province these days, though on occasion he could remember it quite vividly, especially the kind practiced in a certain ground-floor room at the Par Central Motel. But while that was worse, this was close, somewhere, at least, in the general ballpark.
'Sure I do,' William said. 'Jean was exercising his rights under the First Amendment. Jean was just having some fun.'
'Jean didn't have fun.'
'Oh, yeah. I forgot.'
'Jean wasn't the kind of person who could.'
'That's right. It slipped my mind.'
'You didn't know him…'
'You can say that again,' William said. 'Hey, I don't care about the pictures. I don't want them. You can rip them up, burn them, sell them to Rodriguez, whatever you like. I'm not interested in them.'
'Then why'd you ask for them?'
Yes. Why did he ask for them?
'It's a little hard to explain.' Which was true, considering he hadn't exactly explained it to himself yet. 'We used to work together,' William said, a line he seemed to know by rote now.
'Uh huh.' Mr. Weeks was still waiting; Mr. Weeks looked like he'd been waiting for a long time.
'Back when we worked together we sometimes had to finish each other's cases. We didn't like each other all that much, but we'd cover for each other. Because it was professional courtesy. That's all.'
'He's dead.'
'Yeah. Right. You've got me there. But maybe what he was working on isn't. Dead. What do you say, Mr. Weeks? Is there something else you haven't given me? Just one thing else. Maybe something Jean really cared about, not like the pictures, something else?'
Okay, the cat was out of the bag. He hadn't come for the pictures. He'd just followed the pictures, the way you follow those signs on the highway that promise food fifteen, then ten, then five miles down the pike. He was hungry; after all, he hadn't eaten in twenty years, and he could just about taste the meal. The pictures? They were just the flyers that rummies hand out in the glow of topless bars. He'd come for the show. For if someone had taken the pictures, someone, for instance, like Mr. Weeks, it stood to reason he would have taken something else, the something he wanted, the something he'd come for.
And now Mr. Weeks was sitting stock-still, his shock of white hair rippling up and down from the fans, up and down like the hair of a cat caught between fear and hunger.
'Okay,' Mr. Weeks said. 'Okay…'
He stood up and walked to the back of the apartment where it was darker still, where Mr. Weeks disappeared into the gloom and all William could hear was the sound of someone rifling through drawers, through this, inside that, right down to the bottom.
Then he was back, and in his hand a file, which he dropped ever so softly into William's lap, as if it were holy.
To William, it was. The file was thin, worn, and stained with thumbprints. And it was red.
TWELVE
One of the fans had died, just like that, sputtering off like an aircraft engine hit by flak. Mr. Weeks had ministered to it for several minutes, but it was no go; machines were a mystery to him, he said. He readjusted the remaining fans as best he could but it made little difference-instead of three fans blasting hot air around the room, there were now two; it was nearly an improvement.
Yet the darkness in the room made it seem like the inside of a rain cloud: the heat, the moisture, and the sense that something was about to happen, that answers, like lightning, were about to light up the room.
But no such luck. The file was full, but full of what? William had spent several minutes flipping through it as if skimming a book for the dirty parts; but there were no dirty parts, nothing that juicy. Just a list of names: Mr. Samuels… Mrs. Timinsky… Mr. Shankin… Mrs. Winters. Names and addresses-one to a page, and a check under each. And on another page some numbers- license plates perhaps, six to a group. That was it. William looked up now at Mr. Weeks, who was back in his chair and staring back at him, warily, as if under house arrest. Senile, Rodriguez had said. Well, William thought now, we'll see… He leaned forward, just enough to be friendly, like an old friend, like an old friend of an old friend. 'Did Jean ask you to hide this for him, Mr. Weeks?' Mr. Weeks nodded. 'He said it was in case something happened. Don't give it to anyone, he said. It's my last testament, it's what I bequeath, understand? He made me promise.' What I bequeath. 'But you didn't keep your promise?' 'I know who you are. Jean showed me your picture once. When I saw you in the hall yesterday with Rodriguez, I knew you'd come back.' So, William thought, so… 'Funny, isn't it.' 'Funny?' 'Jean gets you to clean up for him-just in case. And Rodriguez to bury him-just in case. Two of you-just in case. And then Jean's on a case, that too.' 'Yes…?' 'It's just that Jean being Jean, we could say maybe something had him worried. Not just here, understand, but hereafter.' Mr. Weeks blinked at him, at him, or at the wall, or just at the situation. 'So, Mr. Weeks, what was the case?' 'I don't know.'
'You don't know, or you don't know if you should tell me?'
'I don't know.'
'Not another something he made you promise, huh?'
'No.' Mr. Weeks shook his head, a good shake, a no- doubt-about-it shake. 'He never said a word to me. If you knew Jean, you knew that wasn't his way. I wasn't even supposed to look in the file. I haven't.'
Okay, so he was right. That wasn't Jean's way. Even with that woman. I can't tell you, he'd said. I can't… Secrets, for Jean, were like insurance policies and he'd loaded up on so many of them that he'd long ago reached equity.
'Okay. Any guesses? Go ahead… it's free.'
'I don't know anything,' Mr. Weeks said, as if he were making a general statement of his intellectual worth, a totaling up of seventy-odd years' worth of acquired knowledge. Maybe the older you get, the less you do know. Maybe Weeks had gotten so old he was already into negative knowledge. On the other hand…
'Maybe you don't know what you know. Knowing things is like that.' Like his clients, remember, who always knew, but didn't. 'Why don't we see?'
'How?'
'Tell me about Jean's last few weeks. What he looked like, where he went, what he said. Walk me through them, okay, Mr. Weeks? We'll take a stroll, nice and easy, you and me. Okay?'
Somewhere outside, an ice cream truck was rolling up the street. There were these bells, this jingle, something insipid but kind of catchy… Here comes Mr. Softee… over and over… Here comes Mr. Softee… but as far as he could tell there were no takers. Not a one.
Now inside, it was different. Here comes Mr. Weeks… and he had a customer too, a customer just about panting for something refreshing, for something tasty to chew on.
Mr. Weeks had gone to the refrigerator for some juice, had opened it, closed it, come back empty-handed, shuffled his feet, cleared his throat, made up his mind. He would tell William about the last few weeks, but not just about the last few weeks. He was one of those people who have to start from the start, not from the end, not even from the middle. To remember his lines he needed the first cue, and the first cue here was Jean-not several weeks ago, but several years ago, more than that, a Jean bored, broke, and nearly beaten.
He'd tried his hand at security years before, Mr. Weeks began, but whether he'd resigned from it or whether he'd been forced to, the experience hadn't been pleasant and hadn't been long.
William picked forced to. Jean had always been a lot happier breaking laws than trying to enforce them. Does fox in the chicken coop ring a bell?
After that, Mr. Weeks continued, after a long while of doing nothing at all, really nothing, because Jean didn't read, or have a television, or even an interest, he tried to start over again. Another agency, a one-man agency. He found a storefront in Flushing, he fixed it up, he hung up a shingle. No one came. One look at the man in the one- man agency and would-be clients turned tail and ran.
