Mystery

been bubbling on a gas range, also black, that must have belonged to his parents. Tom liked the entire kitchen, with its wainscoting, hanging lamps, and old-fashioned sinks and high wooden shelves and mellow, clean wooden floorboards.

The old man said, “In honor of the occasion, I think we could add a little something to the coffee, don’t you?”

He took a bottle of cognac from another shelf, and tipped a little into each cup.

“What occasion?” Tom asked.

“Your being here.” He handed Tom one of the cups, and smiled at him.

Tom sipped the hot, delicious mixture, and felt the tension drain from him. “I didn’t know that you knew Hattie Bascombe.”

“Hattie Bascombe is one of the most extraordinary people on this island. That you know about our friendship means that you must have seen her today! But I’m not going to keep you in the kitchen. Let’s go into the other room and hear about what has you so worked up.”

Tom sprawled back on the old leather couch, and put his feet up on the coffee table covered with books. Von Heilitz said, “One minute,” and put a record on his gleaming stereo equipment. Tom braced himself for more Mahler, but a warm, smoky tenor saxophone began playing one of Miss Ellinghausen’s tunes, “But Not For Me,” and Tom thought that it sounded just like the way the coffee and brandy tasted: and then he recognized it.

“That’s Blue Rose,” he said. “My mother has that record.”

“Glenroy Breakstone’s best record. It’s what we ought to listen to, tonight.” Tom looked at him with a mixture of pain and confusion, and von Heilitz said, “This state you’re in—I know it’s a terrible condition, but I think it means you’re almost there. Events are almost moving by themselves now, and it’s because of you.” He sat down across from Tom, and drank from his cup. “Another man was murdered today— murdered because he talked too much, among other reasons.”

“That policeman,” Tom said.

“He was a loose end. They couldn’t trust him, so they got rid of him. They’d do the same to me, and to you too, if they knew about us. We have to be very careful from now on, you know.”

“Did you know that my grandmother committed suicide?” Tom asked. Von Heilitz paused with his cup halfway to his mouth. “It’s like … it was a shock, but it wasn’t. And you lied to me!” Tom burst out. “My grandfather couldn’t have seen the Thielmans’ dock from his balcony! It doesn’t face the water, it faces the woods! So why did you say that? Why does everybody tell me so many lies? And why is my mother so helpless! How could my grandfather dump her at someone’s house and go back to Eagle Lake by himself?” Tom let out a long sigh that was nearly a sob. He covered his face with his hands, then lowered them. “I’m sorry. I’m thinking about four or five things at once.”

“I didn’t lie to you. I just didn’t tell you everything—there are a couple of things I didn’t know then, and a few I still don’t know.” He waited a moment. “When do you go to Eagle Lake?”

“The day after tomorrow.” When von Heilitz looked up sharply, he said, “It was just worked out. That’s why my grandfather called. I’m going on the Redwing plane.”

“Well, well.” The old man crossed his legs and leaned back into his chair. “Tell me what happened to you today.”

Tom looked across the table, and was met by a smile of pure understanding.

He told him everything. About the hospital and David Natchez and the dead man and Dr. Milton; about his “excursion” to the old slave quarter and Maxwell’s Heaven; about seeing Fulton Bishop glide through the court like a hungry snake; about Nancy Vetiver and what Michael Mendenhall had said; Dr. Milton in the pony trap; his father’s drunken hostility and the visit from Ralph Redwing; about the call from his grandfather; his mother in her bedroom, remembering Eagle Lake and her childhood.

“My God,” the old man said when Tom had finished. “Now I know why you were in such a state when you arrived. I think all that calls for some more brandy, without the coffee this time. Will you have some?”

“I’d fall asleep if I had any more,” Tom said. “I’m only half done with this.” Putting it all into words had helped him. Despite what he said, he was tired but not at all sleepy, and he felt much calmer.

The Shadow smiled at him, patted his knee, and took his cup out into his kitchen. He returned with a snifter of brandy and set it on the table, then turned over the Glenroy Breakstone record and filled the room with the confidential, passionate sounds that Tom would associate with both this moment and his mother for the rest of his life.

He sat down again across from Tom and looked at him steadily—with what looked to the boy like steady unambiguous affection, as he swirled the brandy in his glass. “Just now, you told me two very useful bits of information, and confirmed something that I have always thought to be true—that you went out to the Goethe Park area seven years ago for the same reason that you made your English teacher drive you to Weasel Hollow. I saw you that day, and I knew that you saw me too. You didn’t recognize me, but you saw me.”

Mr. von Heilitz seemed very excited, and his excitement infected Tom. “You were there? You told me—that first time I came here, you asked if I remembered the first time—”

“And that was it, Tom! Think!”

And then Tom did remember a gloomy Gothic house, and a face that had looked skull-like peering through the curtains. His mouth dropped open. Von Heilitz was grinning at him. “You were in that house on Calle Burleigh!”

“I was in that house.” His eyes glowed at Tom from over the top of the snifter as he drank. “I saw you coming down the block, looking between the houses to see 44th Street.”

“What were you doing there?”

“I rent houses and apartments in various places on Mill Walk, and I use them when I have to keep an eye on things and stay out of sight. That place was as close as I could get to Wendell Hasek’s house on 44th Street. From the top floor, I could see that whole block of 44th Street.”

“Wendell Hasek,” Tom said, and then saw him: a fat man with a crewcut leaning against a bay window in the brown and yellow house, and the same man appearing on its porch, signaling with his hand.

“He was there,” he said. “He must have seen me. He sent out—” Tom stopped talking, seeing an older boy and a dark-haired girl in his memory. Jerry Fairy. And what are you gonna do now, Jerry Fairy? “He sent his children out to get me. Jerry and Robyn. They wanted to know—”

You want to know what’s going on? Why don’t you tell me, huh? What are you doing here?

“—what I was doing there. And then—”

He saw two other older boys, a fat boy who already looked angry and a boy as thin as a skeleton, rounding the corner of a native house. The whole crowded, frightening scene of those few minutes came back to him in a rush: he remembered Jerry hitting him, and the sudden flash of pain, and how he had lashed out and broken Jerry’s nose—

Nappy! Robbie! Get him!

He remembered the knives. Running. Remembered seeing Wendell Hasek come out on his front steps and winding his hand in the air. The fear of it, and the sense of uncanniness: of being trapped in a movie, or a dream.

“Jerry must have sent for his friends,” he said.

Tom began to shake. Now he could remember everything: the gleam bouncing off one of the knives, the insolent way the one called Robbie had lounged before he began running, the white street name in the purple air, AUER, the certainty that Robbie was going to shove his long knife into him, the traffic on Calle Burleigh suddenly dividing around him and a grey-haired man on a bicycle swooping toward the ground like a trick rider in a circus. He put his hands over his eyes. The mesh of a grille, and a face pointed toward him.

“Nappy and Robbie,” he said.

“Nappy LaBarre and Robbie Wintergreen. That’s right. The Cornerboys.”

Tom’s shaking had gradually subsided, and he stared at von Heilitz.

“That was what they called themselves,” the detective said. “They all dropped out of school at fourteen, and they did a few things for Wendell Hasek. They stole. They kept a lookout for police. In general, they got up to no good until they reached their early twenties, when they suddenly turned respectable and started working for the Redwing Holding Company.”