another. I wondered where he left the wheelbarrows he usually carried around on his shoulders.
'Jack,' Papa said. 'So you own bars now instead of tearing them up.'
'Mostly.'
'Heard you were still in Cambodia.'
'I was.'
'Sue Ling doing okay, I hope.'
'Believe it.'
Papa nodded. 'Always thought that girl had fine taste. Then she up and mamed you.'
'Hear you moved up in the world too, Captain. But they call you Papa now, don't they? Make your money off what other people do.'
Papa sh nigged.
'Hey,' the man said. 'Maybe you already did enough, all those years, who's to say. Buy you a beer?'
'Sure.'
These came from under the bar, in bottles. Beads of cold sweat on them.
The man sat looking down at Wayne. 'You think that boy's gonna get up?'
'He'll come around. He's strong.'
'Good thing, too, dumb as he is.'
They grinned at one another again for a while.
'Don't guess you showed up here just for old times' sake,' the man said.
Papa shook his head, then looked at me.
'Lew Griffin,' I said, putting my hand across the table. He didn't take it.
I told him about Armantine Rauch, and why I was looking for him. Described his appearance and background. Slid the photo across the table, which tried to keep it. Told him we'd greatly appreciate any help he could give us.
When I was done, he looked at Papa. 'What's this all about, Bill?' I'd never heard anyone call Papa by name before.
'Talk to him, not me,' Papa said. He sipped at his beer. 'I just run the ferry.'
'Right.' Throwing back half his Dos Equis. 'Okay, I guess I owe you that, at least.' The second half of his beer went looking for the first.
'Griffin. That right? Man you're looking for, this Rauch, yeah, he comes in here some.'
'How often?'
'Some, I said.'
'Once a week? Paydays? Every night?'
'Look. Till ATF says I have to, I don't keep track.'
'You know where he lives?'
'Around, is what I heard.'
'You consider having your people give me a call next time he shows up:
He glanced over at Papa, who nodded.
'Okay.'
'Thanks. We-'
'But you want to look him up before then, he teaches a self-defense class over at the high school every Sunday.'
I asked for directions and got them.
'That it?'
I nodded.
'Appreciate it, Jack,' Papa replied. 'You be sure to give Sue Ling my love.'
When he was gone, we sat looking down at Wayne.
'Good work, by the way,' I told Papa. 'Guess Doo-Wop figured I might need you out here. Usually have to do my own heavy lifting.'
Papa drained off the last of his beer.
'Yeah. Well, good thing once in a while to just kick back, let somebody else do the cooking.'
When I got home that afternoon three police cars were parked a couple of blocks up my street. Cops stood talking to people and writing on clipboards as radios sputtered. The kids on bikes had grabbed another purse and a wallet from an old couple out for a walk. One of my neighbors had chased them halfway to Freret.
19
You could read the building's transformations through the years, manifest histoiy, in its string of add-ons and embellishments: the colonnaded entryway that turned it from palatial residence to luxury hotel sometime in thefifties; redundant entrances from subsequent incarnation as apartment building with (judging from electric meters left in place on the rear wall) at least twelve units; from its brief time as church, a long-unused plywood marquee, FIRST UNITY emerging, ghostlike, beneath whitewash.
Now it was a school. Fleurs-de-lis and stylized coat-of-arms medallions high on the walls had been highlighted in peach, as had miniature, rooklike turrets at the roofline. The remainder of the building was light blue. Behind the building, riverside, half a dozen aluminum trailers squatted on high cinder-block foundations with stairways out front, intended to be temporary, auxiliary classrooms, now permanent.
The school on this late Saturday afternoon looked abandoned.
The front fence, facing on Joseph, was impassable, looped in lengths of chain and padlocked. Around to the side near the back, though, was an old delivery entrance. Roots from a nearby oak had shattered its drive to plugs of cement sitting all on different planes, vaguely geodesic, with shoots of giass and weed between them. The gate stood agap. There was a long groove in the cement where the gate had been forced open until it would go no farther, forward or back, and had remained so ever since.
I was crabbing through this gap, thinking I'd come too late, no one's here, it's a waste of time, when a young woman appeared outside a utility shed lodged at the lot's far corner. After a moment others began to emerge, individually, in pairs or small groups. Most wore gym clothes. Fleece shorts, sleeveless Ts and sweats, warm-ups. A few in skintight biker's shorts or cutoff jeans.
I watched as they slipped through the fence on their way back to cars, cups of coffee, Blockbuster videos, showers, drinks, apartments, homes. Stragglers included an elaborately coiffed fiftyish woman in silver warm-ups, a pair of black-clad silent teenagers, an elderly male so bent with arthritis that his face was parallel to the ground.
Was that it?
I waited.
Faint strands of music from inside. Something with a % beat, heavy bass.
The music shut off, and moments later a man stepped out. He wore an unreconstructed silk sportcoat over maroon T-shirt and chinos, carried a backpack and portable CD player. Pulling the door shut behind him, he glanced my way, but his eyes passed on. Then he seemed to remember something he'd forgotten or left behind, and went back into the building.
Towards which I was moving, fast.
I went through the front door just in time to see, out a back window, the chain-link fence rebounding where he'd gone over. It still sang against its posts. The window was never intended for exits, sudden or otherwise. Its frame hung by a corner, tapping alternately at fence and building side, snap-in plastic shutters dropping one by one to the ground.
A quick movement off in trees, worthy of Bigfoot or Deerslayer.
You live the way Rauch does, you better have good instincts and reflexes.
Somehow he'd sensed I was there. Knew I was there.
I went back inside. The floor, which also served as foundation, was cheap cement, poured quickly, pitted and uneven. Exercise mats were scattered about, folding steel chairs pushed together helter-skelter at the back. Two or
