I declined, and after a moment he said, “I’m afraid he’s in trouble. I wondered if you might be able to help him.” Then he added: “Laura’s dead against my getting involved.”
“Drugs. I don’t know how deeply.”
“Then your wife may be right. The other thing I’d have to know is what you’d expect me to do. There’s probably not much you, or I, or anyone else
He nodded, head remaining momentarily bowed. “I suppose in a sense I’ve dedicated my life to the belief that knowledge, that learning, intellect, reason,
“If not flying, at least taking one hell of a leap of faith.”
“Too close to the son,” he said. I wouldn’t have thought he had it in him.
And because of that, as much as anything else, I told him I would do it.
I got the son’s address, a snapshot (his only one, he told me as he pulled it from his wallet) and as many details of his son’s life as he knew. There weren’t many: a workplace that might or might not be current, a bar he’d mentioned a couple of times, a few friends’ first names. His son drove an old mustard-color Volvo, loved spicy food and war movies, was not a reader and had no particular taste for music.
“I want to know how bad it is,” Dean Treadwell said, “how deeply he’s into this. That’s all I expect of you. Maybe then I can find a way to help him.”
“I’ll do what I can. I still have a few contacts out there. I’ll ask around, turn over some stones.”
Treadwell had pulled a checkbook out of his coat pocket and was uncapping a pen.
I shook my head. “This is a favor. Besides, it may well come to nothing.”
“I insist.”
“So do I.”
“Very well, then.” He clipped pen to checkbook and slipped them back into his pocket. “At least promise that you’ll come over for a meal with Laura and me, soon.”
“I’ll be in touch.”
Outside, he turned back.
“Lew. I almost forgot: my wife made me promise to ask when there’s going to be a new book. She’s read them all, and said to tell you she loves them, especially the ones set in New Orleans.”
“Tell her thanks, but I’m not sure. Lately I seem to be getting distracted by life a lot.”
Neither of us knew, of course, that the next book when it came, written in a two-week binge of twenty-hour days and published just before
Chapter Thirty-Four
It was much worse than he said, of course. Probably even worse than he thought.
The first thing I did that afternoon, from my airless, shared office in the basement of Monroe Hall, was call Walsh. They couldn’t find him for a while, and I sat listening to a rumble of shouts and clatter, indecipherable conversations, other phones buzzing. Finally he came on with “Yeah?”
“Lew.”
“Listen, I don’t care how much you beg, I’m not buying you any more dinners.”
“Two desirable bachelors like us, both our calendars are probably filled anyway, bubba.”
“Well, I might just be able to squeeze you in-but you’d have to buy.”
“I’m not that desperate yet.”
“You will be.”
“So I’ll call you back when I am.”
“Sure you will.” Someone spoke to him, and he turned away briefly, came back. “How’s the girl?”
“Doing okay, this far.”
“Good sign. Any word from Clare?” When I said nothing, he went on. “Yeah, well, I’m sorry about that, Lew, I really am.”
“Life goes on.”
“Yeah. Such as it is. So what kind of favor you need this time? Not a big one, I hope. The city just dumped a new load of shit on us and now the mayor and his boys are down here smearing it all around.”
I told him.
“You at home?”
“School.” I gave him the number.
Twenty minutes later, he called back.
“What about the mayor and his boys?” I asked.
“Hey, urgent police business came up. It happens like that. They’re cooling their buns on the bench out in the squad room, staring at me in here. Told them I’d be right out, soon as I took care of this emergency. First time I’ve sat down today.”
“Maybe I should thank them.”
“Maybe you should shoot the whole lot of them.”
“So what’s the story?”
“Well, it looks like your boy’s cut himself a little swath down the coast from Seattle to Portland.”
“Drugs?”
“Initially. Possession, PI, sales. Then your man went to school somewhere: suddenly B amp;E, suspicion of auto theft and attempted fraud start rolling up. No convictions on any of it, so a lot of this isn’t on the record, but he became a familiar face. A couple of short falls, one for assault and battery, the other for, get this, unpaid traffic tickets. He’s been lucky. But the captain I talked to up there said he’s a body ready to drop. That help?”
“You bet. Thanks, Don.”
“You want me to keep the net open on this?”
“No. Good enough.”
“This guy’s in town, I take it.”
“Yeah.”
“Yet another fine example of scuz rising to the bottom. I’m sure he’ll be in to say hello sooner or later.”
“Good chance of it.”
“So I have to go feed the lions now, right?”
“Guess so. Pull a tail for me.”
“You got it.”
I could have just called Dean Treadwell then, of course. It was what he wanted to know-more than he wanted to know. My favor was done. But I didn’t want to break the old man’s heart, I told myself, not in such an impersonal fashion.
If you’re in New Orleans with time to kill and a taste for alcohol, sooner or later you run into Doo-Wop. And sooner or later you’ll probably buy him a drink and get into a conversation with him.
Every day Doo-Wop makes his steady round of bars from the Quarter up through the Irish Channel and along Oak Street. That’s what he
And if you ever had one of those conversations, Doo-Wop remembers it. He can’t remember if he ever had another name or where he’s from, he doesn’t know the year or who the President is and probably can’t tell you where he stayed last night, but if you talked to him, last week, last month, or back in the summer of ‘68, Doo-Wop’s still got it all.
I found him after a couple of hours, in the twelfth or fourteenth place I tried. He was seated on a stool at the
