Blind Willie

'San Francisco, sir.' He hesitates, then adds, 'The Pussy Palace, sir.'

The man in the topcoat laughs heartily at this, and when his face crinkles, the tears which have been standing in his eyes run down his weathered cheeks. 'Pussy Palace!' he cries. 'I haven't heard that in ten years! Christ! A bedpan under every bed and a naked nurse between every set of sheets, right? Naked except for the lovebeads, which they left on.'

'Yes, sir, that about covers it, sir.'

'Or uncovers it. Merry Christmas, soldier.' The man in the topcoat ticks off a little onefinger salute.

'Merry Christmas to you, sir.'

The man in the topcoat picks up his bags again and walks off. He doesn't look back. Blind Willie would not have seen him do so if he had; his vision is now down to ghosts and shadows.

'That was beautiful,' Wheelock murmurs. The feeling of Wheelock's freshly used air puffing into the cup of his ear is hateful to Blind Willie — gruesome, in fact — but he will not give the man the pleasure of moving his head so much as an inch. 'The old fuck was actually crying. As I'm sure you saw. But you can talk the talk, Willie, I'll give you that much.'

Willie says nothing.

'Some VA hospital called the Pussy Palace, huh?' Wheelock asks. 'Sounds like my kind of place. Where'd you read about it, Soldier of Fortune?'

The shadow of a woman, a dark shape in a darkening day, bends over the open case and drops something in. A gloved hand touches Willie's gloved hand and squeezes briefly. 'God bless you, my friend,' she says.

'Thank you, ma'am.'

The shadow moves off. The little puffs of breath in Blind Willie's ear do not.

'You got something for me, pal?' Wheelock asks.

Blind Willie reaches into his jacket pocket. He produces the envelope and holds it out, jabbing the chilly air with it. It is snatched from his fingers as soon as Wheelock can track it down and get hold of it.

'You asshole!' There's fear as well as anger in the cop's voice. 'How many times have I told you, palm it, palm it!'

Blind Willie says nothing. He is thinking of the baseball glove, how he erased BOBBY

GARFIELD — as well as you could erase ink from leather, anyway — and then printed Willie Shearman's name in its place. Later, after Vietnam and just as he was starting his new career, he erased a second time and printed a single name, GARFIELD, in big block letters. The place on the side of the old Alvin Dark glove where all these changes have been made looks flayed and raw. If he thinks of the glove, if he concentrates on that scuffed place and its layer of names, he can probably keep from doing something stupid. That's what Wheelock wants, of course, what he wants a lot more than his shitty little payoff: for Willie to do something stupid, to give himself away.

'How much?' Wheelock asks after a moment.

'Three hundred,' Blind Willie says. 'Three hundred dollars, Officer Wheelock.'

This is greeted by a little thinking silence, but Wheelock takes a step back from Blind Willie, and the puffs of breath in his ear diffuse a little. Blind Willie is grateful for small favors.

'That's okay,' Wheelock says at last. 'This time. But a new year's coming, pal, and your friend Jasper the Police-Smurf has a piece of land in upstate New York that he wants to build a little cabana on. You capeesh? The price of poker is going up.'

Blind Willie says nothing, but he is listening very, very carefully now. If this were all, all would be well. But Wheelock's voice suggests it isn't all.

'Actually, the cabana isn't the important part,' Wheelock goes on. 'The important thing is I need a little better compensation if I have to deal with a lowlife fuck like you.' Genuine anger is creeping into his voice. 'How you can do this every day — even at Christmas — man, I don't know. People who beg, that's one thing, but a guy like you . . . you're no more blind than I am.'

Oh, you're lots blinder than me, Blind Willie thinks, but still he holds his peace.

'And you're doing okay, aren't you? Probably not as good as those PTL fucks on the tube, but you must clear . . .