewis? Lewis, is that you?”
“Go ahead,” the operator said.
“Mom. Listen, what’s going on?”
“It’s bad, Lewis. Where have you been? I been tryin’ to get you all week long. It’s bad. It’s a heart attack, Lewis. He’s had a heart attack. A bad one, the doctors say. Now let me get this right.” She was probably reading it off a piece of paper. “A myocardial infarction.”
Somehow I’d known. “How’s he doing?”
“Holding his own, Lewis, holding his own. They say the crisis comes in three days. If he passes that three days, then his chances get a lot better.”
We had a bad connection. I could hear other, distant voices in the wires.
“Mom, listen, is there anything I can do? Anything at all?”
“Just he’s askin’ for you, Lewis. He wants to see his only boy. Lewis, he knows. He knows he’s dyin’. He wants to see you before that comes.”
Betty motioned from the bar, wanting to know if I wanted another one. I nodded.
“I can’t make it, Mom. Not now. I’m on a case. But if there’s anything I can do, anything at all….” I left the rest unsaid. Of course there was nothing I could do. I had a feeling there was nothing anyone could do. Far back in the wires I heard someone say, “Well, then, Harold, when
Betty brought the new drink around to me at the phone and I had a long draw off it. It went down like a wire brush.
“Lewis, you’ve got to come.”
“I can’t, Mom. The case might break any day. I’ve got to be here. But I’ll call-I’ll be in touch. You keep me posted.”
“They’re taking him to surgery tomorrow, Lewis. They’re going to put some kind of a balloon in his heart, something that’s supposed to help him. I hoped you’d be here.”
“I can’t. I just can’t. Not now. But I’ll be in touch.”
“Let me give you this number,” she said. “There’s always someone here. You make friends fast when something like this happens. It’s one of the waiting rooms. We all sleep here at night. Everybody looks out for each other. Now you call, you hear? I never can get you.”
She read off the number and I copied it down in my notebook, scrawling underneath it: Dad. Someone on the line was saying, “But I can’t wait that long, I gotta know tomorrow.”
“I’ll be talking to you then, Mom,” I said, and hung up.
I went over to the bar and had three straight doubles. How many of these was it that had killed Dylan Thomas? Then I scooped up my change, all but a couple of dollars, and moved on.
Chapter Four
“Roaches,” I told the bartender at a hole-in-the-wall in the Irish Channel. His name was sewn over his shirt pocket, PAT, but whoever did the needlework, in cursive, left a heavy line trailing from the belly of the P to the A, so it looked more like RAT.
In a notoriously wild city, the Channel at one time and for a long time was the wildest spot of all, scene of bars with names like Bucket of Blood, showers of bricks for encroaching outsiders, police killings. Whenever it
